The Crossing Places

CHAPTER 5

The police car arrives at Ruth's door promptly at nine.

Expecting this (Nelson seems like an early riser to her) she is dressed and ready. As she walks to the car, she sees one of the weekenders (Sara? Sylvie? Susanna?) looking furtively out of the window, so she waves and smiles cheerfully.

They probably think she is being arrested. Guilty of living alone and weighing over ten stone.

She is driven into the centre of King's Lynn. The police station is in a detached Victorian house which still looks more like a family home than anything else. The reception desk is obviously in the middle of the sitting room and there should be framed family portraits on the walls rather than posters telling you to lock your car safely and not to exceed the speed limit. Her escort, a taciturn uniformed policeman, ushers her through a secret door beside the desk. She imagines the defeated-looking people waiting in reception wondering who she is and why she deserves this star treatment. They climb a rather beautiful swirling staircase, now marred with institutional carpeting, and enter a door marked CID.

Harry Nelson is sitting at a battered Formica desk surrounded by papers. This room was obviously once part of a bigger one; you can see where the plasterboard partition cuts into the elaborate coving around the ceiling. Now it is an awkward slice of a room, taller than it is wide, with a disproportionately large window, half-covered by a broken white blind. Nelson, though, does not seem a man who bothers much about his surroundings.

He stands up when she enters. 'Ruth. Good of you to come.'

She can't remember telling him to call her by her first name but now it seems too late to do anything about it. She can hardly ask him to go back to Doctor Galloway.

'Coffee?' asks Nelson.

'Yes please. Black.' She knows it will be horrible but somehow it feels rude to refuse. Besides it will give her something to do with her hands.

'Two black coffees, Richards,' Nelson barks at the hovering policemen. Presumably he has the same problem with 'please' as with 'thank you'.

Ruth sits on a battered plastic chair opposite the desk.

Nelson sits down too and, for a few minutes, seems just to stare at her, frowning. Ruth begins to feel uncomfortable.

Surely he hasn't just asked her here for coffee? Is this silent treatment something he does to intimidate suspects?

The policeman marches back in with the coffees. Ruth thanks him profusely, noticing with a sinking heart the thin liquid and the strange wax film floating on the surface.

Nelson waits until the door has shut again before saying, 'You must be wondering why I asked you to come in.'

'Yes,' says Ruth simply, taking a sip of coffee. It tastes even worse than it looks.

Nelson pushes a file towards her. 'There's been another child gone missing,' he says. 'You'll have read about it in the press.'

Ruth stays silent; she doesn't read the papers.

Nelson gives her a sharp look before continuing. He looks tired, she realises. There are dark circles around his eyes and he obviously hasn't shaved that morning. In fact, he looks more like a face on a 'wanted' poster than a policeman.

'There's been a letter,' he says. 'Remember I told you about the letters that were sent during the Lucy Downey case? Well, this looks to be from the same person. At the very least someone's trying to make me think it's from the same person, which may be stranger still.'

'And you think this person may be the murderer?'

Nelson pauses for a long time before replying, frowning darkly into his coffee cup. 'It's dangerous to make assumptions,'

he says at last, 'that's what happened with the Ripper case, if you remember. The police were so sure the anonymous letters came from the killer that it skewed the whole investigation and they just turned out to be from some nutter. That may well be the case here. Nothing more likely, in fact.' He pauses again. 'It's just… there is always the chance that they could be from the killer, in which case they could contain vital clues. And I remembered what you said, that day when we found the bones, about ritual and all that. There's a lot of that sort of thing in the letters, so I wondered if you'd take a look. Tell me what you think.'

Whatever Ruth had been expecting, it wasn't this.

Gingerly, she takes the file and opens it. A typewritten letter faces her. She picks it up. It seems to have been written on standard printer paper using a standard computer, but she assumes the police have ways of checking all that. It's only the words that concern her: Dear Detective Nelson,

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what has been planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together.

She lies where the earth meets the sky. Where the roots of the great tree Yggdrasil reach down into the next life. All flesh is grass. Yet in death are we in life. She has become the perfect sacrifice. Blood on stone. Scarlet on white.

In peace.

There is no signature.

'Well?' Nelson is watching her closely.

'Well, the first bit's from the Bible. Ecclesiastes.' Ruth shifts in her chair. She feels slightly queasy. The Bible always does this to her.

