The Ghost Fields (Ruth Galloway) (35 page)

Chaz hurries out of the door and Sally comes over with a glass of water. ‘Try to drink something,’ she says to Judy. ‘You should eat too, keep your strength up. Shall I make you a sandwich? Someone ought to eat some of the food.’

‘No thanks,’ says Judy. Ruth is relieved to see that her breathing is almost back to normal. It’s odd but having gone through labour and childbirth herself doesn’t make it any easier to witness in someone else.

Judy is obviously transferring her affections to the competent Sally. ‘Will you come with me?’ she asks.

Sally looks nervously around the room. ‘I’d like to but I can’t really leave . . . Ruth will come with you.’

‘Please!’ Judy grabs her arm. ‘You’re a nurse.’

Sally looks at Ruth, who is torn between wanting Sally to take over and not wanting to abandon Judy. The silence lasts until a car is heard outside.

‘Come on, Judy,’ Sally helps her to her feet. ‘Let’s get you to hospital.’

‘Will you come with me?’

Sally looks at Ruth again. ‘OK, I will. Ruth, can you look after Dad? Old George? He might be a bit upset with the floods and everything.’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth. If she’d had to choose between being Judy’s birth partner and babysitting Old George, she’s pretty sure that she would have chosen Judy. But Judy seems to want Sally and there’s no time to argue about any of it.

Chaz’s jeep is at the door. Sally helps Judy into the back seat and gets in beside her. Chaz drives off as soon as the door is shut, leaving Ruth staring after them with a feeling of dread that is slowly turning her body to ice.

She has recognised the jeep. It’s the car that followed her home across the marshes.

Nelson looks around his room with distaste. The course is being held at York University, and if this is being a student, thinks Nelson, you can keep it. Single bed, Blu-tack on the walls where posters have been taken down, cracked sink, carpet with stains that look suspiciously like blood. So this is what Whitcliffe described as ‘luxury accommodation’. The campus itself, sixties concrete blocks interspersed with ornamental ponds, is a far cry from Nelson’s idea of a university (
Brideshead
crossed with
National Lampoon’s Animal House
). It has been raining all day and the whole place has a sad, watery feel to it.

Nelson gets out the course programme. ‘18.00,’ he reads, ‘Meet and greet. 19.00: Supper in the student union.’ It gets worse. ‘21.00: Police Force Bingo.’ Jesus wept. What the hell is Police Force Bingo? Four drunk and disorderlies in a row and you get a cash prize? After pacing the room for a few minutes he decides to ring Michelle. She’d seemed a bit odd when he left, alternately distracted and rather weepy. Women’s troubles, he thinks vaguely. As the sole male in a household of women, he tends to attribute everything to this cause.

Michelle’s phone goes straight to answerphone but there are four missed calls from Clough. Christ, what trouble is Cloughie in now?

‘Hi, boss.’ Clough sounds cheerful at any rate. ‘Crazy weather here. Floods everywhere, the coast road’s underwater. Cassie and I are stranded at Spalding.’

‘Aren’t you meant to be going to the do at Blackstock Hall?’

‘No one’s going anywhere. Half of Norfolk’s under water.’

Good riddance, thinks Nelson. But this thought is instantly replaced by worry about Michelle, Ruth and Kate. Where are they all? Are they OK? He can feel his sheepdog instincts taking over, wanting to herd them all to safety.

‘Anyway,’ Clough is saying, ‘thought you’d like to know. We’ve had the DNA analysis on my mask.’

My mask. Clough is ridiculously possessive about his assault case.

‘Go on. Surprise me.’

‘Well, it’s not really a surprise at all. Guess who the red devil is related to?’

But Nelson doesn’t have to guess. Amongst other tests, he asked the lab to compare the DNA profile recovered from the mask against the sample provided by George Blackstock junior.

‘He’s a Blackstock.’

‘Got it in one. Direct sibling or offspring.’ Nelson ends the call feeling twitchier than ever. Could Clough’s attacker really be a direct relation of Young George’s? Offspring must mean Chaz, surely? Young George is an only child so that rules out siblings. He rings Clough back.

‘Have Ruth and Johnson left for Blackstock Hall?’

‘They won’t have gone, boss. Like I say, everywhere’s underwater.’

But a flood won’t put Judy off if she’s feeling determined, thinks Nelson. He tries her number. No answer. That’s worrying for a start. Judy always answers her phone. Then he calls Ruth. It goes to answerphone but that’s not so unusual. Ruth has a maddening habit of putting her phone on silent and then not being able to find it. He leaves her a curt message: ‘Ruth. Ring me.’ Then he rings Tim (maybe he could get to Blackstock Hall to protect the girls), but he too is unobtainable. Michelle is still not answering. He sends her a text message and tries Ruth again. Now her phone seems to be switched off. By now Nelson is seething with frustration. He picks up the course programme and stares at it unseeingly.

19.00: Supper in the student union.

21.00: Police Force Bingo.

Bingo. He thinks of the pets’ burial ground, the sound of an old man’s grief. Then he picks up his bag and strides off down the corridor, ignoring the course leader, who is hovering by the coffee machine.

Nelson is going home.

Ruth is outside, trying to get a signal. It is a few minutes before she notices that she is soaking wet. Her hood has come down and the rain is trickling down her back. The driveway is now an inch deep in water and her shoes are sodden. She doesn’t think she has ever felt more helpless in her life. She has let Judy be driven away by a man who follows women home in the dark, by a man who may well have killed a close relative and fed him to his pigs. What can she say to Cathbad? Cathbad. She should ring him. Now, while she’s got a signal.

