Текст книги "Dying Fall"

Автор книги: Elly Griffiths

Соавторы: Elly Griffiths
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CHAPTER 33

Ruth carries on screaming even as the police converge on Cathbad. She can hear Sandy yelling for an ambulance and Nelson just yelling. Tim seems to be in contact with the helicopter because she hears him asking, ‘Is there anyone else there? In the carriage?’ And, above it all, she hears something very small and soft, which, all the same, soars above the mayhem around her.

‘Mum?’

She whirls round. A motherly attendant is standing a few feet away, holding Kate by the hand.

‘Found her in Dora’s World. Fast asleep, poor little mite.’

‘Kate!’ Ruth scoops her daughter into her arms, oblivious of anything but the sight, smell and sound of her. She buries her face in Kate’s dark hair.

‘Mum,’ says Kate sleepily.

‘Oh, my baby.’

She hasn’t called him but Nelson is beside her. She thinks he’s crying but she can’t be sure. She hears Tim telling the attendant to start the ride moving again. ‘As quick as you can, don’t go through the whole circuit.’ Screams as the carriages start to move backwards. An ambulance is driving past them through the goggling crowds, but Ruth, holding Kate, can think of nothing else. She is aware that Elaine, too, is crying. The ride screeches to a halt in front of them. Sandy rushes forward and pulls the woman out of her seat. The mask and the wig come off together.

Leaving Ruth staring at the open, friendly face of Sam Elliot.

*

And, in Norfolk, Judy cries out, loudly enough to wake the baby.

CHAPTER 34

It is the perfect day for a druid’s funeral. The sun has just risen over Pendle Hill and the four robed figures stand, arms raised, as if to lift it higher into the pale blue sky. The main celebrant, a woman named Olga, calls out in a thin but carrying voice:

‘Oh great spirit, Mother and Father of us all, we ask for your blessings on this our ceremony of thanksgiving, and honouring and blessing. We stand at a gateway now. A gateway that each of us must step through at some time in our lives.’

Ruth, standing shivering with Kate in her arms, thinks of the people she knows who have passed through the gateway. Erik, Dan, little Scarlett – the girl whose death really started everything. Are they really just out there, beyond the sunrise, waiting? Cathbad once said something like this to her, that he had travelled to the land between life and death to save Nelson and had seen Erik, guarding the portal to the afterlife. Nelson had dismissed it, of course, but Ruth had thought at the time that he looked rather uncomfortable. She suspects Nelson of having had a near-death experience when he was ill last year. Not that he would ever admit it.

The four druids, Olga explained earlier, represent the four elements: earth, fire, water and air. The ceremony relieves the elements of the responsibility of supporting the dead soul. The druids now chant:

‘Earth my body,

Water my blood,

Air my breath,

Fire my spirit.’

The sun rises higher and a flock of geese flies westwards, towards the sea. Sacred birds, Cathbad had called them, sacred to the Romans and maybe also to the ancient Britons who had worshipped the Raven God.

Olga turns and raises the clay urn. ‘May his soul be immersed in the shining light of the unity that is the Mother and Father of us all.’

She takes a handful of dust and flings it into the air where an obliging gust of wind takes it and sends it spiralling upwards, a second’s transitory glitter before dispersing to the four corners of the earth. One by one, the other druids place their hands into the urn.

‘Earth my body,

Water my blood,

Air my breath,

Fire my spirit.’

Olga offers Ruth the receptacle, but she shakes her head. ‘Want,’ says Kate, but quietly. Ruth is surprised to see not only Nelson, but Tim take a handful of ashes and throw them into the air. She is surprised how much there is but, eventually, Olga turns the urn upside down to show there is nothing left. The four druids come together and bow.

‘Go in peace, our beloved,’ says Olga. ‘From his spirit a pure flame shall rise. Hail and farewell.’

‘Hail and farewell,’ answer the others.

Ruth raises her eyes to the sky, surprised by the sudden sting of tears. The druids are walking down the hill now, Tim, Nelson and the other mourners following behind.

