Текст книги "Dying Fall"

Автор книги: Elly Griffiths

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CHAPTER 31

Ruth stands in the doorway, frozen with shock. She thinks of the occasion, last year, when she went into a deserted museum and discovered a dead body. For some reason, she is reminded, not of the corpse, but of a waxwork figure in one of the galleries, a man seated at his desk, quill raised, dusty eyes unseeing. Perhaps it’s the absence of blood, perhaps it’s the almost comical expression of shock on Clayton Henry’s face, but the scene does not seem quite real somehow. It’s like a tableau: posed, unconvincing. She steps closer. The knife’s hilt is embedded in Clayton’s smart pink shirt. A darker pink stain is slowly spreading but that is all the blood she can see. She touches Clayton’s hand, still – like the waxwork – holding a pen. It’s warm. She feels for a pulse but can’t detect anything. She reaches for her phone.

*

Nelson is sitting outside The Swan With Two Necks when he gets the call. At first he can’t take in what Ruth is saying. It seems so at odds with the idyllic village scene, the perfect country pub, the stream running the length of the street, the tables and umbrellas, the two pretty women in front of him.

‘Clayton Henry? Murdered?’

Michelle looks up, almost crossly, as if it’s bad taste to mention that word in this setting. Two elderly women at the next table lean forward avidly.

‘Are you sure he’s dead? Have you called an ambulance? OK, love. Listen. Don’t stay there. Get into your car and lock the door. Don’t get out until the police get there. I’ll ring Sandy and the local boys. Yes, I’m on my way.’

He looks up at his spellbound audience and spreads his hands apologetically.

*

It is not until Nelson tells her to get into her car that Ruth realises she might be in danger. Clayton Henry’s killer might still be in the building. In fact, probably is, given the warm body and the still spreading blood. She stands still, listening, thinking of all the hundreds of rooms in this huge old industrial building. The killer could be anywhere, in an office, in one of the labs, hiding in the students’ Common Room, lurking behind one of the scientific displays in the atrium. She listens. Silence except for the traffic outside and the dim mechanical whirr of computers and plumbing and alarm systems. Then she hears something. A very faint tap like the hooves of a tiny horse. Someone is running about on the floor above. Someone in high heels.

She turns and runs, down the stairs, skidding on each landing, through the atrium, bumping off the display cases. She flings herself through the double doors and doesn’t stop running until she reaches her car. Then she locks all the doors and sits slumped in her seat until the ambulance and police cars arrive.

*

‘For Christ’s sake, put your bloody foot down!’

Tim, who is already driving at ninety miles an hour with sirens blaring, grits his teeth and presses the accelerator even harder. They got the call about Clayton Henry when they were already on their way back from Lancaster, but now all thoughts of a leisurely pub lunch have vanished and Sandy is in full Sweeney mode. He knows that the local boys will be on their way and there is nothing that Sandy hates more than letting uniforms in on a murder case.

‘Who’s your money on?’ he asks as they take the turn for Preston.

Tim hates being asked this sort of question, especially when he is cutting across three lanes of traffic.

‘The Arch Wizard,’ he says, half-joking.

But Sandy replies seriously, ‘My thoughts exactly. And we know who the Arch Wizard is, don’t we?’

Tim, who doesn’t, says nothing.

*

Nelson is pulling into the university car-park when he gets the call from Clough. He listens as he takes the steps at a run.

‘Elaine Morgan, boss. There’s something on her, all right. Conviction as a minor for grievous bodily harm.’

‘What did she do?’

‘Stabbed her mother.’

*

Nelson finds Ruth in the atrium, sitting below a poster of chemical engineering in Chile. She looks pale but manages a rather shaky smile.

‘Are you OK, love?’

‘Yes. I took them up to the room. The police are in there now. They’re sealing it off.’

Sandy will go mad if the forensics boys get there before him, thinks Nelson.

‘He’s definitely dead then?’ he says.

