The Outcast Dead (28 page)

Nelson holds out his hand and, slowly, Judy passes over the T-shirt in its bag.

‘We’ll find him,’ he says, speaking directly to her. ‘We’ll find him if it kills us.’

Judy doesn’t explode as she usually does with Nelson’s promises. She looks at him almost as if she feels sorry for him. ‘Goodbye,’ she says. And she turns and goes back into the house.

*

By six o’clock Ruth is ready to drop. She is in her room, supposedly getting ready for the night shoot, but all she can think about is how good it would be to collapse on her bed and go to sleep. She doesn’t dare even sit on the bed, partly because of the temptation to shut her eyes and partly because it’s freshly made. Jack and George are going to share the double bed tonight and Ruth is going to sleep in Kate’s room. Though neither of them actually mention the child abductions there’s a general feeling that it would be better to have everyone sleeping in the house. Simon insists that he’ll be quite happy on
the sofa. Ruth can hear him downstairs. He’s making spaghetti bolognaise, assisted by all three children. Ruth hadn’t realised just how domesticated her brother was but it appears that he can cook, put up tents and make a dozen pots of tea a day. Cathy should try to hang on to him, she thinks. But presumably Cathy is trying to do just that in the only way she knows how; by pretending that nothing’s happening. Simon hasn’t mentioned his domestic arrangements again but Ruth knows this whole trip is part of his rebellion against his wife. What would Cathy really hate? Simon getting on with his snotty sister, that’s what.

And they are getting on well. They have had a great day. The boys loved Yarmouth and Kate was even persuaded to go on some of the gentler rides with them. They all ate fish and chips on the pier and the children made a giant sandcastle on the beach. Simon was an undemanding and tactful companion. He understood both that Ruth was sad about Michael and that she didn’t want to talk about it all the time. He entertained the children and was prepared to carry Kate when she got tired. Seeing Kate on her uncle’s shoulders reminded Ruth of Frank and their walk along the river at Saxlingham Thorpe. She has had another message from him.
See you later. Frank
.

Now she checks her phone again. No message from Cathbad. Is she really expecting to hear that Michael has turned up, safe and well? She can’t help hoping. They listened to the five o’clock news in the car. ‘Police are still searching …’ Ruth thought of Nelson, Clough and
Tanya, how desperate they would be by now, how frantically they would be following up the smallest lead. Do they have any more leads, apart from the ‘Childminder’ letter? Ruth types ‘childminder’ into her phone. Like Tanya earlier, she gets a string of results: forums, helplines, horror stories from the past. Where would you start? Presumably Nelson has police files and past cases at his disposal, but how do you find someone who wants to stay hidden? How do you find a child when the world is full of children?

Looking at herself in the mirror, Ruth thinks of Mother Hook. Was she Frank’s wronged woman or something altogether more sinister? Does the so-called Childminder honestly think that they are looking after Michael? In a way Ruth hopes so, because that way he will stay safe. But if whoever it is wants Michael that much, maybe they’ll never give him back. All day some lines from the terrible Book of Dead Babies have been echoing in her head.

You never spoke yet we miss your silence

You never walked but we miss your step
.

Is this what Judy is condemned to? A lifetime of remembering? Ruth looks at her stricken face in the glass. How on earth are they all going to get through this night?

*

It’s nearly eight when she arrives at the castle. Filming is due to start at nine. It’s still light but the air has that charged feeling that you sometimes get at twilight, as if every object has been outlined in pencil. She can see lights being set up on the battlements and tents being
erected in the castle grounds. It looks like the beginning of a siege.

Aslan is waiting for her in the car park.

‘Dani says can she have a word? In the truck.’

Ruth remembers how, on the first day of filming, she’d been surprised that people like Dani and Corinna didn’t have trailers, places where they could receive visitors while lounging on sofas surrounded by flowers. She began to realise that
Women Who Kill
was being filmed on a pretty strict budget. The cameramen travel with their equipment in a truck and, for longer shoots, there’s a catering van and a portaloo. Most meetings seem to be held in Corinna’s hotel room, which is apparently the biggest. Ruth remembers her embarrassment at the only meeting that she attended, to find herself sitting on the double bed wedged between Dex and Frank while Aslan crouched in the en suite bathroom.

Now, in the back of the truck, Corinna looks furious to find herself perched on a packing case with a tripod in her ear. Frank is leaning against the door, obviously enjoying himself. Aslan ushers Ruth up the ramp like someone loading a horse into a trailer.

