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‘The horned figure,’ says Judy. ‘I’ve seen a picture of Gaia with her hair in two buns on top of her head. Space buns, they’re called. Miranda sometimes asks me to do her hair like that. They could look like horns.’
‘Ballard wouldn’t say anything else, though,’ says Nelson. ‘Just babbled on about Janus.’
‘Janus. He’s the one with two faces, isn’t he?’
‘I think so. Ballard had a statue of him in his garden. Creepy-looking thing.’
‘I was looking at my notes yesterday,’ says Judy. ‘I don’t have the official files, of course, just what I’ve pieced together. But I kept thinking: two people. There were two green children. Two sisters. Gaia and Freya.’
‘And Emily and her sister Sophie.’
‘Yes,’ says Judy.
They look at each other. Nelson’s mind is struggling, like a carriage creaking its way to the top of a roller coaster. Sooner or later will come the plunge, the vertigo.
Look to the sister.
Our old friend Janus.
I’m Ruth’s sister.
Nelson goes to his computer and opens the case file. He scrolls through the interviews until he finds Mark Oldbury.
‘Listen to this,’ he says to Judy. Oldbury’s voice, with its slight Antipodean twang, fills the room.
‘We’d had a few good days. You know these pampered kids; they’re not used to roughing it. There are always complaints at first. The ground’s too hard, there’s no hot water and they have to pee behind a bush. They don’t come prepared at all. One girl even brought her curling tongs. But, by the end of the weekend, they’d all settled down. There was a celebratory feeling that last night. One of the students played the guitar. We were all singing. . .’
‘Very interesting,’ says Judy. ‘But why is it relevant?’
‘When Cathbad watched the video of Emily in Ely he went to a total stranger’s house and asked if he could use their phone.’
‘That sounds like Cathbad.’
‘It does. Anyway, the woman thought she heard him say something about a gate.’
‘A gate?’
‘Yes. But what if it wasgait? The way someone walks?’
‘Do you mean Emily?’
‘Yes.’ Nelson grabs his black jacket. ‘Come on. We’re going to a funeral.’
‘What do you mean?’ says Ruth. But she knows what he means, only too well. She’s just trying to stall things. Preferably for ever. She wishes she was anywhere else in the world. She almost wishes she was still buried in the underground mine shaft.
‘I’m in love with you,’ says David. He says it in the same irritable way that he puts the case for the arrival of the Beaker People in 2000 BC. ‘I assumed you knew.’
‘I certainly didn’t,’ says Ruth. ‘We seem to argue most of the time.’
‘That’s always a sign, don’t you think?’
Is it? When Ruth first met Nelson they had clashed, disagreeing on almost everything. Ruth was an atheist, Nelson a lapsed Catholic. Ruth was an academic, Nelson a hard-nosed police officer. Nelson was a family man, Ruth happy living alone with her cat. And yet. . . there was definitely something, a connection between them, something that transcended all the differences. Cosmic balance, Cathbad said once, yin and yang. Is it the same with David?
‘I’m sorry, David,’ says Ruth. ‘My life is. . . complicated at the moment. I can’t really think about relationships.’
‘Oh, I know about Nelson,’ says David. ‘But he’s never going to leave his wife.’
‘She’s left him,’ says Ruth. Her voice sounds small and unconvincing.