‘Yes. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. It was weird, Nelson.’ She shivers. ‘He looked just like a statue or a waxwork, sitting propped up at his desk with a knife sticking into him.’

Nelson reaches out a hand to her but doesn’t quite make contact.

‘Sandy here yet?’

Ruth shakes her head. ‘Someone called Peter Greengrass seems to be in charge.’

‘Have you seen anyone else? Anyone leaving the building?’

‘No.’ She tells him about the footsteps.

‘You say they sounded like a woman’s steps?’

‘Yes. Someone wearing high heels.’

Nelson looks around the deserted atrium. He wants to go up to the crime scene but he knows that he’ll be given short shrift by the forensics team and by Sandy’s nemesis Peter Greengrass. Also, he doesn’t want to leave Ruth on her own. But he hates doing nothing. Comforting witnesses is not one of his strengths; that’s Judy’s job. Not for the first time, he wishes she and Clough were there.

As he hesitates, the doors crash open and Sandy and Tim erupt onto the scene.

‘Where is he?’ barks Sandy.

‘Fourth floor,’ says Nelson. ‘The forensics boys are up there.’

With a furious expletive Sandy charges for the stairs. Tim stays to confer with Ruth.

‘Are you all right? Shall I get someone to drive you home?’

‘It’s OK. Nelson’s looking after me.’

Tim gives Nelson a rather doubtful look.

‘Has anyone taken a statement?’

‘Yes. A policewoman. She was very nice.’

‘Can I have a word?’ says Nelson.

He tells Tim what he has learnt about Elaine Morgan. He can’t help adding, ‘I’d get her and that Guy chap in for questioning.’

Tim doesn’t betray any annoyance at being told how to do his job. ‘I’ll tell the boss,’ he says. Then he turns and takes the stairs at a run. He must be very fit, thinks Nelson enviously.

‘I’ll run you home,’ says Nelson.

‘I’m meeting Cathbad in Blackpool,’ says Ruth. Her phone rings. ‘That’ll be him now. He’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.’

The caller ID says Cathbad but Ruth hardly recognises his voice. ‘Ruth, I’m so sorry. I’ve lost Kate.’

CHAPTER 32

The world spins. Nelson and the engineering posters blur into one dizzying, whirring kaleidoscope of shape and colour. It’s Kansas, and Dorothy’s house is disappearing into the vortex of the tornado. But Ruth herself sits quite still in the centre of it all.

‘What do you mean, you’ve lost her?’

Cathbad’s voice is high and strained. She thinks dumbly that she hardly knows this person. ‘It was just for a second. We were in Nickelodeon Land and I’d just bought her an ice cream. I turned round for a second to put my wallet back in the backpack and she was gone.’

The backpack. Ruth had made him take the backpack. ‘There’s more to taking a child out than you know,’ she’d told him bossily. ‘You need drinks, snacks, wet-wipes, spare clothes in case she goes on the log flume.’ If she had let Cathbad look after Kate in his own way – conjuring drinks and snacks from the air – maybe she would still be at his side.

‘I’m sure she’s just wandered away,’ Cathbad is saying. ‘I’ve told the Pleasure Beach people. They’re being very good. Apparently kids get lost all the time.’

But Kate isn’t a ‘kid’. She’s Ruth’s baby and now she’s … nowhere. Lost. In Limbo. In the liminal zone between life and death so beloved of Erik. The floor tilts and she has to grip onto the sides of her chair to stop herself from falling. She looks up, trying to remember where she is, and, as she does she so, she becomes dimly aware that one of the spinning shapes has materialised into Nelson.

‘Give me the phone.’

She can hear Nelson barking into her mobile, telling Cathbad to stay where he is, to contact the police, to retrace his steps. At the same time Nelson is pulling her to her feet and propelling her across the atrium and through the double doors. All this happens without her once being aware of her feet moving. She has left her body and is hovering somewhere among the cast-iron rafters and industrial lifting devices.

She is in Nelson’s car and hurtling towards Blackpool at the speed of light before she manages to take a proper breath. Her ribs ache and she feels as if she’s about to pass out.

