Midnight is a Lonely Place

Drying her hands Kate went outside. The storms of the night had passed and the day was bright and crisp with only the lightest wind blowing from the south.

‘Good morning.’ She stopped behind Alison as the girl groped inside the shed.

Alison jumped. She turned, her spade in her hand. ‘Hi.’ She did not look pleased to see her.

‘I thought you might be going to drop in and say hello,’ Kate said.

Alison shrugged. ‘I thought I’d get on.’

‘Fair enough. But first, haven’t you got some explaining to do about last night?’

It had not been easy to sleep after the disturbances. Even with the front door locked and bolted and the lights on throughout the house Kate had only dropped off an hour or so before dawn and then her sleep had been restless and light.

‘Last night?’ Alison turned back to the shed and retrieved a trowel and a broom.

‘It was you who came up to the cottage.’

‘Me?’ She had the girl’s full attention at last. ‘I didn’t come up last night. What on earth would I do that for?’

Kate frowned. The wide eyes looked genuinely puzzled.

‘Someone came to the cottage last night. About three in the morning and let themselves in. They must have had a key.’

‘Weird.’ Alison shook her head. ‘Did they steal anything?’

‘No.’

‘Why did you think it was me? I’m not a thief.’

‘I know.’ Kate tried to lighten the mood by laughing. The sound came out tightly; it betrayed her sudden misgivings. ‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you, because if it wasn’t you, I need to know who it was.’

‘Perhaps it was Greg. He’s probably still got a key.’

‘No, it was a woman. And she had earth on her hands. I thought perhaps you had been digging again.’

‘At three in the morning?’ Alison gave her a withering look. ‘If it was a burglar you’d better tell the police or something. We’ve never had burglars here before.’ The implication in her tone was that Kate had obviously brought the trouble with her. ‘You’d better ring Dad.’

‘Yes, perhaps I’d better.’ Kate frowned. ‘In fact I’ll drop in and see him when I pick up the car. I need to go into Colchester this morning.’

She wasn’t sure when she had decided she needed to go back to the museum. The idea had come so firmly, so ready-formed it was as though she had had it planned all along.

‘He’s not there now. They’ve gone to Ipswich for the day.’

‘Oh.’ Kate felt let down. Ever since she had woken up that morning she had kept a picture of the gentle, reassuring face of Roger Lindsey firmly before her. He would know what to do. ‘Are you going to be all right here by yourself?’ She turned to Alison who was juggling all her tools into her arms with her ghetto blaster.

‘Of course. I always come up here by myself.’ The voice was jaunty, firm. It belied the moment of uncertainty in Alison’s eyes.

The museum was comparatively empty as Kate threaded her way through the Bronze Age and Iron Age exhibits towards the staircase. Over on her left she could hear the video playing to itself. Someone had pressed the button, activating the sequences and then they had left, leaving the sound to echo disembodied around the deserted gallery.

Marcus Severus Secundus stared blankly at the glass cases around him from dead stone eyes. His face was stereotyped – handsome, classic, the hair formally curled. Was there any likeness there, or had the statue been purchased off the sculptor’s shelf by an admirer or a descendent – his son perhaps – to stand in memoriam near his tomb? She stood staring at him for a long time, trying to get behind those blank eyes. Then, gently, aware that she was breaking museum regulations, she raised her hand and ran her fingers across his face, touching the mutilated nose, tracing the line of his cheekbones, his jaw, his shoulder.

The glass case which contained the surviving contents of his grave was close by. She stood and stared down at it with a sense of shock. She had not expected to see bones.

‘In an inhumation, rare at this period, excavated on site B4 at the third Stanway burial mound were found the remains of Marcus Severus Secundus and his wife Augusta Honorata. A survivor of the Boudiccan attack on Colchester in A.D. 60, Marcus Severus was a leader of the rebuilding of the town. In the grave were found symbols of his office, jewellery and small grave goods.’

