Dying Fall, A (35 page)

‘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, doublechecking 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.