Dying Fall, A (3 page)

No, it’s not policing that’s doing his head in. It’s the insistence of his wife, Michelle, and his boss, Gerry Whitcliffe, that he go on holiday. Nelson always ends up with leave owing at the end of the year, and this time Michelle wants him to take a holiday in August, ‘when normal people go away, Harry.’ Whitcliffe keeps reminding him that he was seriously ill at the end of last year and implying that he’s still not quite up to scratch. ‘You need a break, a complete rest, recharge your batteries.’ Recharge your batteries. What the hell does that mean? Nelson prides himself on not needing batteries. He’s an old-fashioned, wind-up model.

Michelle has told him that she’ll be home early but she’s going out again with some girlfriends at eight. That’s partly why Nelson is still at the station at half-seven. He loves his wife, but now that his two children have left home they just have too much time together. Enough time, certainly, for Michelle, who’s good at getting her own way, to persuade him into some God-awful summer holiday. Memories of Lanzarote a year ago rise up in horrific Technicolor, sitting in some Tex-Mex-themed bar chatting to the most boring couple in the world about computer programming. Never again. He’d rather go to the North Pole and eat whale blubber.

So Nelson is still in his office when Ruth rings.

‘How’s Katie?’ is the first thing he says.

‘Kate’s
fine.’

‘Good,’ says Nelson. Then, after a pause. ‘And you?’

‘I’m OK. A bit knackered, we’ve being doing a dig all week. Look, Nelson, I wondered if you could help me. A friend of mine died a few days ago in a house fire in Fleetwood.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ says Nelson. Then, ‘Fleetwood, Lancashire?’

‘Yes. I know that’s your . . . where you come from . . . and I wondered if you still had any contacts in the police force up there.’

‘My old mate Sandy Macleod’s the DCI at Blackpool CID.’

‘Well, I just wondered if you could find out if there were any . . . you know, suspicious circumstances.’

‘What makes you think there might be?’ asks Nelson. ‘I had a letter from my friend, written just before he died. He mentioned that he was afraid. I wondered if someone might have been intimidating him.’

‘I see,’ says Nelson. ‘Well, I’ll give Sandy a call. There’s probably nothing in it, mind. Just a nasty coincidence.’

‘Coincidence,’ says Ruth in an odd voice. ‘Maybe. But I’d be very grateful if you could ask around a bit.’

‘Be glad to,’ says Nelson. ‘I haven’t spoken to Sandy for years.’

Nelson drives home thoughtfully. Normally he manoeuvres his car as if he is being pursued by mafia hitmen but, today, lost in the past, he stops meekly at traffic lights and even allows a bus to pull out in front of him. Sandy Macleod. Just one mention of that name and it all came back. Harry and Sandy, new recruits to the Blackpool police force, patrolling the pleasure beach, interrogating tax-evading landladies in guest houses filled with plastic models of Elvis, eating chips in the squad car, the windows so steamy that every villain in Lancashire could have gone past unnoticed. Suddenly Nelson can smell the Golden Mile—chips and doughnut fat and the heady tang of the sea.

It’s not the first time recently that he has been hit by a wave of nostalgia. When, in May, Blackpool was promoted to the Premier League he had surprised himself by being close to tears as he watched the final match against Cardiff at Wembley. He had wanted to be there, in that joyous tangerine crowd. He wanted to be part of the victory parade in Blackpool, saluting the heroes who would—incredibly enough—soon be facing Manchester United and Chelsea. He has been a Seasiders fan all his life and has a tattoo (and a chip) on his shoulder to prove it. But as his wife and daughters do not share this enthusiasm he has got out of the way of going to matches, has become, in fact, a typical Southern softy armchair fan. Now, more than anything, he wants to be in Blackpool for the new season, he wants to go to Bloomfield Road and watch his team play. He turns into his drive, dreaming of Ian Holloway lifting the Premier League trophy.

Michelle is out but she has left his supper in the microwave and a tasteful array of holiday brochures on the breakfast bar. Italy, France, Portugal, the Seychelles. Nelson pushes them to one side and gets a beer from the fridge. When Michelle comes home, he is at the computer, taking a virtual ride on the Big Dipper, three empty cans at his side.

‘I know, love,’ he says. ‘Let’s go to Blackpool.’

‘There’s a man in a purple cloak looking for you.’

Ruth isn’t unduly surprised by this news. She looks up at the student peering over the edge of the trench, a nervous-looking American woman called Velma who is always asking questions about health and safety. Velma has already had to be driven to A & E twice, once after scratching herself on a flint (although students have up-to-date tetanus jabs) and once after an allergic reaction to ice cream.