Kate stared through the glass. The bones lay in heaps, displayed in a plaster replica of the grave. Neither skeleton was complete. Had they died together then, Marcus Severus and his wife? She squatted nearer the case to see better the jewellery which was displayed there. Two rings of gold, a necklace of turquoise and amber, two brooches, one silver, one enamelled and several hairpins. Those must have been hers. And his was the heavy signet ring, mounted beneath a magnifying glass through which she could see the engraving. It showed a rearing horse. And his also, presumably, was the large silver brooch with an intricate design and long embossed pin. Consulting the information cards at the far side of the display she read: ‘Exhibit 4: A curvilinear brooch of native silver, Celtic. Probably dating from the first century B.C. An unusual find in a Roman grave.’ So, what was Marcus Severus of the Roman Legion doing with a Celtic cloak broach? Had he bought it? Or looted it? Or was he given it as a gift?

Leaving the museum at last she turned into the town centre. Having stocked up with fresh food, a couple of films for her camera, a large torch with two spare batteries and after treating herself to a glass of wine and a plateful of fettuccine and salad at a wine bar off the High Street she made her impulse buy – a bottle of silver polish. The weathered silver of the brooch in the glass case had given her the idea. That too must once have been a corroded unrecognisable lump of metal. It was probably wrong to clean the torc herself. She should leave it to the trained restorers at the museum, but if she were gentle, and very careful – she wanted to see if she could achieve that same soft radiance. The torc itself was locked in her car. She had not wanted to leave it in the cottage, giving Alison all day to look for it. Now suddenly she wanted to get back to it, to make sure it was safe.

A cold wintery sunshine flooded across the town as she retraced her steps to the car. To reach it she walked past the theatre and through the surviving arch of the Roman Balkerne Gate. There was a wonderful view of the Roman wall here, as she walked, laden with her parcels, across the footbridge over the scar which was one of the main dual carriageways into town, towards the multi-storey car park.

The drive down the track to Redall Farmhouse was alarmingly slippery. Twice the car slid out of control sideways, where somehow it had clawed its way out this morning. Presumably other cars had made the track worse. She hoped that meant that the Lindseys had changed their minds and come home early, but there was no sign of them when she parked in the barn, transferred the torc from the locked glove compartment to her shoulder bag, unloaded all her shopping and finally changed her shoes for her heavy boots.

It took a long time to walk the half mile or so to the cottage through the mud. Several times she stopped to change arms, and rest with her heavy bags. In the slanting sunshine the wood looked beautiful. Without leaves, the trees were graceful, linear dancers in the wind and there were hidden flowers around her feet; dead nettle and winter heliotrope and speedwell with the occasional small clump of snowdrops tightly furled in bud. The scent of pine and wet vegetation and resin was sharp and exhilarating. It was, she realised suddenly, nothing like the earthy smell which had permeated her cottage the night before.

To her relief the front door was still locked. Letting herself in she dumped her purchases on the kitchen table and went on a careful tour of the place. Nothing had been touched. The hair she had, rather shamefacedly, stuck across the drawer was still there. No one had been in. The more she had thought about it during the day, the more certain she was that Alison had somehow been responsible for last night’s intrusion. Who else could it have been? With a silent apology to her young neighbour in the dune for her suspicions that she would return, she transferred the torc back to its resting place. Only then, cheerful enough to whistle as she worked, did she unload her bags and put on the kettle.

XV (#ulink_692e6511-3eb0-5836-8318-ccebe0208b60)

Alison had stood for a long time on the edge of her excavation surveying the damage the wind and tide had wrought on her carefully exposed soil face. The dune had almost broken up. Half the wall she had left the day before had fallen. It lay, a tumble of wet sand and soil in the bottom of the declivity, strewn with tangled seaweed and shells and the rotting half-eaten corpse of a large fish. At the sight of it she pulled a face. Stacking all her equipment on the edge of the hollow she jumped in. She lifted the dead fish out on a spade and hurled it back onto the beach with a shudder. Moments later a screaming gull was circling over it, its claws outstretched for a landing.

