The Crossing Places - Elly Griffiths (22 page)

Judy and Clough report that there is no response from either of Ruth’s neighbours.

‘Houses look shut up, Sir.’ Nelson tells them to stay and wait for the dog handlers. He will search on the Saltmarsh.

‘In this?’ says Clough, gesturing towards the dark expanse of the marsh, where the trees are almost blown flat by the wind. ‘You’ll never find them.’

‘There’s quicksand,’ says Judy, as a particularly savage blast almost knocks her off her feet. ‘And the tide comes in really quickly. I used to live around here. It’s not safe.’

‘I know a way,’ says Cathbad.

They all look at him. His cloak is flying out in the wind, his eyes are bright. Somehow he doesn’t look quite as ridiculous as usual.

‘There’s a hidden way,’ Cathbad goes on. ‘I discovered it ten years ago. It’s a sort of shingle spit. It leads from the lowest hide right up to the henge circle. Solid ground all the way.’

That must have been the path Ruth took to find Scarlet’s body, thinks Nelson. ‘Can you find it in the dark?’ he asks.

‘Trust me,’ says Cathbad.

Which none of them finds very reassuring.

The sound of her name seems to have a devastating effect on the girl. She starts to cry loudly. A child crying rather than a teenage girl.

‘Let me out!’ she sobs. ‘Oh please, let me out.’

‘I will,’ says Ruth grimly.

She reaches down and grabs the girl’s arm. It feels brittle, as if it might snap. Then she hauls but she is not strong enough to take the girl’s weight, skinny as she is.

Oh, why hadn’t she kept going to the gym?

‘I’m coming down,’ she says at last. ‘Then I’ll give you a leg up.’

The girl backs away but Ruth is determined. She jumps in through the trapdoor and falls heavily onto the concrete floor below. The girl is standing against the opposite wall, her teeth bared like an animal at bay. In her hand she holds a stone. A flint, decides Ruth, giving it a sharp, professional look. A sharp one.

Ruth tries a smile. ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Hello Lucy. I’m Ruth.’

The girl lets out a small, frightened sound but doesn’t move.

Ruth looks around. She is in a small, square, underground dungeon. Looking up, she sees the trapdoor in the ceiling, and a barred window which also has a wooden cover. The room is empty apart from a low bed, a bucket and a plastic box which seems to contain a baby’s toys.

The walls and the floor are all concrete, rough in places, and there is moisture running down the walls. The whole place smells of damp and urine and fear.

My God, thinks Ruth in horror, has Erik really kept her a prisoner all this time? What about when he was in Norway? Cathbad, that must be the answer. This is the link between Erik and Cathbad. Cathbad is his jailer.

And now they must escape. Ruth turns to the girl, who is still cowering against the wall.

‘Come on.’ She holds out her hand again. ‘I’m going to help you get out of here.’

But the girl, Lucy, just whimpers and shakes her head.

‘Come on, Lucy,’ says Ruth, trying to keep her voice as calm and gentle as possible. Trying to make it sound as if they have all the time in the world and there isn’t a madman on their trail and a raging tempest outside. ‘Come on. I’ll take you home. You’d like to go home, wouldn’t you, Lucy? See your mum and dad?’

She’d expected Lucy to react to the words mum and dad but the girl is still looking terrified. Ruth edges slowly towards her, dredging her mind for every soothing platitude she can think of.

‘There, there. It’s OK. Don’t worry. It’ll be alright.’

What were some of the meaningless things her mother used to say to her? Annoying little catchphrases but nevertheless as soothing as a cup of cocoa when you can’t sleep.

Ruth has never had children so it is her own childhood she must conjure up. Remember the days when her mother was not just someone who annoyed her on the phone, but the most important person in the world. The litany of motherhood.

‘Don’t worry. No use crying over spilt milk. Never get well if you pick it. Tears before bedtime. Tomorrow’s another day. All’s well that ends well. It’s just a phase.

Don’t cry. It’s darkest before dawn.’

And, as if the last words are the magic spell that releases the princess from the tower, Lucy throws herself into Ruth’s arms.

Nelson drives Cathbad to the car park in silence. The only sounds are the overloaded windscreen wipers swishing to and fro and Nelson’s fingers drumming impatiently on the steering wheel. Perhaps fortunately for his continued well being, Cathbad does not comment on this typically Scorpio impatience.

The trees around the car park are blown into a frenzy.

The boarded-up kiosk looms eerily out of the dark, promising ghostly Cornettos and Calippo Shots. Grimly, Nelson gets a rope and a heavy-duty torch out of the boot.

Cathbad hums serenely.

They walk up the gravel track to the first hide. Nelson is in the lead, shining the torch in front of him. He doesn’t think of himself as imaginative, but the noise of the wind howling across the marshes is starting to give him the creeps. The thunder rumbling overhead just adds to the cliched horror film atmosphere. Behind him Cathbad sighs with what sounds like happiness.

They pass the first hide and Cathbad pushes in front.

