The Crossing Places - Elly Griffiths (6 page)

But Ruth isn’t a mother; she is an archaeologist and it is time she got to work. Nelson needs her professional help and professional is what she must be. Closing down the computer, she opens the file containing the letters. First she puts them in date order, rather surprised to find that Nelson has not already done this, and examines the paper and the ink. Ten of the twelve letters seem to be on the same standard printer paper as the Scarlet Henderson letter. This doesn’t necessarily mean anything, she tells herself. Nine out of ten people with printers must use this sort of paper. Similarly the typeface looks very ordinary, Times New Roman she thinks. But two of the letters are handwritten on lined paper, the sort that comes from a refill pad, complete with a narrow red margin and holes for filing. The letters are written with a thin felt-tip, what used to be called a ‘handwriting pen’ when Ruth was at school. The writing itself is legible but untidy and slopes wildly to the left. A man’s writing, the expert said. It occurs to her that she hardly ever sees handwriting these days; her students all have laptops, her friends send her emails or texts, she even edits papers on-line. The only handwriting she can recognise is her mother’s, which usually comes inside inappropriately sentimental cards. ‘To a special daughter on her birthday …’

The handwritten letters come in the middle of the sequence. Ruth puts them back into order and starts to read: November 1997

Nelson,

You are looking for Lucy but you are looking in the wrong places. Look to the sky, the stars, the crossing places. Look at what is silhouetted against the sky. You will find her where the earth meets the sky.

In peace.

December 1997

Nelson,

Lucy is the perfect sacrifice. Like Isaac, like Jesus, she carries the wood for her own crucifixion. Like Isaac and Jesus she is obedient to the father’s will.

I would wish you the compliments of the season, make you a wreath of mistletoe, but, in truth, Christmas is merely a modern addition, grafted onto the great winter solstice. The pagan festival was here first, in the short days and long nights. Perhaps I should wish you greetings for St Lucy’s day. If only you have eyes to see.

In peace.

January 1998

Dear Detective Inspector Harry Nelson,

You see, I am calling you by your full name now. I feel we are old friends, you and I. Just because Nelson had only one eye, it doesn’t follow that he couldn’t see. ‘A man may see how the world goes with no eyes.’

In peace.

January 1998

Dear Harry,

‘A little touch of Harry in the night.’ How wise Shakespeare was, a shaman for all time. Perhaps it is the wise men - and women - you should be consulting now.

For you still do not look in the right places, the holy places, the other places. You look only where trees flower and springs flow. Look again Harry. Lucy lies deep below the ground but she will rise again. This I promise you.

In peace.

March 1998

Dear Harry,

Spring returns but not my friend. The trees are in bud and the swallows return. For everything there is a season.

Look where the land lies. Look at the cursuses and the causeways.

Ruth stops and reads the last line again. She is so transfixed by the word ‘cursuses’ that it is a few minutes before she realises that someone is knocking on the door.

Apart from the postman making his surly visits to deliver Amazon parcels, unannounced visitors are almost unheard of. Ruth is irritated to find herself feeling quite nervous as she opens the door.

It is the woman from next door; the weekender who watched her drive off in the police car that morning.

‘Oh … hello,’ says Ruth.

‘Hi!’ The woman flashes her a brilliant smile. She is older than Ruth, maybe early fifties, but fantastically well preserved: highlighted hair, tanned skin, honed figure in low-slung jeans.

‘I’m Sammy. Sammy from next door. Isn’t it ridiculous that we’ve hardly ever spoken to each other?’

Ruth doesn’t think it is ridiculous at all. She spoke to the weekenders when they first bought the house about three years ago and since then has done her best to ignore them.

There used to be children, she remembers, loud teenagers who played music into the early hours and tramped over the Saltmarsh with surfboards and inflatable boats. There are no children in evidence on this visit.

‘Ed and I … we’re having a little New Year’s party. Just some friends who are coming up from London. Very casual, just kitchen sups. We wondered if you’d like to come.’

Ruth can’t believe her ears. It’s been years since she’s been invited to a New Year’s party and now she has two invitations to refuse. It’s a conspiracy.

‘Thank you very much,’ she says, ‘But my head of department’s having a party and I might have to …’

‘Oh, I do understand.’ Sammy, like Ruth’s parents, seems to have no difficulty in understanding that Ruth might want to go to a party from motives of duty alone.

‘You work at the university, don’t you?’

‘Yes. I teach archaeology.’

‘Archaeology! Ed would love that. He never misses Time Team. I thought you might have changed jobs.’

