by Alex Walters
'Perhaps they were right.'
'I'd already heard things. They were being bought off. A long way up. Maybe all the way to the top.'
'You can't know that,' Mary protested.
'I knew it. I even made a half-hearted attempt to do something about it. I don't think I expected to succeed. I just wanted to bring things to a head.' He laughed, humourlessly. 'I did that, all right.'
'I heard–'
'You heard I had a breakdown? I suppose I did, in a way. I certainly didn't handle things very cleverly. It suited the chief perfectly. He wanted me out of the picture. I was an embarrassment to him, personally and professionally. He pulled a few strings. There I was with a smart university degree, so I got called up for some confidential work in London.'
'Intelligence work?'
'I'm not at liberty to divulge the nature or content of my activities,' he intoned, in what was presumably a parody of some official pronouncement. 'But you can imagine.'
'And your wife went with you?'
'Not at first. We thought it would be too dangerous to take Sam to London once the bombing started.'
Mary took another look at the sky. 'We really ought to get back.'
He made no response. 'But she wanted to give it another go. Things were getting desperate for her. She was lonely. She wanted to try.'
'We need to get back,' she repeated. The snow was swirling more thickly around them.
'So she came. It was that weekend. That weekend it happened.'
'Ivan,' Mary said. 'We need to move.'
He was staring into the darkness, his eyes fixed on one of the rows of gravestones.
'What is it?'
'There,' he said. 'Can you see it?'
She peered towards where his finger was pointing. 'I can't see anything.'
'I thought I saw something move, but that's not possible. But there's definitely something there.'
'There's more than enough snow. I know that much. We really need to get home.'
'Wait. There is something.' He switched on the torch and aimed the beam out across the churchyard. The light was dazzling for a moment, catching the endlessly turning snow.
Mary's eyes followed the cone of light. The trunk of a twisted elm. The angular blocks of worn gravestones, diagonal shadows across the white-coated earth. A shape.
'What is it?'
Winterman glanced at her, unsure whether to ask to stay where she was or to accompany him further into the churchyard. 'Come on.' He walked forward, his gloved hand still clutched in hers. The torchlight glanced across the blank snow-coated stones, emphasising the thick shadows behind.
Winterman shone the beam high in the air. Twenty feet away, there was a small clearing among the clustered graves. Beyond that was a larger raised grave – a rectangular stone box, the last resting place of some local notable. Something was resting on the tomb. Something out of place. Something black and formless.
'It's another body.' Mary's voice was barely audible in the night. 'Another child.' Winterman felt her hand close more tightly around his.
He took one more step forward, the torch-beam unwavering. Then, suddenly, he lowered the light, as if he had seen enough. 'Stay there. Don't move.' He raised the torchlight again and shone it across the blank surface of the tomb.
It was a child's body, sure enough. A pale shrivelled scrap of a thing, not yet bone but scarcely flesh, clothed in a few shreds of disintegrating cloth. Not fit clothing for a night like this. He moved the torch-beam over the body, the light glittering once, shockingly, on a pair of sightless eyes. The body was on its back, its leathery face twisted towards him, limbs spread like a sacrificial offering. He flashed the light briefly around the tomb, but in the dim light the snow looked untouched.
'What do we do?' Mary spoke from just behind him, her voice breaking unexpectedly into his thoughts. Her face in the torchlight was calm – the look of a mourner who has grown all too accustomed to death.
The snow was still coming down heavily, the rising wind blowing it into a toiling blizzard. It was already thick on their hats and shoulders. For the first time, Winterman was conscious of how cold he felt.
'You were right. We have to get back.' He glanced at the body. 'We can't do anything now. I can't even move the poor thing without risking disturbing the scene. We'll have to leave it till the morning. Nobody else is likely to come here before morning.'
She looked past him towards where the body lay. 'Somebody's been here tonight.'
She was right. The snow lay only thinly across the child's corpse. It could not have been long since it was left here.
