The Crossing Places

CHAPTER 31

Ruth is walking along the sand. It is early March and although the wind is cold there is a faint promise of spring in the air. She is barefoot and the clam shells cut into her feet.

She is near the henge circle. The sand, rippling like a frozen sea, stretches far in front of her. She thinks of Ozymandias, 'the lone and level sands stretch far away'.

There is something grand and terrible about the great expanse of sea and sky, something terrifying, yet at the same time exhilarating. We are nothing, Ruth thinks, nothing to this place. Bronze Age man came here and built the henge, Iron Age man left bodies and votive offerings, modern man tries to tame the sea with walls and towers and bridges. Nothing remains. Man dwindles into dust, less than sand; only the sea and sky stay the same. Yet she walks jauntily, with a spring in her step, stepping lightly over mortality.

She is due to meet Nelson, who is going to give her the latest news of Lucy. This is one legacy of that terrible night, three weeks ago. Ruth feels bound to Lucy and knows that this connection will last forever, whether Lucy wants it or not. Ruth may soon fade in Lucy's mind – indeed, she hopes many things will fade from Lucy's mind; one day she will become just the strange, large lady who comes with presents at Christmas and birthdays, bringing with her a faint memory of a dark night, a wild sea and the end of a nightmare. But for Ruth, that moment when she held Lucy in her arms was a turning point. She knew then that she would do anything to protect Lucy. She knew then what it is to be a mother.

Nelson told her about Lucy's reunion with her actual parents. 'We called them, didn't tell them what was up, just asked them to come to the station. It was four in the morning, God knows what they thought. The mother thought we'd found Lucy's body, I could see it in her eyes.

We had a child psychologist standing by; nobody knew what would happen. Would Lucy even recognise her parents? She was very calm, just sat there, huddled in my jacket, as if she was waiting for something. We made her a cup of tea and she screamed. Hadn't expected it to be hot.

Probably hadn't had a hot drink for ten years. She screamed and dropped the drink on the floor, then she cringed away from me, as if she expected me to hit her.

That bastard ill-treated her, I'm sure of it. So I left her with Judy. Then, when I came in with the parents… she made this noise, this little cry, like a baby. Then the mother said, "Lucy?" And Lucy just howled "Mummy!" and flung herself into her arms. Jesus. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Judy was weeping buckets and Cloughie and I were both sniffing away. But the parents, they hugged her as if they'd never let her go. Then the mother looked at me, over Lucy's head, and said "Thank you." Thank you! Jesus.'

'Will she be alright, do you think?'

'Well, she's obviously seeing an army of psychiatrists but they say she's remarkably resilient. She has to learn to be a teenager, not a little girl. In some ways, they say she's stuck at five years old but, in others, she's amazingly mature. I think she understands a lot more than we give her credit for.'

And Ruth, remembering the way that Lucy had used the bird call (the call, she is sure, of the Long Eared Owl) to lure David to his death, believes him.

They have not found David's body. It must have been washed out to sea and carried by the tide to another shoreline.

Perhaps they will never find it and David's remains will one day join the Neolithic bones and relics that lie beneath this shallow sea.

They did find Erik though. The great shaman, who knew the marshes like the back of his hand, had drowned in a marshy pool just a few hundred metres from Ruth's cottage.

Ruth went to Norway for Erik's funeral. Despite everything, she found that she still had some love left for him and for Magda. Erik had always said that he wanted a Viking's funeral. Ruth remembers him, by the camp fire in full storyteller mode: 'The ship, its sails full in the evening light. The dead man, his sword at his side and his shield on his breast. The flame, that burst of purifying fire that will send him to Valhalla to sit with Odin and Thor until the world is renewed…' So they had taken his ashes and put them in a wooden boat built specially by Lars, Magda's lover. They had set fire to the boat and sent it sailing out onto the lake, where it burnt all through the night and was still smouldering in the morning.

'You know,' Magda had turned to Ruth, her face lit by the glow from the boat, 'we were happy.'

'I know,' said Ruth.

And she did know. Magda and Erik were happy, despite Shona and Lars and all the others. And she, Ruth, still loved Erik, despite the letters and the adultery and the cold light behind the blue eyes. She seemed to have learnt a lot about love over the last few weeks. After Norway, she went home to Eltham where she went shopping with her mother, played scrabble with her father and even attended church with them. She doesn't think she will ever be a believer herself but these days it does not seem so important to remind her parents of this. Somehow, when she held Lucy in her arms in that terrible cellar, she found a way back to her own mother. Perhaps it is just that she learnt the value of the maternal cliche, the love that is always the same no matter how many years pass and burns no less strongly by being expressed in time-worn phrases.

Erik was never charged with any crime. Cathbad was quietly cleared of the charge of wasting police time. The letters, with their haunting messages of life and death and resurrection, were never made public. Ruth thinks about them sometimes though. Thinks about why Erik and Shona wrote them, why Erik hated Nelson so much that he was prepared to distract him from his job of catching a murderer. Was it grief for James Agar that motivated Erik or was it arrogance, the chance to pit his wits against the police, that embodiment of a philistine state? She will never know.

Cathbad celebrated the dropping of the charges by performing a spiritual cleansing session on the beach, not unlike a Viking funeral, involving much dancing around a ceremonial fire. He invited Nelson but Nelson declined to attend. Despite this, Cathbad and Nelson have become, for want of any other word, friends. Nelson has a reluctant admiration for the way Cathbad remained calm in the storm, guiding him across the deadly marshes. And Cathbad is convinced that Nelson saved his life. He says so on every possible occasion, which somehow Nelson doesn't dislike as much as he should.