Ruth looks at her blankly, though she has a good idea what is coming.

Sammy laughs gaily. ‘The police car! This morning.’

‘Oh, that,’ says Ruth. ‘I’m just helping the police with their enquiries.’

And with that, she thinks grimly, Sammy will have to be content.

That night, in bed, Ruth finishes the Lucy Downey letters.

She was halfway through the letter dated March 1996, with its surprising mention of cursuses and the causeways.

A cursus is a fairly obscure archaeological term meaning a shallow ditch. There is a cursus at Stonehenge, older even than the stones.

… Look at the cursuses and the causeways. We crawl on the surface of the earth but we do not know its ways, or divine its intent.

In peace.

April 1998

Dear Harry,

Happy Easter. I do not think of you as a Christian somehow. You seem to belong to the older ways.

At Easter, Christians believe Christ died on the cross for their sins but did not Odin do this before him, sacrificing himself on the Tree of All Knowledge? Like Nelson.

Odin had only one eye. How many eyes do you have Detective Inspector? A thousand, like Argus?

Lucy is buried deep now. But she will flower again.

In peace.

Now come the two handwritten letters. They are undated but someone (Nelson?) has scribbled the date they were received:

Received 21 June 1998 Dear Harry,

Greetings of the summer solstice be with you. Happy Litha time. Hail to the Sun God.

Beware the water spirits and light bonfires on the beach. Beware the wicker man.

Now the sun turns southwards and evil spirits walk abroad. Follow the will o’the wisps, the spirits of the dead children. Who knows where they will lead you?

In peace.

Received 23 June 1998 Dear Harry,

Compliments of St John’s Day. Sankt Hans Aften. Herbs picked on St John’s Eve have special healing powers.

Did you know that? I have so much to teach you.

You are no nearer to Lucy and that makes me sad. But do not weep for her. I have rescued her and raised her up. I have saved her from a life of the mundane, a life spent worshipping false Gods. I have made her the perfect sacrifice.

Weep rather for yourself and for your children and your children’s children.

In peace.

Now the letters revert to typewriting and the tone changes.

No longer is there the half affectionate teasing, the assumption that Nelson and the writer are ‘old friends’ and share a special bond. Now the writer seems angry, resentful.

There is a gap of four months before the next letter and the date is predictable:

31st October 1998

Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,

Now is the time when the dead walk. Graves have yawned and yielded up their dead. Beware the living and the dead. Beware the living dead. We who were living are now dying.

You have disappointed me, Detective Inspector. I have shared my wisdom with you and still you are no nearer to me or to Lucy. You are, after all, a man bound to the earth and to The Mundane. I had hoped for better things of you.

Tomorrow is the Feast of All Saints. Will you find St Lucy there in all the holy pantheon? Or is she, too, bound to the earth?

In sadness.

25th November 1998

Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,

It is now a year since Lucy Downey vanished. The world has turned full circle and what have you to show for it? Truly you have feet of clay.

A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on the things of flesh, whose heart turns from the Lord. He is like dry scrub in the wastelands, if good comes, he has no eyes for it.

In sadness.

December 1998

Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,

I nearly did not write to wish you compliments of the season but then I thought that you would miss me.

But, in truth, I am deeply disappointed in you.

A girl, a young girl, an innocent soul, vanishes but you do not read the signs. A seer, a shaman, offers you the hand of friendship and you decline it. Look into your own heart, Detective Inspector. Truly it must be a dark place, full of bitterness and regret.

Yet Lucy is in light. That I promise you.

In sadness.

The last letter is dated January 2007:

Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,

Had you forgotten me? But with each New Year I think of you. Are you any nearer to the right path? Or have your feet strayed into the way of despair and lamentation?

I saw your picture in the paper last week. What sadness and loneliness is etched in those lines! Even though you have betrayed me, still I ache with pity for you.

You have daughters. Do you watch them? Do you keep them close at all times?

I hope so for the night is full of voices and my ways are very dark. Perhaps I will call to you again one day?

In peace.

What did Nelson think, wonders Ruth, when he read that open threat to his own children? Her own hair is standing on end and she is nervously checking the curtains for signs of lurking bodies. How did Nelson feel about receiving these letters, over months and years, with their implication that he and the writer are in some way bound together, accomplices, even friends?

Ruth looks at the date on the last letter. Ten months later Scarlet Henderson vanishes. Is this man responsible? Is he even responsible for Lucy Downey? There is nothing concrete in these letters, only a web of allusion, quotation and superstition. She shakes her head, trying to clear it.