One of the robed figures stops beside Ruth. ‘A beautiful service.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see the birds flying across the sun?’

Ruth looks sceptical. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that it was a sign of something.’

‘Everything’s a sign of something,’ says Cathbad.

*

Cathbad’s fall to earth had been cushioned by a stall selling giant slush puppies. Tim, racing to the scene, described his horror at seeing Cathbad’s face covered by a virulent crimson liquid that seemed mysteriously to be full of ice.

‘Poor soul,’ said a voice in the crowd. ‘His blood’s frozen from being so high.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Sandy, pushing his way through the throng. ‘It’s one of those bloody silly kids’ drinks.’

Cathbad had opened his eyes, blinking back chunks of strawberry-flavoured ice. ‘Kate?’

‘She’s been found,’ says Tim. ‘Safe and sound.’

‘Thank the gods,’ said Cathbad, closing his eyes again.

The police think that Sam drugged Kate, leading to a heavy sleep behind a giant statue of Dora in Latin America. His threat to throw her from the Big One was an attempt to scare Ruth into dropping her investigation into King Arthur’s bones, but as the police rushed to the Pleasure Beach he must have known that the game was up. Maybe he just wanted one more laugh, waving to Ruth as the roller-coaster began its journey into the sky, grinning behind his Simon Cowell mask. Maybe he was planning to jump himself. Police found a suicide note at his house, alongside instructions on how to look after his dog. Like Pendragon, Sam hadn’t forgotten his faithful familiar. But, unlike Pendragon, Sam hadn’t taken the fateful plunge but had allowed himself to be taken away by the police, where he is currently in the process of convincing them that he’s insane.

‘Perhaps he always was mad,’ said Elaine. ‘It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?’

Sam’s fingerprints were on the paper knife, and that same evening he confessed to the murders of Clayton Henry and Dan Golding. Elaine was in the clear and appeared desperate to talk to Ruth. That first night, Nelson had whisked Ruth and Kate to his mother’s house, where Maureen looked after them, sure that Ruth was frantic with worry about her ‘lovely boyfriend Cuthbert’. Ruth was frantic with worry, but once she knew that Cathbad was in no danger (the fall had left him with nothing worse than concussion and two cracked ribs), she felt a kind of mad exultation. Kate was safe. She hadn’t been kidnapped or killed or thrown from the highest roller-coaster in Britain. She was safe with her mother – and her father. That night, Ruth had sat watching Kate as she slept, feeling guilty happiness at the thought that Nelson was sleeping under the same roof. He hadn’t been able to make too much of a fuss of Kate under his mother’s eagle eye (besides, he was on the phone to Sandy for most of the evening), but that didn’t matter. For that one short night, they were all together.

*

When Ruth drove back to Beach Row the next day, Elaine was waiting for her. Ruth remembered the other time that Elaine had turned up at her door, full of tales of King Arthur. Except that she had left out the most important fact: the identity of Mordred.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said to Ruth, who was trying to contain Thing’s frantic welcome. Nelson had been over the night before to feed the dog and take him for a walk but Thing clearly seemed to feel that he had narrowly escaped abandonment yet again. In fact, it took Ruth several minutes to feed Thing and get Kate settled with juice and her toy cars. By that time, Elaine was already ensconced on the sofa.

‘You must have had some idea,’ said Ruth.

‘I didn’t. Honestly. I thought Guy was the Arch Wizard. I really did. That’s why I was so scared. I didn’t even know that Sam was in the White Hand. I thought he was quite boring actually, always going on about the war and all that. I thought he was just an anorak, quite sweet but dull, you know.’

But what better indication of fascist sympathies, thinks Ruth, than an obsession with the Second World War? After all, hadn’t Sam’s first words to her been about Adolf Hitler? And, when she met him at the library, he had been going to give a talk about the war. It seems, though, that Sam’s interest had gone beyond mere local history. Police had found his house stuffed with Nazi memorabilia, as well as hundreds of books about King Arthur and a rather worried Jack Russell. This, of course, was the dog that Ruth had seen being walked along Beach Row by the blonde woman.

