That night she sees the Grey Lady. She has no idea what time it is, drifting in an uneasy state between waking and sleeping. She opens her eyes. Or does she? There’s a woman standing in front of her, dressed in long grey robes. Her hand is outstretched, as if she’s offering something, but she can’t see what it is. It’s the eyes that she remembers most. They look so sad.
She must have fallen asleep because, when she wakes up, her sleeping bag is wet with condensation. Was the Grey Lady ever there, gazing at her with her sweet, sad eyes? He’s left a bucket for her to pee in and she does that, gagging at the stench of ammonia. She can’t be sick again because there’s nothing in her stomach. She almost takes another pill, just for the sensation of swallowing, but she manages to stop herself.
She never hears him approaching. It’s as if he has paws instead of feet. Like a cat. She’s drifting in and out of sleep when the grille opens and she hears his voice.
‘It’s me,’ he says. But who else would it be?
She takes the plate. It contains another apple and a tiny piece of cheese.
‘You’ll lose weight in no time,’ he says from behind the door.
Will she continue to lose weight until she’s nothing but a skeleton? There are more pills too.
‘Why are you giving me medicine?’ she says.
‘Just swallow them,’ he says, ‘and then you’ll be free.’
‘Give me some water then.’
He pushes a bottle through. She takes a gulp.
‘Have you taken a pill?’ There’s a new note in his voice. Excitement.
‘Yes.’
‘Good girl.’
Is that what the Grey Lady was doing? Holding out pills for her to take? But, no, she’s convinced that the Lady was a friendly spirit. The way she’d looked at her was so sorrowful, so understanding. Our Lady of the Sorrows. But maybe this was just because she’s dead too. Sometimes she imagines that everyone else in the world is dead, victims of the virus, and there’s only her, battering on her prison door, shouting into the silence.
Ruth barely sleeps. She dreams about Cathbad, about walking with him on the Blackpool sands, about Cathbad climbing into the sky to rescue Kate. She sees a room with ballet dancer wallpaper, Cathbad weeping when Michael was born, his face when he performed Kate’s naming ceremony. May the gods keep this child perfect and let anything that is negative stay far beyond her world.
Flint starts meowing outside the door at five a.m., just when Ruth has fallen into an uneasy sleep. Light is filtering in through the curtains. She might as well get up. Ruth checks her phone. Nothing from Judy. But would she tell Ruth if the worst had happened? ‘Think it’s the end’ is what Judy had texted to Nelson. What if the end has already happened? Is Ruth living in a post-Cathbad world?
She gets up and reaches for her favourite dressing gown. At least she is now free to wear this garment, which she considered too unsexy to show Nelson. It’s very comforting though, towelling and threadbare. She puts on her slippers – equally ancient and not revealed to Nelson – and leaves the room, almost tripping over Flint who has positioned himself at the top of the stairs. Ruth goes into the kitchen to feed him and put on the kettle, in that order. The supply of gourmet cat food is running low. She will have to go shopping today.
Ruth takes her mug of tea into the sitting room. It’s another stunning sunrise, the marshes turning palest pink and then deepest gold. Dawn, she thinks. Dawn 1963. Had her sister been named after this daily phenomenon? She can hardly ask her mother, and, at this rate, she’ll never see Zoe again to ask her either. At six, she feels brave enough to text Judy. How are you? This seems neutral enough. She hopes that the message doesn’t wake Judy.
But Judy texts back in seconds, clearly awake too. OK. No more news. C still critical. Critical, thinks Ruth, but still alive. Thanks be to the goddess. Despite spending years attending church with her parents, she doesn’t know how to pray but she sends out a message to the wakening world, the waving grass, the swirling seabirds. Please save Cathbad.
Nelson, too, wakes early. His bed is bigger and more comfortable than Ruth’s, but he hasn’t slept well since he’s been home. He misses sharing a bed with Ruth, he misses seeing Katie at breakfast, he even misses the yowls of the demon cat on the landing. He reaches for his phone. Six thirty. He can hear the radio playing softly in Laura’s room. She doesn’t sleep well either. Not for the first time, he wishes that Bruno were there. His primal needs – food and walking – would stop him thinking about Cathbad. Can it really be the end? Surely Cathbad is indestructible.
Nelson gets up and puts on his dressing gown. It’s a Dad garment, bought by his daughters, with his initials on the pocket. Not something he would like Ruth to see. He puts on his slippers and pads downstairs. Once again, he imagines that he can hear Bruno beside him, panting gently, his tail battering Nelson’s legs. Black Shuck again? Or a message from Cathbad the shape-shifter? Nelson is making tea when he sees that he has a message from Ruth.
Heard from Judy. No change.
‘Thank Christ for that,’ says Nelson, aloud. ‘Where there’s life there’s hope.’ He imagines the ghost dog wagging its tail.
Kate emerges at nine looking, for a scary second, like a mini teenager.
‘How’s Uncle Cathbad?’ she says. She hasn’t called him Uncle for years. Cathbad isn’t Kate’s uncle but he is her godfather – through the pagan ceremony and in the eyes of the Catholic church – and she loves him.
‘He’s still very ill,’ says Ruth, ‘but the doctors and nurses are looking after him. Judy says he’s got a lovely nurse called Abbas.’
‘We should pray for Uncle Cathbad,’ says Kate. Ruth wonders again where Kate is getting this religious stuff from. ‘I like Bible stories,’ she’d said the other day. Ruth feels out of her depth although this would be familiar ground for Nelson. Last night he mentioned that he was praying to some entity called St Carlo, apparently on the advice of his mum. Ruth is always worried when Nelson takes his mother’s advice. But, then again, what harm can praying do?