‘Where is he?’ asks Ruth, straightening up.

‘Over by trench number one.’

‘OK. Do you want to take over here?’ Ruth has had enough of her trench, which has yielded only three rusty nails and a few flakes of animal bone.

Velma climbs carefully into the hole, holding aloft a hand which is still wrapped in a bandage.

‘I think I saw a snake over there in the grass,’ she says.

‘Grass snake,’ says Ruth breezily. ‘Harmless.’ She knows nothing about snakes. She’ll have to ask Cathbad who, last year, narrowly escaped death from a poisonous adder.

Cathbad, the figure in the purple cloak, is kneeling down to examine a tray full of pottery fragments found earlier in the week. From a distance, he looks like he’s at prayer, an impression heightened by the cloak and the bowed head. Cathbad’s long hair is loose around his shoulders, and as he raises his head at Ruth’s approach he looks somehow ageless, a figure turned to stone. Then his mobile rings.

He gets to his feet. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes. Thanks for telling me.’ As Ruth gets closer, she gets the feeling that Cathbad is somehow shrinking and growing older before her eyes.

‘Hi Cathbad,’ she says. ‘What brings you here?’

Cathbad looks at her, and for a second she thinks that she can see tears in his eyes.

‘Judy’s had her baby,’ he says.

‘Oh,’ says Ruth. ‘Good.’ She doesn’t know quite what to say as she’s not sure if Cathbad is the father of Judy’s baby and she suspects that Judy herself doesn’t know. What is clear is that Judy’s relationship with Cathbad is over and she intends to bring up the baby with her husband, Darren.

‘Who told you?’ asks Ruth.

‘I’ve got a friend at the hospital.’ That figures. Cathbad has friends everywhere.

‘But I knew anyway,’ he says. ‘My sixth sense told me.’ Ruth is glad to hear Cathbad sounding more like his old self even though she’s distinctly ambivalent about his sixth sense.

‘Of course it did,’ she says. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘A boy. Seven pounds, two ounces.’

‘Oh,’ says Ruth again. She knows that Cathbad has a daughter from a previous relationship. She knows that he will be wondering whether he now has a son.

‘Of course, children don’t belong to us,’ he says, as he and Ruth walk towards the outer edge of the dig. ‘They belong to the universe.’

Ruth says nothing. She never knows what to reply to pseudo-religious utterances, a fact that probably goes back to her upbringing by devout Born Again Christians. But thinking of Judy and her baby makes her remember the day that she had Kate, with Cathbad as her unexpected birth partner. She squeezes his arm.

‘It’s all part of the great web.’ This is one of Cathbad’s favourite expressions.

He smiles at her. ‘Yes it is. The great web ordained before time began.’

‘Mustn’t mess with the great web.’

‘We must not.’ But he is still smiling.

They stop at the brow of the hill. From here you can just see the sea, a fact that always led Max to believe that this was a
vicus,
part of a Roman garrison town, on the way to the port at Borough Castle.

‘What happened to the Janus Stone?’ asks Cathbad.

The stone head depicting the two-faced Roman God was found on this site almost two years ago. Thinking of it reminds Ruth of Max, and of someone else who was obsessed with the old, bloodthirsty gods. Obsessed to the point of murder.

‘It’s in the museum,’ she says. ‘I’m sure you don’t approve.’

Ruth and Cathbad first met when Ruth was part of a team excavating a Bronze Age henge on a North Norfolk beach. Cathbad and his fellow druids had protested when the henge’s timbers were removed to a museum. They should be left where they were, they said, part of the landscape, open to the sky and sea. Erik had been in sympathy with them but the henge had been dismantled nonetheless.

‘Oh well,’ he says. ‘It can still work its magic in the museum.’

‘You’re mellowing,’ says Ruth.

‘It happens to us all.’

Cathbad turns to look at Ruth, his dark eyes uncomfortably shrewd.

‘How are you, Ruth? You look a bit shaken.’

Cursing Cathbad’s sixth sense or plain nosiness (not for the first time), Ruth says, ‘A friend died a few days ago. An old friend from university. I hadn’t seen him for years but, yes, it has shaken me.’

‘Maybe his soul is calling to you,’ says Cathbad.

Ruth gives Cathbad a dark look. She feels sorry for him but she’s not going to let him talk like that.

‘I just feel sad,’ she says. ‘That’s all.’

‘That’s enough,’ agrees Cathbad.

They stay looking at the gentle hills as they lead to the sea. High above them a skylark is calling. It’s nearly Midsummer’s Day, a major event in Cathbad’s calendar.