Surprisingly, it seems that Elaine knew, or suspected, about the cross-dressing. ‘Dan said that he’d caught him at it once. He called round unexpectedly and found Sam all tarted up in a dress and high heels. To be honest, I didn’t think too much about it. I mean, each to their own.’ She looked at Ruth earnestly, her face naked and vulnerable, like an actress without make-up. ‘We’ve all got something to hide. I’m sure you’ve heard all about my past.’

Nelson had told Ruth the night before. The young Elaine Morgan had a history of schizophrenia and, at fifteen, had stabbed her mother after a row about homework. A spell in a secure institution had followed, beginning a cycle of mental illness and hospitalisation interspersed with impressive academic achievements. Meeting Guy had proved to be a turning point. He had proved a remarkably stabilising influence, and for the last five years Elaine had lived with him in relative tranquillity – apart from dressing up as Arthurian characters and getting involved with white supremacist groups, of course.

‘We didn’t care about the politics,’ said Elaine. ‘We only cared about Arthur.’

But what about Guy, the man who loved Elaine but was forced to watch her have an affair with his friend and next-door neighbour? Guy was clearly involved with the White Hand, he knew Pendragon well, and he knew that Cathbad had been to Dame Alice’s cottage and found the laptop. Did Sam tell him? Did Guy know that Sam was the Arch Wizard? Ruth thinks not; she thinks that Sam stayed hidden behind the persona of a geeky war enthusiast, always on the outskirts of the group, always in the shadows. She remembers Terry Durkin mentioning Guy that day at CNN Forensics. That was the link, she thinks. Terry must have told Guy about the computer. Terry was probably the only person who knew about Sam and that was because Sam needed him, his man on the inside. The police are charging Terry Durkin with the theft of the computer. As a member of the forensics team, he would have had ample opportunity to remove evidence. Sandy is in ecstasy at the thought of the possible embarrassment to Peter Greengrass. And Terry also helped Sam to switch the bones. Didn’t he say that nothing entered or left CNN Forensics without his knowledge?

How much did Dan know? His diaries showed that he trusted both Guy and Sam. He thought that Clayton was shielding someone but had no idea who. His main concern was that Clayton would find out that he was sleeping with his wife. Not for the first time, Ruth wondered what it was that her old university friend really cared about. Not Elaine certainly. Not Pippa, who hardly merited a few words in his diary. In fact the only person mentioned with any passion was the Raven King himself. King Arthur.

Dan had loved the legend of King Arthur. The discovery of his tomb was the thrill of his life, professionally and personally. But Dan had made a fatal mistake. He must have told his friend Sam, his office mate, about the amazing test results that proved that Arthur, King of the Britons, though born in the north of England, had African DNA and was almost certainly black. This had sealed his fate. Sam says that he had pushed the burning rags through Dan’s doorway himself but the police think that he must have had accomplices, other members of the White Hand. Terry? Other members of the group? Sandy and Tim have still got a lot of work to do, tracking down all the neo-fascists at Pendle.

But Sam must have still had his doubts about Clayton, the man who was in so much financial trouble and who, in the tomb of King Arthur, saw his potential salvation. Didn’t Elaine say, that evening when she turned up at the cottage, that Clayton wanted to carry on with the investigation? And it was Clayton who had summoned Ruth, the so-called bones expert. From the moment that she arrived in Lytham, Ruth realises, she must have been in danger. And Clayton … Clayton signed his own death warrant.

