a cup of tea and she screamed. Hadn't expected it to be hot.
Probably hadn't had a hot drink for ten years. She screamed and dropped the drink on the floor, then she cringed away from me, as if she expected me to hit her.
That bastard ill-treated her, I'm sure of it. So I left her with Judy. Then, when I came in with the parents… she made this noise, this little cry, like a baby. Then the mother said, 'Lucy?' And Lucy just howled 'Mummy!' and flung herself into her arms. Jesus. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Judy was weeping buckets and Cloughie and I were both sniffing away. But the parents, they hugged her as if they'd never let her go. Then the mother looked at me, over Lucy's head, and said 'Thank you.' Thank you! Jesus.'
'Will she be alright, do you think?'
'Well, she's obviously seeing an army of psychiatrists but they say she's remarkably resilient. She has to learn to be a teenager, not a little girl. In some ways, they say she's stuck at five years old but, in others, she's amazingly mature. I think she understands a lot more than we give her credit for.'
And Ruth, remembering the way that Lucy had used the bird call (the call, she is sure, of the Long Eared Owl) to lure David to his death, believes him.
They have not found David's body. It must have been washed out to sea and carried by the tide to another shoreline.
Perhaps they will never find it and David's remains will one day join the Neolithic bones and relics that lie beneath this shallow sea.
They did find Erik though. The great shaman, who knew the marshes like the back of his hand, had drowned in a marshy pool just a few hundred metres from Ruth's cottage.
Ruth went to Norway for Erik's funeral. Despite everything, she found that she still had some love left for him and for Magda. Erik had always said that he wanted a Viking's funeral. Ruth remembers him, by the camp fire in full storyteller mode: 'The ship, its sails full in the evening light. The dead man, his sword at his side and his shield on his breast. The flame, that burst of purifying fire that will send him to Valhalla to sit with Odin and Thor until the world is renewed…' So they had taken his ashes and put them in a wooden boat built specially by Lars, Magda's lover. They had set fire to the boat and sent it sailing out onto the lake, where it burnt all through the night and was still smouldering in the morning.
'You know,' Magda had turned to Ruth, her face lit by the glow from the boat, 'we were happy.'
'I know,' said Ruth.
And she did know. Magda and Erik were happy, despite Shona and Lars and all the others. And she, Ruth, still loved Erik, despite the letters and the adultery and the cold light behind the blue eyes. She seemed to have learnt a lot about love over the last few weeks. After Norway, she went home to Eltham where she went shopping with her mother, played scrabble with her father and even attended church with them. She doesn't think she will ever be a believer herself but these days it does not seem so important to remind her parents of this. Somehow, when she held Lucy in her arms in that terrible cellar, she found a way back to her own mother. Perhaps it is just that she learnt the value of the maternal cliche, the love that is always the same no matter how many years pass and burns no less strongly by being expressed in time-worn phrases.
Erik was never charged with any crime. Cathbad was quietly cleared of the charge of wasting police time. The letters, with their haunting messages of life and death and resurrection, were never made public. Ruth thinks about them sometimes though. Thinks about why Erik and Shona wrote them, why Erik hated Nelson so much that he was prepared to distract him from his job of catching a murderer. Was it grief for James Agar that motivated Erik or was it arrogance, the chance to pit his wits against the police, that embodiment of a philistine state? She will never know.
Cathbad celebrated the dropping of the charges by performing a spiritual cleansing session on the beach, not unlike a Viking funeral, involving much dancing around a ceremonial fire. He invited Nelson but Nelson declined to attend. Despite this, Cathbad and Nelson have become, for want of any other word, friends. Nelson has a reluctant admiration for the way Cathbad remained calm in the storm, guiding him across the deadly marshes. And Cathbad is convinced that Nelson saved his life. He says so on every possible occasion, which somehow Nelson doesn't dislike as much as he should.
Ruth sees Nelson approaching over the sand dunes. He is wearing jeans and a leather jacket and he looks wary, as if he expects the sand to leap up and attack him. Nelson will never love the Saltmarsh. He always found it a spooky sort of place and now it will always be associated in his mind with Lucy's long imprisonment (under the noses of his officers!) and with death.
Nelson has reached Ruth who is standing, she thinks, at the start of the henge circle. There is nothing to show for it now though, just a few blackened streaks on the grey sand. The timbers themselves lie artificially preserved in the museum, far from the wind and the sand.
'What a place to meet,' grumbles Nelson, 'miles from anywhere.'
'The exercise will do you good,' says Ruth.
'You sound like Michelle.'
Ruth has met Michelle now and, to her surprise, quite likes her. She admires the way that Michelle always does exactly what she wants, whilst retaining the image of the perfect wife. This, she feels, is a skill she could usefully learn, not that she is planning to be anyone's wife. Ruth suspects that Michelle, for her part, is simply dying to give her a make-over.
Peter has gone back to Victoria. Ruth is happy for him, and is also relieved that it was David, not Peter, who sent the text messages. Her memories of him can stay intact.
'How's it going?' Ruth asks.
'Not too bad. There's a new corruption scandal brewing which may take the pressure off me for a bit.'
The discovery of Lucy Downey was, of course, a media sensation. There seemed to have been little else in the papers for weeks, which was one reason why Ruth escaped to Norway and Eltham. Nelson came in for his share of criticism; after all, Lucy was found in an area which had been searched many times by the police. But, then again, Nelson did get all the credit for rescuing Lucy. Ruth was more than happy for her part to be downplayed and Cathbad, too, had his own reasons for remaining in the shadows. Also, Lucy's parents consistently refused to criticise Nelson, saying instead that it was his tireless searching that had eventually resulted in Lucy's discovery.
'How's Lucy?' asks Ruth as they walk along the sea's edge. The tide is going out, leaving a line of shells and glistening stones. The seagulls swoop low, looking for treasure.
'Good,' says Nelson. 'I went round there yesterday and she was playing on a swing in the garden. Apparently she remembered the house and the garden perfectly. But she'd forgotten lots of other things. When she first saw a cat, she screamed.'
Ruth thinks of Flint who, fully recovered from his exertions, stayed with Shona while she was away. Shona, desperate to make amends, fed Flint almost entirely on smoked salmon. I should get another cat, Ruth thinks, stop Flint getting too spoilt.
'Has Lucy said anything about what it was like?' she asks. 'When she was locked up?'
'The psychiatrist has been getting her to draw pictures.
The most disturbing things you ever saw. Little black boxes, clutching hands, iron bars.'
'Was she abused by him? David.'
'Abused? Of course she was abused. But, sexually, there's no sign. I think he was quite squeamish about sex, actually. The psychiatrists think that if she'd started menstruating, he might have killed her.'
'How did he make that underground room? It had concrete walls and everything.'
'Apparently it was an old Second World War bunker. He built the hide on top of it.'
'Jesus.' Ruth is silent for a few minutes, thinking of the preparation that must have gone into creating Lucy's prison. How many years had David been planning this?
'Does anyone know why he did it?'
'The shrinks have got a million theories but it's all guesswork.
Perhaps he wanted birds to be free but liked to keep humans in captivity.'
'For company, that's what he said to me.' Ruth thinks of what David said when she told him of her grief for Sparky; 'she was company'. With a shiver, she realises that when she and Peter saw him that day he must have been on his way to check up on Lucy. That was why he hated tourists and litter. He wanted everyone to keep away from the hide.