‘The path,’ he says calmly. ‘It’s near here.’

Nelson hands him the torch. If they get lost he will kill Cathbad first and arrest him afterwards.

After a few yards, Cathbad veers off the gravel track and starts to head out over the marsh. Despite the torch, it’s pitch black. Here and there, Nelson can see glimpses of water, dark and dangerous. It’s like walking into the unknown, like one of those ridiculous trust exercises they make you do on police training courses. Except that Nelson doesn’t trust Cathbad, not one little bit. Following Ruth across the marshes, even in the daylight, had been difficult enough. It takes all his self-control now not to elbow Cathbad out of the way and insist on turning back to the track.

Suddenly Cathbad stops. ‘Here it is,’ he murmurs.

Nelson sees him shine the torch onto the ground. A bolt of lightning turns the sky white. Cathbad grins at him.

‘Follow me,’ he says.

About a mile away, across the black marshland, Ruth holds Lucy in her arms. It feels strange, cuddling this thin, vulnerable body. Ruth doesn’t know many teenagers and those she does know are hardly likely to fling their arms around her and sob into her shoulder.

‘There, there,’ says Ruth in her mythical mother persona. ‘It’ll be alright. Come on, Lucy.’

But Lucy just cries and cries, her entire body shaken with the force of her sobbing.

‘Come on,’ Ruth is forced to say at last. ‘Come on.

Before he gets back.’

That does the trick alright. Lucy breaks away, her eyes round with fear.

‘Is he coming?’ she whispers.

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. Who knows where Erik is?

Hopefully he is lost out there on the dark marshes but, knowing Erik, he probably has a sea sprite’s sixth sense that will allow him to walk unharmed through the storm and arrive just as they are trying to escape. She doesn’t say this to Lucy though. Taking advantage of the girl’s loosened grip, she propels her gently below the trapdoor.

‘I’m going to give you a leg up. You know,’ she adds desperately, ‘like on a pony.’ She has never ridden a pony but she is hoping that Lucy has.

‘A pony,’ Lucy repeats carefully.

‘Yes. I’m going to push you up through that hole and then climb up myself. OK?’ she finishes brightly.

Almost imperceptibly, Lucy nods.

‘Put your arms up,’ says Ruth. Lucy does so. Clearly she is used to obeying orders. In the event Ruth does not give her a leg up, instead she clasps Lucy round the waist and lifts her. It is surprisingly easy. Either Lucy weighs almost nothing or Ruth has developed superhuman strength. To her amazement, Lucy grasps the edge of the trapdoor and deftly swings herself up. Then she peers down at Ruth, her lips curved in something like a smile.

‘Well done, Lucy! Well done!’ She is so elated that she has almost forgotten that she has still got to get herself up.

Desperately, Ruth looks around for something to climb on. She spots the plastic box of toys and pulls it over to the space below the trapdoor. She stands on top. Still not high enough. So she gets the bucket, tipping its pungent-smelling contents into the corner, and puts it upside-down on top of the box. Now she balances precariously on the bucket. Yes!

She is able to grab the rim of the trapdoor. Then, using every ounce of superhuman strength, she struggles to pull herself up. Her fingers scrabble madly on the hide’s wooden floor and, amazingly, she feels something else pulling determinedly at her hand. It is Lucy. Lucy trying to help her.

Whether or not this makes the difference, suddenly her torso is up through the trapdoor. One final heave and her legs are up too. Ruth lies panting on the floor of the hide.

Lucy is watching her. When she leans forward, her voice is again that breathy little whisper.

‘Are we going home?’

‘Yes.’ Ruth struggles to her feet and takes Lucy’s hand.

She can hear the rain drumming on the roof but the thunder seems to have stopped. She looks at Lucy’s thin, shivering body. How is she ever going to get her home?

Ruth takes off the policeman’s jacket and wraps it around Lucy. It comes to below her knees.

‘There,’ she says in her bright ‘mother’ voice. ‘Now you’ll be fine.’

But Lucy is looking beyond her. Staring at the entrance to the hide. She has heard something and now Ruth hears it too. Footsteps. A man’s footsteps. Coming quickly towards them.

Purple cloak flying out behind him, Cathbad leads the way across the marshes. Occasionally he stops and shines the torch at the ground and then he turns slightly to the right or left. Nelson follows. He feels his jaw locked with frustration, but he has to admit that, so far, Cathbad hasn’t put a foot wrong. On either side of them he can see still water and dark, treacherous marshland but their feet remain on the twisting stony path. Thunder is rolling above them, the rain beats down unmercifully. Nelson is soaked but none of this matters if they find Ruth.

It is so dark that sometimes he almost loses sight of Cathbad, though he is only a few paces in front. Then he sees a glimmer of purple and realises that the old nutter is still there. Once or twice, Cathbad turns to him, grinning manically.

‘Cosmic energy,’ he says.

Nelson ignores him.

