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And Ruth has the strangest sensation, as if time has rewound itself and, in the process, become distorted, inverted. She has a vision of herself peering into an underground prison, a girl’s face looking up at her.
‘Lucy?’ she says. ‘You’re Lucy, aren’t you?’
Chapter 33
‘Are you hurt?’ shouts the woman. Lucy.
‘We’re not,’ Ruth’s voice is hoarse from storytelling, ‘but there’s an injured man down here.’
‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ says Lucy. ‘The police too. Can you climb the ladder?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth, ‘but I think we should stay with Cathbad until the ambulance comes.’ She doesn’t explain who Cathbad is, but Lucy seems to understand. Ruth wants, more than anything, to escape the pit but she can’t leave Cathbad on his own and she doesn’t want Kate to go above ground without her. The appearance of Lucy is so odd, so dreamlike, that Ruth can’t imagine what else they will find in the real world. The god Grim? All the victims Ruth has excavated over the years, wandering through the forest in a zombie-like state?
A few minutes later, Lucy calls down. ‘I’m throwing down a bottle of water. Help is on its way.’
The plastic bottle ricochets down the rungs of the ladder. Ruth takes it and crawls back, through the tunnel, past the headless torso, to Cathbad. Once again, Kate is close behind her. She holds the water to Cathbad’s lips.
‘We’ve been rescued,’ she says. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
But Cathbad seems to have sunk back into unconsciousness. Please, Ruth prays to whatever being guards the underworld, please don’t let it be too late. Cathbad looks peaceful now, almost as if he is sleeping. Ruth remembers when Kate was a baby and refused to go to sleep. Cathbad had stayed at their house, taken hallucinogenic drugs and contacted the afterlife. After that, Kate slept like an angel.
‘Michael and Miranda are waiting for you,’ Kate tells Cathbad.
Ruth blesses her daughter for thinking of invoking the magical names. She joins in: Judy, Maddie, Michael, Miranda (Cathbad obviously has a thing for the letter M), Thing, Kate, Hecate, Ruth, Nelson, Michelle, Laura, Rebecca, George. The litany of their shared past.
After what feels like ages but is probably fifteen minutes there’s a loud clanging sound. ‘Paramedics coming down,’ shouts a male voice, sounding wonderfully breezy and confident.
‘We’re here,’ shouts Ruth. ‘In the tunnel.’ She switches on her phone, now on its last five per cent.
After a few minutes, a large moustachioed face appears in the entrance to the cave.
‘He’s here,’ says Ruth. ‘He’s called Cathbad.’
The man crawls forward, with difficulty because he’s bigger than Ruth or Kate. ‘Hi there, Cathbad, let’s look at you.’ He takes Cathbad’s pulse and listens to his chest. ‘Vital signs not too bad. I’ll get a colleague down here and we’ll wrap him up and pull him out. You two should go now. You’ve looked after him really well, but we need the space in here.’
‘OK,’ says Ruth. She touches Cathbad’s hand. ‘See you soon,’ she says. Then she edges past the paramedic and crawls back along the underground passage.
Kate is up the ladder in a trice. Ruth finds it much more difficult. Her arms seem to have lost all their strength and her ribs hurt. But, finally, she feels the blessed cold air on her face. The night seems full of lights and people. Someone puts a silver blanket over Ruth’s shoulders and guides her to a patch of grass where Kate is sitting next to a young woman with dark hair pulled back from a pale face. As Ruth looks at her, she knows.
‘Am I dreaming?’ she says. ‘Are you Lucy Downey?’
‘It’s Vanstone now,’ says Lucy. ‘DC Lucy Vanstone. But yes. Yes I am.’
‘DC? Are you with the police?’
‘Yes. I’m working with DCI Nelson.’
‘Does he know? Who you are, I mean?’
‘No,’ says Lucy. ‘It’s hard to find the words somehow. Anyway, I wanted to tell you first. I keep going to your house but you’re always out. I think your next-door neighbour is getting suspicious.’
‘Is that how you found us?’ says Ruth. ‘Did Zoe tell you where I was?’
‘She said it was something to do with the case,’ says Lucy, ‘so I drove around all the locations connected with it. When I arrived here, I saw your car, so I knew I was in the right place.’
‘Who are you?’ says Kate. After being so brave in the mine, her voice now sounds as if she’s on the verge of tears.
‘Your mum saved my life when I wasn’t much older than you,’ says Lucy.