Out here, she does have a signal but she notes with horror that her battery is very low. Bloody iPhone. And her charger is sitting smugly by her bed at home. There’s a missed call and a text message from Nelson.
Ruth. Ring me.
Typical Nelson – it doesn’t take that many characters to say please. Well, she hasn’t got enough battery to ring him. Cathbad has to take priority now.

He answers on the first ring. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Look, Cathbad, don’t panic. Judy’s gone into labour but she’s fine. Chaz is taking her to the hospital and Sally’s with her. Sally’s a trained nurse.’ Well, she was thirty years ago but Ruth doesn’t think it’s worth saying this.

‘Oh my God. I’ve got to go to her.’

‘No!’ Ruth almost shouts. ‘You’ve got to look after Kate and Michael. You can’t take them into a maternity ward. Besides, the roads are a nightmare. Flooding everywhere.’

‘Yes, it’s pretty bad here,’ admits Cathbad. ‘But I can’t just sit at home while Judy’s having our baby.’

‘Send positive thoughts,’ says Ruth. ‘That’s what I’m doing.’

‘You’re right,’ says Cathbad. ‘But positive thoughts aren’t as good as being there, are they?’

‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘They’re not. But I’m sure she’ll be OK. Chaz has this great big car, a jeep. It’ll get through the floods.’

‘Hazel says that Chaz is a good man,’ says Cathbad. ‘Do you think so?’

‘Yes,’ lies Ruth. ‘He’ll take care of her. I’ll ring when I have news.’

‘OK,’ says Cathbad, sounding sad and a long way away. ‘Take care, Ruth.’

Take care. If only he knew. Ruth takes a deep breath and goes back into the house.

CHAPTER 33

Michelle and Tim stare into each other’s eyes.

‘I’ve waited for this moment for so long,’ says Tim.

‘Me too,’ says Michelle. She is no longer subdued but now looks almost possessed, her hair wild, her pupils huge.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ says Tim. He wants it to be her choice, irrevocably so.

Michelle just nods and leans in towards him. She is wearing only her silk underwear and Tim reaches round to unhook her bra with one hand. He hopes the gesture doesn’t look too practised. He hopes he’ll be able to last longer than a few seconds.

The bleep of a text message makes them both jump. Leave it, Tim urges her silently. Just leave it. But Michelle turns and looks at the phone.

‘Leave it,’ he mutters into her hair. But she pulls away from him and reads the message. When she turns back, her pupils are back to their normal size. Even her hair looks subdued again.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she says.

‘Why?’ asks Tim. ‘Is it bad news? One of the girls?’

‘It was Harry.’

‘Jesus, he hasn’t found out about us, has he?’

Michelle shakes her head. Her eyes fill with tears.

‘I’ve got to go home. I can’t do this to him.’

‘For Christ’s sake.’ Tim turns away and sits on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. Michelle touches his naked back timidly.

‘I’m sorry, Tim.’

He can hear the tears in her voice and suddenly he’s sorry too. He should never have done this, should never have let things get this far.

‘It’s OK,’ he says. He goes to the window. Where, earlier in the afternoon, there had been a sunken Italian garden there is now a swimming pool.

‘We might have some trouble getting back,’ he says.

Old and Young George are sitting side by side on the sofa. They both look up when Ruth comes in. In their dinner jackets, they look like a couple of old-school entertainers waiting to go on stage. They also look strikingly alike.

‘Chaz has taken Judy to hospital,’ she says. ‘Sally’s gone with them.’

Young George says kindly, ‘Sally used to be a nurse. She’ll know what to do.’

‘They’ll drown,’ says Old George. ‘The seas are rising.’

God, thinks Ruth, he’s really lost it now. She wishes that she was a thousand miles away, with Kate on a sunlit beach somewhere. She wishes that she had never met the Blackstocks. But she has promised Sally that she will look after her father-in-law. It doesn’t look as if Young George is going to be much help.

‘I’m sure they’ll be fine,’ she says, trying to make her voice soothing. ‘Sally will ring when she has news.’

‘The phone lines are down,’ says Old George. ‘Civilisation is collapsing.’

Young George walks over to the desk and tries the phone. He looks apologetically at Ruth. ‘I’m afraid the lines are down.’

‘But surely Sally’s got a mobile?’

‘She’s got one but we can’t get a signal here so she’s always losing it.’

Judy’s got a phone, thinks Ruth. She never goes anywhere without it. But she imagines that Judy will be rather too busy to be making calls. And Ruth’s phone has hardly any battery life left. There’s a silence.

‘I might as well start clearing things away,’ says Young George. ‘I don’t think anyone’s going to come to the party, do you?’

Old George looks towards the window, where the sky is completely black now. ‘Is it time for dinner?’ he says. ‘Who’s going to cook my dinner?’

‘The house is full of food,’ says Young George. ‘Sally’s been preparing it for days.’

‘Buffet food,’ says his father scornfully. ‘
Canapés
. I want a real supper.’

Both men look at Ruth.

It all goes fine until the exit for the A17. Nelson flew along the A1, passing everything in a haze of spray, windscreen wipers on overdrive. But now there’s a flashing sign saying ‘Road closed due to flooding’. Jesus Christ, he thinks, what’s happened to the weather? First storms and then floods. What’s next? Earthquakes? A line from a hymn that they sung at Fred’s funeral comes back to him: ‘Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still, small voice of calm.’ He forces himself to stay calm. It won’t help anyone if he drives into a ditch. He edges forward, trying to remember an inland route to King’s Lynn.