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‘What about you and me?’ asked Judy. Because she sometimes still can’t believe that she, rational police officer Judy, is in a relationship with someone who thinks they can talk to cats.
‘We were always ordained to be together,’ said Cathbad.
Is that why she’s here today? Because of cosmic repercussions? Judy doesn’t know but she has learnt enough from Cathbad, over the years, to follow her instincts. She read more of his memoirs last night, growing up under the guardianship of kind, tough Fionnuala and ethereal Bridget, whose magic powers Cathbad never seems to doubt. Judy reached Cathbad’s fifteenth birthday and his first kiss, with a girl called Niamh. She was reluctant to read further, not just because she knew that Bridget died when Cathbad was sixteen. But she woke up that morning with the Saltmarsh in her head, her path pulsating like an electronic map, the blue dot moving ever closer to its destination. It must be a message, surely? Does she really think Cathbad will be here? It seems ridiculous but is it any stranger than the fact that they once found a girl here, kept captive in a hide for ten years?
The hide is in front of them now. Judy has Thing on the lead because bird watchers get very worked up about dogs frightening the wildfowl. But the wooden building is deserted. It was taken apart by forensics teams thirteen years ago but rebuilt by the RSPB. It’s just a hut really, raised up over the flat ground, but Judy remembers that it was originally built over an old Second World War air-raid shelter. The marshes are full of reminders of this, more recent, human conflict: pillboxes, anti-tank defences, even a target range. All human life is here, thinks Judy. She was once part of a team that found Second World War skeletons buried on a Norfolk beach.
The hide smells of sheds. There’s a chart showing the most commonly spotted birds and a bench running the length of one wall, with viewing holes at eye level. Judy scans the hut for signs of human activity. She finds them quite easily. There are muddy footprints all over the rubber floor and, in the very centre of the room, a bunch of flowers next to a stone with a hole through the middle.
Cathbad has always thought that Judy and Clough share a psychic connection so perhaps he wouldn’t be too surprised to see that Clough, too, is journeying into the past. Clough surprises himself, though. With all the work of a busy DI on his plate, not to mention the Emily Pickering investigation, why is he knocking on the door of ‘Madame Rita, Psychic Investigator’?
Clough first came across Rita when Michael, Judy’s son, was abducted. She’d given him a clue which, although maddeningly cryptic at the time, turned out to be accurate, when looked at in the right way. Impressed, despite himself, Clough had consulted the psychic when another child went missing. Again, she had been helpful, even if only in retrospect. Clough is not sure why he thinks that Madame Rita will lead him to Cathbad this time. Maybe because neither of them ever explains quite what they mean but, perhaps for this very reason, it’s hard to prove them wrong.
A quick google search has revealed that Rita now lives in Girton, on the north-west fringes of Cambridge. It’s one of those leafy villages that always make Clough think of horror films. There’s the church where the vicar will be horribly murdered, there’s the pub where every head will turn at the entrance of a stranger, there’s the cottage where a face will appear in an upper window, mouth open in a silent scream.
All that appears in Madame Rita’s window is the psychic herself, wearing a prosaic NHS face mask.
‘Come in,’ she shouts down. ‘The door’s open.’
Clough finds himself in a small sitting room. There’s a crystal ball on a side table but, otherwise, it could be a room belonging to any elderly person, lots of doilies and ornaments, framed grandchildren on the walls.
‘DS Clough.’ Rita has made a soundless entrance. ‘Good to see you again.’
‘It’s DI now,’ Clough can’t help adding.
Rita laughs. ‘You can’t expect me to know everything. You don’t mind if I keep the mask on, do you? Compromised immune system.’
Clough mutters something about it being better to be careful. He’s already regretting the visit.
‘Did you bring something belonging to the missing person? Like I said on the phone?’
Clough produces three stones threaded together. It had been a wedding gift from Cathbad (along with a rather more useful John Lewis voucher from Judy). ‘Hag stones have powerful magic,’ he’d said at the time. ‘They guard against witches and some say that, if you look through the central hole, you can see the fairy realm.’ Cassandra usually keeps the stones hanging in the porch.
Now Rita takes them in both hands and shuts her eyes. Clough doesn’t know where to look and fixes his gaze on the church tower, visible through the latticed window. The blue face of the clock says ten past eleven. What would Nelson say if he knew Clough was wasting his time in this way?
Clough looks back at Madame Rita. Her eyes above the mask are compassionate.
‘He is no longer walking on the surface of this earth.’
Tanya feels as if she, too, is in the underworld. Five Oaks Nursing Home looks pleasant enough on the outside– green lawns, yellowing in the heat, flower beds, strategically placed benches– but, inside, there’s a pervasive smell of urine and despair. The staff seem friendly, though. The woman on reception knows who she is and says that she’ll send for the manager. She also asks Tanya to put on an NHS issue mask. Tanya wants to complain because her own mask is the top-rated KN95 version. But she does what she’s told, adjusting the elastic to fit her face.
The reception area tries its best, with flowers and magazines on a coffee table, but the smell is still there. As Tanya waits, a nurse in blue scrubs passes, pushing a man in a wheelchair and talking with a kind of determined cheerfulness that Tanya could never achieve. Her own parents are healthy sixty-somethings. She can’t imagine them ever needing a place like Five Oaks but, if that day ever comes, Tanya knows that she will go to pieces and leave everything to her brother and sister. Joe would be great at the helm of a wheelchair.
‘Detective Sergeant Fuller? I’m Adele Masters. The manager.’
Tanya is surprised to find herself liking Adele, who has short hair and a no-nonsense manner. She’s also wearing a KN95 mask. They don’t shake hands, because of Covid, but Tanya is sure that Adele’s handshake would be a firm one.
‘Arabella’s in the visiting room. I’ll take you there. You’ll have to talk to her behind a screen, I’m afraid.’
Arabella is a young person’s name, thinks Tanya, as she follows Adele along green-painted corridors. She can hear a television blaring somewhere and occasionally blue-uniformed figures scurry past, but she doesn’t see any of the inmates. Arabella is a heroine’s name, or one belonging to an artist with flowers in her hair. She’s pretty sure that’s not who she’s going to meet.
‘Does. . . er. . . Arabella have many visitors?’
‘Well, of course, for much of last year we couldn’t allow any visitors,’ says Adele. ‘It was heart-breaking. Early on in the pandemic, hospitals routinely sent patients back to us with Covid. We had several deaths and we couldn’t let relatives be with their loved ones, even in their last hours. Our staff were fantastic, though. Many of them voluntarily locked down with us. We lost two staff members to Covid.’
‘That’s terrible.’ Tanya is beginning to see the blue figures in a new light.
‘We were able to relax restrictions in May,’ says Adele. ‘Although we’ve had to limit the number of visitors and we can’t allow any physical contact. Even so, it’s amazing to see the effects on the patients. Social distancing was very hard for people with Alzheimer’s. We couldn’t explain what was going on.’
