The Crossing Places

CHAPTER 10

Nelson is, for once, driving slowly. It is still raining hard, turning the narrow lanes into treacherous gullies, but Nelson isn't usually the sort of driver who worries about weather conditions. No, Nelson is dawdling because he has just been to see Scarlet's parents and feels he needs some time to recover before getting back to the station. He has had to tell the parents, Delilah and Alan, that not only has the investigation made no progress, but the police want to bring sniffer dogs to search the family garden. Cases like this, it's usually the parents. That's what he told Ruth and although maybe he had been trying to shock her, in his experience it has often proved true. One of his first cases involved a missing child in Lytham. Hundreds of police hours spent searching, a young mother very eloquent and moving at the press conference and then Nelson, a young PC, making a routine call at the house, had noticed a strange smell in the downstairs loo. He'd called for reinforcements but, before they arrived, had already found the tiny corpse, stuffed into the cistern. 'She gets on my nerves,' said the mother, apparently unrepentant. 'She's a little devil'. The present tense. It still gets to him. He'd been commended for his work on that case but he remembers weeks, months, of sleepless nights afterwards, retching as he remembered the smell, the sight of the water-bloated body.

He's ruling nothing out but he doesn't really suspect Scarlet's parents. Alan was away anyway and Delilah Delilah is a fading flower child in bare feet and fringed skirts. She irritates the hell out of him but he can't really imagine her as a killer. Never assume, he tells himself.

'Never assume', his first boss, Derek Fielding, used to say, laboriously. 'It makes an ass out of you and me. Get it?'

He'd got it, but he wasn't going to give Fielding the satisfaction of laughing; probably why it took so long for the old bastard to promote him, despite the commendation.

But the point is a good one. Never make assumptions about people or circumstances. Delilah Henderson could have killed her daughter. She was in the right location and probably had the means to hand. It had taken her three hours to report Scarlet missing. 'I thought they were just playing hide and seek,' she had sobbed. Nelson disapproves (what sort of mother would not notice, for three hours, that her four-year-old was missing?) but, on balance, he puts it down to the sort of lackadaisical parenting of people like the Hendersons. And she had been distraught, God knows, when she finally realised that Scarlet had gone. She was still distraught, weeping today and clutching an old photo of Scarlet, heart-break ingly happy astride a pink bike with stabilisers. Delilah had hardly taken in the news about the garden, had just clutched at Nelson, begging him to find her baby. Nelson slows down almost to walking pace as the windscreen wipers battle against the onslaught of water. Sometimes he hates his job. Christ, he could do with a cigarette but it's only January, a bit early to break his New Year resolution.

When his phone rings he almost doesn't answer; not for safety reasons – Nelson thinks hands-free phones are for wimps – but because he just can't be bothered with anything else today. When he does press RECEIVE an almost inhuman sound greets him, a sort of sobbing wail. Nelson squints at the caller identification. Ruth Galloway. Jesus.

'Ruth? What is it?'

'She's dead,' wails Ruth.

Now Nelson does stop the car, almost skidding into a waterlogged ditch.

'Who's dead?'

'Sparky.' Long, gulping pause. 'My cat.'

Nelson counts to ten. 'Are you ringing me up to tell me about a dead cat?'

'Someone cut her throat.'

'What!"

'Someone cut her throat and left her on my doorstep.'

'I'll be right over.'

Nelson turns his car, with maximum tyre skidding, and heads back towards the Saltmarsh. Ruth's dead cat could be a message from the abductor or the letter writer or both. It seems just the sort of warped thing the letter writer would do. Never assume, he tells himself, overtaking a lorry, half-blinded by spray. But cutting an animal's throat, that is definitely sick. Might be able to get some DNA though. He will have to be sensitive ('sensitive' he repeats to himself – the word has a wet, Guardian-reader sound that he distrusts), Ruth seems very upset. Funny, he wouldn't have thought her the sort of woman to have pets.

It is pitch black by the time he reaches the Saltmarsh, and though the rain has stopped it is still blowing a gale.

The car door is almost ripped out of his hand and, as he walks up the path, he can feel the full force of the wind in the small of his back, pushing him forwards. Jesus, what a place to live. Nelson's home is a modern, fourbedroomed house outside King's Lynn; it is all very civilised, with speed bumps and security lights and double garages. You'd hardly know you were in Norfolk at all. Ruth's cottage seems little better than a hovel and it's so isolated, stuck out here on the edge of nowhere with only the twitchers for company. Why on earth does she live here? She must earn a fair wage at the university, surely?

Ruth opens the door immediately as if she were waiting for him.

'Thanks for coming,' she sniffs.

The door opens straight into a sitting room which, to Nelson's eyes, looks a complete mess. There are books and papers everywhere, a half-drunk cup of coffee sits on the table, along with the remains of a meal, crumbs and olive stones. But then he stops noticing anything because, on the sofa, lies what must be the mutilated corpse of a small cat.

Ruth has covered the body with a pink, fluffy blanket which, for some reason, makes his throat close up for a second. He pulls back the blanket.

'Have you touched it? The body?'

'She. She's a girl.'

'Have you touched her?' repeats Nelson patiently.

'Only to put her on the sofa and I did… stroke her a bit.' Ruth turns away.