Involuntarily he shivered, his eyes moving to the impenetrable darkness around them. Someone could still be out there. Someone could be watching them.
He slipped his arm through hers again, unsure of his motives. 'Come on. Let's get you home.'
Chapter 35
'This is getting to be a habit.' Howard was wearing another of his large collection of dressing gowns, a characteristically startling collation of primary colours he had no doubt picked up somewhere overseas.
'It's this bloody weather.' Pyke was wheeling his motorbike slowly into the lee of Howard's cottage. He dragged a tarpaulin from the rear pannier of the bike and draped it carefully over the machine. 'I was heading back to town–'
'Of course you were, dear boy. But you know you're always welcome here.' There was no edge to Howard's voice, no sense that his words were anything other than entirely sincere.
'I don't want to disturb you.'
'What's to disturb, dear boy? What would I be doing on a night like this, apart from keeping well out of the way of the snow?' Howard peered past Pyke into the frozen night. 'Speaking of which, you'd better come in. It's freezing out here.'
'I had noticed.' Pyke followed Howard through into the warmth of the hallway, shrugging off his overcoat, bending to unfasten his heavy boots. Howard had always kept the house slightly too warm. Like many of Howard's habits, it had vaguely offended Pyke's austere sensibilities, but he was glad of the welcoming heat.
'You'll be wanting a drink, of course,' Howard said over his shoulder. 'Gin or scotch?'
Pyke hesitated. This was a bloody bad idea. Another bloody bad idea. He didn't really even know why he was here, what had brought him back to this Godforsaken place. He had spent a hard lonely miserable day in the lab working on Fisher's body and then on that poor child's body, largely only either confirming the initial judgments he had made on the hoof or simply that there were no more solid judgments he could make.
Some time in the late afternoon, as the snow-coloured light thickened to dusk, he had grown thoroughly sick of the bleak sparse surroundings of the laboratory and decided to take a ride out on the bike. Even that had been madness. The threatened snow had held off all day and the main road had been cleared, but the temperature had stayed below freezing and the road surface was likely to be lethal.
But that was it, of course. There was something invigorating about the danger. No doubt that was why he rode the bike in the first place. No doubt that was why he did half the things he did.
Why he was here.
He could blame the weather, but he had chosen to put himself out in it. He had chosen to ride in this direction. His own choice.
'Drink?' Howard repeated. He was waving the gin bottle, which, Pyke thought, had already seen some use that evening.
'Thanks, Howard. And thanks for taking me in again. Can I have some tea first?'
Howard hesitated momentarily and then poured himself another large measure. 'Sit down. Get yourself warmed up. I'll bring you the tea.'
Pyke lowered himself onto the sofa and stretched out his stockinged feet towards the high-banked log fire. Not much sign of austerity Britain in this household.
'What brings you back out here so soon?' Howard called from the kitchen. 'Those bodies again?'
Pyke rose slowly and stepped over to the kitchen door. 'There were some details I needed to check for the report.'
Howard was busying himself warming the teapot, his head down. 'You're too conscientious, you know. That's your trouble. Anyone else would have waited till the weather improved.'
Pyke gazed at the top of Howard's balding head, wondering whether he was being mocked. 'I had to come out. If the snow melted, I wouldn't be able to check anything.'
Howard nodded slowly, as if acknowledging the truth of Pyke's assertion. 'You're the expert. Just didn't think you'd want to get caught in the snow twice.'
'I didn't. But I was stupid enough to do it, and here I am.'
'And, as I say, very welcome you are too, dear boy.' Howard smiled, sliding a cup of tea towards Pyke. 'Now let's make the most of it.'
Chapter 36
The first pale light of dawn found Winterman trudging slowly through the snow back into the village. The previous night, he and Mary had arrived at her house just after eleven, the snow still falling heavily around them. The main road, cleared earlier in the day, was already covered, the drifts higher in the hedgerows.
