The Crossing Places

CHAPTER 9

As Ruth turns into New Road she sees a familiar red sports car parked in front of her house. Shona often explains that her car is a penis substitute and, like the real thing, is often unreliable. Ruth hasn't seen Shona since before Christmas and wonders what new dramas she will have to report. She quite enjoys Shona's love life – second hand, she wouldn't want to live it herself, just as she wouldn't drive a scarlet Mazda. Fat chance of either, she thinks, as she parks behind Shona's car – number plate: FAB 1.

Shona, huddled up in a sheepskin coat, is standing looking out over the Saltmarsh. Dark clouds are gathering over the sea, which gives the whole place an ominous feel.

Shadows race over the mudflats and the seagulls are flying inland, sure sign of a storm to come.

'Jesus, Ruth,' says Shona, "I don't know how you can live here. This place gives me the creeps.'

"I like it,' says Ruth mildly. "I like being able to look right out to the horizon, with nothing in the way.'

'No people, no shops, no Italian restaurants.' Shona shudders. 'It wouldn't do for me.'

'No,' agrees Ruth. 'Do you want some lunch?'

In the cottage they are greeted ecstatically by Flint. Ruth goes into the kitchen and arranges cheese, pate and salami on a plate. Shona sits at the table by the window, talking.

'I'm definitely going to end it with Liam. He says he loves me but he's obviously never going to leave Anne.

Now she's got to have an operation and he can't do anything to upset her. I bet it's just a tummy tuck, anything to avoid making a decision. It was awful on New Year's Eve. Liam kept shoving me into cupboards and saying he loved me and trying to feel me up, then next minute he was back with his arm round Anne talking about their extension.

And Phil kept asking me if I'd got a bloke yet.

Wanker. Just because I wouldn't go to bed with him. And Phil's awful wife telling me that I'd got a mauve aura.

Bloody cheek, I hate mauve; it clashes with my hair.'

She pauses to eat a piece of bread, shaking out her red gold hair so that it shimmers in the dim afternoon light.

Ruth wonders what it must be like to be so beautiful.

Exhausting, to judge from what Shona says. Yet it must be exciting too – imagine if every man you met wanted to go to bed with you. Briefly, she flicks through a mental card index of the men in her life: Phil, Erik, her students, Ed next door, David, Harry Nelson. She can't really imagine any of them panting with desire for her. The thought is absurd and oddly disturbing-

'Ruth!'

'What?'

"I was asking what you did on New Year's Eve.'

'Oh, well, I had a cold, like I told you, so I decided to stay home but next door were having a party and the music was so loud that I gave in and went round.'

'Did you? What was it like?'

'Pretty boring. My neighbour kept asking annoying questions about archaeology.'

'Anyone interesting or were they all smug marrieds?'

'Mostly couples. There was another neighbour, David, the bird warden.'

'Oh.' Shona perks up at the thought of an unattached man. Unconsciously she rakes her fingers through her hair so that it falls more seductively across her face. 'What was he like?'

Ruth considers. 'OK. Quiet. Interesting, though a bit obsessive about birds.'

'How old?'

'My age, I think. Fiftyish.'

'Ruth! You're not forty yet.'

'I will be in July.'

'We must have a party,' says Shona vaguely, licking her finger to pick up cheese crumbs. 'And what about this highly mysterious police work you've been doing?'

'Who told you about that?'

'Phil'

'Oh, well it's not very mysterious really. This policeman asked me to look at some bones he'd found but they weren't modern, they were Iron Age.'

'Why did he think they might be modern?'

'He was looking for the body of a girl who disappeared ten years ago.'

Shona whistles. 'There's been another little girl gone missing recently, hasn't there?'

Ruth nods. 'Scarlet Henderson.'

'Are you involved in that too?'

Again, Ruth hesitates. She is not sure how much she wants to tell Shona. Shona is always so interested in everything, she is sure to make Ruth say more than she wants to.

Nelson has told her that the contents of the letters are confidential ('Don't want the press getting hold of it') but, then again, Shona is the literature expert.

'A little. There are some letters…'

Sure enough, Shona leans forward immediately, intrigued by the mention of the written word.

'Letters?'

'Yes, written after the first disappearance and now after Scarlet Henderson. This policeman, he thinks they might be linked.' Has she said too much?

'What do the letters say?'

'I don't think I can tell you,' says Ruth. She feels uncomfortable under the ultraviolet glare of Shona's interest.

Shona looks at her speculatively, as if wondering how much information she can extract. But then she seems to change her mind, tossing back her hair and looking out of the window where the sky is now a brooding purple colour.

'This policeman, what's his name?'

'Nelson. Harry Nelson.'