She recognises the Bible and Shakespeare, of course, but she wishes she had Shoria for some of the other references.

She is sure there is some T.S. Eliot in there somewhere.

What interests her more are the Norse allusions: Odin, the Tree of all Knowledge, the water spirits. And, even more than that, the signs of some archaeological knowledge. No layman, surely, would use the word ‘cursuses’. She lies in bed, rereading, wondering …

It is a long time before she sleeps that night, and, when she does she dreams of drowned girls, of the water spirits and of the ghost lights leading to the bodies of the dead.

‘So what do you think? Is he a nutter?’

Ruth is once again sitting in Nelson’s shabby office, drinking coffee. Only this time she brought the coffee herself, from Starbucks.

‘Starbucks eh?’ Nelson had said suspiciously.

‘Yes. It’s the closest. I don’t normally go to Starbucks but…’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, you know,’ she shrugged, ‘too global, too American.’

‘I’m all for America myself,’ said Nelson, still looking doubtfully at the froth on his cappuccino. ‘We went to Disneyland Florida a few years ago. It was champion.’

Ruth, for whom the idea of Disney World is sheer unexpurgated hell, says nothing.

Now Nelson puts down his Styrofoam cup and asks again, ‘Is he a nutter?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth slowly. ‘I’m not a psychologist.’

Nelson grunts. ‘We had one of those. Talked complete bollocks. Homoerotic this, suppressed that. Complete crap.’

Ruth who had, in fact, thought she noticed a homoerotic subtext to the letters (assuming, of course, that the writer is male), again says nothing. Instead she gets the letters out of her bag.

‘I’ve categorised the references in the letters,’ she says. “I thought it was the best way of starting.’

‘A list,’ says Nelson approvingly. “I like lists.’

‘So do I.’ She gets out a neatly typed sheet of paper and passes it to Nelson.

Religious

Ecclesiastes

Isaac

Christmas

Christ dying on cross/Easter

St Lucy

St Lucy’s Day (21 December)

St John’s Day (24 June)

All Saints’ Day (1 November)

Jeremiah

Literary

Shakespeare:

King Lear: ‘A man may see how the world goes with no eyes.’

Henry V: ‘A little touch of Harry …’

Julius Caesar: ‘Graves have yawned and yielded up their dead.’

T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday: ‘There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again.’

The Waste Land: ‘We, who were living are now dying.’

Norse legend

Odin

The Tree of All Knowledge (the World Tree, Yggdrasil) Pagan

Summer solstice

Winter solstice

Litha (Anglo-Saxon word for the solstice)

Wicker Man

Sun God

Shamanism

Will o’the wisps

Mistletoe

Greek legend Argus

Archaeological

Cursuses

Causeways

Nelson reads intently, his brows knitted together. ‘It’s good, seeing it all spread out like this,’ he says at last, ‘otherwise you can’t tell which is a quote and which is just mumbo jumbo. “We who were living are now dying,” for example. I thought that was just more spooky stuff. I never realised it was an actual quote.’

Ruth, who has spent hours trawling through Eliot’s Collected Poems, feels gratified.

Nelson turns back to the list. ‘Lots of biblical stuff,’ he says, ‘we spotted that straight off. Psychologist thought he might even be a lay preacher or an ex-priest.’

‘Or maybe he just had a religious upbringing,’ says Ruth. ‘My parents are Born Again Christians. They’re always reading the Bible aloud, just for kicks.’

Nelson grunts. ‘I was brought up a Catholic,’ he says, ‘but my parents weren’t really into the Bible. It was more the saints, praying to this one or that one, saying Hail Marys. Jesus - a decade of the rosary every bloody day! It seemed to take hours.’

‘Are you still a Catholic?’ asks Ruth.

“I had the girls baptised Catholic, more to please my mum than anything else, but Michelle’s not a Catholic and we never go to church. Don’t know if I’d say I was a Catholic or not. A lapsed one maybe.’

‘They never let you get away, do they? Even if you don’t believe in God, you’re still “lapsed”. As if you might go back one day.’

‘Maybe I will. On my death bed.’

“I won’t,’ says Ruth fiercely, ‘I’m an atheist. After you die, there’s nothing.’

‘Shame,’ says Nelson with a grin, ‘you never get to say I told you so.’

Ruth laughs, rather surprised. Perhaps Nelson regrets this foray into levity because he turns back, frowning, to the list.

‘This guy,’ he says, ‘what does he believe?’