‘Where’s Dani?’ Corinna is demanding. ‘It’s bloody rude keeping us waiting like this. Night air is very bad for me, I have to be very careful of my chest.’

Ruth can’t prevent an involuntary glance at Corinna’s chest, magnificently exposed in black velvet.

‘Shall I get you a coffee?’ asks Aslan. This, after all, is what he does best.

‘No thank you, darling,’ says Corinna, with dangerous silkiness. ‘I just want to see our bloody director.’

‘Now you see me,’ comes Dani’s voice. She bounds up the ramp carrying a clipboard. She’s wearing jeans and a thin T-shirt. Her only concession to the evening chill is a woolly cap.

‘Just want to give you a few notes,’ says Dani, ignoring both Corinna’s hostility and her ostentatious shivering.

‘We’ve got a lot of extras in,’ she says. ‘So I’d like you, Ruth, to brief them.’

‘Brief them?’

‘Tell them the right way to hold a trowel, that sort of thing. Nearest most of them have ever come to digging is on Cromer beach.’

‘Couldn’t Phil do it?’ says Ruth. ‘He said he was coming tonight.’

‘No,’ Dani shakes her head authoritatively. ‘I get the impression that Phil doesn’t get his hands dirty too often.’

Frank laughs. ‘And Frank,’ Dani whirls round. ‘I want a scene of you talking about the hanging. We can make those signposts look like gibbets. I want you to say that an innocent woman may have been killed.’

‘Excuse me,’ Corinna tosses her head. Ruth finds herself looking at the cascading curls and wondering if she can see the join. The metal truck positively reeks of expensive scent. ‘Excuse me, but I’m going to take advantage of the night setting to give a bit of
atmosphere
. The sort of atmosphere for which
Women Who Kill
is rightly famous.’

‘Are you going to mention the hook?’ asks Ruth.

‘Yes, Ruth.’ Corinna turns on her. ‘Our viewers will have tuned in to see a programme about one of the most evil women who ever lived, a woman who had a hook for a hand. So, yes, I am going to mention the hook.’

‘And Frank is going to mention that she may have been innocent,’ says Dani. ‘It’ll make good TV. Dex, is that you?’ The lead cameraman has appeared at the truck door.

‘Yes, Captain.’ The crew sometimes treat Dani the way Nelson’s team treats him.

‘A word.’ And Dani sweeps out of the truck.

‘Frank!’ calls Corinna without looking at Ruth.

‘Coming ma’am.’ Frank levers himself upright.

‘Can you give me your arm to make-up, there’s a darling? The ground’s wretchedly uneven.’

‘Sure,’ says Frank, proffering his arm. ‘Will you be OK, Ruth?’

‘Yes, Ruth,’ says Corinna over her shoulder. ‘Don’t forget to visit make-up yourself, dear. You could do with a bit of toning down.’

*

Ruth decides to give Corinna time to get through makeup. She also wants to give her decidedly flushed face a chance to tone itself down. She sits on the bank below the castle and watches as the sound engineers unload their equipment. Tents are being set up on the grass and she can see a sign saying ‘Extras. Queue Here.’ The castle is obviously expecting an invasion. She checks her phone. No message from Cathbad.

‘Hi, Ruth.’

It’s Dex, the friendly cameraman. As usual he looks perfectly relaxed, Styrofoam cup in hand, camera on shoulder.

‘Looking forward to tonight?’ he asks.

‘Not particularly.’

‘It’ll be all right. Corinna will put in a command performance.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

‘You mustn’t mind Corinna. She’s had a tough life.’

‘She has?’ A successful acting career followed by being a full-time mother to two supremely gifted children doesn’t seem exactly roughing it to Ruth.

‘Yes. Her husband left her a few years ago. She practically had a nervous breakdown.’

Was this when she lost her hair, wonders Ruth. She wonders about the nature of Dex’s relationship with Corinna. On set, they often argue but they are also often to be seen deep in discussion. Could Dex have consoled Corinna after her husband left? He’s curiously ageless with his shaven head and earrings but they could be almost the same age.

‘I don’t think I’ll have much more to do with Corinna,’ she says. ‘I’m just digging today.’

‘That’s right,’ says Dex. ‘You concentrate on the archaeology. It’s safer that way.’

Ruth looks up at the cameraman. His face is in shadow and, just for a second, the camera on his shoulder gives him a monstrous misshapen look. Richard the Third, the bottled spider.

Then Dex smiles and the shadow passes. ‘Have fun,’ he says.