'What's all that about a tree?'

'In Norse legend, there's a tree called Yggdrasil. Its roots are supposed to stretch down to hell and up to heaven.

There are all sorts of legends attached to it.' As she says this she remembers Erik, that great teller of Norse tales, sitting by the camp fire, his face radiant in the half light, telling them about Odin and Thor, about Asgard, the home of the Gods and Muspelheim, the land of fire.

'The letter says its roots reach down into the next life.'

'Yes.' This was the first thing to strike Ruth. She is surprised to find Nelson so perceptive. 'Some people think that prehistoric man may have believed that heaven was below the earth, not above. Have you heard of Seahenge?'

'No.'

'It was found on the coast, near the Saltmarsh, at Holme-Next-the-Sea. A wooden henge, like the one at Saltmarsh, except there was a tree buried in the centre of it. Buried upside down. Its roots upwards, its branches going down into the earth.'

'Do you think this guy,' – he picks up the letter – 'may have heard of it?'

'Possibly. There was a lot of publicity at the time. Have you thought that it might not be a man?'

'What?'

'The letter writer. It might be a woman.'

'It might, I suppose. There were some handwritten letters the first time. The expert thought the handwriting was a man's but you never know. The experts aren't always right. One of the first rules of policing.'

Wondering where this leaves her, Ruth asks, 'Can you tell me something about the child? The one who's gone missing.'

He stares at her. 'It was in the papers. Local and national. Bloody hell, it was even on Crimewatch. Where have you been?'

Ruth is abashed. She seldom reads the papers or watches TV, preferring novels and the radio. She relies on the latter for the news, but she's been away. She realises she knows far more about happenings in the prehistoric world than in this one.

Nelson sighs and rubs his stubble. When he speaks, his voice is harsher than ever. 'Scarlet Henderson. Four years old. Vanished while playing in her parents' front garden in Spenwell.'

Spenwell is a tiny village about half a mile from Ruth's house. It makes the whole thing seem uncomfortably close.

'Scarlet?'

'Yes. Scarlet on white. Blood on stone. Quite poetic isn't it?'

Ruth is silent. She is thinking about Erik's theories of ritual sacrifice. Wood represents life, stone death. Aloud she asks, 'How long ago was this?'

'November.' Their eyes meet. 'About a week after we found those old bones of yours. Almost ten years to the day since Lucy Downey vanished.'

'And you think the cases are connected?'

He shrugs. 'I've got to keep an open mind, but there are similarities, and then this letter arrives.'

'When?'

'Two weeks after Scarlet vanished. We'd done everything.

Searched the area, drained the river, questioned everyone. Drawn a complete blank. Then this letter came.

It got me thinking about the Lucy Downey case.'

'Hadn't you been thinking about it already?' It is an innocent enough enquiry but Nelson looks at her sharply, as if scenting criticism.

"I thought about it, yes,' he says, slightly defensively.

'The similarities were there: similar age child, same time of year, but there were differences too. Lucy Downey was taken from inside her own home. Terrible thing. Actually snatched from her bed. This child was on her own, in the garden…'

There is a faint edge of censure in his voice that leads Ruth to ask, 'What about the parents? You said… it's sometimes the parents…'

'Hippies,' says Nelson contemptuously, 'New Agers. Got five children and don't look after any of 'em properly.

Took them two hours to notice that Scarlet was missing.

But we don't think they did it. No signs of abuse. Dad was away at the time and Mum was in a bloody trance or something, communing with the fairies.'

'Can I see the other letters?' asks Ruth. 'The Lucy Downey letters. There might be something there, about Yggdrasil or Norse mythology or something.'

Nelson is obviously expecting this enquiry because he hands over another file which is lying on the desk. Ruth opens it. There are ten or more sheets inside.

'Twelve,' says Nelson, reading her mind. 'The last one was sent only last year.'

'So he hasn't given up?'

'No.' Nelson shakes his head slowly. 'He hasn't given up.'

'Can I take these home and read them tonight?'

'You'll have to sign for them, mind.' As he roots around on the desk, looking for a form, he surprises her by asking.

'What about the bones we found. What's happened to them?'

'Well, I sent you the report…'

Nelson grunts. 'Couldn't make head nor tail of it.'