As she had showed him to the spare bedroom, he had wondered whether it would be in order to show some gesture of – what? Affection? Concern? A kiss on the cheek, a touch on the hand? In the circumstances, nothing seemed appropriate.
He had no idea what she was thinking. Any emotion between them had been dulled and dissipated, first by his own narrative and then by the experience in the graveyard. She had gazed at him expressionlessly, and he wondered whether she was expecting some move on his part. Was she disappointed when he had murmured a polite goodnight and closed the bedroom door?
There was no way of knowing, he decided, as he stamped his way through the heavy banks of snow. Perhaps later he might discover whether his reticence had been the only appropriate response or an opportunity missed.
Despite their discovery in the churchyard, he had slept soundly enough, with no further dreams that he could recall.
He had woken at six thirty, dressed quickly and let himself silently out of the house. Everyone else – Mary, her mother, the children – were, as far as he could tell, still sleeping.
Outside it was dark, though there were signs of dawn in the east, the sky bruised and translucent. The last of the night was dense with stars, a sickle moon low over the horizon to the west.
It was colder than ever, far below freezing. He had borrowed an additional overcoat that had been hanging in Mary's hallway, wrapped up in layers of clothing like a human dirigible. He wanted to run, to expend some energy to get the warmth back into his limbs, but the treacherous ground made even that impossible.
By the time he reached the church he was cold to the bone. He stamped slowly across the churchyard, the snow clinging to his boots. The night before, he had barely registered the church itself. Now it loomed over him in the dim light, gothic and imposing, oddly threatening, too large for the village it supposedly served.
He had half-expected that the child's body would have been removed – spirited away as mysteriously as it had arrived, leaving him unsure what he had witnessed in the darkness. But it was still there – or something was – curling grotesquely in a snow-covered bundle on the top of the tomb.
The fresh fall of snow had rendered it less horrific, at least at first sight. Under the white coating, it might have been nothing more than a discarded bundle of rags, the detritus left by some passing tramp. Was it possible they had deluded themselves the previous night? Was he so spooked by this case that he was creating his own ghosts?
It took him only another step to see the answer. The twisted face – the dried mummified flesh, the sightless eye sockets – was twisted towards him, still uncovered by the drifts of snow. He could discern the angled bony arm, the white fingers reaching beseechingly towards him. Another child. No more than nine or ten years old, he guessed. But dead for a long time.
Even given what had already happened, the sight was shocking. Winterman had no idea how frequented the churchyard might be, particularly in weather like this, but someone would have found it quickly enough. Probably some aged widow or widower tending their late spouse's grave. It didn't bear thinking about. But none of it bore much thinking about.
He peered round the far side of the tomb. As he had expected the further fall of snow had concealed any footprints that might have been made around the gravestone. It was possible that the forensic people might be able to find some traces, but he had little real hope.
This was serious. Spooner had arranged for him to be posted to this desolate patch to be out of harm's way – or, at least, out of the chief constable's way. The first child's body, the body that Fisher had found, had been an intriguing mystery, but nobody at HQ had taken the case seriously. In such a rural environment, deaths, even children's deaths, were hardly unusual, particularly in recent years. The causes were mundane, even when heartbreaking – neglect, sickness, casual abuse, sometimes even starvation. Winterman had no illusions about the state of the country, the levels of poverty and deprivation out there. The '45 landslide hadn't come from nowhere.
But a third young corpse, alongside Fisher's murder, was not so easily dismissed. The locals would be getting concerned. If it hadn't been for the weather the local press would be sniffing round, the national press close behind them. Almost the only positive thing you could say about the bloody weather.
The available manpower was stretched thinly enough as it was, and the weather would put even more pressure on resources. All but the most major routes would be closed again, the trains running only sporadically if at all. Even if the weather improved, it was likely to be several days before any serious backup might arrive.