‘It’ll be OK,’ Nelson is saying. ‘I’ve seen this hundreds of times. Kids wander away, parents panic, ten minutes later they’re back together again. Lots of tears and wasted police time. No harm done.’

Ruth glances at his set profile and wonders why she isn’t more reassured. Because there’s a muscle going in Nelson’s cheek and his knuckles are white on the steering wheel? Because Cathbad hasn’t rung back to say it’s all a terrible mistake and he and Kate are enjoying complimentary Krabby Patties in Sponge Bob’s Snack Shop? Because deep down she has always known that they will get her – the shadowy figures who killed Dan and goaded Pendragon to his death. And how better to get her than to attack the most precious thing in her life? Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Oh why hadn’t she flown back home as soon as she received those texts? Why is she still here, in this nightmare world where people are thrown into the air for pleasure and cartoon animals guard a land where children can disappear forever? She starts to cry.

‘It’ll be OK,’ says Nelson again. ‘We’ll find her. She’ll have just wandered off to see Dora.’

‘She loves Dora.’

‘I know. I saw the book by your bed.’

Will she ever read to Kate again? She would give everything – everything – to be lying beside her sleepy child, ploughing through Dora’s interminable adventures. Please God, she prays fiercely, I’ve never believed in you but, please, prove me wrong. Please find my darling daughter.

Nelson screeches to a halt on double yellow lines outside the Pleasure Beach. They run through a hall full of people queuing for tickets, and out again to more queues and a row of turnstiles.

‘Have you got day passes sir?’ asks a polite doorman. Nelson waves his police badge and pushes Ruth past the outraged pleasure seekers. Ruth rings Cathbad as she runs. He says he’s waiting for them outside Nickelodeon Land.

‘Have you found Kate?’ asks Ruth though she knows that, if he had, it would have been the first thing he’d said.

‘No.’

They run past ghost trains and carousels and people hanging upside down in the air. A vast skull in a Viking helmet guards the entrance to something called Valhalla. The giant raven of the Raven Falls spreads his baleful wings, as black as night. For Ruth, the place could not seem more hellish if there were actual devils manning the rides. The visitors to the Pleasure Beach resemble not happy families in search of an innocent thrill, but sinister misshapen creatures, their features smeared with face paints, ghastly smiles enhanced by comedy hats and T-shirts saying ‘I’m with Stupid’. Some of these monsters are clutching the furry corpses of stuffed animals won in arcades, others are swilling lurid drinks from oversized plastic glasses. Many of them are wearing the Simon Cowell masks Ruth first saw on the pier. The effect is of hundreds of dark-haired, icy-toothed showbiz supremos on the rampage. It’s as if Cowell has been cloned by some evil pharmaceutical lab intent on taking over the world. Ruth rushes past these abominations, head down, phone clasped to her heart. She hates everyone for not being Kate.

A white-faced middle-aged man is standing by a ride featuring demonic cartoon children with oversized teeth and knowing leers. Screams and splashes fill the air. A giant sign exhorts riders to ‘Hold on to your nappies’. ‘By the Rug Rats log flume,’ Cathbad had said, otherwise Ruth might genuinely not have recognised him. He seems to have aged twenty years since this morning.

‘Ruth,’ he takes a step forward.

Ruth backs away. ‘You lost Kate.’

Nelson takes hold of Ruth’s arm. ‘OK, OK. Let’s all be calm. Cathbad, who’s in charge here?’

A young woman in a high visibility vest steps out from behind one of the cartoon children.

‘Hi, I’m Holly. I’m the Duty Manager. Are you Kate’s mum and dad?’

Ruth is about to deny this when she realises that actually – yes – they are Kate’s mum and dad. She nods mutely.