Shona swings round to look hard at Ruth. 'Are you sure?'

'Yes. Why?'

'Oh nothing.' Shona goes back to the window. 'It's just that I think I heard something about him once. Something about police brutality, I think. God, look at that sky! I'd better get home before it tips down.'

Ten minutes after Shona has left, the storm breaks. Rain and hail hurl themselves at the windows until Ruth feels as if she is under siege. The wind is roaring in from the sea with a noise like thunder and she feels as if her whole cottage is shaking, tossed to and fro like a ship at sea. She is used to storms, of course, but she still finds them disconcerting.

This house has stood for over a hundred years, she tells herself, it'll take more than a winter storm to blow it away. But the wind howls and wails as if it is trying to disprove her and the windows rattle under the onslaught.

Ruth draws the curtains and turns on the lights. She'll do some work; that'll take her mind off the weather.

But instead of clicking onto Lectures 07, Ruth finds her finger hovering over the tempting, multicoloured Google logo. After a few seconds' inward struggle, she gives in and types in the words Harry Nelson, enter. A stream of Nelsons floods the screen, including a US chess champion and a professor of physics. Harry Nilsson is there too, the guy who sang 'Without You'. Ruth hums it now, scrolling down the screen. There he is. DI Harry Nelson, decorated for bravery in 1990. And again, Harry Nelson (back row, second left) in a police rugby team. Ruth has another idea and clicks onto Friends Reunited, a rather guilty late-night fix of hers. Yes, here he is. Henry (Harry) Nelson at a Catholic grammar school in Blackpool. What does he say about himself? His contribution is brief in the extreme: 'Married to Michelle, two daughters. Living in Norfolk (God help me).'

Ruth ponders this. No mention of the police. Does Nelson think his old friends in Blackpool will despise him for becoming a policeman? And it is interesting that he refers to his wife by name but not his daughters. Maybe he is scared of paedophiles on the internet. He would, surely, know more than most about the dark side of human nature.

Still, it must be significant that his marriage to Michelle is the first thing he mentions, as if it were the achievement of his life. Perhaps it is. Ruth thinks back to that sighting before Christmas. Michelle certainly looked attractive enough, a definite prize for a man who is letting himself go a bit, a man who doesn't look as if he has a gym membership or spends more than five pounds on a haircut. And Michelle looked, Ruth struggles to put her finger on it, like a woman who knows her own worth, as if she knows the value of her good looks and how to use them for her own purposes. She remembers seeing her laughing up at Nelson, her hand on his arm, soothing, cajoling. She looked, in short, like the sort of woman Ruth dislikes intensely.

What else? Well, he doesn't like Norfolk much. Ruth has already gathered as much from his references to 'this Godforsaken county'. Godforsaken. And God gets a mention here too, even if the police force doesn't. God help me. It is meant light-heartedly, Ruth knows, but the fact remains that Nelson has one thing in common with the mysterious letter writer. He too likes to mention God.

Ruth scrolls back and clicks on the first mention, the decoration for bravery. She sees a much younger Nelson, less battered and wary-looking. He is holding a certificate and looking embarrassed. She reads: PC Harry Nelson was awarded the Police Medal for Bravery in connection with the poll tax riots in Manchester. The riots, which quickly became violent, culminated in the death of a policeman, PC Stephen Naylor. PC Nelson, at great risk to his own life, broke through the lines of protestors to carry away PC

Naylor's body. PC Naylor later died of his injuries. A twenty-four-year-old man, James Agar, was charged with the murder.

James Agar. Ruth looks at the name, clicking through her internal search engine. Then it comes to her. Cathbad's poem, 'In praise of James Agar'. No wonder Nelson's face had turned black when he read it. No wonder Cathbad had been so careful to choose this particular example of his handwriting. Manchester. That must have been when Cathbad was a student. Maybe he was involved in the riots. Lots of students were. She remembers similar riots when she was a student in London, watching from a window at University College, sympathising with the cause but too prudent to join in. Cathbad, typically, would have shown no such reserve. And James Agar was convicted.

She wonders on whose evidence.

Sure enough, Ruth clicks on 'James Agar' and finds page after page of tributes to James Agar – 'framed by the police for the killing of PC Stephen Naylor'. There had been one key witness at Agar's trial: PC Harry Nelson.

Ruth clicks back onto her lecture notes. The wind continues to howl across the marshes. Flint, his fur soaked flat, dashes in through the cat flap and sits on the sofa looking martyred. Sparky is nowhere to be seen. She is probably hiding somewhere. She hates rain.

Ruth adds a few desultory notes about soil erosion and is just about to make herself a compensatory sandwich (compensating for what?) when the phone rings. She snatches it up like a lifeline.