He pulled his layers of clothing more tightly around him and glanced at his watch. Seven fifteen. It wasn't likely that anyone would be about yet in this weather, but these country types tended to rise early. He glanced back at the ugly mound on the gravestone, shuddering at the thought that anyone else might stumble across it.
He couldn't move the body until forensics and Pyke had had a look at it. The only option was to get Brain to come and stand guard so they could keep people away. Time to be the bearer of bad news.
Winterman stamped his way slowly out of the churchyard. The village stretched out below him – the pub, a scattering of cottages and houses, the small village shop and post office, the snow-covered village green. Picturesque, under this blanket of white. At other times though, it wasn't the kind of rural township that found itself decorating the fronts of chocolate boxes. It was a working village, surrounded by bleak open fields, acres of farmland where landowners and tenants scraped a living growing beets and root vegetables. Rural poverty, battered by depression and six hard years of wartime, struggling with austerity. Wondering when the promised future was going to arrive.
The police station stood in the centre of the village, a few hundred yards beyond the pub. There was no sign of life. Even the shop was closed and silent, with an air of abandonment. The police house looked as uninhabited as anywhere else.
Winterman pulled hard on the bell, and was rewarded by the sound of a faint jangling from somewhere inside.
After a few moments, he heard another sound, a shuffling of footsteps, before the door was pulled open. Brain peered out, his eyes blinking and bloodshot against the morning light. 'Yes?'
'Morning, Bryan. Duty calls, I'm afraid.'
Brain blinked again. 'Morning, sir.' He appeared to regain his composure with impressive speed. 'You'd best come in. It's freezing out there.'
Winterman stepped in, removing his hat. 'Brass monkey weather,' he agreed, then added, with feeling, 'Too cold even for bloody brass monkeys, if you ask me. Unfortunately, we have work to do.'
'Work, sir?' Brain glanced pointedly at the replica grandfather clock that dominated one corner of the hallway. 'What sort of work?'
Winterman followed him through into the warmer sitting room. Hoxton was sitting by the fire, toasting his stockinged feet against the flames. There was no sign of Marsh. Winterman nodded to Hoxton. 'We've
found another one.'
'Another what?'
'Another bloody body,' Winterman said. 'Another child. Just like the first two.'
Hoxton looked at him, clearly biting back some facetious comment he had prepared. 'Who found it?'
'Me and Mary. Last night. On the way back.'
'My God,' Hoxton said. 'You should have come to find us.'
'There was nothing we could have done. The snow was coming down. I just wanted to get her back home.'
'But the body–'
'It's still there,' Winterman said. 'That's why I'm here. There was nothing to be done last night, but we need to get the place cordoned off now. Keep out any sightseers. Protect the site until the lab boys can get here. And track down Pyke.'
'Elusive bugger, your Dr Pyke,' Hoxton observed. 'Never where he's supposed to be.'
'Probably just smarter than you and me then. Bryan, I'll need you to get up to the churchyard and keep on eye on the body. Not the most enjoyable task, even without this cold.'
'No problem, sir.' Brain stood upright, looking as if he was about to salute. 'What do you want me to say to people? If anyone comes along, I mean.'
'Is there just the one entrance to the churchyard?'
'There's no other way in unless you climb over the wall.'
'I'd suggest you position yourself at the gate then. If anyone comes, tell them there's a police investigation going on – which will be true, soon enough. Don't for goodness' sake mention the body. With a bit of luck, no one will be able to see it from outside the churchyard, so we should be able to keep it quiet for a bit. At least till we've had the scene examined properly.'
'I'll keep them out, sir.' Brain had the air of someone entrusted with a possibly lethal mission. He made his way hurriedly out of the room. Moments later, they heard the front door slam.
'I reckon you probably can rely on him,' Hoxton said. 'Bit more to that lad than meets the eye.'
'You're not wrong. We'll have to draft him over to our lot. Right, let's get to it. Where's Marsh?'