She turned back to the shambles before her and stared round. She had already spotted several more pieces of that strange red earthenware lying around in the loose soil and there were other things too. Small round things. Black. ‘Coins!’ Her shriek was echoed by the gull which danced into the air for a moment before returning to gorge itself on the cold white flesh of the fish.

There were thirteen that she could find. Wrapping them carefully in pieces of soft tissue which she had optimistically brought with her for just such a purpose she stowed them in the pocket of her haversack, then she turned back to the dig.

It was the silence she hated. A silence which seemed to block out the gentle constant noise of wind and waves. It was threatening. It entered her aching head like an entity, battering against her brain. She was pretty sure that it had given her the migraines which were the reason for her missing school, but this time she had thought of a way of defeating it; of keeping the headaches at bay. Half an hour later, to the deafening sounds of The Sex Pistols, she was intently sifting through the heaps of sand with her fork and trowel, systematically separating out anything of interest, when she paused, looking down at the patch of dark sand in front of her.

The dagger was half buried still, the hilt and transverse hand-guard badly corroded, but not so badly that it was not instantly recognisable. For a long moment Alison stared down at it without moving, then she dropped to her knees and reverently she began to scrape away the surrounding sand. The dagger was some fifteen inches long, the blade two inches wide at its broadest. She sat for a long time with it in her hands, staring at it, awed, as the voice of Johnny Rotten blasted across the beach, torn by the wind and dissipated across the water. When at last she stood up, she held her trophy awkwardly aloft and she reached for her haversack again.

The blast of ice cold wind took her completely by surprise. Whipping the haversack with its precious cargo out of her hands it flung it down the beach as, blinded by flying sand, she tried desperately to catch it. Her broom fell sideways in front of her and was blown away to end up wedged into the shingle at the end of the dune and her cassette player subsided slowly into the loose soil, where it continued to blast out its music into the roar of the wind before the heavy soil depressed the switches on the top and it fell silent.

The squall had gone almost as soon as it had come. Pushing her hair out of her eyes Alison scrambled out of the hollow and stared up the beach. She could see her haversack, lying in a dayglow heap amongst the tangled seaweed, fifty yards along the tide line. Running to it she caught it to her chest, panting. Then she turned.

Above the dune the sand was still spinning crazily in a whirling spiral which extended about four feet into the air. For several seconds she watched as it spun out of the hollow and away from her down the beach towards the inlet into the bay. Then as swiftly as it had come, it disappeared.

She swallowed nervously. This place was getting to her badly. She forced herself to walk back and stared down at the spot where she had been working so peacefully only five minutes before. All her hard efforts had been undone. The sand was piled randomly once more, her broom and spade lying beneath it. Her trowel had gone. Her cassette player was half-buried and silent, her picnic – two chocolate bars and a can of Coke – had fallen into a pool of sea water.

‘Shit!’

She jumped down into the hole. Salvaging her belongings she heaped them on the edge. Switching on the music again she was comforted to hear it blast forth apparently unharmed. The Cure did a great deal to restore her equilibrium. Tearing the wrapper, thankfully intact and seemingly undissolved, off a chocolate bar she began to eat it.

Two yards to her left, unnoticed and almost invisible in the clay from which it protruded, a human hand, clawed and shrivelled, began, in the cold damp air, the process of disintegration.

Behind her, a faint shadow hovered over her; when at last she looked up and saw it, it was the size and shape of a man.

XVI (#ulink_53a3df1c-a58a-565e-91d6-fd44b97c8356)

Oh, she was beautiful, the mother of his son. He watched her as she lay, propped on her elbow on the far side of the low table picking idly at the figs heaped on the plate before her. Her hair was rich and thick, piled high on her head and held in heavy-plaited coils by four ivory pins. Her skin was creamy, soft; her breasts, heavy, luscious beneath the soft folds of her long tunic. He felt himself tense. They were breasts which had been touched by another man’s hands; another man’s lips. It was strange. The heat of his fury and bitter jealousy was contained utterly by the cloak of ice which had formed inside him. Contained and controlled but not extinguished.