Nelson reaches over as if to pat her shoulder but Ruth moves away, blowing her nose. When she turns back, her face is quite composed.

'Do you think it was him?' she asks. 'The murderer?'

'We haven't got a murder yet,' says Nelson cautiously.

Ruth shrugs this aside. 'Who would do something like this?'

'Someone pretty sick, that's for sure,' says Nelson, bending over Sparky's body. Then he straightens up. 'Does anyone know you're involved in this investigation?'

'No.'

'Are you sure?'

'Phil, my boss, knows,' says Ruth slowly, 'and maybe some other people at the university. My next-door neighbour saw me leaving in a police car that time.'

Nelson turns away from Sparky then, almost as an afterthought, he stoops and covers the little body again with the pink blanket. Then he touches Ruth's arm and says in a surprisingly gentle voice, 'Let's sit down.'

Ruth sits in a sagging armchair. She looks away from him, out towards the curtained window. The wind is still roaring outside, making the panes rattle. Nelson perches on the edge of the sofa.

'Ruth,' says Nelson, 'we know there's a dangerous man out there. He may well have murdered two girls and he may be the person who did this to your cat. In any event, you've got to be careful. Someone, for whatever reason, is trying to frighten you and I think it's safe to assume that it has something to do with this case.'

Still looking past him, Ruth asks, 'Do you need to take her, Sparky, away?'

'Yes,' says Nelson, trying to be honest and yet not too harsh, 'we need to test for fingerprints and DNA.'

'So really,' says Ruth in a high, hard voice, 'this is a bit of a breakthrough.'

'Ruth,' says Nelson, 'look at me.' She does so. Her face is swollen with crying.

'I'm sorry about your cat. About Sparky. I had a German Shepherd once called Max. I thought the world of that dog. My wife used to say she felt quite jealous sometimes.

When he was run over, I was beside myself, wanted to charge the driver with dangerous driving though it wasn't his fault really. But this is a possible murder investigation and I'm afraid your cat is a valuable clue. You want to find out what has happened to Scarlet, don't you?'

'Yes,' says Ruth, 'of course I do.'

'I promise you, Ruth, that, when the lab has finished, I'll bring Sparky back and help you bury her. I'll even light a candle in church. Deal?'

Ruth manages a watery smile. 'Deal.'

Nelson picks up Sparky's body, covering it carefully with the blanket. As he moves towards the door, he turns. 'And Ruth? Make sure you lock all your doors tonight.'

When he has gone, Ruth sits on the sofa, at the opposite end to the place where there is a faint bloodstain on the faded chintz. She looks at the remains of her meal with Shona and wonders, dully, how long ago it was that they sat at this table talking about men. It seems like days but it was in fact only a few hours ago. Since then, she has found out that Nelson has a secret in his past, spoken to her ex boyfriend and seen her beloved cat brutally murdered. She laughs, slightly hysterically. What else will the night bring?

Her mother coming out as a lesbian? David the bird warden proposing marriage? She heads for the kitchen, hell-bent on finding some wine. Flint, who has been watching from a distance, comes up and rubs against her legs. She picks him up, weeping into his dusty orange fur. 'Oh Flint,' she says, 'what will we do without her?' Flint purrs hopefully. Ruth has forgotten to feed him.

Splashing Pinot Grigio into a glass, Ruth looks across to the table by the window where her laptop is still open. She presses a key and her lecture notes appear. She clicks back through her history until she is back on the page of Nelsons: the US chess champion, the professor of physics, Harry Nilsson and Henry (Harry) Nelson of the Norfolk police. He had tried to be kind about Sparky, she recognises dimly. Part of him must have been excited about the possible clue but he had tried to acknowledge her feelings.

He probably despises her for getting so upset about a cat but she doesn't care. Sparky was her pet, her companion, her friend – yes, her friend, she repeats defiantly to herself.

She thinks of the little black cat, so sweet, so self contained, and the tears run down her face. Who would want to kill Sparky?

And, for the first time, Nelson's final words sink in. Make sure you lock all your doors tonight. The person who killed Sparky could have killed Scarlet and Lucy too.

The murderer could have been on Ruth's doorstep. He could have been listening outside her window, knife sharpened.

He killed Sparky. Her entire body goes cold as she realises that the dead cat was a message addressed directly to her. Next time it could be you.

Then she hears it. A sound outside her window. A pause, a muffled cough and then, unmistakably, footsteps, coming closer and closer. She listens, her heart thumping with such huge, irregular beats that she wonders if she is going to have a coronary, right there on the spot. The knock on the door makes her cry out with fear. It has come. The creature from the night. The beast. The terror. She thinks of The Monkey's Paw and the unnamed horror that waits at the door. She is shaking so much that she drops her wine glass.

The knock again. A terrible, doom-laden sound, echoing through the tiny house. What is she going to do? Should she ring Nelson? Her phone is across the room, by the sofa, and the idea of moving suddenly seems impossible. Is this it? Is she going to die, here in her cottage with the wind howling outside?

'Ruth!' shouts a voice. 'Are you in there?'

Oh thanks be to the God she doesn't believe in. It is Erik.

Half-laughing, half-crying, Ruth dives to open the door.

Erik Anderssen, dressed in a black raincoat and carrying a bottle of whisky, stands smiling in the doorway.

'Hello Ruthie,' he says, 'fancy a nightcap?'