‘I wonder if Nelson knows,’ says Ruth, ‘about Judy.’

‘Ask him,’ says Cathbad.

And Ruth knows, without looking round, that Nelson is behind them.

Nelson doesn’t know quite why he has come up to the dig. He could easily have spoken to Ruth on the phone. Besides they’re busy at the station, what with no Judy and Clough tearing round the backstreets in a (metaphorical) red sports car. All he knows is that as soon as he had finished speaking to Sandy he was reaching for his car keys and telling Leah, his PA, that he’ll be out for an hour or two.

‘I think Superintendent Whitcliffe wanted to catch up with you,’ she’d said.

Then want, thought Nelson, taking the stairs two at a time, must be his master. Jesus. Where had that come from? It was something his mother used to say.

And now, striding over the grass towards Ruth and Cathbad, he is glad he came. It is good to be in the open air after days in the station, completing paperwork and assuring Whitcliffe that his team didn’t cut any corners in the drug smuggling case (they did, but Nelson hopes he’s covered up adequately). And it’s good to see Ruth. Over the last few months he has battled to shape his relationship with Ruth into one of benevolent friendship. He is the father of her child. Michelle, after a nightmarish year, has accepted this. All three adults can now work on doing what’s best for Katie. Sounds simple but, as Ruth turns and smiles at him, Nelson reflects ruefully that nothing’s ever that simple. Not where women are concerned.

And trust Cathbad to be there. Nelson is now used to Cathbad popping up all over the place, usually where there’s trouble. Cathbad had once told Nelson about a saint who could be in two places at once and Nelson concluded instantly that the druid must share this gift. Not that he’s a saint. Far from it. Cathbad, under his original name of Michael Malone, is well known to the police. Which makes it all the more surprising that Nelson considers him a friend. After all, Nelson once saved Cathbad’s life and Cathbad claims to have visited a dream world between life and death in Nelson’s company. It beats Sunday morning football for bonding.

‘Nelson,’ Ruth greets him. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Well, you know how interested I am in archaeology.’

‘This is the man who can’t tell the difference between the Stone Age and the Iron Age.’

‘They’re both old, that’s all I know.’

‘All ages are as one,’ offers Cathbad.

‘I might have known you’d have something bloody silly to add.’

Ruth and Cathbad are exchanging glances. Nelson wonders what they were talking about when he arrived. Then Ruth says, ‘Have you heard about Judy?’

‘No. Has she had it?’

‘A boy. Seven pounds something.’

‘A boy, eh?’ Nelson is genuinely pleased. He approves of babies and he likes Judy. It would never have occurred to him that Judy could have had an affair with Cathbad or that Cathbad could be the baby’s father. Judy is married to Darren, her first love, and now they’re starting a family. That’s the way things should be. After all, it’s what he did.

‘How did you hear?’

‘Cathbad heard on the druid grapevine.’

Nelson grunts. He finds it all too believable that such a thing exists.

‘I’ll get Leah to send some flowers,’ says Nelson. ‘Dave Clough will be sure she’ll name the kid after him.’ Cathbad has veered off to talk to Phil, Ruth’s head of department. Nelson lowers his voice. ‘Got some news for you.’

‘About Dan?’

‘About your friend, yes. I spoke to my old mate Sandy in Blackpool.’ One word from Sandy and the years had fallen away. That suspicious Northern growl, softening to comedy Lancastrian when he heard who it was. Nelson had felt his own voice becoming more and more Blackpool as they spoke. Sandy Macleod. They don’t make coppers like that down here.

‘Well, looks like you may be right. There were suspicious circumstances.’

‘There were?’

‘Yes. Seemed like a straightforward house fire at first. but when the SOCO team got there they found that the door had been locked from the outside.’

‘Jesus.’ Ruth’s voice is almost a whisper. ‘They locked him in?’

‘And there were things missing. Things that ought to have been there.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like his mobile phone and his laptop. Sandy’s launching a murder enquiry.’

Ruth seems to be stuck in a never-ending traffic jam on her way to collect Kate from her childminder. Usually she frets and steams at this point. She hates being late for Kate although Sandra is always extremely understanding. ‘I know what it’s like for you working mums.’ All her life Ruth has been a punctual person. Like Nelson (it is almost the only thing they have in common), she is highly organised and likes lists and schedules. But since becoming a mother she has discovered the nightmare of always running late. Kate does not seem to share her mother’s liking for schedules and often manages to make Ruth late for work. Then Phil insists on holding staff meetings at five p.m., which means that she is then late at Sandra’s. These days Ruth seems to spend her whole time in traffic, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel and counting to a hundred under her breath.