It is a body, he is sure. He hears how heavily it falls and he knows, without any doubt, that the body will be dead when it hits the water. For a moment, he feels nothing. His entire body, his entire self, is numb. Even as he swims towards the dark shape in the water, he knows that it is all over. He knows that she is dead.
Max has been desperately following in the electric boat. He sees Nelson reach the Lady Annabelle and try to get a handhold on her side. Max swings the smaller boat round, attempting to get alongside. Next to him, Cathbad is silent for once. He had shouted ‘Harry!’ when Nelson went overboard. Once, Max had thought that Cathbad loved Ruth. Now he isn’t so sure.
The Lady Annabelle is still coming towards them and Max has to act quickly to save his boat from being rammed. He can see Nelson bobbing in the water and then he hears a splintering crash and sees a body falling.
‘Oh no,’ Cathbad whispers.
‘Hold tight,’ says Max. He swings the electric boat round almost at a right angle and somehow he is beside Nelson, who is supporting the body in a lifeguard’s hold, barely keeping his head above water.
‘Hang on, Nelson,’ Max shouts, ‘I’m here.’
With Cathbad’s help, he hauls the body into the boat. It is frighteningly heavy; a dead weight. Then Cathbad helps Nelson in; he is shivering and crying, he seems to have completely taken leave of his senses.
Max is bending over the body. He looks up and suddenly the mist clears, revealing a full moon like a baleful eye.
‘It’s not her,’ he says gently.
CHAPTER 35
It is June the twenty-first, the longest day. In the evening Max is holding a party at the Roman site to celebrate both the summer solstice and the end of the dig. Cathbad will be there, complete with dowsing rod, mistletoe crown and oak staff. Ruth is also invited, along with most of the staff from the archaeology department. But Nelson, though invited, is instead on his way to Sussex to visit Father Patrick Hennessey.
He is not quite sure why. Over the phone, he told Hennessey that he wanted to ‘clear up some loose ends’ but, in truth, all the loose ends in the case of Bernadette McKinley have been well and truly laid to rest. Two weeks ago, Father Hennessey himself conducted the funeral service for the little girl who died over fifty years ago, at the hands of her father.
Bernadette’s mother was not at the funeral. When Judy turned up at the convent, on the morning after her interview with Sister Immaculata, she was told that the nun had died in the night. ‘Did she see a priest?’ Father Hennessey asked urgently when he was told. Yes, Judy said, Father Connor was with her at the end and administered the last rites. Judy knows, and Nelson knows too, the importance of this. Sister Immaculata may have confessed to Judy but this is not the confession that would matter most.
Although neither parent could be present, the little dusty church was not quite empty for the short ceremony. Nelson was there, as were Clough and the newly promoted Detective Sergeant Judy Johnson. Ruth, Max and Cathbad also attended, the latter dressed quite conservatively in a black shirt and jeans. Irish Ted and Trace were also there, Trace wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her lacy purple top.
Edward and Marion Spens sat in the front row, staring straight in front of them. ‘After all,’ said Edward afterwards, rather unsteadily, to Nelson, ‘she was my half-sister. It just seems unbelievable that…’ His voice trailed off. Nelson sympathised with the unspoken words. Almost unbelievable that Edward’s father turned out to be a murderer who killed a child while in his teens and attempted murder again as a seventy-year-old? Almost unbelievable that the crime lay buried for over half a century, while the killer’s son planned to dig up the land for profit? Almost unbelievable that, on the same site, a children’s home would provide a refuge for hundreds of children and yet two would run away, one dying soon afterwards? All of it is unbelievable, yet all of it is only too true. Nelson grasped Edward Spens’ hand briefly then walked away through the tombstones. There was nothing else left to say.
At the church gate he stopped and spoke to Trace, who was still mopping her eyes.
‘I’ve just been speaking to your uncle.’
She looked up at him. ‘How did you know?’
‘It wasn’t difficult,’ said Nelson though, in truth, the connection escaped him for a long time, even after he saw the names on Judy’s family tree. Charlotte Spens, children Tracy and Luke. Though, of course, Trace’s surname isn’t Spens, which made it less obvious. Still, her presence explained why Sir Roderick was able to know so much about what went on both at the Swaffham dig and at Woolmarket Road.
Trace looked shell shocked, much as her uncle had done. ‘I can’t believe that Grandad… Mum quarrelled with Uncle Edward, you see, so we didn’t really see the rest of the family. But I’d always liked Grandad. He always seemed such a sweet old thing. We used to talk about history, about the Romans. It was something we had in common.’
‘Let’s hope it’s the only thing,’ said Nelson soberly, turning away to talk to Ruth.
Ruth had looked pale and tired but otherwise in good enough health. Her pregnancy was now obvious, even in the unflatteringly baggy black suit.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ she smiled rather shakily. ‘I’m glad we had this funeral. It feels right.’
‘Yes,’ Nelson agreed, ‘it feels right.’
He was about to say more when Clough bore down on them, suggesting a visit to a nearby pub. ‘It’s the proper thing to do after a funeral. Ask any Irishman.’ In the background, Irish Ted was nodding vigorously.
‘I’d better get back to work,’ said Ruth. ‘Goodbye, Nelson.’
And she had leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. It was their first physical contact since their child had been conceived.
When the police boarded the Lady Annabelle that night in early June, they had found Ruth sitting huddled on the deck, holding the gun. ‘I killed him,’ she kept saying, ‘I killed him.’ Nelson, had he been there, would have told her to keep this thought to herself. But Nelson was, at the time, sitting in an ambulance wrapped in a silver foil blanket and babbling about his daughters. The reinforcements, two police cars and an ambulance, had arrived almost as soon as Max pulled Sir Roderick’s dead body out of the water. The Lady Annabelle had drifted harmlessly onto the river bank. The policemen, local boys, boarded the boat easily, leaving their squad car parked in the reeds, its lights flashing eerily in the mist.
Ruth was convinced that she had killed Sir Roderick Spens. After all, didn’t she pull the trigger and see him fall, arms flailing helplessly, through the wooden railing of the boat? But the post-mortem (performed by an indecently cheery Chris Stevenson) showed that there were no bullet wounds on Sir Roderick’s body. Cause of death was a blow to the head, probably sustained when he fell. The bullet was later found, wedged into one of the Lady Annabelle’s bench seats. Ruth was relieved but the verdict does not alter her fundamental belief that she was the cause of the old man’s death. She had wanted to kill him. Isn’t intent to kill the same as murder?
This is something that Nelson could discuss with Father Patrick Hennessey. He knows, as he joins the traffic edging over the Dartford Bridge, that his visit is about more than police business. The Woolmarket Street case is closed. Whitcliffe is, if not happy, at least satisfied that none of the details have made it to the press (though the local papers did report the death of Sir Roderick Spens in a boating accident). Edward Spens is going ahead with the building development. ‘Life must go on,’ he said sententiously to Nelson, as if Nelson might be about to dispute the fact. He plans to call the apartment block ‘Bernadette House’.