‘What do you mean you know?’ says Nelson. He’d forgotten how infuriating Cathbad could be.
Cathbad leans forward. He looks tired, Nelson realises, and rather unhappy, but still has plenty of his old force.
‘I know what was wrong with you, Nelson. You were cursed. You got in the way of a curse meant for Danforth Smith. It killed him but you were too strong for it. You were lost in the Dreaming, between life and death. So I came to rescue you.’
‘You… came to…’ Nelson is speechless. He has always known that Cathbad is more or less mad but this? This seems to be pure delusion. He wonders if Cathbad is on drugs.
Cathbad’s next words don’t exactly put him at his ease. ‘I prepared a libation and took certain substances. I entered a dream state and I came to rescue you.’ He smiles kindly at Nelson.
‘Well I’m very grateful,’ says Nelson sarcastically. ‘I hope I said thank you at the time?’
‘You think you don’t remember,’ says Cathbad, ‘but you do. You remember the water and the darkness and Erik guarding the portal to the afterlife.’
Cathbad doesn’t seem to expect any answer to this, which is lucky because Nelson shows no sign of giving one. Instead, Cathbad leans over and takes a handful of the grapes that he has brought with him.
‘Did you know someone tried to kill me last night?’ he says chattily.
‘Is this something else that happened in your bloody dream world?’
‘No. Someone sent me a poisonous snake.’
‘What?’ Nelson struggles to sit up. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘A venomous snake was sent to the university, addressed to me. I got a call from the police as I was on my way here. I told them I was a friend of yours.’
Nelson groans inwardly. That’s all he needs. Head office thinking that he’s best mates with a warlock in a purple cloak. And what the hell’s this about another bloody snake? He thinks of the warnings in the letters about the Great Snake. Could this be the work of the Elginists? But Cathbad’s one of them, isn’t he?
‘Do they know who sent it?’
‘They think it’s some animal rights group but I have my doubts. I have a lot of enemies. The snake’s fine,’ he adds. ‘They’ve sent it to a zoo near Great Yarmouth.’
There’s not a lot Nelson can say to that. He looks at Cathbad, who is calmly finishing off the last of the grapes. The ward is quiet; all the other patients seem asleep. The afternoon sun makes squares on the worn lino floor. A very old woman is pushing a trolley laden with tea, coffee and squares of cake. Is Cathbad mad or is he?
One thing is certain: Nelson will never tell a living soul that he did see Erik.
Kate wants to see the stuffed animals again so Ruth is forced to run the gamut of the glass eyes. Kate stands for ages, breathing heavily on the glass, watching the foxes looking into their
‘Fox,’ says Kate in ecstasy.
‘Yes, fox,’ says Ruth, who wants to get home. ‘Like Fantastic Mr Fox. Say goodbye to the fox, Kate. We’ve got to get home to Flint.’
‘Fox,’ says Kate, ignoring her. ‘Fox, box.’
‘She’s a poet,’ says a voice behind them. Ruth can see Bob Woonunga’s smile reflected in the cabinet doors. Ruth, instinctively, moves between him and Kate. Behind her, Kate starts making the didgeridoo sound.
‘Don’t be scared, Ruth.’ Bob sounds amused. ‘I’m your friend. Your friendly neighbour.’
Is he her friend? He has certainly always been friendly towards her. Didn’t he find Flint that first night? In fact, both Flint and Kate seem entranced by him. And Cathbad likes him, though Cathbad also seems believe that he was capable of casting a spell that killed a man.
‘I heard that the skulls are going back,’ says Ruth. ‘You must be pleased.’
Bob is playing peek-a-boo with Kate, but when he looks up to meet Ruth’s eyes his face isn’t playful in the least. ‘I’m pleased, of course,’ he says. ‘But I’ve just been down to the cellars. The way those bones were kept! There’s no respect, no reverence, not even an acknowledgement that they’re human. I tell you, Ruth, it turned my stomach.’
‘I did say in my report that they weren’t kept in appropriate conditions,’ says Ruth weakly.
‘I know you did,’ says Bob, his voice softening. ‘I knew all along that you were on our side.’
Is that why you put me under a circle of protection, thinks Ruth. But she doesn’t believe in the curse, does she? Surreptitiously, she takes Kate’s hand.
‘We’d better be going.’
‘I hope you’ll come to the repatriation ceremony. It’ll be something else, I promise you.’
‘I’d like to come. Thank you.’
‘Bye Ruth,’ Bob stands aside. ‘Bye Kate.’
As they go out of the room, Ruth sees the case containing the grass snake, its glass eyes winking in the afternoon sunlight.
Up next is Judy. She hasn’t brought flowers or grapes. Instead she dumps a couple of lurid-looking paperbacks on his locker.
‘Thought you might want something to read.’
Nelson isn’t much of a reader. One of the books has a skull on the cover, the other a swastika. He squints at the blurbs: conspiracy… war… torture… blackmail… death. Judy really has him down as the sensitive type, doesn’t she?
‘I heard all about last night,’ he says.
‘Who from? Oh, Clough’s been in has he? What did he tell you?’
‘Just that you solved Operation Octopus.’
Judy seems to relax slightly. ‘It was a lucky guess. A series of lucky guesses.’
‘Sounded like good police work to me.’
Judy looks away. ‘I messed up. Clough had to save me.’
‘He saved me once,’ says Nelson. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘I should never have gone there without back-up but I wanted to solve it on my own.’
‘Policing’s about teamwork,’ says Nelson, who has never waited for back-up in his life.
‘You’re right,’ says Judy, fiddling with a hand sanitiser. ‘Clough’s a better team player than me.’
‘I hear he wrestled a mad horse to the ground.’
Judy laughs. ‘He was scared stiff. Did he tell you that? Mind you, it was terrifying, shut in a small space with a horse like that. I like horses but I’m not sure I ever want to see one again.’
‘So you’re not going to go back and see Randolph Smith?’
‘Did Clough tell you I fancied him? I don’t. He was brilliant last night though. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t turned up when he did.’
‘So the older sister turned out to be the black sheep?’
‘Yes. She was the clever one, despised the other two. Hated the dad too, by all accounts. Mind you, Caroline, the younger sister, is a bit mad too.’
She tells Nelson about the dead snakes and the men dancing in the woods.
‘Snakes again,’ says Nelson.
‘Yes, turns out that Danforth Smith was terrified of them.’
With reason, thinks Nelson. Aloud he says, ‘And this Caroline’s a friend of Cathbad’s? Figures.’
‘She wanted her father to give back the Aborigine bones. It sounds like she was obsessed with them.’
‘Do you think she wrote the letters to the curator? And there was a snake found in the room with the body. Maybe that was her too.’
‘I don’t know. She didn’t mention the curator. It seemed to be all about her dad. Like it was all his fault.’
‘It’s always the dad’s fault,’ says Nelson.
Judy thinks of her own genial, horse-loving father. ‘I think dads are OK,’ she says.
She sounds so like her old self that Nelson begins to hope that the silent, withdrawn Judy has gone for good. Maybe now they can get back to police work. He’ll give her some more responsibility. She didn’t do so badly with Operation Octopus, after all. Then she spoils everything by telling him that she’s pregnant.
Flint is delighted to see Ruth and Kate. He has been alone all day, he tells them, purring sinuously about their ankles, starving and neglected. He has, in fact, been asleep in the airing cupboard. Ruth feeds her cat and starts