Ruth sees Nelson approaching over the sand dunes. He is wearing jeans and a leather jacket and he looks wary, as if he expects the sand to leap up and attack him. Nelson will never love the Saltmarsh. He always found it a spooky sort of place and now it will always be associated in his mind with Lucy's long imprisonment (under the noses of his officers!) and with death.

Nelson has reached Ruth who is standing, she thinks, at the start of the henge circle. There is nothing to show for it now though, just a few blackened streaks on the grey sand. The timbers themselves lie artificially preserved in the museum, far from the wind and the sand.

'What a place to meet,' grumbles Nelson, 'miles from anywhere.'

'The exercise will do you good,' says Ruth.

'You sound like Michelle.'

Ruth has met Michelle now and, to her surprise, quite likes her. She admires the way that Michelle always does exactly what she wants, whilst retaining the image of the perfect wife. This, she feels, is a skill she could usefully learn, not that she is planning to be anyone's wife. Ruth suspects that Michelle, for her part, is simply dying to give her a make-over.

Peter has gone back to Victoria. Ruth is happy for him, and is also relieved that it was David, not Peter, who sent the text messages. Her memories of him can stay intact.

'How's it going?' Ruth asks.

'Not too bad. There's a new corruption scandal brewing which may take the pressure off me for a bit.'

The discovery of Lucy Downey was, of course, a media sensation. There seemed to have been little else in the papers for weeks, which was one reason why Ruth escaped to Norway and Eltham. Nelson came in for his share of criticism; after all, Lucy was found in an area which had been searched many times by the police. But, then again, Nelson did get all the credit for rescuing Lucy. Ruth was more than happy for her part to be downplayed and Cathbad, too, had his own reasons for remaining in the shadows. Also, Lucy's parents consistently refused to criticise Nelson, saying instead that it was his tireless searching that had eventually resulted in Lucy's discovery.

'How's Lucy?' asks Ruth as they walk along the sea's edge. The tide is going out, leaving a line of shells and glistening stones. The seagulls swoop low, looking for treasure.

'Good,' says Nelson. 'I went round there yesterday and she was playing on a swing in the garden. Apparently she remembered the house and the garden perfectly. But she'd forgotten lots of other things. When she first saw a cat, she screamed.'

Ruth thinks of Flint who, fully recovered from his exertions, stayed with Shona while she was away. Shona, desperate to make amends, fed Flint almost entirely on smoked salmon. I should get another cat, Ruth thinks, stop Flint getting too spoilt.

'Has Lucy said anything about what it was like?' she asks. 'When she was locked up?'

'The psychiatrist has been getting her to draw pictures.

The most disturbing things you ever saw. Little black boxes, clutching hands, iron bars.'

'Was she abused by him? David.'

'Abused? Of course she was abused. But, sexually, there's no sign. I think he was quite squeamish about sex, actually. The psychiatrists think that if she'd started menstruating, he might have killed her.'

'How did he make that underground room? It had concrete walls and everything.'

'Apparently it was an old Second World War bunker. He built the hide on top of it.'

'Jesus.' Ruth is silent for a few minutes, thinking of the preparation that must have gone into creating Lucy's prison. How many years had David been planning this?

'Does anyone know why he did it?'

'The shrinks have got a million theories but it's all guesswork.

Perhaps he wanted birds to be free but liked to keep humans in captivity.'

'For company, that's what he said to me.' Ruth thinks of what David said when she told him of her grief for Sparky; 'she was company'. With a shiver, she realises that when she and Peter saw him that day he must have been on his way to check up on Lucy. That was why he hated tourists and litter. He wanted everyone to keep away from the hide.

'Company,' Nelson grunts. 'Jesus. Couldn't he have joined a computer club?'

Why not indeed, thinks Ruth, looking out at the sea. Why does anyone do anything? Why does she remain here, on the Saltmarsh, where so many awful things have happened? Why is Nelson still in love with his wife, although they have nothing in common? Why does Phil still not believe that the henge and the causeway are linked? Why is she fat and Shona thin? There's no answer to any of it. But, she thinks, smiling to herself as the cold water foams over her bare feet, somehow none of that matters today. She's happy with her life, here on the desolate coast. She wouldn't change any of it. She likes her job, her friends, her home. And besides, she thinks, smiling even more widely to herself; I'm not fat, I'm pregnant. She has no intention of telling Nelson, though. Not yet.

Nelson too is gazing out to sea. 'What's happened about the Iron Age girl?' he asks suddenly. 'The one who started all this?'

Ruth smiles. 'They're calling her Ruth, you know, after me. I call her the lost girl of the marshes. I'm writing a paper about her.'

'Do you know any more about why she died?'

'Not really. She seems to be from a wealthy family, her nails are manicured and we've done tests on her hair that prove she had good nutrition. But no-one knows why she was tied down on the marsh and left to die. Maybe it was to ensure safe passage over the marsh. Maybe she was an offering to the Gods. But, really, we don't know.'

'Seems to me it's all a lot of guesswork,' says Nelson.

Ruth smiles. 'The questions are more important than the answers.'

'If you say so.'

And they turn and walk back towards the dunes.