Dying Fall, A (30 page)

A search for Karen Golding reveals her to be a professor of theoretical physics at Manchester University. Still a high-flyer then. Ruth wonders how she feels about Dan now. Caz said that she seemed very upset at his funeral and it was apparently Karen, the career woman, who wanted to settle down and have children. Why didn’t Dan want children? Ruth remembers his bitter observation that she was probably married with ten children ‘like everyone else’. Maybe Dan just didn’t want to be like everyone else. Maybe he was happy living on his own, having a succession of affairs. But in his diaries he doesn’t sound like a happy man exactly.

She searches the diaries for Pippa and comes up with a couple of mentions. There’s the reference to her presence at the excavation and, a few days later:

Pippa came round. We both know it has to stop but I think neither of us wants to say the word. Pippa talked about leaving Clayton but I don’t think she ever will. She loves the lifestyle—the windmill, the parties, the adoring husband. She couldn’t survive on her own. Does she mean to throw in her lot with me? I’ve never encouraged her to think that we have a future together. I told her that after Karen left I vowed never to marry again. She accepted this at the time but she may think that she can get me to change my mind. I asked (again) if Clayton suspected. She said he didn’t, that he trusts me and would never think that I would betray him. Afterwards, I felt bad about this. Clayton has been good to me, according to his lights, and, whichever way you look at it, I am betraying him. Then I thought that it was odd that she had said that he trusted me, he didn’t think I would betray him. What about Pippa? What about his wife? Didn’t he trust her?

Ruth reads this with, once again, mixed feelings. She finds Dan’s tone a little hard—‘I’ve never encouraged her to think that we have a future together’—but at least he had felt some remorse about deceiving Clayton. The part about Pippa is interesting though. Did Clayton trust his wife? Did he know about the affair? And if he had found out, what would he think about the man who had betrayed him, the man he had welcomed into his department, into his life? Would Clayton have been angry? Angry enough to kill?

Did Dan end his relationship with Pippa? Ruth scans the rest of the diary but can find only one other reference to Pippa Henry. Dan is writing about the possibility of organising another dig to explore the area around the temple. He says that Guy and Elaine are keen to help but ‘Pippa thinks that Elaine is dangerous’. That’s all. Was Pippa just prejudiced against Elaine because she knew that she was Dan’s ex-lover or did she know something else about her? Ruth suspects that there are many words that could describe Elaine Morgan but
dangerous
? It’s an uncomfortable choice. Was Elaine dangerous? To herself? To Dan?

She looks at the time displayed on the side of the screen. Eight o’clock. Where is Cathbad? At least she hasn’t got Thing pacing around, driving her mad. She gets up and pours herself another glass of wine. They’re very small glasses, more like sherry glasses really. She checks her phone. No messages from the wandering warlock. She’s not worried about Cathbad—he’s a grown man and he’s got a bull terrier to protect him—but she does hope he hasn’t decided to stay the night at the cottage. She doesn’t want to be on her own, that’s all. Not with the texter still on the loose and the memory of the hooded figure on the riverbank so clear in her mind. She goes to the front door and looks out. It’s nearly dark outside and the street is deserted. No sign of Sandy’s mythical patrol car. The holiday-making crowds have all gone home. Ruth puts the chain on the front door and goes back into the sitting room.

There is nothing else in the diaries about Pippa or Elaine—or Ruth. The last entry is the one where Dan received a letter from the White Hand containing the names and addresses of his family. The last lines are:
I rang Clayton and once again said that we should call the police. He refused. He’s shielding someone. But whom?

Who was Clayton Henry shielding? His wife? Himself? He was scared enough of the White Hand to sanction the removal of the bones to a private laboratory but why won’t he call the police when a member of his department is being threatened? It’s as if the White Hand are moving closer and closer. They write letters, they leave dead birds on Dan’s doorstep, a few days after this last diary entry his house was set on fire. Did they come closer still? Did Dan ever see the cloaked figure standing in the shadows outside his house? Did he ever look into the blackness where the face should be? If so, the diaries aren’t telling.

Ruth is really spooked now.
Ladybird, ladybird. Fly away home.
Well, she’ll be home tomorrow and she’ll never again go further north than the Wash. Should she check on Kate again? Calm down, she tells herself, it only halfpast eight on a summer night. What’s going to happen to you? But, all the same, she thinks she’ll just draw the curtains.

