Dying Fall, A (17 page)

‘We’ll come back another day,’ says Sandy.

By the afternoon it is raining heavily. So when Ruth says, for the second time, that she really must be going, Caz offers to drive her. Ruth, who is feeling tired and full of food, accepts gratefully. It has been a good day, though. Pete arrived after lunch with the children: Ashley, Becky and Jack. Ruth, after she’d got over the shock of Ashley being about six feet tall, had to admit that they were nice kids and very good with Kate. Perhaps this is what Kate has wanted all along, three older children to pander to her every need. ‘It’s good for them,’ said Caz. ‘They don’t know any babies.’ Caz has a breezy, authoritative way with her children that Ruth much admires. Within two seconds of coming into the house, they have changed their sailing gear for indoor clothes and are playing trains with Kate on the sitting-room carpet. ‘You’re in charge, Ash,’ Caz had said. ‘We grown-ups want some time together.’

Caz, Pete and Ruth sat in the kitchen, drinking white wine and talking about life, children, jobs and whether everything has gone downhill since the Eighties.

‘The music,’ said Pete. ‘They have all this manufactured pop these days. The
X Factor
and all that.’

‘We had Kylie and Jason though,’ said Ruth. ‘It wasn’t all plain sailing.’

‘But we had Adam Ant and Boy George as well,’ said Caz. ‘Be fair.’

‘Do you remember,’ said Pete, ‘when Dan had that party and everyone thought that Boy George was coming?’

‘He was a friend of Dan’s sister,’ said Caz. ‘She knew lots of famous people.’

That was the way it had been all afternoon. Dan was mentioned often and with affection but they didn’t allow themselves to be caught up in nostalgia. Dan was the reason that Ruth was sitting there, in that state-of-the-art kitchen in the frozen north, but none of them mentioned this. They all said how good it was to see each other again, but they didn’t dwell on the fact that if they had wanted to be reunited they could have done it any time over the last twenty-odd years. Fire and death have brought Ruth to Lancashire but no one says these words either.

But as Ruth and Caz set out in Caz’s gleaming 4×4, a sleepy Kate in the back, Ruth knows that there is something she has to ask.

‘How far is it to Fleetwood?’

Caz glances at her. ‘About twenty minutes. Do you want to see where it . . . do you want to see Dan’s house?’

‘Yes please.’

They don’t speak much on the drive along the coast road, past Blackpool and the giant glitter ball and the roller-coaster reaching up to the sky. Despite the rain, families trail along the Golden Mile carrying candy floss and virulent cuddly toys won in arcades. Once past the north pier, the landscape changes again, with long stretches of windswept grass and grey sea. At Fleetwood the sea stretches out into an estuary, with boats beached high on the sand. They pass shuttered Victorian hotels, derelict dockyards, red-brick houses.

Ruth knows from reading up about Ribchester that the town used to be a thriving port. In fact, the Roman Road might well have led from Ribchester to Fleetwood. But now, in the afternoon rain, the town doesn’t look as if it is on the road to anywhere. It looks tired, as tired as Kate, who is fast asleep in Jack’s old car seat.

Caz turns down a side street and stops suddenly in front of a row of pebbledash houses. Nothing in Ruth’s imagination has prepared her for the horror of it. The middle house in the terrace has been reduced to a blackened stump, windows smashed, door boarded up. The walls are streaked with soot, half the roof is missing. Ruth thinks of Dan, trapped inside, choking with acrid smoke, breathing his last . . .

‘Are you OK?’ says Caz.

‘Yes,’ says Ruth, wiping her eyes. ‘It’s just . . . thinking about it.’

‘I know,’ says Caz. ‘I drove past the day I found out about it. You hear the words “house fire”, but you just can’t imagine the damage a fire can do.’

‘Why didn’t he jump out of the window?’ asks Ruth. ‘It’s such a tiny house.’

‘At the funeral his father told me that the bedroom window didn’t open,’ said Caz. ‘They all wondered why he didn’t get out though. He was found right by the door. I guess the heat was just too intense.’

Ruth remembers Nelson telling her that the door had been locked from the outside. She imagines Dan pounding away at the door, slowly losing consciousness. Someone had pushed petrol-soaked rags through the letter box. The hall must have been the white-hot heart of the blaze. Did Dan know, as he tried desperately to escape, did he know that he was going to die? Did he know that someone had killed him?