It was Sam who sent the text messages: the phone was found in his possession. He must also have been the cloaked figure on the riverbank. Well, his attempts to scare Ruth away almost worked. If it hadn’t been for that last visit to the university and the discovery of Clayton Henry’s body …

Elaine told Ruth that she had received a phone call that morning asking her to come to the university for an interview. ‘I’d been applying for jobs as an assistant lecturer but no one seemed to want to employ me.’ She looked at Ruth out of mad blue eyes. ‘I don’t know why.’ So Elaine had dressed in her black interview suit and high heels and arrived at the university to find Clayton dead at his desk. ‘I panicked. I didn’t know what to do. I ran around trying to find a place to hide.’ Ruth remembered the ghastly figure at the desk and the footsteps skittering about on the floor above and found herself feeling sorry for Elaine. She might be mad and seriously lacking in judgement, but she didn’t deserve to be framed for murder. Because that must have been what Sam was trying to do, surely? Elaine, with her history, would have been the perfect suspect. If Sandy hadn’t been distracted by Nelson’s frantic phone call, he would probably have charged Elaine on the spot. And she, in her fragile emotional state, might even have confessed. And, if Ruth happened to recall a mysterious blonde woman hanging around her house, wouldn’t that also have pointed to Elaine?

Ruth remembers looking at Elaine as she sat curled up on the sofa. Elaine had thought she was Guinevere and Ruth had once figured her, as her name suggested, as Morgan-le-Fay, but, in reality Elaine was a peripheral figure in the drama. Dan had not loved her and Clayton had not trusted her. Sam had seen her as the perfect scapegoat. Only Guy had stayed loyal, Sir Lancelot to the last. Ruth only hoped that Elaine appreciated him.

*

Ruth and Cathbad walk through the gate leading to Dame Alice’s cottage. Cathbad has prepared a post-funeral breakfast for all participants. When Ruth agreed to stay a few more days in Lancashire so that she could attend Pendragon’s funeral, she was surprised when Cathbad had announced that he was moving into the cottage. ‘I think it’s what he would have wanted,’ he said. ‘Thing will like it too.’

‘Why can’t you stay in Lytham with us?’ Ruth grumbled. The events at the Pleasure Beach had proved to her that, however unsatisfactory he was as a babysitter, Cathbad really loved Kate. After all, he was prepared to risk his life to save her. Nelson might call him a bloody fool but Ruth feels rather in awe of her friend. Would she have climbed nearly two hundred feet to save her baby? Well, yes, she would have tried, but the amazing thing is that Cathbad had nearly succeeded. ‘He looked like sodding Spider-Man up there,’ Sandy had said, and Cathbad’s feat had even made the later editions of the local papers. ‘Spider-Man’s Climb To Save Tot,’ said one, ignoring the fact that the tot was several hundred yards away and fast asleep at the time. ‘Superman to the rescue,’ read another. Cathbad claimed not to have seen any of the headlines but Ruth suspected that he was rather enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame. So why was he proposing to abandon them in favour of a deserted (probably haunted) cottage?

‘I can’t explain,’ he had said. ‘I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.’

Ruth understands this. After all, she had been the one to take Judy’s hysterical phone call, received as Ruth and Kate accompanied Cathbad to the hospital.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Judy had shrieked. ‘Cathbad’s dead.’

It was several minutes before Ruth could convince her that Cathbad, though injured, was still alive. Judy had only calmed down when Ruth had held the phone to Cathbad’s ear and he had croaked a feeble, ‘Not dead yet, sweetheart.’ Sweetheart. For some reason that had brought tears to Ruth’s eyes. But how had Judy known? ‘We have a strong psychic connection,’ said Cathbad, when they discussed it later. Despite everything, he looked rather pleased with himself.

‘I think she really loves you,’ Ruth had said.

‘I love her,’ said Cathbad. ‘But that’s not enough, is it?’

Is it enough, thought Ruth, looking at Cathbad as he lay in his hospital bed with Kate at his feet, playing happily with a ‘Nil by Mouth’ sign. Is it?

Two days later, Ruth received a late-night phone call.