She has just got to the window when the doorbell rings. Ruth smiles with relief. Typical of Cathbad to have forgotten his key. She approaches the door rehearsing her reproaches, just as if she really is his wife. What time do you call this? Why didn’t you ring? Don’t you know we’ve got an early start in the morning?

But it’s not Cathbad standing outside.

It’s the last of the triumvirate. It’s Elaine.

‘I hope you don’t mind me calling round like this,’ says Elaine.

Ruth does mind but Elaine doesn’t actually seem dangerous or deranged. In fact, she looks rather forlorn, standing there in the twilight. In contrast to her glamour at Clayton’s party, she looks distinctly scruffy in faded jeans and an oversized jumper. She also looks very young.

‘Come in,’ says Ruth.

‘I’ve been driving round all day,’ says Elaine. ‘Trying to get up the courage to come and see you.’

Ruth takes Elaine into the sitting room; it seems more formal somehow than the kitchen. It is only when they are sitting on the sofa that Ruth notices her laptop on the coffee table, open at Dan’s diaries. Will Elaine look at the screen? Surely not, but even so Ruth wishes that she could move it. But how can she do this without drawing attention to it?

Elaine, though, seems hardly to notice anything. She sits, huddled in her big jumper, her knees pulled up to her chest.

‘I’m so frightened,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘I’ll make you a nice cup of tea,’ says Ruth, aware how ridiculous this sounds. She hurries out, casually sweeping up the laptop on the way. In the kitchen, she hides the computer in the larder and crashes about with mugs and biscuit tins. She wonders about offering Elaine a drink (she could certainly do with another herself), but, remembering Dan’s diary, thinks it’s safer to stick to tea. It looks as if their conversation is going to be sticky enough without alcohol.

When she goes back into the sitting room, Elaine is still in the same hunched position. Ruth puts a mug in front of her.

‘Here’s some tea. There are biscuits in the tin.’

‘Thank you,’ says Elaine tonelessly. ‘You’re very kind.’

Ruth waits, wrapping her hands round her mug and listening for noises from upstairs. But the only sound in the room is Elaine’s ragged breathing. Ruth wonders if she’s ill.

‘I’m so scared,’ says Elaine, again.

‘Why?’ asks Ruth.

Elaine looks at her. She has very pale blue eyes and blonde eyelashes. It gives her an exotic albino appearance.

‘Guy says you’ve found Daniel’s laptop.’

Ruth thought at the time that her story about the police having the laptop hadn’t convinced Guy. He must have guessed that she would have taken copies of the files. If so, he knows exactly how much she knows. She thinks of her computer, at this moment crammed into the larder next to the cornflakes and teething rusks. Luckily, Elaine doesn’t wait for an answer.

‘If you’ve read his diary, you’ll know all sorts of things about me. I thought I ought to come and set the record straight.’

‘You don’t owe me any explanations,’ says Ruth. She is dreading a heart-to-heart with Dan’s ex-girlfriend. Oh God, why doesn’t Cathbad come back?

Elaine ignores her. She is crying now but makes no attempt to stem the tears; they run, unchecked, down her pale cheeks.

‘I loved Daniel,’ she says. ‘I thought he loved me but he didn’t. I was convenient, I was next door. But when I started to get heavy he dumped me. He could be a coldblooded bastard, you know.’

Funnily enough, Ruth can believe this. Hadn’t she felt a faint chill, reading his diary just now? Against her will, she feels sorry for Elaine.

Now Elaine reaches forward and grabs Ruth’s hand. ‘But I would never do anything to hurt him. You must believe that!’

Gently Ruth extracts her hand. ‘No one thinks you did,’ she says.

‘The police do,’ says Elaine. ‘That awful detective, the fat one, he came round asking all these questions. I know he suspects me, he kept giving me these horrible looks. And the other one, the good-looking one, he kept asking about the White Hand.’

‘Well, they think the White Hand might be involved,’ says Ruth. ‘After all, they’re Neo-Nazis, they’re capable of anything.’

Elaine stares at her. Wet with tears, her eyes look almost white.

‘Don’t you understand? We were in the White Hand, all of us.’

