'Who's dead?'
'Sparky.' Long, gulping pause. 'My cat.'
Nelson counts to ten. 'Are you ringing me up to tell me about a dead cat?'
'Someone cut her throat.'
'What!'
'Someone cut her throat and left her on my doorstep.'
'I'll be right over.'
Nelson turns his car, with maximum tyre skidding, and heads back towards the Saltmarsh. Ruth's dead cat could be a message from the abductor or the letter writer or both. It seems just the sort of warped thing the letter writer would do. Never assume, he tells himself, overtaking a lorry, half-blinded by spray. But cutting an animal's throat, that is definitely sick. Might be able to get some DNA though. He will have to be sensitive ('sensitive' he repeats to himself – the word has a wet, Guardian-reader sound that he distrusts), Ruth seems very upset. Funny, he wouldn't have thought her the sort of woman to have pets.
It is pitch black by the time he reaches the Saltmarsh, and though the rain has stopped it is still blowing a gale.
The car door is almost ripped out of his hand and, as he walks up the path, he can feel the full force of the wind in the small of his back, pushing him forwards. Jesus, what a place to live. Nelson's home is a modern, fourbedroomed house outside King's Lynn; it is all very civilised, with speed bumps and security lights and double garages. You'd hardly know you were in Norfolk at all. Ruth's cottage seems little better than a hovel and it's so isolated, stuck out here on the edge of nowhere with only the twitchers for company. Why on earth does she live here? She must earn a fair wage at the university, surely?
Ruth opens the door immediately as if she were waiting for him.
'Thanks for coming,' she sniffs.
The door opens straight into a sitting room which, to Nelson's eyes, looks a complete mess. There are books and papers everywhere, a half-drunk cup of coffee sits on the table, along with the remains of a meal, crumbs and olive stones. But then he stops noticing anything because, on the sofa, lies what must be the mutilated corpse of a small cat.
Ruth has covered the body with a pink, fluffy blanket which, for some reason, makes his throat close up for a second. He pulls back the blanket.
'Have you touched it? The body?'
'She. She's a girl.'
'Have you touched her?' repeats Nelson patiently.
'Only to put her on the sofa and I did… stroke her a bit.' Ruth turns away.
Nelson reaches over as if to pat her shoulder but Ruth moves away, blowing her nose. When she turns back, her face is quite composed.
'Do you think it was him?' she asks. 'The murderer?'
'We haven't got a murder yet,' says Nelson cautiously.
Ruth shrugs this aside. 'Who would do something like this?'
'Someone pretty sick, that's for sure,' says Nelson, bending over Sparky's body. Then he straightens up. 'Does anyone know you're involved in this investigation?'
'No.'
'Are you sure?'
'Phil, my boss, knows,' says Ruth slowly, 'and maybe some other people at the university. My next-door neighbour saw me leaving in a police car that time.'
Nelson turns away from Sparky then, almost as an afterthought, he stoops and covers the little body again with the pink blanket. Then he touches Ruth's arm and says in a surprisingly gentle voice, 'Let's sit down.'
Ruth sits in a sagging armchair. She looks away from him, out towards the curtained window. The wind is still roaring outside, making the panes rattle. Nelson perches on the edge of the sofa.
'Ruth,' says Nelson, 'we know there's a dangerous man out there. He may well have murdered two girls and he may be the person who did this to your cat. In any event, you've got to be careful. Someone, for whatever reason, is trying to frighten you and I think it's safe to assume that it has something to do with this case.'
Still looking past him, Ruth asks, 'Do you need to take her, Sparky, away?'
'Yes,' says Nelson, trying to be honest and yet not too harsh, 'we need to test for fingerprints and DNA.'
'So really,' says Ruth in a high, hard voice, 'this is a bit of a breakthrough.'
'Ruth,' says Nelson, 'look at me.' She does so. Her face is swollen with crying.
'I'm sorry about your cat. About Sparky. I had a German Shepherd once called Max. I thought the world of that dog. My wife used to say she felt quite jealous sometimes.
When he was run over, I was beside myself, wanted to charge the driver with dangerous driving though it wasn't his fault really. But this is a possible murder investigation and I'm afraid your cat is a valuable clue. You want to find out what has happened to Scarlet, don't you?'
'Yes,' says Ruth, 'of course I do.'
'I promise you, Ruth, that, when the lab has finished, I'll bring Sparky back and help you bury her. I'll even light a candle in church. Deal?'
Ruth manages a watery smile. 'Deal.'
Nelson picks up Sparky's body, covering it carefully with the blanket. As he moves towards the door, he turns. 'And Ruth? Make sure you lock all your doors tonight.'
When he has gone, Ruth sits on the sofa, at the opposite end to the place where there is a faint bloodstain on the faded chintz. She looks at the remains of her meal with Shona and wonders, dully, how long ago it was that they sat at this table talking about men. It seems like days but it was in fact only a few hours ago. Since then, she has found out that Nelson has a secret in his past, spoken to her ex boyfriend and seen her beloved cat brutally murdered. She laughs, slightly hysterically. What else will the night bring?
Her mother coming out as a lesbian? David the bird warden proposing marriage? She heads for the kitchen, hell-bent on finding some wine. Flint, who has been watching from a distance, comes up and rubs against her legs. She picks him up, weeping into his dusty orange fur. 'Oh Flint,' she says, 'what will we do without her?' Flint purrs hopefully. Ruth has forgotten to feed him.
Splashing Pinot Grigio into a glass, Ruth looks across to the table by the window where her laptop is still open. She presses a key and her lecture notes appear. She clicks back through her history until she is back on the page of Nelsons: the US chess champion, the professor of physics, Harry Nilsson and Henry (Harry) Nelson of the Norfolk police. He had tried to be kind about Sparky, she recognises dimly. Part of him must have been excited about the possible clue but he had tried to acknowledge her feelings.
He probably despises her for getting so upset about a cat but she doesn't care. Sparky was her pet, her companion, her friend – yes, her friend, she repeats defiantly to herself.
She thinks of the little black cat, so sweet, so self contained, and the tears run down her face. Who would want to kill Sparky?
And, for the first time, Nelson's final words sink in. Make sure you lock all your doors tonight. The person who killed Sparky could have killed Scarlet and Lucy too.
The murderer could have been on Ruth's doorstep. He could have been listening outside her window, knife sharpened.
He killed Sparky. Her entire body goes cold as she realises that the dead cat was a message addressed directly to her. Next time it could be you.
Then she hears it. A sound outside her window. A pause, a muffled cough and then, unmistakably, footsteps, coming closer and closer. She listens, her heart thumping with such huge, irregular beats that she wonders if she is going to have a coronary, right there on the spot. The knock on the door makes her cry out with fear. It has come. The creature from the night. The beast. The terror. She thinks of The Monkey's Paw and the unnamed horror that waits at the door. She is shaking so much that she drops her wine glass.
The knock again. A terrible, doom-laden sound, echoing through the tiny house. What is she going to do? Should she ring Nelson? Her phone is across the room, by the sofa, and the idea of moving suddenly seems impossible. Is this it? Is she going to die, here in her cottage with the wind howling outside?
'Ruth!' shouts a voice. 'Are you in there?'