‘What is it?’ she asked, seeing the name on her phone. She was exhausted, having spent another action-packed day with Caz at the water park. It had been great to get away from everything for a few hours, and if Ruth had been afraid to let Kate out of her sight even for a minute that will surely pass. Will Ruth keep in touch with Caz? She’s not sure. It’s been great spending time with her but she’s not sure how much they have in common, apart from the past. Caz is married with three teenage children, she lives in a designer house and drives a four-by-four. Ruth is a single parent who drives a clapped-out Renault. They’re not equals any more.

Cathbad, who is almost certainly her friend for life, sounded wide awake and certifiably insane.

‘I’ve found him,’ he was saying.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘King Arthur. I’ve found him.’

When Ruth arrived at the cottage the next morning, Cathbad had led her out into the garden. ‘I always knew there was something about this garden,’ he said. ‘There was always a raven in that tree. I knew he was trying to tell me something. And then there was the poem.’

‘What poem?’ said Ruth, feeling bemused.

‘There was a poem in an old book by Pendragon’s bed. A ballad. It said something about ‘in cold grave she was lain’. Pen had changed the ‘she’ to ‘he’. I thought he was talking about his own grave but I think he was pointing us to King Arthur.’

‘Telling us that he was buried in the back garden?’

‘Yes,’ says Cathbad seriously. ‘Then, when I let Thing out for his run last night he wouldn’t come back in, just kept running round and round barking at the moon.’

‘Maybe he was turning into a werewolf.’

‘So I went out and the moon was shining really brightly, right on the herb garden. And I heard Dame Alice’s voice. She said, “He’s here. The Raven King is here.”’

‘In the herb garden?’

‘I think so, don’t you? I always wondered why that was the only place where Pendragon had dug. It all makes sense, doesn’t it?’

The weird thing was, it did make sense. Sam had brought Dan’s computer to Pendragon for safekeeping: it stood to reason that he would have brought Arthur’s bones to the same place for sanctuary. Ruth looked at Cathbad, who was smiling.

‘Have you brought your excavating kit, Ruthie?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there’s a spade in the shed. Let’s go for it.’

And that was how Ruth came to supervise the excavation after all. Of course, strictly speaking it wasn’t an excavation, just uncovering recently buried bones, but that’s what it felt like. And when, after only a few feet of digging, she saw her first glimpse of the skeleton, she experienced the self-same thrill described by Dan in his diaries: Oh my God, my first sight of the exposed skeleton! He looked so kingly and peaceful, lying on his back, hands crossed over his chest. And Arthur was still lying supine and peaceful; he had clearly been buried with great reverence. Slowly, almost as if she was sleepwalking, Ruth photographed and then removed the bones, cleaning and numbering each one and placing them in individual bags (Pendragon had a surprising amount of freezer bags in his cupboard). Cathbad was the perfect assistant, double-checking the numbers and marking each one on Ruth’s bone chart. They worked in silence while a bird sang high above them and Thing and Kate played happily in the long grass. When they had finished, Ruth rang Guy, almost the sole survivor of Pendle’s history department.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘I thought the bones must have been burnt.’

‘I’m taking the skeletal matter back to Norfolk with me,’ said Ruth. ‘Is that OK?’

As Cathbad remarked, in some amusement, Guy wasn’t really in a position to argue. So Dan’s great discovery came into Ruth’s possession, as perhaps he would have wanted. Even so, Ruth is pretty sure that Guy will get a book out of it. And so, with any luck, will she.

*

Tim walks back down the hill, keeping a respectful distance from the druids. He is representing Blackpool CID, Sandy having flatly refused to attend the funeral (‘Lot of bloody weirdos capering about on a hill? No thanks’). Tim was quite willing, though. He likes new experiences and he enjoyed the dawn start (something else Sandy viewed with extreme suspicion). Tim gets up at six every day, anyway, to go to the gym but he has to admit there is something about actually being outside, feeling the cold air on your face and hearing the birds singing high above you. Perhaps he should go jogging instead. The trouble is, he lives in a rather insalubrious area of the city. He would probably lose his iPod in five minutes and his kneecaps in ten.

