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.