‘Try not to worry too much,’ says Holly. ‘I’m sure we’ll find her. I’ve taken a full description of Kate and I’ve radioed it to all our staff. We’ve got a specialised lost child unit and I’m checking in with them every few minutes. I’ve also sent out messages on the tannoy. Would she recognise her name if she heard it on the tannoy?’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘No. I don’t know.’ Kate is a bright little girl – a wonderful, clever, adorable little girl – but would she pick out her name from the cacophony of fairground music, screaming children and current pop hits? Ruth doubts it.

‘Have you got CCTV?’ asks Nelson brusquely.

‘Yes,’ says Holly. ‘We’ve got cameras at every exit. It’s impossible for her to leave without our staff knowing.’

‘Why is it impossible?’ asks Nelson. ‘There must be thousands of people here. Your staff can’t check everyone.’

‘She’ll have her bracelet on. The staff at the gates all have Kate’s details. If anyone … if anyone tried to take her out of the park, the staff would check her bracelet.’

Bracelet? Kate wasn’t wearing a bracelet. But then Ruth sees that Cathbad has a white paper band round his wrist, stamped with an orange ‘Pleasure Beach’ exclamation mark.

‘The bracelet will record the time Kate entered the park, which rides she went on and so on,’ says Holly. ‘And it would show the time she leaves. I mean … it’s impossible for her to leave.’

Holly is being kind, Ruth knows, but her words have conjured a new spectre. A sinister figure leading Kate out of the park to … Where?

She knows that Nelson is thinking the same thing because he cuts in, saying, ‘Have you called the police?’

Holly looks slightly defensive. ‘We’ve got a community officer on the beat and she’s looking at the CCTV now. As I say, though, the child usually turns up within ten minutes.’

‘Meanwhile a pervert’s halfway to London with my child in the boot of his car,’ says Nelson brutally. Ruth gasps and Cathbad makes a choking noise. Holly looks shocked, ‘I know you’re upset but …’

Nelson thrusts his warrant card in her face. ‘I am the police,’ he says. ‘And I want all units here now.’

He has hardly finished speaking when the wail of sirens is heard in the distance. Ruth knows that Nelson called Sandy on the way to the Pleasure Beach, but to Holly this must seem proof of immense, almost supernatural, influence. She stares at Nelson in awe.

‘I want police at every exit,’ he says. ‘And I want to see the CCTV footage now.’

Holly is about to speak when her walkie-talkie crackles. Ruth’s heart contracts. Please, please let them have found Kate. She wishes it so hard that she can almost hear Holly’s soft Lancastrian voice saying, ‘She’s been found and she’s fine. She just wants her mum.’ She even feels her face relaxing into a relieved smile. But Holly’s actual words are very different.

‘There’s been a development,’ she says.

*

The CCTV cameras are in a room above the booking hall. From the window they can see the startled faces of punters on the Ice Blast, an infernal machine that shoots its occupants two hundred feet in the air and then back down again. But the shock and horror on the faces of the Ice Blastees are nothing to the expression on Ruth’s face as she enters the room. She knows that the news cannot be good.

A young man is sitting at a frozen TV screen. The picture is blurred and indistinct but Ruth can just make out a tiny figure in a Hello Kitty hat.

‘That’s her!’ she screams.

Nelson and Cathbad surge forward. Over Nelson’s shoulder Ruth sees that the tiny figure is holding someone’s hand, a woman with blonde hair, wearing a long coat. It’s such an everyday image, a child holding a woman’s hand, that Ruth can hardly take in the horrific implications of what she is seeing.

‘Zoom in on the woman’s face,’ barks Nelson. The young man does so but the grainy pixels give nothing away. The woman has shoulder-length blonde hair, that’s all that is visible.

‘Who is it?’ asks Nelson. ‘Ruth, do you know who it is? Cathbad, do you?’

‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘But I think … I think … it’s Elaine Morgan.’

‘Elaine Morgan’s here,’ says a voice behind them.

Sandy and Tim stand framed in the doorway. Between them is a smartly dressed woman in a black suit. Ruth finds her eyes drawn immediately to Elaine’s shoes. High heels.