The pagan ritual fascinated him too. Tim was brought up in a highly religious household and, in his mind, church-going is associated with a kind of hysterical fervour that always made him uncomfortable. Even as a child, he had preferred science, which could be proved, to anything arty, which couldn’t. This is probably what led him into the police force. He doesn’t, for one second, go along with all this ‘mystical gateway’ business but at least fire, water, earth and air are tangible physical realities, unlike the Big Daddy in the sky, a personage his mother always refers to as Father God. Well, for Tim, one father was enough. His dad left the family home when he was ten and Tim has never been inclined to search for him.

Courteously holding open a five-bar gate for the other mourners, Tim thinks about Pendragon and about Dan Golding and Clayton Henry. None of these men were fathers, unless you count Henry’s stepdaughter. Tim met her when he interviewed Pippa Henry about her husband’s death. By that time, Sam had confessed to the murder and so the visit was a mere formality. Sam had, in fact, admitted everything within ten minutes of entering Bonny Street Station. ‘He’s going to play the nutter card,’ predicted Sandy, ‘but he’s as sane as you or I.’ Sandy had appeared not to notice that Sam had still been dressed in a skirt and high heels and Tim admired his boss for realising that cross-dressing was not, in itself, a sign of insanity. He couldn’t help noticing that Sam also smelt strongly of Ma Griffe.

The WPC who had broken the news of Henry’s death described Pippa as a ‘cold fish’, reporting disapprovingly that the bereaved wife failed to shed one tear. Tim was more forgiving. Pippa was calm, certainly, but grief takes people in different ways. The stepdaughter, Chloe, had certainly been upset, wiping away tears when she described how Clayton had been looking forward to their planned summer holiday in Tuscany. Had it been paid for, wondered Tim. Sandy said that Clayton had been up to his eyes in debt, the windmill mortgaged up to the sails. Pippa apparently had some money of her own, but if that had been enough to support the Henrys’ lifestyle, Clayton would surely not have resorted to stealing from the department.

Pippa gave nothing away as she sat stroking her little dog, occasionally extending a soothing hand to her daughter. It was only when she was showing Tim out that Pippa had said, ‘I warned him. I knew that all this King Arthur business would lead to trouble. There are some very strange people out there.’ This was the first indication that Pippa had known anything about her husband’s membership of the White Hand.

Tim had agreed that there were, indeed, some strange people out there but inwardly he doesn’t feel that the pagans are any stranger than his mother’s fellow worshippers in Basildon. People everywhere need ritual and make-believe to get them through their lives. Tim firmly believes that he is different, that he can exist in a purely rational world. But he is young; he knows he has a lot to learn.

*

Nelson too found himself rather enjoying the lunatic pagan service. Well, enjoy wasn’t exactly the word. Appreciate, maybe. Certainly it seemed to make more sense than some Christian funerals he has sat though; dreary events in anonymous crematoriums where the minister struggled to remember the name of the deceased and the mourners looked bored rather than heartbroken. A fullblown Catholic funeral is something else, such as the service that Maureen has planned for herself, in exhaustive detail. ‘You’ll outlive me, Mum,’ said Nelson that morning, as he ploughed through the list of music (most of which would need the Berlin Philharmonic for maximum effect). ‘Don’t say that,’ said Maureen, crossing herself. ‘It’s a terrible thing for a parent to outlive their child.’ Well, for a few terrible hours last week, Nelson had thought that this would be his fate, that he would lose the daughter he still can’t fully acknowledge and would be doomed forever to grieve in silence. The thought of this made him feel unusually tolerant towards his mother and he had given Maureen a quick, unexpected hug. ‘You’re good for a few years yet,’ he had said. ‘Oh I know that,’ Maureen had replied. ‘Cuthbert read the tea leaves and said I’d live to be ninety.’