'Ruth! How are you?'

It is Peter.

After they split up Peter made a concerted attempt to stay in touch. He was living and working in London but he used to phone a lot, and once or twice came up to see her.

On these occasions they invariably ended up in bed together and this felt so right that Ruth came to the conclusion that it must be wrong. If we're apart, we must stay apart, she had said, it's no good carrying on like this. Apart from anything else, it'll stop either of us finding someone new. Peter had been terribly hurt. But I want to be with you, he had said. Don't you see, if we can't stay away from each other, it must mean that we were meant to be together? But Ruth had been adamant and eventually Peter had stormed back to London in a fury, swearing undying love all the way. Six months later he had married someone else.

That had been five years ago. Ruth had heard very little from Peter in that time, a Christmas card, once a copy of an article he had written. She knew that he and his wife, Victoria, had had a baby, a boy called Daniel.

He must be about four now. After Daniel's birth (she sent a teddy), Ruth had heard nothing until the text message on New Year's Eve. Happy New Year love Peter. Nothing more, but just for a second Ruth had felt her heart contract.

'Peter. Hallo.'

'Bit of blast from the past, eh?'

'You could say that, yes.'

A brief silence. Ruth tries to imagine Peter at the other end of the phone. Is he calling from work? From home?

She imagines Victoria, whom she has never met, sitting by his side with Daniel on her lap. 'What's Daddy doing?'

'Shh darling, he's ringing his ex-girlfriend.'

'So.' Very hearty. 'How've you been, Ruth?'

'I've been fine. How about you?'

'Fine. Working hard.'

Peter teaches history at University College, London, where Ruth did her first degree. She imagines him there: the view of dusty plane trees, of bicycles chained against railings, of London buses, and tourists wandering lost around Gordon Square.

'Still at UCL?'

'Yes. What about you?'

'Still at North Norfolk. Still digging up bones and fighting with Phil.'

Peter laughs. 'I remember Phil. Is he still keen on his geophys gadgets?'

'I think he's shortly going to mutate into a machine.'

Peter laughs again but this time the laugh ends rather abruptly. 'Look Ruth. The thing is, I've got a sabbatical next term-'

'You too?' The words are out before she can stop them.

'What do you mean?'

'Oh, it's just – Erik's got a sabbatical too. He's coming over next week.'

'Erik! The old Viking himself! So you're still in touch?'

'Yes.' Slightly defensively.

'Well, the thing is… I'm writing a book on Nelson.'

'Who}'

A confused pause. 'Horatio Nelson. Admiral Nelson.

You remember, I did my postgraduate research on the Napoleonic Wars.'

'Oh… yes.' The other Nelson in her life has temporarily caused her to forget the most famous Nelson of all. Of course, he was from Norfolk too, there are hundreds of pubs named after him.

'Well, I'm planning to visit Burnham Thorpe. You know, where he was born. I'm renting a cottage nearby and I thought I could pop over and see you.'

Several things cross Ruth's mind. You must have been to Burnham Thorpe before, without 'popping over' to see me, why is this different? Will your wife be there? Is this only about research? Why ring me after all this time?

Aloud she says, 'That would be great.'

'Good.' Peter sounds relieved. 'And I'd like to see the Saltmarsh again. God, I remember that summer. Finding the henge in the mud, those hippies who kept putting spells on us, old Erik telling ghost stories around the campfire.

Do you remember when I nearly drowned?'

'Yes.' Peter is suffering from an attack of nostalgia, she knows the symptoms. She mustn't join in otherwise she'll be swept away too, drowning in a quicksand of the past.

Peter sighs. 'Well, I'll be in touch. It'll probably be next week or the week after. Will you be around?'

'Yes, I'll be around.'

'Great. Bye then.'

'Bye.'

Ruth replaces the receiver thoughtfully. She doesn't know why Peter is coming to see her; she only knows that the past seems to be converging on her. First Erik, then Cathbad, now Peter. Before she knows it, she will have gone back in time ten years and will be walking along the beach, hand-in-hand with Peter, her hair six inches longer and her waist four inches thinner. She shakes her head. The past is dead. She, as an archaeologist, knows that better than most. But she knows too that it can be seductive.

Rain is still drumming against the windows. Getting up, she strokes Flint, who is now stretched out on the sofa, eyes shut, pretending she isn't there. She'd better check that Sparky isn't outside meowing to be let in – although she has a cat flap, Sparky really prefers having the door opened for her. Ruth opens the door.

The rain flies in her face, blinding her. Spluttering, she wipes her eyes on her sleeve. And then she sees it. Sparky is on the doorstep but she isn't meowing or making any other sound. She is lying on her back and her throat has been cut.