‘Are you all right?’
‘What’s happened to Ruth?’
‘We were meant to meet at the Swaffham site. But when I got there there was no sign of her. And I found this in one of the trenches.’
He holds out Ruth’s phone.
‘You’d better come in,’ says Nelson.
The girls hardly look up as the cloaked figure passes through the sitting room. They are deeply involved in some rubbish involving American high school pupils, loud rock music and vampires. Nelson and Cathbad talk in the kitchen, amongst Michelle’s gleaming work surfaces and the cork-board groaning with invitations, shopping lists and school timetables. It seems almost impossible that evil should come here, into this sunny family room, but they both know that it has; they both feel its shadow.
‘I went to her cottage,’ Cathbad is saying. ‘It’s completely deserted.’
‘The university?’
‘No one there. Her office is locked.’
Nelson picks up Ruth’s phone. His was the last number she dialled. He looks at his own phone, six missed calls from Judy Johnson and, before that, one from Ruth Galloway.
It is a shock when his phone rings again. Judy Johnson.
‘Johnson. What is it?’
‘Roderick Spens sir. I think he was the father.’
‘What?’
‘Sister Immaculata. I thought the baby was Sir Christopher’s but now I think it was Roderick’s. He would have been about fourteen or fifteen when it was conceived. Sister Immaculata, Orla, would have been twenty.’
‘She had an affair with a fourteen-year-old?’
‘I think so. Sister Immaculata said he called her his Jocasta. Jocasta was the mother of Oedipus.’
‘Classical scholar, are you now?’
‘I looked it up.’
‘Have you confronted this Sister Immaculata?’
‘She’s too ill to speak to me.’
Nelson remembers Dr Patel saying that Sir Roderick’s mind was ‘remarkably sharp’. He remembers that, when Ruth texted to say that she was expecting a girl and he had rung her back, Sir Roderick had actually been in his office, dithering about and pretending to be a sweet little old man.
‘Are you still there, sir?’
‘Yes. Good work, Judy. Keep trying to see the nun. I’ll call you later.’
He clicks off the phone. Cathbad leans forward and Nelson sees not the fey Druid but the scientist, the man who would, incredibly enough, have made rather a good policeman.
‘Nelson,’ he says. ‘I think Max Grey has kidnapped Ruth.’
I hadn’t expected this. Socrates may favour dialogue but I don’t. The last thing I needed was a chat with the infant. Apart from anything else, my time was limited. The maids would be back at midday and the mother could come in at any moment.
Then I had a brainwave. ‘Keep quiet,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’
I bent over the bed. I had hoped she was asleep but she wasn’t. Her eyes were open and she looked at me.
She obeyed my order, even putting her finger to her lips. I’m obviously born to command. In fact, I think I’ve got quite a gift with children.
‘Lie still,’ I said. And I pulled the knife out of my pocket.
I raised the knife. She laughed. Sacrilege! I lowered the knife slightly and looked at her. Then she started to cry.
CHAPTER 32
When Ruth opens her eyes it is still dark. She is not scared at first. Instead she feels rather sleepy, soothing memories rocking to and fro in her head: picnicking with her mother and brother in Castle Wood, listening to the radio with her dad, floating in the sea, hair streaming back amongst the seaweed, sleeping on a beach in the sun. Even when she realises that she is, in fact, lying tied up on a narrow bed, she is not immediately filled with terror. The pleasant memories persist along with the gentle rocking motion. Then, as if in an effort to rouse her, the baby in her womb kicks. Ruth is suddenly wide awake, struggling to sit upright. Her hands are tied behind her back so this is a difficult feat, but she manages it. By her head there is a small round window but through it she can see only grey and green, merging and separating like colours in a kaleidoscope. The whole thing is so horribly like a dream that she actually closes her eyes again and wills herself to wake up. But when she opens her eyes it is all still there, the rope (now digging painfully into her wrists), the window onto nothingness, the strange seesawing movement.
Desperately she tries to remember what has happened. She was in the trench, looking at the Janus Stone. She can see the two stone faces looking up at her, sinister and impassive. Then someone spoke to her. Who was it? She remembers that she wasn’t scared, just curious and slightly annoyed at the interruption. She remembers getting out of the trench and going to look at something in a car. Then something must have frightened her because she tried to ring Nelson. After that – nothing.
‘Ah. You’ve woken up.’
Ruth turns and sees what should have been clear all along. She is in a boat, very like Max’s boat. Hang on, it is Max’s boat. She can see the stuffed dog, Elizabeth’s dog, grinning at her from the bed. She is lying on the galley seat. The sink and cooker where once Max cooked her a gourmet meal, are opposite her. The herbs are still swinging picturesquely from the ceiling. And, standing on the step leading down from the deck, is Sir Roderick Spens. What’s he doing here?
‘Can you help me?’ she says. ‘I’m tied up.’
Inexplicably Roderick lets out a high-pitched giggle. ‘Tied up? So you are. Dr Galloway’s busy. She’s tied up.’
Ruth does not know what is happening but she knows that she is suddenly very scared. And Roderick’s face, so mild-looking with its faded blue eyes and fringe of white hair, is the scariest thing of all.
‘Let me go,’ she says, trying to sound authoritative.
‘Oh I can’t let you go,’ says Roderick, still sounding gently amused. ‘You have what I want, you see?’
‘What?’
‘You have Detective Inspector Harry Nelson’s baby. You lay with him and now you’re with child. You’re carrying his daughter. That’s what I want.’
Ruth stares, cold with horror. The archaic language ‘lay with him… with child’ only serves to heighten the horror. Somehow this old man knows her secret, that she is carrying Nelson’s baby, and he is going to use this knowledge in some terrible way.
Still smiling, Sir Roderick approaches and Ruth sees the dull gleam of a knife.
‘I want the baby,’ he repeats.
Nelson stares at Cathbad.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Max Grey. I think he’s got something to do with Ruth disappearing.’
When Cathbad appeared in Nelson’s office (was it only yesterday?), he had had some actual information about Max to go with his sixth sense. Apparently Cathbad had been speaking to a fellow Druid who lives in Ireland. ‘He knew Max Grey from a long way back, when he lived in Ireland. He described him in detail. Only he called himself by a different name entirely. And Pendragon–’
‘Who?’ Nelson had asked, wincing as if in pain.
‘Pendragon. My friend. He said that this Max Grey character was a real troubled soul. Full of inner violence.’
Whilst admiring the Druid networking system, Nelson had, at the time, dismissed this as mere new age fancy. But now he says with real urgency in his voice, ‘Why do you think he’s involved?’
‘Today, when I couldn’t find Ruth, I rang him. No answer. I contacted his students. He hasn’t been seen all day.’