‘Well,’ says Ruth, ‘there’s a strong theme of death and rebirth, the seasons, the cycle of nature. I would say his beliefs were more pagan, though. There’s the mention of mistletoe, for instance. The druids considered that mistletoe was sacred. That’s where the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe comes from.’ She pauses.

‘Actually, our Iron Age girl. She had traces of mistletoe in her stomach.’

‘In her stomach?’

‘Yes, maybe she was forced to eat it before they killed her. As I said, ritual sacrifice was quite common in the Iron Age. You find bodies that have been stabbed, strangled, clubbed to death. One body found in Ireland had its nipples sliced through.’

Nelson winces. ‘So does our guy know about all this Iron Age stuff?’

‘It’s possible. Take this stuff about sacrifice, the wicker man. Some people think that Iron Age man made human sacrifices every autumn to ensure that spring came again the next year. They put the victim in a wicker cage and burnt it.’

“I saw the film,’ says Nelson, ‘Christopher Lee. Great stuff.’

‘Well, yes. It was sensationalised, of course, but there’s a theme of sacrifice that runs through all religions. Odin was hung on the World Tree to gain all the knowledge of the world. Christ was hung on the cross. Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac’

‘What did that mean, “Like Isaac, like Jesus, she carries the wood for her own crucifixion.”’

‘Well, Isaac carried the wood on which he was to be burnt. There’s a clear echo of Christ carrying his cross.’

‘Jesus.’ There is a silence. Ruth suspects that Nelson is thinking of Lucy Downey, condemned, perhaps to carry the instruments of her own death. She thinks of her Iron Age body. Was she really staked down and left to die?

‘Actually,’ says Ruth, ‘there’s one very interesting Bible reference. This one from Jeremiah. “A curse on the man who puts his trust in man.”’

“I didn’t even realise that was from the Bible.’

‘Well, it is. One of the prophets. Anyway, I looked it up and guess how the next bit goes …’ She recites it for him: A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on the things of flesh,

whose heart turns from the Lord.

He is like dry scrub in the wastelands,

if good comes, he has no eyes for it,

he settles in the parched places of the wilderness, a salt land, uninhabited.

Nelson looks up. ‘A salt land?’

‘Yes.’

‘The Saltmarsh,’ says Nelson, almost to himself, ‘I always wondered about that place …’

‘Actually, I think there are a few things that might point to the Saltmarsh,’ says Ruth. She reads from one of the letters, Look to the sky, the stars, the crossing places. Look at what is silhouetted against the sky. You will find her where the earth meets the sky. Erik - an archaeologist I know - he says that prehistoric man may have built structures on flat landscapes like the fens or the marshes because they would stand out so much, be silhouetted against the sky. He thinks that’s one reason why the henge was built on the Saltmarsh.’

‘But other places are flat. Specially in this Godforsaken county.’

‘Yes, but …’ How can she explain that she thinks the letter writer shares Erik’s views about a ritual landscape, about marshland being the link between life and death.

‘Remember what I said about marshland?’ she says at last.

‘We quite often find votive offerings or occasionally bodies buried there. Maybe this man’ - she gestures to the letters - ‘maybe he knows that too.’

‘You think he’s an archaeologist?’

Ruth hesitates. ‘Not necessarily but there’s this word, cursuses.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Exactly! It’s a very technical word. It means a parallel ditch with banks on the inner sides. They’re often found within early ritual landscape but we don’t know what they were used for. At the Maxley Cursus, for example, they found shamans’ batons.’

‘Shamans’ what?’

‘Pieces of decorated deer antler. They would have been used by the shaman, the holy man.’

‘What for?’

‘We don’t know, maybe as part of some ritual ceremony.

Maybe they were like magic wands.’

‘This guy’ - Nelson points to the letters - ‘he talks about a shaman.’

‘Yes, it’s quite a popular idea amongst modern New Age thinkers. A holy man who works with natural magic’

Nelson looks back at the list. ‘What about causeways?

Now I’ve heard that word.’

‘Causeways are early pathways, often leading across marsh or water.’ She pauses. ‘Actually, I think I’ve found one at the Saltmarsh, leading to the henge. It’s a sort of hidden path marked out by sunken posts. It’s very exciting.’

Nelson looks as if he will take her word for that. ‘So our man may be a pagan, he may be a New Ager, he may be a religious nutter, he may be an archaeologist.’

‘He may be all four, or maybe he just knows a bit about all of them. He strikes me as someone who hoards nuggets of knowledge. The bit about the will o’the wisps, for example.’

