The Crossing Places

CHAPTER 18

Exhaustion finally sends Ruth to sleep at two a.m. For several hours she had just sat there, listening to her heart pounding and looking at the text message. Those few chilling words. Who could have sent it? Is it Him, the letter writer, the murderer? Who knows where she is? Who has her mobile phone number? Must it – and her stomach contracts as if she is about to be sick – must it be someone she knows?

She knows that she has to ring Nelson, but somehow, she doesn't want to call him in the middle of the night.

Yesterday has blurred all the issues. She doesn't want Nelson to think she is hassling him. What is more important, she asks herself sternly, being murdered in your bed or a man getting the wrong idea about you? She wishes her subconscious was more liberated.

She falls asleep and wakes a few hours later, still upright and stiff all over. Her phone has fallen to the floor and, hand trembling, she picks it up. No new messages. Ruth sighs and burrows down inside the bed. Right now, she is so tired that death seems almost an attractive option, to go to sleep and never wake up.

When she wakes again there is proper, yellow daylight outside the window and Shona is standing by her bed holding a cup of tea.

'You have slept well,' she says brightly. 'It's past nine.'

Ruth sips the tea gratefully. It's ages since someone brought her tea in bed. In daylight, sitting in Shona's sunny, tasteful spare room, she no longer feels destined to die a violent death. She feels, in fact, ready to fight. She gets up, showers, and dresses in her toughest, most uncompromising clothes (black suit, white shirt, scary earrings).

Then she goes downstairs ready to kick ass.

She is sitting in her car, ready to drive to work when her phone goes off. Despite her scary earrings, she is absolutely terrified, breathing hard, palms clammy.

'Hi Ruth. It's Nelson.'

'Oh. Nelson. Hello.' For some reason, her heart is still thumping.

'Just wanted you to know, we're releasing Malone tomorrow.'

'You are? Why?'

'Forensic reports have come back and there's none of his DNA on Scarlet. So we're charging him with writing the letters and that's all. He'll come up in court tomorrow and I expect he'll get bail.'.

'Is he still a suspect?'

Nelson laughs humourlessly. 'Well, he's the only one we've got, but we've got nothing that ties him to the murder. We haven't got any reason to keep holding him.'

'What will he do?'

'Well, he can't leave the area. I suspect he'll lie low though. Might even get police protection, what with all the media interest.' Nelson sounds so scornful that, despite herself, Ruth smiles.

'What did the… the post-mortem say?'

'Death was by asphyxiation. Looks like something was shoved in her mouth and she choked on it. Her hands were tied with some sort of plant plaited together.'

'Some sort of plant}'

'Yes, looks like honeysuckle and – you'll like this mistletoe.'

Ruth thinks of the letters and their mention of mistletoe.

Does this mean that the writer was the murderer? Does this mean that it was Cathbad after all? Then she thinks of the ropes that had hauled the henge timbers into place.

Honeysuckle rope. As Peter had remembered.

'Body had been in the ground about six weeks,' Nelson is saying. 'Hard to tell because of the peat. No sign of sexual abuse.'

'That's something,' says Ruth hesitantly.

'Yes,' says Nelson, his voice bitter. 'That's something.

And we'll be able to let the family have the body for burial.

That'll mean a lot to them.' He sighs. Ruth imagines him scowling as he sits at his desk, looking through files, making lists, deliberately not looking at the photo of Scarlet Henderson.

'Any road' – Nelson's voice changes gear, rather jerkily – 'How are you? No more calls from the press, I hope.'

'No, but I had an odd message last night.' Ruth tells him about the text message. She imagines Nelson's eyes shooting heavenwards. How much more trouble is this woman going to cause me?

'I'll get someone on to it,' he says, 'give me the number.'

She does so. 'Can you trace a mobile phone number?'

'Yes. Mobile phones have a unique number that they send out every time they make a call. It's like they check in to their local base. If we have the number, it won't be hard to trace the call. Of course, if he's clever, he'll have ditched the phone.'

'Do you think it was… him?'

'Christ knows. But we need to get you some protection.

How long are you staying with your mate?'

"I don't know.' As she says this, Ruth is assailed by a longing for her home. For her bed and her cat and her view over the ill-omened marshes.

'I'll send some men to watch her house and to keep your place under surveillance. Try not to worry too much. I don't think he'll come out into the open. He's too clever.'

'Is he?'

'Well, he's been too clever for me, hasn't he?'

'You'll catch him,' says Ruth with more conviction than she feels.

'Wish the press agreed with you. Take care, love.'

As she clicks off her phone, Ruth thinks: love?

