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.

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.