‘Yes, what was all that about?’

‘Will o’the wisps are lights, often seen on marshland and often on the night of the summer solstice. They lead travellers onto dangerous ground and so to their deaths.’ As she says this, Ruth thinks of the weird phosphorous glow over the marsh on the night that she was lost. Without David, would she have died?

‘There are lots of legends

about will o’the wisps. In some stories they’re named after a wicked blacksmith who sold his soul to the devil in return for a flame from the fires of hell. He roams below the earth trying to find his way to the surface, lighting his way by the flame. Other stories say that they’re the souls of murdered children.’

‘Murdered children,’ says Nelson grimly. ‘That’s what this is all about.’

Ruth arrives home to find the phone ringing. She snatches it up and is rewarded by the voice of her favourite Viking.

‘Ruthie! What news on the causeway?’

She tells him that no-one else knows of her discovery.

However, when she visited David to give him a bottle of whisky as a thank-you present, he gave her a map of the Saltmarsh with the posts clearly marked in his own hand.

‘Excellent,’ purrs Erik. ‘Don’t let Techno Boy see anything until I get there.’ Techno Boy is his nickname for THE CROSSING PLACES

Phil, who is addicted to all kinds of archaeological technology.

‘When

will that be?’

‘That’s why I’m ringing. Very good news. I’ve managed to get a sabbatical for next term.’

‘That’s wonderful!’

‘Yes, I know. Magda’s very jealous. It’s the long nights, you know, a real killer in the winter. Anyway, I hope to be with you in a week or so.’

‘Wonderful!’ says Ruth again. ‘Where will you stay?’

Erik laughs. ‘Don’t worry; I won’t be after your sofa. I don’t fancy sharing it with the cats. I’m sure they would put the evil eye on me. I remember a nice B and B quite near you. I’ll book there.’

‘I’ll book it for you, if you want,’ offers Ruth, wondering why she doesn’t mind Erik making jokes about her cats.

‘No problem, baby. I’ve got the internet for that. Techno Boy would be proud of me.’

“I doubt it. Erik?’

‘What?’

‘There’s just a chance you might get a call from someone called Detective Inspector Harry Nelson …’

Nelson had asked her if there was anyone she remembered hanging around the dig ten years ago, anyone

fascinated by archaeology and mythology. Ruth could, in fact, remember one name. A man who called himself Cathbad and who was the leader of the group of druids who wanted to save the henge. After a moment’s hesitation, she had offered Nelson this name, which was met with a snort of contempt. Did Ruth have any idea what his real name was? No. Did she know anyone who might know? So Ruth had given him Erik’s name. She remembers, many times, seeing Erik deep in conversation with Cathbad, the latter’s purple cloak flying out behind him as they stood on the mudflats looking out to sea. Cathbad had been fairly young, she remembers. He would only be in his late thirties or early forties now.

She explains the situation to Erik, telling him about the disappearance of Scarlet Henderson and the earlier case of Lucy Downey.

Erik whistles softly. ‘So. You are helping the police with this case?’

‘Well, only slightly. There are some letters, you see. They were sent when Lucy Downey vanished and Nelson thinks … Well, he’ll explain if he speaks to you.’

‘You sound as if you’ve got quite friendly with him.’

There is an odd note in Erik’s voice. Ruth remembers that he doesn’t much like the police.

‘I’m not friendly with him,’ she hurries to defend herself.

‘I don’t know him very well.’ Erik is silent so she goes on, ‘He’s odd, complicated. He seems very Northern and brash. Thinks archaeology is rubbish and mythology is nonsense and all New Agers should be shot but, I don’t know, there’s something else too. He’s bright, brighter than you think at first. And he’s interesting, I suppose.’

“I look forward to speaking to him,’ says Erik politely.

‘Am I to understand that I am a suspect?’

Ruth laughs. ‘Of course not! It’s just … he was asking whether I remembered anyone from the henge dig, anyone who was interested in druids. And I thought of Cathbad.’

‘Cathbad.’ Erik takes a deep breath, she can hear it all the way across the North Sea. ‘Cathbad. I haven’t thought of him for years. I wonder what he’s doing now.’

‘What was his real name?’

‘Something Irish, I think. He was into the Celtic stuff too. Malone. Michael Malone.’

‘Could he have been involved?’

‘Cathbad? God, no. He was a real innocent. A simple soul. I think he really had magic powers, you know.’

After they have said goodbye and Ruth is bustling around, feeding herself and the cats, she reflects that Erik has a way of bringing you up short with something like that.