Cathbad hadn’t realised how late it was until he went into the garden and saw that the hills were in darkness. Thing, clearly delighted to be back in his old home, is running around, barking at the gathering birds. Cathbad doesn’t wear a watch as they tend not to work on him (too much natural electricity, he suspects) and there don’t seem to be any clocks in the house. Pendragon didn’t have a TV or a radio or any electrical gadget—if you ignore the high-tech office upstairs, which Cathbad is trying to. He fumbles in his pocket for his mobile phone and looks at the display. It’s eight-thirty. He’d better get back to Ruth.

It had been easy to extract the cottage keys from Gary. Once he’d had a sniff that Cathbad might want to take over the rent, he had fallen over himself to be helpful. Yes, take the keys. Drop them back tomorrow. Take as much time as you want. So Cathbad had spent a peaceful afternoon at Dame Alice’s cottage, praying for Pendragon’s soul and offering libations to the good spirits. Anxious to cover all spiritual bases, he said a decade of the rosary (his grandmother would be proud of him) and made a symbolic sacrifice of one of Pendragon’s old robes, which he burnt in the sun-dial. He even forced himself to make a trip to the woodshed where he scattered herbs and said the Catholic prayer for the dead. ‘Eternal rest give unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him.’ Despite this cleansing, Thing had flatly refused to enter the shed.

Sometime during the afternoon, Cathbad realised that all the contents of the house belonged to him. Really, he could just move in tomorrow. Now, as he is locking up, he wonders whether he should take the crucifix from Pendragon’s bedroom. It might transfer some of its protection to Ruth and Kate. But when he stands by the bed, as smooth as a shroud, he feels curiously reluctant to touch the heavy wooden cross. After all, it didn’t bring Pendragon much luck. He is about to leave the room when his eye falls on the book beside the bed.
Old English Ballads,
it’s called. He opens the book and sees that a page has been kept by a bay leaf. A verse has been annotated in pencil. Cathbad reads, Thing panting at his side.

The wind doth blow today, my love
And a few drops of rain
I never had but one true love
In cold grave she was lain.

The word ‘she’ has been changed to ‘he’. The ballad is called ‘The Unquiet Grave’. Cathbad stands still, listening to the silence of the house. There is no wind today and no rain. Why did Pendragon mark this poem? Was he thinking of his own mortality? Of the fact that he was planning to take his own life? The will gave no instructions about a funeral or interment but Cathbad has an idea of what his friend would have wanted. Is this bleak little verse referring to an unmarked grave on Pendle Hill? Is that where Pendragon wanted to lie at rest? And who was Pendragon’s ‘one true love’? Cathbad never heard him mention a woman but he supposes that everyone has one true love in their lives. Not wanting to think about this, he takes the book and makes his way downstairs. It’s cold now so he borrows a cloak that’s hanging on a hook by the back door. He also liberates a large packet of dog biscuits. Everything else can stay where it is.

He sends Ruth a quick text and, with one last farewell to Dame Alice, sets out for the car.

‘What do you mean “all of you?”’ whispers Ruth.

Elaine seems to understand what she means. ‘Oh, not Daniel. He couldn’t join, could he, being Jewish and everything. No, me, Guy and Clayton.’

The casual anti-Semitism shocks Ruth almost more than anything. But Elaine had loved Dan. Ruth notices again how, alone of all his acquaintance, Elaine always refers to him by his full name.

She still can’t quite believe it. ‘You belong to a Neo-Nazi group?’

‘You don’t understand,’ says Elaine, sounding quite impatient. ‘The Neo-Nazis on campus, stomping around protesting about Chinese cockle-pickers in Fleetwood, they weren’t anything to do with us. The White Hand was different. It was about going back to the old days. The days of the High King.’

‘King Arthur?’

‘Yes, even before we joined the White Hand, we used to talk about recreating Camelot, the four of us. Clayton was King Arthur, I was Guinevere, Guy was Lancelot. Pendragon was Merlin.’

‘So why did you join the White Hand?’

‘Pendragon told us about it. He said there were magical powers associated with belonging to the group. Strong psychic energies. And he was right. We had an initiation ceremony on Pendle Hill. It was wonderful. There were lights in the sky, voices from the heavens, a great black bird appeared above us with wings of fire.’ She smiles reminiscently.

There is a lot that Ruth could say to this. You can admire the Arthurian legends without belonging to a sinister secret society associated (whatever Elaine says) with racist and homophobic groups. As for the heavenly voices and the fiery blackbird, she suspects the presence of hard drugs. But there are other things she needs to know.