‘Shall we go?’ says Caz gently.

Ruth nods. As Caz performs a U-turn, with difficulty as the car is about the size of a Blackpool tram, Ruth looks back at the house. And she sees two people, a man and a woman, letting themselves in next door. They are youngish, dressed in jeans and windcheaters, and, for some reason, she thinks that she might know them. It is only when they are halfway back to Lytham that she realises who they were. Elaine and Guy. The Brideshead couple, who turn out to live in a run-down backstreet, next to a burned-out house.

‘Well,’ says Sandy, overtaking with a perfunctory blare of the horn. The rain has reduced visibility to almost nil but this has not affected Sandy’s driving. ‘What did you think of Professor Henry?’

‘He’s hiding something,’ says Nelson.

‘He’s got an alibi for the night of the fire, though.’ This last had been ascertained from Pippa Henry in an icy exchange on the door step. ‘He was with his wife all evening, apparently.’

‘She’s quite something, the wife,’ says Nelson.

‘You can say that again. How did a little pipsqueak like him ever end up with a woman like that?’

‘Sometimes beautiful women like ugly men,’ says Nelson. ‘Look at Michelle and me.’

‘You might be ugly but you’re not a pipsqueak in a pink jumper.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Clayton Henry’s afraid of something,’ says Sandy. ‘It might be his wife, it might be these White Hand bozos, it might be something else entirely.’

‘How much do you know about these White Hand people?’

‘Never heard of them,’ admits Sandy. ‘Tim, my sergeant, might know. He’s the one who’s put in all the work on these extreme right-wing groups. In general the people he’s investigating are pretty much what you’d expect, low income, not very well educated, wound up over immigration and lack of jobs. There are some very deprived areas round here, you know.’

Nelson looks out of the window. They have reached the outskirts of Blackpool now. He has never thought of the area as being deprived exactly but there’s no denying that the rows of glum terraces are not looking their brightest in the driving rain.

‘But the recent trouble at the university is something else,’ Sandy is saying, putting his windscreen wipers on full speed. ‘There have been some very nasty threats made, a real undercurrent of violence.’

‘What about all that King Arthur stuff? Have you come across anything like that before?’

‘No, that’s a new one on me, I must admit, but nothing would surprise me about these idiots. They have all sorts of heroes—Hitler, Enoch Powell, Boadicea, Asterix the Gaul.’

‘Asterix? Isn’t he French?’

‘He stood up to the Romans, didn’t he? I tell you, these people would hero-worship anyone, even the French.’

The image of that horrible blackened house remains in Ruth’s head all evening. When she gets back, Cathbad is still out and the rain is still falling. Kate wakes up as soon as they enter the cottage and, deprived of her teenage minions, she is grumpy and determined not to be placated. Ruth makes toast for them both (she is too tired to attempt any Cathbad-style gourmet cooking and, besides, she’s still full up from lunch) and prepares to start the nighttime routine. Kate cheers up slightly in the bath (whether it’s to do with being a Scorpio or not, she does love the water), but as soon they go into the bedroom, she starts to look mutinous. Ruth tucks her into the double bed, gives her a bottle and reads interminable multi-lingual adventures featuring Dora the Explorer. Kate endures this for a while, watching Ruth out of her big dark eyes, so like her father’s. But as soon as Ruth closes the book and prepares to leave the room, Kate starts to cry. Eventually Ruth lies down on the bed next to her daughter. The rain batters against the windows and the little house seems almost to shake under the onslaught. For once Ruth is happy to have near neighbours. Through the curtains she can see the orange glow of streetlights, hear cars going past. If this was the Saltmarsh she’d have only the wind and the rain for company. And Flint, of course. She wonders how he is. Perhaps she should text Bob.

She looks down at Kate. The bottle has fallen out of her hands and she seems to be breathing heavily. Slowly, trying to make herself weightless, Ruth sits up and swings her feet to the floor. Kate murmurs but doesn’t wake. Leaving the bedside light on, Ruth tiptoes out and goes in search of her mobile phone. Where can she have left it?

