Lucy Downey and is struck by the resemblance to Scarlet Henderson. The same dark, curling hair, the same smiling mouth. Only the clothes are different. Lucy Downey is wearing a grey school uniform. Scarlet, in the picture Ruth saw, had been wearing a fairy dress.
âNo,â says Cathbad shortly. âWhatâs all this about?â
âThis little girl vanished ten years ago,â says Nelson, âwhen you and your mates were getting all worked up about that henge thing. I wondered if youâd seen her.â Unexpectedly, Cathbad is angry. Ruth remembers hisability to change emotions in a second. Now, his face dark in the blue light, he looks like his younger self.
âThat henge thing,â he says in a voice shaking with rage, âwas a holy site, a place dedicated to worship and sacrifice. And Doctor Gallowayâs
friends
proceeded to destroy it.â
Ruth is rather shocked to find herself under attack. Nelson, though, positively quivers at the words âworship and sacrificeâ.
âWe didnât destroy it,â Ruth says, rather lamely. âItâs at the university. In the museum.â
âThe museum!â mimics Cathbad savagely. âA dead place, full of bones and corpses.â
âMr Malone,â cuts in Nelson. âTen years ago, you were ⦠how old?â
âIâm forty-two now. Not that I count the years on the temporal plane.â
Nelson ignores this. âSo, ten years ago you would have been thirty-two.â
âFull marks for the maths, Detective Chief Inspector.â
âWhat were you doing ten years ago, aged thirty-two?â
âLooking up at the stars, listening to the music of the spheres.â
Nelson leans forward. He doesnât raise his voice but suddenly Ruth feels the temperature in the caravan drop. She is suddenly aware of an undercurrent of violence in the room. And it isnât coming from Cathbad.
âLook,â says Nelson softly, âeither you answer my questions civilly or we go down to the station and do it there. And, I promise you, when it gets out that youâve been questioned in connection with this case, you wonât be lookingat the stars. Youâll be looking at a gang of vigilantes trying to burn your bloody caravan down.â
Cathbad looks at Nelson for a long moment, drawing his cloak around him as if for protection. Then he says, in a low monotone, âTen years ago I was living in a commune near Cromer.â
âAnd prior to that?â
âI was a student.â
âWhere?â
âManchester.â Cathbad suddenly looks at Ruth and smiles, rather oddly. âStudying archaeology.â
Ruth lets out an involuntary gasp. âBut thatâs whereââ
âErik Anderssen taught. Yes. Thatâs where I met him.â
Nelson seems uninterested in this but Ruthâs mind is racing. So Cathbad knew Erik long before the henge dig. Why hadnât Erik mentioned it? Erik had been her tutor when she did her doctorate at Southampton but she knew that previously he had been a lecturer at Manchester. Why hadnât Erik told her that he had been Cathbadâs tutor too?
âSo, what did you do, on this commune? Did any of you do any real work?â
âDepends what you mean by real,â says Cathbad with a flash of his old spirit. âWe grew vegetables, we cooked them, we made music, we sang, we made love. And I was a postman,â he adds, as an afterthought.
âA
postman
?â
âYes. Is that real enough for you? Early starts, it suited me fine. I love the dawn, leaves you with the rest of the day free.â
âFree to disrupt the henge dig?â
âDisrupt!â The fire is definitely back in Cathbadâs eyes.âWe were trying to save it! Erik understood that. He wasnât like the rest of those â¦â He pauses for an epithet strong enough. âThose â¦
civil servants
. He understood that the
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