But today’s ceremony was different. There was something fitting about the early morning, the clear sky and the chanting figures. Nelson hadn’t known Pendragon but he is sure that the air and the earth meant more to him than some half-imagined deity. He remembers the day that he came to Dame Alice’s cottage with Cathbad, the day when, unbeknown to both of them, Pendragon’s body had been hanging in the wood store. Why had he done it? No one will ever know, though Cathbad said that he was terminally ill, which might explain some of it. Guilt at Dan Golding’s death might also have contributed, plus a realisation of the sort of organisation that lurked behind the Arthurian posturing of the White Hand. Nelson doesn’t understand any of it, he is only here today at Cathbad’s request. ‘I think it’s important that you come,’ he had said and Nelson was hardly in a position to argue, given Cathbad’s recent heroics. He hasn’t brought Michelle; capering about on hills isn’t exactly her scene and, besides, he’s hoping for a few words with Ruth later. ‘Rest in peace, Pendragon,’ he says now to himself, looking up at the white house on the hill. ‘Wherever you are.’

As he begins the trek up the path, he finds that Tim is walking beside him. The two policemen smile at each other although Tim carefully maintains his expression of respectful neutrality. Tim, Nelson thinks, will go far.

‘A pagan funeral,’ he says now, taking the slope with a long, easy stride. ‘One to tick off the list.’

‘What else is on the list?’ asks Nelson, panting slightly. The only thing he dislikes about Tim is that he makes him feel old and unfit.

‘Swim with dolphins,’ says Tim. ‘Read Ulysses. Learn Italian. See the Taj Mahal. Leave Blackpool.’

Nelson turns to look at the young policeman. They are almost at the house; he can hear Thing barking inside and the sound of quavery Celtic voices singing. Jesus, please don’t let Cathbad have brought his Enya CDs.

‘Are you serious?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ says Tim, ‘I’d like to move back down south. I’m an Essex boy really. Just ended up in the north because of university. I’d like to try somewhere new.’

‘What about Norfolk?’ says Nelson, only half joking.

Tim turns to him. ‘Would you give me a job?’

‘I can’t promise anything,’ says Nelson. ‘My boss is a stickler for procedure. But I’d certainly put in a good word for you.’ He smiles to himself, thinking how much Tim would stir things up at King’s Lynn. Cloughie would hate him, he’s sure of that, and the sight of a bright, ambitious young sergeant wouldn’t exactly fill Judy and Tanya’s hearts with joy either. But new blood is always good. Tanya isn’t ready to be a sergeant yet and he sometimes doubts whether Judy will ever return from maternity leave. He had a very strange phone call from her the other day, almost accusing him of covering up Cathbad’s accident. ‘If he had died,’ she had said, ‘would you have let me know?’ ‘Listen, Johnson,’ said Nelson, ‘It’d take more than a two-hundred-foot fall to kill Cathbad.’

Cathbad now greets them at the door of the cottage, offering them coffee or a rather dubious-looking ‘Loving Cup’. Nelson chooses coffee: the Loving Cup looks potent and he has a feeling that the local police won’t extend the same leniency to him as they do Sandy if they catch him driving under the influence. All in all, he’s not sorry to be leaving Lancashire tomorrow. It has been great to catch up with Sandy and to ride the mean streets again but it’s not his home any more. For years he’s been labouring under the delusion that one day – when the girls have finally left home, perhaps – he and Michelle will go back to Blackpool. Now he knows that this will never happen. He has lost his accent and, according to Sandy, his edge. It’s time to admit that he could never go back to those hard-drinking, fast-driving, politically incorrect days. It’s not just that Norfolk has softened him up, either. It’s more that the Blackpool Nelson was a product of his upbringing, a reflection of what Archie Nelson would expect in his son. The middle-aged Nelson is a product of his marriage to Michelle and, if he’s honest, his affair with Ruth. He’s now a husband and father first and a policeman second. Jesus, what an admission. Next thing, he’ll be looking forward to retirement in a Cromer seaside chalet. No, that’s going too far. When he retires it’ll be to a place with decent rail links.