At the university, the first person she sees is Peter. He's waiting outside her room and the memory comes back, unbidden, of seeing Nelson in the same place, so harsh and unyielding next to the conciliatory Phil. Unlike Nelson on that occasion, who had shown all the swagger of a professional coming into a room full of amateurs, Peter looks nervous, flattening himself apologetically against the wall every time a student goes past (which, as it is still early, is not very often).

'Ruth!' He steps forward to greet her.

'Peter. What are you doing here?'

"I wanted to see you.'

Ruth sighs inwardly. The last thing she needs this morning is Peter going on about his marriage and wanting to relive the henge dig.

'You'd better come in,' she says ungraciously.

In her office, Peter swoops on her cat doorstop. "I remember buying you this. I can't believe you've still got it.'

'It's useful,' says Ruth shortly. She's not about to tell him that she has kept it for sentimental reasons, which wouldn't be true. Well, not entirely true.

Peter sinks down in her visitor's chair. 'Great office,' he says, looking up at Indiana Jones. Ten years ago, she hadn't been important enough for an office of her own.

'Bit small,' she says.

'You should see my office at UCL. I have to share it with an archivist with a personal freshness problem. I only get the desk Mondays and Thursdays.'

Ruth laughs. Peter could always make her laugh, she thinks grudgingly.

Peter smiles too, looking fleetingly like his old self, but then his face looks grave again.

'What a terrible business on the Saltmarsh,' he says, 'you finding that little girl's body.'

'Yes.'

'How did you know she was there?'

Ruth looks up sharply. This seems an odd question.

Who was to say that it wasn't the police who discovered the location?

'It was a hunch,' she said at last. 'I was looking at the map and I saw a line leading from the Spenwell body to my Iron Age body to the henge. The posts that I showed you, the causeway, they seemed to mark the route. I thought of cursuses, underground paths that seem to point to significant things in the landscape. I suddenly realised that the causeway was a cursus.'

'And it led to the body?'

'Yes.'

'But are you saying it was deliberate? That someone buried her there knowing all about causeways and cursuswhatsits?'

'Cursuses. I don't know. The police think that maybe the murderer knows about archaeology.'

'Do they?' Peter is silent for a few seconds, obviously considering this. Then he looks up and says, 'That reminds me, Erik's set up a dig next week to look at the causeway.'

'Has he got police permission?'

'Apparently so. He spoke to your mate Nelson. He says it's OK as long as they don't go into the henge circle. And, obviously, they've got to show the police anything they find.'

Erik has spoken to Nelson, whom apparently he dislikes and distrusts. Nelson has given permission for the dig.

Ruth's head swims in a miasma of contradictions, loyalties, memories.

'When did you see Erik?' she asks at last.

'Yesterday. We had lunch together.'

'Did you?' Ruth tries to imagine the scene. Erik always liked Peter, seemed to approve of him as a partner for Ruth, but she can't quite imagine them sitting down for a cosy pizza together.

'Where did you go?'

'Oh, some sushi place he knows.'

So, no pizza then. 'Did he say anything about Cathbad?

Michael Malone?'

'Only that the police had got the wrong man. He seemed quite heated about it. Kept going on about a police state, you know what an old hippie he is.'

Yet Erik was quite prepared to go to Nelson for permission to dig, thinks Ruth. Nothing, nothing, comes in the way of the archaeology.

'They're releasing Cathbad,' says Ruth. 'It'll probably be on the news today.' Well, Nelson didn't tell her to keep it a secret.

'Really?' says Peter with interest. 'Releasing him without charge?'

'There may be some charges, I don't know.'

'Come off it, Ruth, you seem to know everything.'

"I don't,' snaps Ruth, unreasonably irritated.

'Sorry.' Peter looks contrite. It doesn't suit him. 'So,' he asks brightly, 'how's Shona?'

'Fine. The same. Going on about how she's going to give up men and become a nun.'

'Who is it this time?'

'A lecturer. Married.'

'Is he promising to leave his wife?'

'Naturally.'

Peter sighs. 'Poor old Shona.' Perhaps he is thinking about his own marriage because he seems to slump in his chair, even his hair seems muted. 'I always thought she'd get married and have ten children. The old Catholic upbringing coming out.'

Ruth thinks of Shona's two abortions; the defiant declarations of independence before, the endless tears afterwards. 'No,' she says, 'no children.'

'Poor Shona,' says Peter again. He sinks even further into his chair. It's going to take a rocket to shift him.

'Peter,' says Ruth, lighting the touch paper, 'did you want something? I ought to be getting on.'