The cute little house seems different at night, furniture seems to loom at her or appear in odd places. Surely that bookcase wasn’t there before, thinks Ruth, rubbing her shins. She thinks of Dame Alice’s cottage, the little white house in the hollow of the hills. Has Cathbad decided to stay the night with Pendragon? If so, he’d have told her surely. Yes, he’s probably left a message on her bloody phone. Where is the damn thing? She goes into the kitchen, which still smells of toast. She eats a soggy crust, rejected by Kate. Stop eating, she tells herself sternly. If you don’t eat for a year maybe you’ll be as slim as Caz. But being thin has never seemed worth being hungry, which is one reason why Ruth weighs nearly thirteen stone.

She stops. A floorboard creaks upstairs. Could it possibly be Kate? There’s no stair-gate at the cottage and Ruth is in constant fear that Kate will get up in the night and fall down the stairs. Ruth goes upstairs and looks into the master bedroom. Kate is sleeping deeply, arms flung out. The milk bottle is dripping on the floor and Ruth picks it up. Then she goes into Cathbad’s room. She is not sure what she is expecting to see, but the bed, with its pink flowery duvet, is neatly made and the ballerinas gaze down demurely from the wallpaper. There are no clothes anywhere; Cathbad must have packed everything into the little wardrobe under the eaves. Unlike Ruth, who still has half her stuff in her suitcase. There is a book next to the bed. Ruth picks it up.
Wicked Enchantments,
it’s called,
A History of the Pendle Witches and Their Magic.
The cover shows a cauldron and a black cat. Ruth puts the book down hastily but, as she does so, a photo falls out. Ruth picks it up, trying not to look but, of course, she has seen who is in the picture. Judy, standing on the beach, her hair loose, looking entirely unlike a policewoman. Ruth tucks the photo back into the book and goes downstairs. Where is Cathbad? Has he got lost in the winding paths through the Pendle Forest? Has he strayed into a local coven? If so, he’s definitely likely to stay the night.

Ruth goes back downstairs and—hooray!—finds her phone in her cagoule pocket. She clicks on to Messages.

Just one.

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Your house is on fire. Your children are gone.

Ruth stands in the hall, frozen in terror. She sees the ruined house with its blank, staring windows. She thinks of Dan in his own hallway, trying desperately to open the locked door. Then she turns and runs back upstairs. Kate is still asleep. Ruth turns off the bedside lamp because lamps can overheat, houses can burn down. Instantly her phone clicks into life.

A new message.

Don’t turn out the light.

Ruth has had enough; she rings Nelson.

Cathbad and Nelson arrive at the same time. They exchange a few words on the doorstep and then Nelson barges in and takes charge. First he runs upstairs to check on Kate, then he holds out his hand for Ruth’s mobile.

‘Can you trace the messages?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Mobile phones have a unique number that they send out when they make a call. If I have the number I can trace the call to its local base. That’ll give us a geographical location.’

‘Can you find out who owns the phone?’

‘We can force mobile phone providers to give us that information under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Of course, that only works if they’ve got a contract. If this person’s got any sense they’ll be using pay-as-you-go.’

Ruth sincerely hopes that the texter doesn’t have any sense. ‘They must be close,’ she says. ‘That bit about turning out the light . . . I’d . . . I’d just turned out Kate’s light.’

‘I’ll get Sandy to send some boys round,’ says Nelson, trying to sound reassuring though his brows are lowered ominously.

He gets out his own phone and makes a brief call. Ruth hears the words ‘trace . . . uniforms . . . protection’. She turns to Cathbad and tries to smile.

‘Welcome back.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘I’ve been getting these texts . . .’ She explains about the mystery texts. In the background, Nelson is grinding his teeth.

‘You mean you’ve been getting these calls for weeks and you didn’t say anything?’

‘I thought they were just trying to scare me.’

‘Well, they should have scared you. Someone was threatening you, for Christ’s sake. What about Katie? Didn’t you consider her safety?’

‘Of course I did!’ Ruth flares up. ‘I’m with her all the time, unlike you. She’s my first priority. My
only
priority.’ Nelson spreads out his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘OK, OK. Sandy’s sending a couple of uniforms round to check up on things. In the meantime, let’s all calm down a bit. Have a cup of tea.’

Ruth glares at him but she makes the tea. She resents Nelson jackbooting around but she has to admit that she feels safer when he’s in the house. The furniture seems to have retreated to its usual places and even the rain has stopped. An uneasy calm descends as they sit in the chintzy little sitting room drinking tea while Ruth tells the whole story of the switched bones, Clayton’s nervousness and the texter who didn’t want her to come to Pendle in the first place.