‘She’s under arrest,’ says Sandy. ‘Found her at the university, trying to get out by the fire escape.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ says Elaine tearfully. She looks round the room in search of a sympathetic face and finds Ruth. ‘Please believe me. I didn’t kill Clayton. He was like a father to me.’

Ruth stares blankly back at her. She no longer cares who killed Clayton Henry. She no longer cares about the White Hand, about Pendragon, Guy, Elaine, even about Dan. She only cares about Kate.

‘Thought she might be able to throw some light on this business,’ says Sandy, bending over to look at the CCTV screen. ‘If it’s the same mob involved.’

He hasn’t said one word to Ruth but Tim presses her arm sympathetically. ‘We’ll find your little girl. I promise.’

Ruth turns to him desperately. ‘They’ve got a picture of her holding some woman’s hand. Who is she? What does she want with Kate?’

‘She can’t have left the park,’ says Holly again but Ruth thinks she is sounding less certain. ‘We’ve been watching all the exits.’

But a woman who introduces herself as the community police officer confirms this. ‘I’m certain she hasn’t left.’

‘Then, what are we waiting for?’ Nelson turns for the door. ‘Sandy, have you got reinforcements coming?’

‘I’ve got back-up from three forces.’

‘Then let’s turn this place upside down.’

Ruth allows herself a slight breath of hope. The policewoman says that Kate hasn’t left the park. If she’s here, Nelson will find her. Ruth is sure of that. She sees his dark, intense face across the room and, in that instant, knows something else. That she loves him.

Then her phone buzzes.

It’s a text message, caller unknown:

She is young to fall from such a height. Perhaps she will fly? Who knows?

Ruth turns to the window and sees the roller-coaster, that nightmare railway track across the sky.

*

Judy puts Michael into his Moses basket. If she’s careful, he might stay asleep and she might just get an hour to herself. She could have a cup of coffee, do the Sudoku, maybe even have a sleep. She looks at the clock on the mantelpiece. Two o’clock. It’ll be at least four hours until Darren is home. Four hours until she can speak to another adult. She looks at Michael, sternly asleep, eyelashes fanned out on his cheek. She loves him more than anything in the world but, right at this moment, she wants him to sleep all day, all week, all year, until he leaves home for university. She hardly dares breathe as she leaves the room and goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Please, Michael, stay asleep.

Judy stares dreamily out of the window. Usually their garden is a riot of colour by now, but this year Darren has been too exhausted by co-parenting to do more than mow the lawn. Their hanging baskets are empty, the bulbs have all sprouted unseen in the garage. She can hear the laughter of next door’s children in the paddling pool, a radio playing, the far-off call of the ice-cream van. Summer sounds.

And then, suddenly, she is hit by a spasm of anxiety, as sharp and unexpected as the first onset of labour pain. It’s like the time, during police self-defence classes, when Clough hit her before she’d put on her body armour (he’s always claimed it was a mistake but Judy’s never been convinced). She doubles over, clutching her stomach. Someone she loves is in danger. She runs back into the sitting room but Michael is still sleeping peacefully. Darren? But he’s at work, surely nothing dangerous can happen to a computer programmer on a Tuesday afternoon. Her parents? She’d better ring them. She staggers across the room to get her phone but by the time she reaches it she knows.

Cathbad.

*

The Pleasure Beach is swarming with policemen. Nelson and Sandy run ahead. Tim follows and Ruth realises that he’s handcuffed to Elaine. She runs to catch up with them.

‘You know who it is, don’t you?’ she pants to Elaine. ‘You know who’s got Kate.’

Elaine looks at her. Ruth sees fear and – worse – pity in her pale eyes.

‘The woman. Who is she?’ As she asks the question, a picture appears in Ruth’s head. A suburban street and a blonde woman with a dog. The woman she has seen several times outside the cottage on Beach Row, innocent because she was a woman.

‘I’ve seen her before. She’s been watching me.’

Elaine still says nothing. Ruth is about to yell at her, or strangle her, when Sandy calls over his shoulder, ‘What did the text message say again?’

