He continues rifling through Judy’s (incredibly neat) papers and comes across the sheet of paper on which she has jotted down the Spens family tree.
He stares at the scribbled names, sure he is missing something. He is so deep in thought that he doesn’t hear his name being called. It is not until Cathbad is actually in the room with him that he registers his presence, purple cloak and all. Tom, the desk sergeant, hovers in the background looking embarrassed.
Since the Saltmarsh case, Nelson and Cathbad have almost become friends. There is an understanding between them, despite Nelson’s contempt for new age philosophy and Cathbad’s dislike for authority. Cathbad has even visited Nelson’s house, bearing dreamcatchers for the girls and Nelson has once or twice met him for a drink in dodgy pubs where the beers all have names and, unless you are careful, people play folk music at you.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ says Tom. ‘He said it was important.’
Nelson notices that, cloak notwithstanding, Cathbad does look unusually serious, even worried.
‘What it about?’ he asks.
‘Max Grey,’ Cathbad answers.
Judy arrives at Southport at just after four to be told that Sister Immaculata is ‘unwell’ and can’t see anyone.
‘It’s important,’ pleads Judy, standing in the spotless reception area surrounded by tropical plants and pictures of saints.
‘I’m sure it is,’ says the Sister sympathetically, ‘but Sister Immaculata is having a bad day. Perhaps she’ll be brighter tomorrow.’
So, after promising to be back tomorrow, Judy finds herself on Southport seafront, tired, hungry, discouraged and slightly scared. What if Nelson is furious with her for disappearing like that? What if Ruth gets murdered tonight and it’s all her fault? What if Tanya finds the dental records, solves the case and gets promoted? She sighs and starts to walk towards the nearest B and B.
Ruth had not been pleased to open her door expecting Judy but finding Tanya Fuller, designer glasses flashing, on the doorstep. She likes Judy and had been looking forward to seeing her again. The morning’s conversation with Father Hennessey has left her rather more unsettled than before. What did he mean, ‘The evil in that house began long before I ever saw it.’? ‘Surely you don’t mean the place is haunted?’ Ruth had answered lightly.
‘Maybe I do,’ the priest had replied.
‘But priests don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘Sure we do,’ Hennessey had smiled. ‘What about the Holy Ghost? The most important one of the trilogy as far as I’m concerned.’
All rubbish as far as Ruth is concerned but, driving back along the misty Saltmarsh road, she kept having a ridiculous compulsion to look in her mirror to check that no one was sitting on the back seat. Even now, as she cooks supper for herself and Tanya, she puts on the radio to stop herself wondering if she can hear breathing outside.
Ruth doesn’t cook much (although she loves reading cookery books, preferably with pictures of Tuscan olive groves) and she slightly resents cooking for Tanya. It had been all right with Judy but preparing a meal for this stranger sitting on the sofa picking cat’s fur off her black trousers, this is different and slightly stressful. Nevertheless Ruth cooks pasta and sauce and mixes a salad. She and Tanya chat in a desultory manner as they eat. Ruth learns that Tanya is twenty five and has been in the police force four years, she is a graduate (sports science) and she thinks keeping fit is a moral imperative. Ruth listens to this in silence, helping herself to an extra piece of garlic bread. Tanya thinks Norfolk is ‘very nice’, her colleagues are ‘very nice’ and Nelson is also ‘very nice’.
‘Don’t you find him a bit of a bully?’
‘No. He’s been very nice to me.’
He’s been nice to me too, thinks Ruth, and look where that got me. She looks out of the window and thinks of Nelson and that night, four months ago, when he turned up unexpectedly at her front door. The sun is setting over the marshes and the birds wheel into the air, shifting black clouds against the deep blue sky.
‘Beautiful view,’ says Tanya politely.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ says Ruth. She thinks of the Saltmarsh and its secrets: the hidden causeway, the henge, the bodies buried where the land meets the sea. Last year she had nearly died on the marshes. She had thought that the danger was over and that she could live quietly for a while. But somehow danger seems to have found her again.
Tanya eats a tiny amount of pasta, pausing between each mouthful. Ruth has finished her second helping before Tanya has eaten her first. They drink water (‘I’m on duty’) and Tanya reacts to the offer of pudding as if Ruth had tried to sell her drugs. Ruth eats a slice of chocolate cake and wonders what the hell they are going to talk about all evening. Perhaps they can just watch TV.
She is about to suggest this when, without warning, the lights go out. Tanya jumps up, alert at once.
‘It’s OK,’ says Ruth, ‘it’s only the fuse. It does that occasionally. The box is out the back.’
The fuse box is in a small outhouse in the back garden. Ruth’s neighbours, the weekenders, have converted their outhouse into another bathroom but Ruth’s just contains rusty gardening equipment, a defunct exercise bicycle and the remains of a rotary washing line.
‘I’ll go,’ says Tanya.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s right by the back door. Anyway, you’d never find the box. There’s no light in the shed.’
Ruth puts on her shoes and opens the kitchen door. It is dark outside and a fresh, salty wind is blowing. She steps into the garden, feeling for the side of the shed with one hand. She can feel the flint wall, the rotting wood of the door. She reaches out to touch the handle.
And encounters living flesh.
CHAPTER 27
Ruth screams. She is aware of a smell, lemon and sandal-wood, and then the world goes black. She is fighting for breath; she can’t see or feel anything. She falls to the ground, scraping her knee on stone.
‘Ruth!’ Tanya’s voice, muffled but close.
Something is pulled from over Ruth’s head and she can see again. The night sky looks extraordinarily bright after the previous total blackness. Ruth is kneeling on the floor by the shed and Tanya is standing beside her, holding a heavy black cloth.
‘What happened?’ Tanya sounds very shaken. Whether it is concern for Ruth or fear of what Nelson would say if anything happened to her, Ruth doesn’t know.
‘I came out. I was feeling for the wall and I felt… a person. Someone was standing there, right by the wall. I touched them. Their face, I think. I heard them breathing. Then it all went black.’
‘They threw this over you.’ Tanya indicated the black cloth. ‘It’s weighted at the bottom,’ she says.
‘That’s why I couldn’t get it off.’ Ruth struggles to her feet. Now that the fear has subsided, she feels rather foolish. There is something infinitely ridiculous about being wrapped in a cloth, like a budgie in a cage.
Tanya pushes open the shed door. ‘Is there anyone there?’ she calls, her voice admirably steady. No answer but Flint nearly gives them both a heart attack by jumping heavily from the roof, landing with a thump on the grass.
‘Let’s get you inside,’ says Tanya. ‘I’ll come back out here with a torch.’
But Ruth doesn’t want to stay indoors on her own, so she follows Tanya back out into the garden. Tanya flashes her torch around the tiny shed. Its beam illuminates the collection of rusty iron and plastic, the fuse box on the wall, the festoons of cobwebs – but nothing else. She gestures towards the fuse box, all the switches have been pushed down.