He looks hurt. 'Just to see how you were. I wondered if you'd like to go out for a drink tonight?'

Ruth thinks of going back to another girl's night in: Pinot Grigio, Liam, takeaway, mysterious text messages.

'Ok,' she says. 'That'd be nice.'

They go to a restaurant in King's Lynn, near the pub where Ruth had lunch with Nelson. This place, though, has pretensions: lower-case menu, blonde wood floors, square plates, banks of flickering candles. Chasing a lone scallop over acres of white china, Ruth says, 'Where did you find this place?' Then she adds hastily, 'It's great.'

'Phil recommended it.' That figured.

It's early and there are only two other couples dining, two thirtysomethings who are clearly counting the minutes until they can be in bed together and an elderly couple who do not exchange one word all evening.

'Blimey, why don't they get a room?' mutters Ruth as the thirtysomething woman starts licking wine off the man's fingers.

'Probably married to other people.'

'Why do you say that?'

'If they were married to each other, they wouldn't be talking, let alone be performing sex acts on each other's fingers,' says Peter in a low voice. 'Look at the old dears over there. Fifty years of wedded bliss and not a word to say to each other.'

Ruth wants to ask if this was what his marriage was like.

Say nothing, she tells herself, and he'll come out with it.

Peter was never very good at silences.

Sure enough, Peter sighs and takes a gulp of over-priced red wine. 'Like me and Victoria. We just… drifted apart.

I know it's a cliche but it's true. We just ran out of things to say to each other. Woke up one morning and discovered that, apart from Daniel, we had nothing in common. Oh we still like each other, it's all very friendly, but that something, that vital something, has gone.'

But that's what happened to us, Ruth wants to say. She remembers that feeling of looking at Peter – intelligent, kind, good-looking Peter – and thinking, 'Is this it?' Is this what I have to settle for, a nice man who, when he touches me, I sometimes don't even notice?

But Peter has his rose-tinted spectacles on again. 'With us, we had so much in common,' he says dreamily, 'archaeology, history, books. Victoria's no intellectual. Her only serious reading matter is Hello magazine.'

'That's very patronising,' says Ruth.

'Oh, don't get me wrong,' says Peter hastily, 'Victoria's a wonderful woman. Very warm and giving.' (She's put on weight, thinks Ruth). 'I'm very fond of her and we're both devoted to Daniel but it's not a marriage any more. We're more like flatmates, sharing childcare and housework, only talking about who's picking up Daniel the next day or when the Tesco delivery is coming.'

'Well, what did you expect to be talking about?

Renaissance architecture? The early poems of Robert Browning?'

Peter grins. 'Something like that. Well, we talked, didn't we? Do you remember the nights around the camp fire talking about whether Neolithic man was a hunter-gatherer or a farmer? You said that women would have done the hunting and you tried to creep up on that sheep to show how it could be done.'

'And fell flat on my face in sheep crap,' says Ruth drily.

She leans forward. It seems very important to make this clear to Peter. 'Look Peter, the henge dig was ten years ago.

That was then. This is now. We're different people. We had a relationship and that was great but it's in the past. You can't go back.'

'Can't you?' asks Peter, looking at her very intently. In the candlelight his eyes are very dark, almost black.

'No,' says Ruth gently.

Peter stares at her in silence for a minute or two, then he smiles. A different smile, sweeter and much sadder. 'Well, let's just get pissed then,' he says, leaning forward to fill up her glass.

She doesn't get pissed but she's probably slightly over the limit when she gets into her car.

'Drive carefully,' says Peter as he heads towards a new looking Alfa Romeo. Mid-life crisis?

"I will.' Ruth is glad that she doesn't have to negotiate the treacherous New Road with the darkness of the marsh all around. It's only a few minutes' drive to Shona's, she should be alright. She drives slowly, following other, more decisive, cars. On the radio, someone is talking about Gordon Brown. 'He wants to go back to the way things were.' Don't we all, thinks Ruth, taking a left turn into Shona's road.

Despite her tough words, she sympathises with Peter and his yearning for the past. There is something very tempting about the idea of going back to Peter, accepting that the mysterious perfect man is not going to turn up, that Peter is the best that she is going to get, probably a lot better than she deserves. What's stopping her? Is it the shadowy Victoria and Daniel? Is it Nelson? She knows that nothing will come of the night with Nelson – it is just that imagining herself in bed with Peter seems comforting and familiar; it does not, for one minute, seem exciting.

She finds a space by the Indian restaurant and starts to walk towards Shona's house. Out of reflex, she checks her text messages. Just one:

I know where you are.