Dying Fall, A (33 page)

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.

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.