'Well, basically it said it was probably the body of a young girl, between six and ten, pre-pubescent. About two thousand, six hundred years old. We excavated and found three gold torques and some coins.'

'They had coins in the Iron Age?'

'Yes, it was the start of coinage actually. We're going to do another dig in the spring when the weather's better.' She hopes Erik will be able to come over for it.

'Do you think she was murdered?'

Ruth looks at the detective, who is leaning forward across his untidy desk. It seems strange to hear the word 'murdered' on his lips, as if her Iron Age body is suddenly going to form part of his 'enquiries', as if he is planning to bring the perpetrator to justice.

'We don't know,' she admits. 'One strange thing, half her hair was shaved off. We don't know what that means but it may have been part of a ritual killing. There were branches twisted around her arms and legs, willow and hazel, as if she was tied down.'

Nelson smiles, rather grimly. 'Sounds pretty conclusive to me,' he says.

As Nelson escorts her out, he leads her through a room full of people, all working intently, crouched over phones or frowning at computer screens. On the wall is what looks like a roughly drawn mind map, full of arrows and scrawling writing. At the centre of it all is a photograph of a little girl with dark, curly hair and laughing eyes.

'Is that her?' Ruth finds herself whispering.

'That's Scarlet Henderson, yes.'

No-one in the room looks up as they pass through.

Perhaps they are pretending to work hard because the boss is there, but Ruth doesn't think so somehow. At the door she turns and Scarlet Henderson's smiling face looks back at her.

Once home, she pours herself a glass of Shona's wine and puts the file with the letters in front of her. Before she looks at them though, she clicks on her computer and googles Scarlet Henderson. Reference after reference spews onto her screen. Nelson is right, how can she have missed this?

'Heartache of Scarlet's Parents' screams an article from the Telegraph. 'Police Baffled in Henderson Case' says The Times, rather more soberly. Ruth scrolls down the article: 'Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson of the Norfolk Police admitted yesterday that there are no new leads in the case of missing four-year-old Scarlet Henderson. Sightings in Great Yarmouth of a child answering Scarlet's description are said by police to have been ruled out of the enquiry…'

Scarlet's face, poignant in black and white, looks up from the edge of the page. Is she dead, this bright-eyed, smiling child? Ruth doesn't like to think about it but she knows that, sooner or later, she will have to. Somehow she has become involved.

To stave off the moment when she will have to look at the letters, Ruth types 'Lucy Downey' into the search engine. Fewer references this time, Lucy disappeared before the ubiquity of the internet. She is listed, though, on a couple of websites.for missing children and there is an article from the Guardian headed 'Ten Years On, the Never-ending Nightmare'. 'Alice and Tom Downey,' she reads, 'meet me in their neat Norfolk home, full of pictures of the same, smiling five-year-old. Ten years ago, Lucy was sleeping in her bed in this same house when an intruder scaled the garage wall, opened the window and snatched the child while the parents were still sleeping…'

Jesus. Ruth stops reading. Imagine that. Imagine coming to wake your little girl in the morning and finding she wasn't there. Imagine looking under the bed, searching, with increasing panic, downstairs, in the garden, back in the bedroom. Imagine seeing the open window, the curtains (she imagines them pink featuring Disney princesses) blowing in the breeze. Ruth can imagine all this, the hairs lifting on the back of her neck, but she can't imagine what Alice Downey felt, is still feeling, ten years later. To lose your child, to have her spirited away like something from a fairy tale, surely that must be every mother's nightmare.

But Ruth isn't a mother; she is an archaeologist and it is time she got to work. Nelson needs her professional help and professional is what she must be. Closing down the computer, she opens the file containing the letters. First she puts them in date order, rather surprised to find that Nelson has not already done this, and examines the paper and the ink. Ten of the twelve letters seem to be on the same standard printer paper as the Scarlet Henderson letter. This doesn't necessarily mean anything, she tells herself. Nine out of ten people with printers must use this sort of paper. Similarly the typeface looks very ordinary, Times New Roman she thinks. But two of the letters are handwritten on lined paper, the sort that comes from a refill pad, complete with a narrow red margin and holes for filing. The letters are written with a thin felt-tip, what used to be called a 'handwriting pen' when Ruth was at school. The writing itself is legible but untidy and slopes wildly to the left. A man's writing, the expert said. It occurs to her that she hardly ever sees handwriting these days; her students all have laptops, her friends send her emails or texts, she even edits papers on-line. The only handwriting she can recognise is her mother's, which usually comes inside inappropriately sentimental cards. 'To a special daughter on her birthday…'

The handwritten letters come in the middle of the sequence. Ruth puts them back into order and starts to read: November 1997

Nelson,

You are looking for Lucy but you are looking in the wrong places. Look to the sky, the stars, the crossing places. Look at what is silhouetted against the sky. You will find her where the earth meets the sky.

