The Outcast Dead (21 page)

*

Ruth and Kate are walking along the shingle path to the
beach. Ruth has been shopping and has bought a range of food high in E-numbers and low on mushrooms. She and Kate ate chips at the supermarket cafe (who knew supermarkets had cafes, it’s a whole new world) and now Ruth has acquiesced to Kate’s demands for the sea. It’s a beautiful day and, as they reach the sand dunes, the beach is spread out before them like a present. It’s almost deserted. The Saltmarsh beach, accessible only after miles of trekking across the marsh, is not on the usual tourist trail. There are always a few hardy souls who think the journey is worth it for the view and the sand but Ruth doesn’t begrudge them their place in the sun. As long as they don’t try to talk to her, that is.

They pause at the base of the dunes. Ruth thinks of that other journey, four years ago, to find Scarlet’s body. Please God, don’t let the search for Poppy end the same way. She remembers Cathbad lighting a bonfire on the sands – ‘Saint Bridget accept our offering’ – and she includes Saint Bridget, whoever she is, in the prayer. This is sacred land, Cathbad would say, otherwise why would those unknown Bronze Age Britons have bothered to build a henge, way out here between the earth and the sky? Why would later people have built the causeway, that snaking path that leads across the treacherous marshland to the sea?

Kate is pointing back towards the grassland.

‘Poppy!’

Ruth jumps. ‘Where?’

But then she sees that her daughter is pointing at the
flowers blooming amongst the wind-blown shrubs, blood red against the green. She wonders who taught Kate to identify a poppy.

‘Come on Kate,’ she reaches out her hand. ‘Nearly there.’

*

Five o’clock and Donna and Patrick are still not back. Nelson must have taken them into the station for some reason. Or maybe Donna has collapsed and needs hospital treatment. The children are getting restive and Judy reckons it’s probably time for their tea. She’s sure Justine has some fairly rigid routines in place but she’s not exactly available to help. Justine has been taken in for questioning. Tim’s with her now.

‘Do you want to make them some tea?’ Judy asksTanya, just to see what response she’ll get.

Tanya looks horrified. ‘Me? I don’t know what children eat.’

Judy doubts whether Scooter and Bailey would enjoy afternoon tea cooked by Auntie Tanya. As far as she can make out, Tanya exists on energy drinks and cereal bars. So Judy makes scrambled egg on toast and they eat it in front of the TV, something apparently strictly forbidden by Justine. ‘Though Mummy lets us sometimes.’

Afterwards Judy leaves Tanya with the washing-up and takes the children into the garden. They run in delighted circles, glad to be free of the house and its stultifying atmosphere. Bailey scales the climbing frame and Judy helps Scooter onto a swing. All this equipment, she
thinks. Their back garden is only big enough for a tiny sandpit. Still, Michael loves playing in the sand, spending hours sifting and sorting. Maybe he’ll grow up to be an archaeologist. Like his dad.

‘Look at me!’ shouts Bailey from the top.

‘Be careful,’ says Judy. The last thing she wants is for one of the children to be injured in her care.
Tiny tot in horror fall. Policewoman to blame
.

‘Why don’t we play a game?’ she says.

‘Hide and seek,’ says Bailey, swinging on the rope.

Judy looks at him. She still thinks that Bailey has something that he wants to tell her. Maybe the game will unleash that memory or observation, whatever it is. She had better be careful though. She doesn’t want another of the Granger children going missing.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘But just in this part of the garden. OK? Just where the play stuff is.’

‘Count to three hundred!’ shouts Bailey, jumping up and down.

‘I’ll count to fifty,’ says Judy. And she’ll make damn sure to keep her eyes open too.

Scooter seems a bit uncertain. Through her fingers Judy can see him circling her slowly before crouching down behind the seesaw. Bailey has disappeared in the direction of the Wendy House.

‘Coming!’ she calls. ‘Ready or not.’

After a show of searching that has Scooter in giggles, she ‘finds’ him and hoists him onto her hip. He clings to her like a monkey.

‘Where’s Bailey?’ she asks. ‘Where’s your brother?’

Scooter giggles again and buries his face in her hair. She thinks that she can see Bailey’s red t-shirt behind the Wendy House.

‘Is he over here?’ She doesn’t want to find him too soon. He’s older, after all, and deserves a proper game.

‘Is he in here?’ She tries the playhouse door. She won’t go inside. She knows the search teams have practically taken the place apart. She’ll just pretend to look.

‘Bailey! Are you in here?’