‘Let’s pray silently for Cathbad,’ says Ruth. ‘And we’ll pray that Zoe gets home safely.’
‘If Zoe doesn’t come back,’ says Kate, ‘can we adopt Derek?’
Nelson has asked both Tanya and Tony to come in today. They have a lot to do, after all. Joe McMahon, Eileen Gribbon and Zoe Hilton are all still on the missing list. Then there’s the witness who saw a ‘bearded chap’ visiting Samantha Wilson. Was this Joe McMahon? Nelson doesn’t know but he would like to speak to the missing student as soon as possible.
Tony is in the kitchen and offers to make Nelson a cup of coffee. Nelson says yes although he knows he’ll be buzzing after three teas. Still, the day he goes caffeine free will be the day they nail down his coffin lid.
‘No Leah today?’ says Nelson.
‘I haven’t seen her,’ says Tony. ‘Sugar?’
‘No thanks.’ Michelle made him give up last year.
Tanya floats in carrying her own box of special tea bags. ‘This one’s called health and well-being.’ She waves a purple sachet at them.
‘Don’t know why the government bothers with all those health experts,’ says Nelson. ‘Send them a box and Covid will be finished. No more hands, face, space and all that bollocks.’ This reminds him that he really shouldn’t be in the small kitchen with two other people.
‘Meeting in the incident room,’ he says and goes to open some windows.
Tanya says that she’s contacted Eileen’s mother. ‘She hasn’t heard from Eileen in about a week. She didn’t seem worried though.’
‘Some people don’t deserve to be parents,’ says Nelson.
‘Could Eileen and Joe be together?’ asks Tony. ‘They’re in the same year at uni after all.’
‘It’s a possibility,’ says Nelson. ‘It was Eileen who first alerted us about Joe’s disappearance, but he could have been in touch since.’
Tony opens his mouth and Nelson dreads an anecdote about his own university days, possibly featuring friends made in freshers’ week and never forgotten, but he has underestimated the new recruit. ‘I was looking at Judy’s notes on the supposed suicides,’ says Tony, ‘and one of Karen Head’s friends mentioned her having a boyfriend with an unsuitable age difference.’
Nelson is impressed. ‘You think it might be Joe McMahon?’
‘It’s just a thought.’
‘A good one. See if Joe ever attended one of those slimming meetings. Lean Machine or whatever they were called.’
‘Lean Zone,’ says Tanya, zipping through her notes as though keen to match Tony for insights.
‘Ruth went to a Lean Zone meeting,’ says Nelson. ‘And McMahon seems to be obsessed with her. Her missing neighbour, Zoe Hilton, went too.’
‘Good for Ruth,’ says Tanya.
‘Why?’ says Nelson.
‘No reason.’ Tanya looks back down at her notes. ‘Judy thought there was a link with Lean Zone, didn’t she? I suppose we could ask her about it.’
‘She’s got enough on her plate at the moment,’ says Nelson.
And that’s the other reason for all the activity. To avoid thinking about Cathbad.
But Judy is, in fact, sitting at her home-office space in her bedroom. Maddie has taken the younger children to the beach and there is only one thing that can take Judy’s mind off the possible death of her life partner: work. Although she’s had messages today from Nelson, Clough, Tony and even Tanya, none of them have asked about the case. She wishes they would. She wishes that she could say something besides ‘no news yet, in ICU, holding his own.’ ‘I used to hold my own,’ Clough texted back, ‘until I was told it would make me go blind.’ She misses Clough.
There’s something there, some link that she’s not seeing. Judy leafs through her notebook.
She went to evensong at St Matthew’s sometimes.
Avril and Tony loved birdwatching. It was one of the reasons they moved here.
She was very devout in her quiet way.
People do become very close sometimes. We’ve even had a few romances.
I was a bit worried. I wish I’d asked more.
What’s the connection? She’s got to find it. Nelson and co will never crack this case on their own.
‘Mum!’ She hears shouts from downstairs. Barking. Wails of, ‘It’s not fair. She said I could have it.’ The children have become particularly demanding in the last twenty-four hours. Thing too. She knows she should go downstairs but she can’t quite face it yet. Then she hears another voice, one that seems to come from another world, another life.
‘I know I can’t come inside but can you just say I’m here?’
‘Clough!’
Judy runs to the top of the stairs.
Back in his office, Nelson takes out the postcard that Eileen Gribbon posted under Mei’s door. It’s still in its plastic evidence bag.
I’m off! Thanks for everything. Love you Exx
‘Off,’ says Nelson aloud. ‘Off where, Eileen?’ In theory, it should be easy to trace people during lockdown. After all, everyone is meant to be staying at home to save lives. But what happens when they have to leave home, maybe to save their own life?
Mei has given him her number and he rings it now.
‘Just checking that you’re all right.’
‘I’m fine,’ says Mei with the heartbreaking confidence of youth. ‘Jeremy came to check on us today.’
‘Jeremy? Oh yes, the warden.’ At least he seems to be remembering his duty of care, albeit rather late in the day.
‘Let me know if you’re worried about anything,’ says Nelson.
‘I’m not worried,’ says Mei, as if she’s not alone in a foreign country in the middle of a pandemic.
After a cheerful farewell from Mei, Nelson turns the postcard over. The picture is of a lopsided black and white house with a cloaked figure standing in front of it.
‘Augustine Steward’s House, Tombland,’ he reads, ‘is haunted by the Grey Lady. This tormented ghost from the sixteenth century hides a terrible secret.’