In peace.

December 1997

Nelson,

Lucy is the perfect sacrifice. Like Isaac, like Jesus, she carries the wood for her own crucifixion. Like Isaac and Jesus she is obedient to the father's will.

I would wish you the compliments of the season, make you a wreath of mistletoe, but, in truth, Christmas is merely a modern addition, grafted onto the great winter solstice. The pagan festival was here first, in the short days and long nights. Perhaps I should wish you greetings for St Lucy's day. If only you have eyes to see.

In peace.

January 1998

Dear Detective Inspector Harry Nelson, You see, I am calling you by your full name now. I feel we are old friends, you and I. Just because Nelson had only one eye, it doesn't follow that he couldn't see. 'A man may see how the world goes with no eyes.'

In peace.

January 1998

Dear Harry,

'A little touch of Harry in the night.' How wise Shakespeare was, a shaman for all time. Perhaps it is the wise men – and women – you should be consulting now.

For you still do not look in the right places, the holy places, the other places. You look only where trees flower and springs flow. Look again Harry. Lucy lies deep below the ground but she will rise again. This I promise you.

In peace.

March 1998

Dear Harry,

Spring returns but not my friend. The trees are in bud and the swallows return. For everything there is a season.

Look where the land lies. Look at the cursuses and the causeways.

Ruth stops and reads the last line again. She is so transfixed by the word 'cursuses' that it is a few minutes before she realises that someone is knocking on the door.

Apart from the postman making his surly visits to deliver Amazon parcels, unannounced visitors are almost unheard of. Ruth is irritated to find herself feeling quite nervous as she opens the door.

It is the woman from next door; the weekender who watched her drive off in the police car that morning.

'Oh… hello,' says Ruth.

'Hi!' The woman flashes her a brilliant smile. She is older than Ruth, maybe early fifties, but fantastically well preserved: highlighted hair, tanned skin, honed figure in low-slung jeans.

'I'm Sammy. Sammy from next door. Isn't it ridiculous that we've hardly ever spoken to each other?'

Ruth doesn't think it is ridiculous at all. She spoke to the weekenders when they first bought the house about three years ago and since then has done her best to ignore them.

There used to be children, she remembers, loud teenagers who played music into the early hours and tramped over the Saltmarsh with surfboards and inflatable boats. There are no children in evidence on this visit.

'Ed and I… we're having a little New Year's party. Just some friends who are coming up from London. Very casual, just kitchen sups. We wondered if you'd like to come.'

Ruth can't believe her ears. It's been years since she's been invited to a New Year's party and now she has two invitations to refuse. It's a conspiracy.

'Thank you very much,' she says, 'But my head of department's having a party and I might have to…'

'Oh, I do understand.' Sammy, like Ruth's parents, seems to have no difficulty in understanding that Ruth might want to go to a party from motives of duty alone.

'You work at the university, don't you?'

'Yes. I teach archaeology.'

'Archaeology! Ed would love that. He never misses Time Team. I thought you might have changed jobs.'

Ruth looks at her blankly, though she has a good idea what is coming.

Sammy laughs gaily. 'The police car! This morning.'

'Oh, that,' says Ruth. 'I'm just helping the police with their enquiries.'

And with that, she thinks grimly, Sammy will have to be content.

That night, in bed, Ruth finishes the Lucy Downey letters.

She was halfway through the letter dated March 1996, with its surprising mention of cursuses and the causeways.

A cursus is a fairly obscure archaeological term meaning a shallow ditch. There is a cursus at Stonehenge, older even than the stones.

… Look at the cursuses and the causeways. We crawl on the surface of the earth but we do not know its ways, or divine its intent.

In peace.

April 1998

Dear Harry,

Happy Easter. I do not think of you as a Christian somehow. You seem to belong to the older ways.