She pushes open the door. The search teams have done their work well. The child-sized furniture – mini kitchen with table and chairs – is all back in place. But there’s something else too. Something pink in the corner. Something that moves.

‘It’s Poppy,’ says Bailey, appearing at her side.

‘And she was in the playhouse all the time?’ says Ruth.

‘She certainly wasn’t there all the time,’ says Nelson. ‘We searched the Wendy House thoroughly on Saturday night and again this morning. Even took the floorboards up. But this afternoon, when I was with the parents at the TV station, Johnson was looking after the other kids. They were playing some game in the garden. Johnson looked in the playhouse and there was Poppy.’

‘Was she OK?’

‘Right as rain. A bit cold and hungry but otherwise fine. And she was dressed warmly. That’s the biggest clue we have really. When she went missing she was just wearing her nightdress. When Johnson found her she was wearing a pink all-in-one thing, fleecy with feet attached.’

‘God. I can’t imagine what Judy would have felt. What did she do?’

‘She picked up the little girl and ran like hell for the
house. She wasn’t sure if she was hurt or not at the time. Fuller called me immediately – I was driving the parents home – and we were there in minutes.’

Ruth can just imagine the way Nelson must have driven to cover those last few miles.

‘What did the mum do?’ she asks, though she feels as if she can see the scene for herself.

‘It was one of the best moments of my career,’ says Nelson. ‘She just grabbed the baby from Johnson and collapsed on the floor, sobbing and laughing. The husband sort of fell on top of her and soon the whole family were in this little heap on the kitchen floor. Johnson and Fuller were crying like a couple of babies.’

‘What about you and Clough?’

‘Oh we’re tough.’ Nelson grins, ‘Well, I think Cloughie had something in his eye. I was just so relieved. You know, I really thought she was dead.’

Ruth and Nelson are in her tiny garden, drinking tea and watching Kate play with her Native American tepee (a present from Cathbad). It’s nearly nine o’clock but warm and still light. When Nelson had rung to say that Poppy had been found and that he’d be round to see Kate when he’d cleared up at the station, Ruth had said, ‘Don’t worry about us, you must be exhausted. Go home.’ ‘No, I want to see her,’ Nelson had replied and Ruth can understand why. She has only been peripherally involved in Poppy’s disappearance and yet the experience has made her want to treasure every moment with Kate. Even now, she’s reluctant to take the little girl to bed. She just wants
to watch her playing in the shadowy garden, shuttling to and fro between the tent and the apple tree, intent on some complicated business of her own. She understands why Nelson wanted to see his youngest daughter, to check with his own eyes that she was safe and happy.

‘It’s a hell of a relief,’ Nelson says again, his eyes on Kate. ‘When you find a missing child alive, it’s the best feeling in the world. But the case isn’t over. The perpetrator’s still at large and we haven’t got much to go on really. The note – assuming it’s the same person – the change of clothes, that one sighting.’

‘Do you think that was her? The woman with the pram?’

‘I don’t know, but no-one’s come forward, which seems suspicious in itself. And why would anyone be wheeling a baby in a pushchair at ten o’clock at night in the pouring rain?’

‘Maybe the baby wouldn’t sleep. I used to take Kate out for drives. Up and down New Road at twenty miles an hour. Anything to get her to close her eyes.’

Nelson smiles. He looks shattered, Ruth thinks. There are dark circles under his eyes and when he puts his empty cup down on the grass his hand is shaking.

‘How long since you slept?’ she asks.

He runs a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t go to bed last night. It’ll have to be another early start in the morning too. Can’t afford to let the trail go cold.’

‘You can’t afford to crack up either.’

He laughs. ‘Don’t worry about me, Ruth. Like I say,
I’m tough. I’d like to give Johnson a day off though. She’s really taken this case to heart.’

*

Judy lies on the sofa, eyes closed. The exhilaration of finding Poppy has given way to an exhaustion so complete that, as soon as she sat down, she felt as if she had sprouted tendrils that would root her to the spot forever. But the exhilaration has not disappeared. She can still feel the glorious weight of the little girl against her shoulder as she ran towards the house, stumbling over the flowerbeds, the two boys chasing after her. She remembers Tanya’s shocked face as she stood at the door, not knowing whether the pink bundle in Judy’s arms was moving or not.

‘She’s alive,’ Judy had panted. ‘Call the boss. Now!’

While they waited for Nelson, Judy had propped Poppy up on the kitchen table, not daring to let go completely. So far the little girl had not uttered a sound but she was awake, her blue eyes round as she stared impassively at the two policewomen.

