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‘Can I have a word?’ says Jo. ‘Is that your phone? What’s it doing on the floor?’
‘Dropped it,’ mutters Nelson.
Jo places the phone on Nelson’s desk and settles herself in the visitors’ chair. She’s wearing tight black trousers and a top that Nelson would describe– possibly wrongly– as leopard-print. The general effect is of a tiger coming to tea. A tiger in high-heeled ankle boots.
Nelson expects Jo to mention the missed appraisal but her first words are surprising. And rather alarming.
‘It’s about Cathbad,’ says Jo.
‘I’ve got all units looking for him,’ says Nelson.
‘This disappearance,’ says Jo. ‘Does it strike you assuspicious?’
Nelson is aware of his senses snapping to attention. Suddenly he’s on high alert. Waiting for the pounce.
‘Unusual, certainly,’ he says. ‘Even worrying. Not suspicious, exactly.’
Jo recrosses her legs. ‘Cathbad knew the missing girl. He may even have had a sexual relationship with her.’
‘He did,’ says Nelson. ‘He told me last week. Not in a formal interview. Just a chat.’
‘That’s my point,’ says Jo. ‘It should have been a formal interview. I know Cathbad’s your friend. I know he’s in a relationship with one of our officers. But we have to treat him as a suspect.’
‘All the evidence so far points to Peter Webster,’ says Nelson. ‘The owner of the Green Child café.’
‘But he’s not the one who’s gone on the run,’ says Jo.
‘Webster’s dead,’ says Nelson. He is taken aback by the phrase ‘gone on the run’. But, Jo’s right, in other cases that’s just how he’d view the disappearance of a key witness.
‘Cathbad’s not well,’ he says. ‘Judy thinks he might be heading for some kind of breakdown.’ She hadn’t said that exactly but all the churchgoing and suchlike could point in that direction.
‘Guilt can do funny things to you,’ says Jo. ‘I just hope he turns up soon.’
So do I, thinks Nelson. He can’t bring himself to think that Cathbad had anything to do with Emily’s death but there had certainly been something strange in his manner during that last walk. All that talk about putting his affairs in order. When they had parted, Cathbad had kissed Nelson on both cheeks, much to the latter’s discomfiture. It had certainly felt like a farewell.
After Jo prowls away, Nelson sits at his desk, deep in thought. A knock on his door makes him jump. Too hesitant to be Jo, thanks be to God.
‘Come in!’ barks Nelson.
Lucy Vanstone approaches rather warily. ‘I think I’ve got something from the house-to-house,’ she says.
‘Oh yes?’ He gestures for her to sit down and Lucy does so. She’s rather old-fashioned in her manner, sitting up very straight with her hands in her lap. You couldn’t imagine her lounging or yelling in the way that Nelson’s daughters do. Yet despite this– or perhaps because of it– she makes Nelson feel rather nervous.
‘I spoke to a man who runs a café on Unthank Road,’ she says. ‘He saw someone answering Michael Malone’s description getting into a car on Friday lunchtime.’
‘Really?’ This is a breakthrough.
‘He says the car pulled up and Malone got inside. Like he was waiting to be collected.’
‘What sort of car was it?’
‘He said he thought it was one of the new electric ones. It was silent, he said.’
Like Leo Ballard’s Kia EV6.
Chapter 27
Judy and Thing are walking along the beach. At least, today, they are on their own. Michael and Miranda are at school, Maddie at work. It’s just Judy and the dog on the Cathbad trail. They’re not on ‘their’ beach at Wells but Ruth’s beach by the Saltmarsh. This is where, twenty-four years earlier, a timber circle had emerged from the sea, a great archaeological discovery, certainly, but also an event that, in Cathbad’s opinion, created a disturbance in the ether, a cosmic jolt that is still causing repercussions in the lives of the people involved. ‘Things are still slightly out of balance,’ he said recently. ‘Ruth and Nelson. That only happened because of the energies from the dig.’