At Easter, Christians believe Christ died on the cross for their sins but did not Odin do this before him, sacrificing himself on the Tree of All Knowledge? Like Nelson.

Odin had only one eye. How many eyes do you have Detective Inspector? A thousand, like Argus?

Lucy is buried deep now. But she will flower again.

In peace.

Now come the two handwritten letters. They are undated but someone (Nelson?) has scribbled the date they were received:

Received 21 June 1998 Dear Harry, Greetings of the summer solstice be with you. Happy Litha time. Hail to the Sun God.

Beware the water spirits and light bonfires on the beach. Beware the wicker man.

Now the sun turns southwards and evil spirits walk abroad. Follow the will o'the wisps, the spirits of the dead children. Who knows where they will lead you?

In peace.

Received 23 June 1998 Dear Harry, Compliments of St John's Day. Sankt Hans Aften. Herbs picked on St John's Eve have special healing powers.

Did you know that? I have so much to teach you.

You are no nearer to Lucy and that makes me sad. But do not weep for her. I have rescued her and raised her up. I have saved her from a life of the mundane, a life spent worshipping false Gods. I have made her the perfect sacrifice.

Weep rather for yourself and for your children and your children's children.

In peace.

Now the letters revert to typewriting and the tone changes.

No longer is there the half affectionate teasing, the assumption that Nelson and the writer are 'old friends' and share a special bond. Now the writer seems angry, resentful.

There is a gap of four months before the next letter and the date is predictable:

31st October 1998

Dear Detective Inspector Nelson, Now is the time when the dead walk. Graves have yawned and yielded up their dead. Beware the living and the dead. Beware the living dead. We who were living are now dying.

You have disappointed me, Detective Inspector. I have shared my wisdom with you and still you are no nearer to me or to Lucy. You are, after all, a man bound to the earth and to The Mundane. I had hoped for better things of you.

Tomorrow is the Feast of All Saints. Will you find St Lucy there in all the holy pantheon? Or is she, too, bound to the earth?

In sadness.

25th November 1998

Dear Detective Inspector Nelson, It is now a year since Lucy Downey vanished. The world has turned full circle and what have you to show for it? Truly you have feet of clay.

A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on the things of flesh, whose heart turns from the Lord. He is like dry scrub in the wastelands, if good comes, he has no eyes for it.

In sadness.

December 1998

Dear Detective Inspector Nelson, I nearly did not write to wish you compliments of the season but then I thought that you would miss me.

But, in truth, I am deeply disappointed in you.

A girl, a young girl, an innocent soul, vanishes but you do not read the signs. A seer, a shaman, offers you the hand of friendship and you decline it. Look into your own heart, Detective Inspector. Truly it must be a dark place, full of bitterness and regret.

Yet Lucy is in light. That I promise you.

In sadness.

The last letter is dated January 2007: Dear Detective Inspector Nelson, Had you forgotten me? But with each New Year I think of you. Are you any nearer to the right path? Or have your feet strayed into the way of despair and lamentation?

I saw your picture in the paper last week. What sadness and loneliness is etched in those lines! Even though you have betrayed me, still I ache with pity for you.

You have daughters. Do you watch them? Do you keep them close at all times?

I hope so for the night is full of voices and my ways are very dark. Perhaps I will call to you again one day?

In peace.

What did Nelson think, wonders Ruth, when he read that open threat to his own children? Her own hair is standing on end and she is nervously checking the curtains for signs of lurking bodies. How did Nelson feel about receiving these letters, over months and years, with their implication that he and the writer are in some way bound together, accomplices, even friends?

Ruth looks at the date on the last letter. Ten months later Scarlet Henderson vanishes. Is this man responsible? Is he even responsible for Lucy Downey? There is nothing concrete in these letters, only a web of allusion, quotation and superstition. She shakes her head, trying to clear it.

She recognises the Bible and Shakespeare, of course, but she wishes she had Shoria for some of the other references.

She is sure there is some T.S. Eliot in there somewhere.

What interests her more are the Norse allusions: Odin, the Tree of all Knowledge, the water spirits. And, even more than that, the signs of some archaeological knowledge. No layman, surely, would use the word 'cursuses'. She lies in bed, rereading, wondering…

It is a long time before she sleeps that night, and, when she does she dreams of drowned girls, of the water spirits and of the ghost lights leading to the bodies of the dead.