Where the hell is Ruth? And Erik? Whatever possessed Ruth to go running off like that, chasing over the marshes on the worst night of the year? Nelson sighs. When he thinks of Ruth, a kind of reluctant tenderness constricts his throat. He thinks of her lists, her love for her cats, her refusal to drink station coffee, the calm way she can dig through layers of mud and come up with a priceless THE CROSSING PLACES

treasure. He thinks of the way she fed him coffee and listened, the night Scarlet was found. He thinks of her body, actually rather magnificent unclothed, white in the moonlight. He thinks of her at Scarlet’s funeral, her eyes red, and of her face when she told him that Erik was the author of the letters. He sighs again, almost a groan. He’s not in love with Ruth but somehow she gets to him. If anything happens to her, he will never forgive himself.

Cathbad stops again and Nelson almost bumps into him.

‘What’s the matter?’ He has to shout to be heard above the wind.

‘I’ve lost the path.’

‘You’re joking!’

Cathbad sweeps the beam of the torch over the ground.

‘Some of the posts are submerged …’he mutters. ‘I think this is it.’

He takes a step forward and disappears. He doesn’t even have time to scream. He just vanishes, swallowed up by the night. Nelson jumps forward and is just in time to catch a handful of cloak. He pulls, the cloak tears, but now he has got hold of Cathbad’s arm. Cathbad is up to his neck in the mud and it takes all Nelson’s strength to haul him out.

Finally, with a ghastly sucking noise, the marsh relinquishes its prey. Cathbad kneels on the path, head down, panting.

He is completely covered in mud, his cloak in tatters.

Nelson yanks him to his feet. ‘Come on, Cathbad, you’re not dead yet.’ It is the first time he has called Malone by his adopted name, but neither of them notices this.

Cathbad grasps Nelson’s arm, his eyes look white and wild in his blackened face. ‘I am in your debt,’ he says, fighting for breath. ‘The spirits of the ancestors are strong, they are all about us.’

‘Well, we’re not about to join them yet,’ Nelson tells him briskly. ‘Where’s that torch?’

Ruth and Lucy stare at each other, terrified. The footsteps are coming nearer. Ruth’s mind works frantically. They are trapped, they can’t leave the hide without Erik catching them. Unconsciously Ruth moves in front of Lucy. Will Erik attack them both? How can she defend herself, defend Lucy? She looks wildly around the hide but it is completely empty. If only she had a stone or a piece of wood. Where is the stone that Lucy was carrying?

The footsteps come nearer and, at the same moment, the moon slides out from behind the clouds. A man’s figure approaches, wearing yellow waterproofs. Hang on, wasn’t Erik in black? The man reaches the steps to the hide and, in the moonlight, Ruth sees his face.

It isn’t Erik. It is David.

‘David!’ shouts Ruth. ‘Thank God!’ David has come to save her again. David, who knows every step of the marshes. David who, she realises, is the only person who really loves the place. She feels giddy with relief.

But, behind her, Lucy starts to scream.

Nelson hears the scream. He grabs Cathbad’s arm.

‘Where did that come from?’

Cathbad points over to the right. ‘From over there,’ he says vaguely.

‘Come on.’ Nelson sets out, running, staggering over the waterlogged ground.

‘No!’ shouts Cathbad. ‘You’re off the path.

But Nelson keeps running.

Lucy screams and, in that second, Ruth understands everything.

‘You!’

She stares at David. ‘It was you.’

David looks calmly back at her. He looks no different from the kind, diffident, slightly eccentric David she thought she knew. Christ, she had even, for a minute or two, almost fancied him.

‘Yes,’ he says. “Me.’

‘You killed Scarlet? You kept Lucy a prisoner here for all these years?’

David’s face clouds. ‘I didn’t mean to kill Scarlet. I brought her as company for Lucy. Lucy was growing up. I wanted a younger one. But she struggled. I tried to make her be quiet and … she died. I didn’t mean to do it. I buried her in the sacred place. Erik told me it was the right thing to do.’

‘Erik? So he knew about this?’

David shakes his head. ‘He didn’t know but he talked to me, all those years ago, about burial places and sacrifices.

He told me that in prehistoric times they buried children on the marshland, as an offering to the Gods. So I buried Scarlet where the wooden circle used to be. But you dug her up again.’ His face darkens.

‘You killed my cat,’ bursts out Ruth. She knows she shouldn’t mention Sparky, she shouldn’t be antagonising David, but she can’t help herself.

‘Yes. I hate cats. They kill birds.’

He takes a step closer. Ruth grabs hold of Lucy, who is shaking violently.

‘Keep away from her.’

‘Oh, I can’t let you go now,’ says David, in a sweet, reasonable voice. ‘She’d never survive in the wild. She’s been in captivity too long. I’ll have to kill you both.’

And then Ruth sees that he is holding a knife, a very serious-looking knife. The moonlight gleams on the jagged blade.

‘Run!’ she yells and, dragging Lucy after her, she sprints past David and into the night.