Ruth tells him.

‘And what’s the tallest ride? The Big One?’

‘Yes.’

Sandy looks up at the track looping across the sky. Ruth sees that he has gone quite green. Perhaps he cares more than he is letting on.

‘Bloody hell,’ he mutters.

They run past the Ice Blast and the flying machines and the people eating hamburgers and ice creams. Ruth finds herself elbowing past small children who are staring at the policemen as if they’re part of the day’s entertainment. Giant skulls, leering witches and grinning Cheshire cats seem to lurk on every corner. Above the sound of police sirens the rides still blare out their advertising jingles offering adventure, excitement, thrills to make your blood run cold. Ruth looks up at the towering structure of the Big One and thinks that her blood is already as cold as ice. Is Kate really up there, on the highest roller-coaster in the country? Is she scared? Is she calling for Ruth? And what will happen when she reaches the top?

She is young to fall from such a height. Perhaps she will fly? Who knows?

But Kate won’t fly. She will fall like a stone, like Icarus, onto the unforgiving concrete below. And then Ruth will kill herself.

They reach the ticket booth. ‘It’s impossible,’ the attendant is saying. ‘No one could take a child onto the ride. You have to be over the height barrier.’

‘What if he smuggled her on in a bag?’ asks Nelson.

‘You’re not allowed to take bags on,’ says the attendant.

‘I don’t care what you’re allowed to do. Stop the bloody ride.’

‘I can’t,’ says the attendant. ‘Not in the middle of a circuit.’

‘What if my daughter’s on there?’

‘I keep telling you, she can’t be.’

‘Nelson,’ says Ruth. ‘Look.’ As the carriages go past them, preparing for their vertiginous journey upwards, they see a woman with shoulder-length blonde hair. She is wearing a Simon Cowell mask. As she passes the knot of policemen, she waves.

‘It’s her,’ says Ruth.

‘Is Kate with her?’ asks Tim.

‘I don’t know. I can’t see.’

Nelson grabs the attendant by his lapels. ‘Stop the ride!’

The attendant grabs at a switch. The carriages stop. But it’s too late. The woman is already high. She’s not at the top of the track but she’s above the Pleasure Beach and the surrounding houses. Ruth looks up and sees her silhouetted against the sky, blonde hair like a helmet. She waves again and seems to search for something inside the car. The other riders, realising that something is wrong, start to scream.

Suddenly Sandy’s voice rises above all the rest. ‘What the fucking hell is he doing?’

Ruth turns to look. Cathbad has sprinted past the police and the park attendants and is climbing the steel structure of the ride, hand over hand, his long grey hair flying out in the breeze.

‘Cathbad!’ Nelson calls. ‘Come back, you lunatic.’

They all watch, frozen in horror. Cathbad climbs, higher and higher. A policeman starts to climb after him but Sandy, who has found a megaphone, yells at him to come down. He yells at Cathbad too but Ruth isn’t surprised when her friend pays no attention. Since when has Cathbad done what he’s told? He’s a druid, a shaman, Ruth’s protector, Kate’s godfather. He climbs up and up, leaving the earth far below.

Nelson turns on his old friend in a fury. ‘Do something!’

‘I’ve got a chopper on the way,’ says Sandy. ‘They should be able to see into the carriage, find out if your daughter is in there.’

Nelson grabs the megaphone. ‘Cathbad!’ he bellows. ‘Come down, you bloody lunatic! They’ve got a helicopter coming.’

But Cathbad is way beyond hearing. He is a black speck against the blue sky, an agile, almost unearthly figure, like Anansi the Spider in the stories that he likes to read to Kate.

‘How tall is this thing?’ asks Tim.

‘Over two hundred feet,’ says the attendant. ‘They had to put lights on it to warn passing aeroplanes.’

As he says this, the air is filled with the sound of rotors. A helicopter moves steadily across the horizon. The woman in the carriage stands up. It seems as if she is shouting, gesticulating. Ruth screams and, at that moment, Cathbad falls.