The Janus Stone

CHAPTER 27

Ruth screams. She is aware of a smell, lemon and sandal-wood, and then the world goes black. She is fighting for breath; she can’t see or feel anything. She falls to the ground, scraping her knee on stone.

‘Ruth!’ Tanya’s voice, muffled but close.

Something is pulled from over Ruth’s head and she can see again. The night sky looks extraordinarily bright after the previous total blackness. Ruth is kneeling on the floor by the shed and Tanya is standing beside her, holding a heavy black cloth.

‘What happened?’ Tanya sounds very shaken. Whether it is concern for Ruth or fear of what Nelson would say if anything happened to her, Ruth doesn’t know.

‘I came out. I was feeling for the wall and I felt… a person. Someone was standing there, right by the wall. I touched them. Their face, I think. I heard them breathing. Then it all went black.’

‘They threw this over you.’ Tanya indicated the black cloth. ‘It’s weighted at the bottom,’ she says.

‘That’s why I couldn’t get it off.’ Ruth struggles to her feet. Now that the fear has subsided, she feels rather foolish. There is something infinitely ridiculous about being wrapped in a cloth, like a budgie in a cage.

Tanya pushes open the shed door. ‘Is there anyone there?’ she calls, her voice admirably steady. No answer but Flint nearly gives them both a heart attack by jumping heavily from the roof, landing with a thump on the grass.

‘Let’s get you inside,’ says Tanya. ‘I’ll come back out here with a torch.’

But Ruth doesn’t want to stay indoors on her own, so she follows Tanya back out into the garden. Tanya flashes her torch around the tiny shed. Its beam illuminates the collection of rusty iron and plastic, the fuse box on the wall, the festoons of cobwebs – but nothing else. She gestures towards the fuse box, all the switches have been pushed down.

‘Someone did that deliberately,’ she says, ‘and look at the doorway. No cobwebs there.’

She shines her torch downwards and there, on the dusty earth floor, between a shovel and the plastic strings of the washing line, is a single footprint.

‘Bingo,’ says Tanya.

Avoiding the print, Tanya switches the power back on and, immediately, light from the house streams into the garden. She spends a few more minutes examining the footprint before saying, ‘OK. Let’s go in. I’ve got to call the boss.’

While Tanya rings Nelson, Ruth feeds Flint who has been meowing loudly for the last five minutes. She can just hear muttered snatches of conversation. ‘No… just now… no sign of… perpetrator escaped… thorough search… print… seems a bit shaken… no… yes, sir.’

‘He’s on his way,’ says Tanya as Ruth comes into the sitting room. She sounds nervous. Ruth thinks it must be extremely stressful to work for Nelson. And she could never imagine calling another adult ‘sir’.

Nelson arrives in ten minutes, bringing with him a colleague from forensics. By this time, Tanya and Ruth are sitting in front of the television mindlessly watching a programme called Your top fifty advertising icons from the 70s. Ruth’s knee is hurting and she is longing to be in bed. Tanya sits on the edge of the sofa, fiddling with her mobile.

‘Nice to see someone’s got time to watch telly,’ is Nelson’s opening gambit.

‘Yes, we’re just having a nice quiet evening,’ Ruth retorts. She doesn’t feel ready for Nelson’s brusque irony. Tanya, though, blushes.

‘I thought it would calm Ruth down,’ she says, ‘she’s a bit upset.’

‘I’m not the slightest bit upset,’ snaps Ruth.

Nelson strides out into the garden, followed by Tanya and the forensics man. Ruth stays inside. She knows she should be bustling about making tea, being terribly grateful for all this police protection but instead she feels cross and tired and, despite what she said to Tanya, extremely scared. It is one thing to be afraid of the creature in the night, another actually to touch its face, to feel its breath. The danger has come closer, almost to Ruth’s very door and, yes, she is very upset indeed.

Ruth sits on the sofa with Flint on her lap watching as the Smash aliens fill the TV screen. She has turned the sound off but she can hear their tinny voices in her head, reminding her of cosy evenings spent watching TV with her parents: Tomorrow’s World, Man About the House, Upstairs Downstairs. No wonder they put all these nostalgia programmes on the TV, just the thing for saddoes like her. Funny, at the time, she didn’t realise that she was living through the golden age of telly; you watched what was on, that was all. There were just the three channels for most of her childhood, no remote control, switching channels meant actually getting up from your seat. They didn’t call it ‘switching’, she remembers, they called it ‘turning over’. ‘Shall we turn over, Daddy?’ her mother would ask when Top of the Pops came on. How Ruth had longed to watch Top of the Pops with all those sinful transvestites gyrating to the devil’s music. Turning over implied only two choices – BBC1 or 2. Ruth’s parents had thought that ITV was somehow common – maybe that’s why they had watched I, Claudius, despite it being so disgusting. Full of sex and violence it may have been, but it was on BBC2 and so somehow safe.

Lying on the table is the black cloth which, only an hour ago, was bundled over her head. Ruth leans closer to examine it, careful not to touch. It is heavy black material, almost oily-looking, and, as Tanya said, it is weighted along the hem, as if it has been specially made to hang down over something.

‘Looks like something you’d put over a statue,’ says a voice behind her. Nelson has come back in, bringing with him cool air and an almost palpable sense of action, of getting things done. Despite herself, Ruth feels a lot safer when he is in the house.

‘What do you mean, over a statue?’ she asks.

‘You know,’ says Nelson, slightly defensively, ‘like when they cover the statues in church on Good Friday.’

Ruth thinks of Father Hennessey. What about the Holy Ghost? The most important one of the trilogy as far as I’m concerned. ‘I’m happy to say I’ve never been in church on Good Friday,’ she says. Not one with statues anyway. Her parents think statues are sinful, evidence of evil Catholic idolatry. Ruth is no fan of Catholicism but she remembers churches in Italy and Spain, rich with incense and mystery, statues and paintings illuminated by hundreds of glowing candles. Idolatry maybe, but a lot more interesting than the empty brick building, rather like a public lavatory, where her parents get to grips with being Born Again.

‘Or a plinth,’ says Tanya, appearing at Nelson’s side, notebook at the ready.

‘Plinth?’ Nelson sounds impatient.

‘It’s like the cloth they use to cover the plinths at the museum,’ says Tanya.

Two black crows in the garden. My lucky number in the date. An even number of pips in my breakfast grapefruit. When I sacrificed (a blackbird) the head came off sweetly, easily, and the blood ran swiftly into the earth, forming the letter S. S for Sacrifice. A very good omen.