Elly Griffiths - The Crossing Places

Then she hears a sound which makes her heart stop. A voice like no human voice she has ever heard. It is as if the dead themselves are calling her. Three calls, low and even, the last shuddering away into silence. What the hell was that?

The call comes again, this time from very close by. For no reason that she knows, she starts to move towards it and suddenly finds herself facing a solid wall.

She can't believe it at first. But it is, unmistakably, a wall. Gingerly, she puts out a hand to touch it. No, it isn't a mirage. It is a solid wall, wood, made of rough boards nailed together.

Of course, it's the hide! She has reached the hide. She almost laughs out loud in her relief. This must be the furthest hide, the one where she and Peter met David that day. But that hide, she remembers, is above the tidal mark.

She is safe. She can shelter inside until the storm passes.

Oh, thank God for bird watchers.

Half-drunk with relief, she staggers into the hut. It's open on one side so it doesn't offer brilliant shelter but it's a great deal better than nothing. It is wonderful to be out of the wind and the rain. Her face aches as if she has been repeatedly slapped and her ears are still ringing. She rests her head against the rough wood wall and closes her eyes.

It's crazy but she could almost go to sleep.

Outside the storm is still raging but she has almost become used to it. Now the wind sounds like children's voices calling. How sad they sound, like the cries of sailors lost at sea, like the will o'the wisps searching the world for comfort and warmth. Ruth shivers. She mustn't get spooked now and start thinking about Erik's fireside tales.

About the long green fingers reaching up out of the water, about the undead creatures roaming the night, about the drowned cities, the church bells ringing deep below the sea…

She jumps. She has heard a cry coming from beneath her feet. She listens again. For a moment, the storm is still and she hears it again. Unmistakably a human voice. 'Help me!

Help me!'

Stupidly Ruth looks at the wooden floor of the hide. It is covered by a carpet of rush matting. She tears at the carpet. It is obviously pinned down but comes away after the third or fourth tug. Below are floorboards and a trapdoor.

Why on earth would there be a trapdoor in a bird-watching hide? And there is the voice again. Calling from beneath the floor.

Hardly knowing what she is doing, Ruth bends down and puts her face to the trapdoor.

'Who's there?' she calls.

there is a silence and then a voice answers, 'It's me.'

The simplicity of this response strikes Ruth to the heart.

It presupposes that Ruth knows the owner of the voice.

And, almost at once, she feels as if she does.

'Don't worry,' she shouts, 'I'm coming.'

There is a bolt on the trapdoor. It slides back easily as if it is used regularly. Ruth opens the door and peers down in the darkness. At the same time a flash of lightning illuminates the surroundings.

A face looks back up at her. A girl, a teenager perhaps, painfully thin with long, matted hair. She's wearing a man's jumper and tattered trousers and has a blanket round her shoulders.

'What are you doing here?' asks Ruth stupidly.

The girl just shakes her head. Her eyes are huge, her skin grey with pallor.

'What's your name?' asks Ruth.

But, all of a sudden, she knows.

'Lucy,' she says gently. 'You're Lucy, aren't you?'

Judy and Clough report that there is no response from either of Ruth's neighbours.

'Houses look shut up, Sir.' Nelson tells them to stay and wait for the dog handlers. He will search on the Saltmarsh.

'In this?' says Clough, gesturing towards the dark expanse of the marsh, where the trees are almost blown flat by the wind. 'You'll never find them.'

'There's quicksand,' says Judy, as a particularly savage blast almost knocks her off her feet. 'And the tide comes in really quickly. I used to live around here. It's not safe.'

'I know a way,' says Cathbad.

They all look at him. His cloak is flying out in the wind, his eyes are bright. Somehow he doesn't look quite as ridiculous as usual.

'There's a hidden way,' Cathbad goes on. 'I discovered it ten years ago. It's a sort of shingle spit. It leads from the lowest hide right up to the henge circle. Solid ground all the way.'

That must have been the path Ruth took to find Scarlet's body, thinks Nelson. 'Can you find it in the dark?' he asks.

'Trust me,' says Cathbad.

Which none of them finds very reassuring.

The sound of her name seems to have a devastating effect on the girl. She starts to cry loudly. A child crying rather than a teenage girl.

'Let me out!' she sobs. 'Oh please, let me out.'

'I will,' says Ruth grimly.

She reaches down and grabs the girl's arm. It feels brittle, as if it might snap. Then she hauls but she is not strong enough to take the girl's weight, skinny as she is.

Oh, why hadn't she kept going to the gym?

'I'm coming down,' she says at last. 'Then I'll give you a leg up.'

The girl backs away but Ruth is determined. She jumps in through the trapdoor and falls heavily onto the concrete floor below. The girl is standing against the opposite wall, her teeth bared like an animal at bay. In her hand she holds a stone. A flint, decides Ruth, giving it a sharp, professional look. A sharp one.

Ruth tries a smile. 'Hello,' she says. 'Hello Lucy. I'm Ruth.'

The girl lets out a small, frightened sound but doesn't move.

Ruth looks around. She is in a small, square, underground dungeon. Looking up, she sees the trapdoor in the ceiling, and a barred window which also has a wooden cover. The room is empty apart from a low bed, a bucket and a plastic box which seems to contain a baby's toys.

The walls and the floor are all concrete, rough in places, and there is moisture running down the walls. The whole place smells of damp and urine and fear.

My God, thinks Ruth in horror, has Erik really kept her a prisoner all this time? What about when he was in Norway? Cathbad, that must be the answer. This is the link between Erik and Cathbad. Cathbad is his jailer.

And now they must escape. Ruth turns to the girl, who is still cowering against the wall.

'Come on.' She holds out her hand again. 'I'm going to help you get out of here.'

But the girl, Lucy, just whimpers and shakes her head.

'Come on, Lucy,' says Ruth, trying to keep her voice as calm and gentle as possible. Trying to make it sound as if they have all the time in the world and there isn't a madman on their trail and a raging tempest outside. 'Come on. I'll take you home. You'd like to go home, wouldn't you, Lucy? See your mum and dad?'

She'd expected Lucy to react to the words mum and dad but the girl is still looking terrified. Ruth edges slowly towards her, dredging her mind for every soothing platitude she can think of.

'There, there. It's OK. Don't worry. It'll be alright.'

What were some of the meaningless things her mother used to say to her? Annoying little catchphrases but nevertheless as soothing as a cup of cocoa when you can't sleep.

Ruth has never had children so it is her own childhood she must conjure up. Remember the days when her mother was not just someone who annoyed her on the phone, but the most important person in the world. The litany of motherhood.

'Don't worry. No use crying over spilt milk. Never get well if you pick it. Tears before bedtime. Tomorrow's another day. All's well that ends well. It's just a phase.

Don't cry. It's darkest before dawn.'

And, as if the last words are the magic spell that releases the princess from the tower, Lucy throws herself into Ruth's arms.

Nelson drives Cathbad to the car park in silence. The only sounds are the overloaded windscreen wipers swishing to and fro and Nelson's fingers drumming impatiently on the steering wheel. Perhaps fortunately for his continued well being, Cathbad does not comment on this typically Scorpio impatience.