*

The hair and make-up area has been set up in a little room at the front of the castle usually used for lockers. Ruth sits feeling uncomfortable as the make-up artist, a kindly woman called Mary-Anne, puts rollers in her hair. The windows are leaded so it’s hard to see out but she can hear people going past all the time. Mary-Anne is being driven distracted by extras coming in and wanting her to powder their noses.

‘You can finish with me,’ says Ruth. She hates people fiddling with her hair and face. She has her hair cut once every six months and often trims the ends herself. She remembers being excruciatingly embarrassed throughout her one and only visit to a spa (to celebrate one of Shona’s thirty-ninth birthdays). Besides, it’s torture to sit still when all the time she’s longing to check her phone. It feels so wrong to be sitting here in this scented room with a towel round her shoulders while Judy is … but Ruth can’t even imagine what Judy is doing.

‘No, I’ve got to have you looking beautiful,’ says Mary-Anne seriously, slathering on orange foundation. ‘Dani says there are going to be some close-ups.’

Take more than a bit of foundation, thinks Ruth.

‘Hi, Ruth.’ Frank appears in the doorway.

‘Hi.’ Instinctively Ruth raises a hand to her hair but Mary-Anne gently pushes it away.

‘Hallo, Frank,’ says Mary-Anne. ‘Come for some makeup?’

‘One of your colleagues has just offered to take some of the grey out of my hair,’ says Frank, sitting beside Ruth.

‘Grey’s OK on a man,’ says Mary-Anne. ‘Silver fox and all that.’

Ruth notices that Frank doesn’t seem to mind this description. She also muses that there isn’t a female equivalent to ‘silver fox’. ‘Grey-haired old bat’ doesn’t cover it somehow.

Frank is lounging beside her, watching her reflection in the mirror. He has this in common with Nelson, if nothing else; when Frank is in a room it instantly feels smaller. Ruth feels nervous, acutely conscious of the curlers and her orange skin. Frank seems to feel no need for conversation. Mary-Anne is humming along to the radio, a cheery little Lana del Ray number. ‘Video Games’.

‘Is Phil here?’ asks Ruth at last.

‘Yes,’ says Frank. ‘Wafting around looking very pleased with himself. I bet he’s already made the trip to make-up.’

‘He spent about an hour in here,’ says Mary-Anne. ‘He was very particular about the bags under his eyes.’

‘Man’s a complete asshole,’ says Frank. ‘What does his girlfriend see in him? I mean, she’s gorgeous.’

Ruth is used to men reacting to Shona in this way. Cathbad, for example, exempts Shona from all Phil’s idiocies. ‘Poor Shona,’ he’d comment. ‘He probably made her do it.’ But Shona, as Ruth knows, is tougher than she looks.

‘She loves him,’ she says now. ‘God knows why.’

‘Well, love is hard to explain,’ says Frank. There’s another awkward silence while Lana sings about heaven and bad girls and the blue dark. Mary-Anne is taking out the rollers, which seem attached to Ruth’s skull by tiny wires.

‘I can’t believe how many people are here tonight,’ says Ruth, wincing.

‘Yeah. The production company are really pushing the boat out. I’m surprised. Must be costing them a fortune. The crew’ll be on golden time. That’s why they’re all so cheerful.’

‘Who do you think will win? Corinna’s “most evil woman who ever lived” or Dani’s “she was innocent all along”?’

Frank grins. ‘Dani. After all, she’ll be the one doing the editing. And she’s determined, Dani. She usually gets what she wants.’

‘But you think Jemima Green was innocent too.’

‘You bet. That’s another reason why our version will win. Because I’ll be better than Corinna.’

He grins again but Ruth can see something rather steely in the blue eyes reflected in the mirror. She thinks that Frank, too, is used to getting what he wants.

‘It’s a pity that we haven’t got any hard evidence,’ says Ruth. ‘If we could only find Joshua’s body …’

‘We’ll have to go on another trip,’ says Frank. ‘How’s Kate?’

‘She’s fine,’ says Ruth. ‘We went to Yarmouth today. With my brother and his children.’

‘Oh, you said your brother was coming to stay. Must be good to catch up, huh?’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘It has been good.’

‘Are the two of you close?’

Ruth hesitates. Are she and Simon close? They are close in age, they have endured a childhood characterised by their parents’ religious certainties. They share both a defensiveness about their lower-middle-class origins and a desire to escape them. They are both intelligent, cynical and somewhat insecure.