streaked with grey.
He has grown a beard which, strangely, remains jet black, so that it looks rather like a disguise, as if it is attached with elastic around the ears. His eyes are dark too and suspicious now as he watches them. Ruth remembers him as nervous, edgy, always likely to explode in either rage or laughter. Now he seems calmer, more in control. Ruth notices, though, that the hand gripping the staff is white around the knuckles.
'Michael Malone?' Nelson greets him formally.
'Cathbad.'
'Mr Malone, also known as Cathbad, I'm Detective Chief Inspector Nelson from Norfolk Police. Can we come in?' As an afterthought, he adds. 'And this is Doctor Ruth Galloway from North Norfolk University.'
Cathbad turns his dark gaze on Ruth.
'I know you,' he says slowly.
'We met at a dig,' says Ruth, 'on the Saltmarsh, ten years ago.'
'I remember,' says Cathbad slowly. 'You were with a man. A redheaded man.'
To her annoyance Ruth finds herself blushing. She is sure Nelson is looking at her.
'Yes,' she says, 'I was.'
'Can we come in?' asks Nelson again.
Silently, Cathbad stands aside to let them into the caravan.
Inside, the first sensation is of being in a tent. Midnight blue draperies hang from the ceiling and cover every piece of furniture. Ruth can just make out a bunk bed with cupboards under it, a cooker, covered with rust and food stains, a wooden bench seat and a table, this time covered with billowing red material. The blue drapes give a strangely dreamlike feeling, as do the twenty or so dream catchers twinkling gently from the ceiling. The air is thick and musty. Ruth sees Nelson sniffing hopefully but she doesn't think it is cannabis. Joss sticks, more likely.
Cathbad gestures them towards the bench before seating himself in a high-backed wizard's chair. First point to him, thinks Ruth.
'Mr Malone,' says Nelson. 'We're investigating a murder and we'd like to ask you a few questions.'
Cathbad looks at them calmly. 'You're very abrupt,' he says, 'are you a Scorpio?'
Nelson ignores him. From his pocket he pulls out a photograph and puts it on the table in front of Cathbad.
'Do you recognise this girl?' he asks.
Ruth looks curiously at the picture. She has never seen a picture of Lucy Downey and is struck by the resemblance to Scarlet Henderson. The same dark, curling hair, the same smiling mouth. Only the clothes are different. Lucy Downey is wearing a grey school uniform. Scarlet, in the picture Ruth saw, had been wearing a fairy dress.
'No,' says Cathbad shortly. 'What's all this about?'
'This little girl vanished ten years ago,' says Nelson, 'when you and your mates were getting all worked up about that henge thing. I wondered if you'd seen her.'
Unexpectedly, Cathbad is angry. Ruth remembers his ability to change emotions in a second. Now, his face dark in the blue light, he looks like his younger self.
'That henge thing,' he says in a voice shaking with rage, 'was a holy site, a place dedicated to worship and sacrifice. And Doctor Galloway's friends proceeded to destroy it.'
Ruth is rather shocked to find herself under attack.
Nelson, though, positively quivers at the words 'worship and sacrifice'.
'We didn't destroy it,' Ruth says, rather lamely. 'It's at the university. In the museum.'
'The museum!' mimics Cathbad savagely. 'A dead place, full of bones and corpses.'
'Mr Malone,' cuts in Nelson. 'Ten years ago, you were… how old?'
'I'm forty-two now. Not that I count the years on the temporal plane.'
Nelson ignores this. 'So, ten years ago you would have been thirty-two.'
'Full marks for the maths, Detective Chief Inspector.'
'What were you doing ten years ago, aged thirty-two?'
'Looking up at the stars, listening to the music of the spheres.'
Nelson leans forward. He doesn't raise his voice but suddenly Ruth feels the temperature in the caravan drop.
She is suddenly aware of an undercurrent of violence in the room. And it isn't coming from Cathbad.
'Look,' says Nelson softly, 'either you answer my questions civilly or we go down to the station and do it there.
And, I promise you, when it gets out that you've been questioned in connection with this case, you won't be looking at the stars. You'll be looking at a gang of vigilantes trying to burn your bloody caravan down.'
Cathbad looks at Nelson for a long moment, drawing his cloak around him as if for protection. Then he says, in a low monotone, 'Ten years ago I was living in a commune near Cromer.'
'And prior to that?'
'I was a student.' I 'Where?'
'Manchester.' Cathbad suddenly looks at Ruth and smiles, rather oddly. 'Studying archaeology.'
Ruth lets out an involuntary gasp. 'But that's where-'
'Erik Anderssen taught. Yes. That's where I met him.'
Nelson seems uninterested in this but Ruth's mind is racing. So Cathbad knew Erik long before the henge dig.
Why hadn't Erik mentioned it? Erik had been her tutor when she did her doctorate at Southampton but she knew that previously he had been a lecturer at Manchester. Why hadn't Erik told her that he had been Cathbad's tutor too?
'So, what did you do, on this commune? Did any of you do any real work?'
'Depends what you mean by real,' says Cathbad with a flash of his old spirit. 'We grew vegetables, we cooked them, we made music, we sang, we made love. And I was a postman,' he adds, as an afterthought.
'A postman?'
'Yes. Is that real enough for you? Early starts, it suited me fine. I love the dawn, leaves you with the rest of the day free.'
'Free to disrupt the henge dig?'
'Disrupt!' The fire is definitely back in Cathbad's eyes.
'We were trying to save it! Erik understood that. He wasn't like the rest of those…' He pauses for an epithet strong enough. 'Those… civil servants. He understood that the site was holy, sacred to the place and to the sea. It wasn't about carbon dating and crap like that. It was about being at one with the natural world.'
Nelson cuts in again. Ruth can tell he stopped listening at about the word 'holy'. 'And when the dig finished?'
'Life went on.'
'You went on being a postman?'
'No. I got another job.'
'Where?'
'At the university. I still work there.'
Nelson looks at Ruth who stares at him blankly. All these years, Cathbad has been working beside her at the university. Did Erik know?
'Doing what?'
'Lab assistant. My first degree was in chemistry.'
'Did you hear about the disappearance of Lucy Downey?'
'I think so. There was a lot in the papers, wasn't there?'
'And Scarlet Henderson?'
'Who? Oh, the little girl who went missing recently. I heard about it, yes. Look Inspector…' Suddenly his voice changes and he draws himself up in the wizard's chair.
'What's all this about? You've got nothing that links me to these girls. This is police harassment.'
'No,' says Nelson mildly, 'just routine enquiries.'
'I won't say anything more without a solicitor present.'
Ruth expects Nelson to argue (something along the lines that only guilty men need solicitors) but instead he