‘She’s not that cold,’ said Judy. ‘She can’t have been in there long.’

‘Christ,’ said Tanya. ‘She must have been put there while we were in the house.’

‘The clothes are different,’ said Judy. ‘Remember, Donna said she was in a nightdress.’ She patted the pink babygro. ‘Feels as if she’s got a clean nappy too.’ Tanya shuddered slightly.

‘Hallo, Poppy,’ said Judy. ‘Hallo darling.’

Scooter was crying quietly in the corner but Bailey
suddenly appeared carrying a squashy toy zebra. ‘Look Pops! It’s Stripes!’

Poppy had burst into noisy sobs. Judy gathered her into her arms as the door opened and Donna exploded into the room …

‘Judy?’ Darren is leaning over her. ‘You ought to be in bed, love.’

Judy opens her eyes. ‘How’s Michael?’

‘Fast asleep.’

Judy thinks of Poppy sandwiched between her parents as they lay on the kitchen floor, a sobbing, shuddering human pyramid. Incredibly, when Donna had finally got to her feet, Poppy had fallen asleep, mouth open, cheeks flushed.

‘Is she OK?’ Donna had asked Judy. ‘She’s not drugged or anything?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Judy said. ‘She seemed perfectly alert when I found her. But you’ll need to get her checked out at the hospital.’

‘There’s an ambulance outside,’ said Clough. They were the first words he had spoken though Judy had seen him surreptitiously wiping his eyes.

‘Thank you,’ Donna said to Judy. ‘How can I ever thank you?’

‘I didn’t do anything really.’

Now she remembers something else. ‘She smelt of perfume,’ Judy says to Darren. ‘Poppy smelt of the play house – you know, that typical shed smell – but she smelt of perfume too. Something expensive.’

Darren pulls her to her feet. ‘You can tell Nelson in the morning.’

Judy leans against her husband as they walk towards the stairs. He smells of home.

‘It’s what’s called a shifted village,’ says Frank. ‘In medieval times the centre would have been here, just north of the church. Now it’s a mile away along the A140.’

Ruth looks around her. It’s almost too perfect, a landscape painter’s dream of a ruin. The walk, through dense woodland choked with nettles and cow parsley, had been hard going, especially for Kate (Frank had to carry her for the last half mile), but the abandoned church was worth it in the end. The trees, thick with summer foliage, hid the ruins until the very last moment. Then, suddenly, they were standing in an open space, the walls, still with their high arched windows, rising up into the sky and the branches reaching out to form their own vaulted ceiling. Apart from a skylark singing somewhere up above, there was perfect silence all around them. Now Kate runs from wall to wall, laughing as she touches the mossy stones. For Ruth, though, the place has a curiously solemn feel – not unhappy, just sombre, as if the space between the walls is charged with something beyond the stillness and
the isolation. Erik would have said that it was sacred land but Ruth doesn’t believe in any of that, does she?

‘When was it ruined?’ she asks, sitting on a low wall to get her breath back. ‘Would Jemima have come to this church?’

Frank shakes his head. ‘The church was abandoned in the seventeenth century. I suppose her family would have gone to the church in Nethergate.’

‘She would have known this place though,’ says Ruth, looking up at the sky, bright blue between the leaves.

‘She would,’ agrees Frank. He takes Kate’s hand as she skips from stone to stone. He’s good with her; not pushy, in the way that adults sometimes are with children, but quiet and respectful. Kate has already honoured him with a full-length rendition of ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’, including gestures.

Ruth walks through a doorway which is still eerily intact, a gateway to nowhere. She’s in another church-shaped space, probably a side chapel. The south wall still stands and includes two alcoves with statues on plinths, their faces worn smooth by wind and rain.

‘I wonder who these were,’ she says.

Frank and Kate are following. ‘The Church was dedicated to Saint Mary,’ says Frank. ‘So maybe one of them was her.’

Ruth looks at the stone shapes, it’s impossible to tell if they were meant to represent male or female figures. There’s a suggestion of a flowing robe, but that doesn’t prove anything. She remembers the time that she visited
Norwich Cathedral with Janet Meadows, looking for the statue of Bishop Augustine. The cathedral was vast and magnificent but this little country church has something of the same feel about it. A sense of peace, of withdrawal from the rest of the world. Ruth thinks of the words of Mother Julian, Julian of Norwich, another woman commemorated in the cathedral.
All shall be well and all shall be well
.