Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  “He’s got to,” the child continued, nodding solemnly. “’Cause he hasn’t got his puff-puff.”

  “His…‘puff-puff’?”

  She took her fingers out of her mouth for long enough to point them, stickily, at one of the shelves. And there, half-hidden behind an open can of fizzy pop and a plastic dinosaur, lay an asthma inhaler.

  11

  Dylan Elliot stood just far enough back from the kitchen window not to be visible from outside. He watched the three coppers climb into their vehicles, circle through the yard and head off along the rutted drive.

  All the while, he tuned out his wife’s whiny voice, nagging on at him from the doorway.

  The redhead took the pick-up truck. What was it with these posh birds and their big four-wheel drives? The two blokes got into the Subaru, the younger one behind the wheel. Dylan was into his cars—or he would have been, given either the money or the credit score to land a decent loan. He was aware of a burst of jealousy as the engine fired with a throaty roar. Who knew the filth were so well paid?

  They’d given him a right jolt, appearing like that, mob-handed. He hadn’t let them shake him, though, that was something at least. Dylan had a couple of nice little deals on the go at the moment. Deals that would not stand too much nosing about by the local cops.

  They must have caught a whiff of something and had come round here, trying it on with some story about Jordan gone missing.

  He wasn’t over concerned about that. The kid came and went as he pleased most of the time. It was true he hardly ever tried to bunk off school, though—little swot.

  Dylan shook off whatever unease he might have felt. The boy had maybe just fallen in with the Gypsies, perhaps gone along for the ride to the Fair. Sooner or later, they’d get a phone call from him, cadging a lift home, or some other kiddie’s parent would roll up and drop him off. Or he’d just arrive back under his own steam.

  They’d never worried about him in the past, so why start now?

  But behind him, Yvonne was droning on and on—something about the pollen count and Ventolin and never forgiving him. He turned.

  “What the bloody ’ell are you on about, woman?”

  She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Ugh! You listenin’ to a word I say, Dyl’?”

  “Only when you say somethin’ worth listenin’ to. So, half the time, no, I don’t.”

  She jabbed him in the shoulder, hard enough to hurt. Almost without thinking, Dylan bunched his fist and hit her, high in the fleshy vee under her ribcage.

  The air and the fight went out of her instantly. She fell back against the door frame, clutching at it to stay on her feet, shoulders heaving as she tried to drag in her next stuttering breath. The rasping sound of it reminded Dylan of the boy, when he was having one of his asthma attacks.

  The guilt hit him at once. He’d done a bit of boxing, in his youth. A punch came natural to him, like those SAS blokes, just back from some war zone. He’d heard all the stories about how they turned on their own families if they were taken by surprise. Couldn’t help themselves.

  He put a hand out to help Yvonne but she swatted him away fiercely, still clinging to the woodwork. Milking it now, he was sure.

  Dylan moved across to lean on the ancient range, put in when the farmhouse was new and still going, more or less. He hooked one foot onto the rail that ran round the hearth, got out his tin of tobacco and Rizla papers and concentrated on fixing himself a roll-up until the colour was back in her face.

  He lit up, took a long drag, and gave her a narrowed stare through the exhaled smoke. “Now, you gonna run that by me again, ’Vonne? But without the lip, this time, eh?”

  She eyed him with healthier respect. “J–Jordan. He didn’t take his inhaler with him. He always has it with him! You know he can’t manage without—not this time of year, with all the pollen an’ that.”

  Dylan shrugged. “Maybe he just didn’t want to look like a wimp in front of them Gypsy lads. Hard as nails, some of ’em.”

  “If he had it in his pocket, how was they gonna know?” Yvonne saw him straighten and flinched. “Just sayin’, that’s all,” she mumbled quickly. “It scared me, seein’ it still by his bed. S’pose summat really has happened to him?”

  “He’ll be fine,” Dylan said, picking a flake of loose tobacco off his lower lip. “Always is, little bugger. They’re just trying to get to me and usin’ any excuse to do it.”

  She looked down as Ollie, their next-to-youngest daughter pushed herself between her mother’s legs. Yvonne bent down and swept her up, clutching the little girl to her chest like a shield.

  For a moment, their eyes met across the hazy gloom of the kitchen. The TV still played in the sitting room at the back of the house. Flies buzzed against the kitchen window. The compressor in the ancient fridge fired up, trying to cope with the heat, rattling the shelves inside.

  “I told ’em you was here last night, don’t forget—all night,” Yvonne said, her voice subdued now. “Are you gonna tell me where you really was, and what you was up to?”

  12

  Gorged with its fill of heat, the day stretches languid along the valley floor, warm and lazy like a sleeping cat.

  Where it moves at all, it moves laboriously. Weighted down by its own mass, it makes half-hearted passes at Mallerstang Edge toward High Seat in the east, up the pitted track of the old Lady Anne’s highway toward the Water Cut. But it lacks incentive for the climb. So it does little more than wash against the yellowed grass that lines the steep sides, and comes tumbling softly down again. So quietly, it does not even wake the trees.

  On the far side, across the River Eden, vapour gasps from the boiler of an old steam train, brass bright and gleaming, working the grade from Carlisle to Settle. Behind the engine are four carriages of day-trippers. They press at the open windows for the movement’s breeze as much as the view.

  The train crawls on but its breath remains to hang flaccid over the tracks. Looming above, Wild Boar Fell shimmers in the western haze.

  The ground has taken in the sun and can take no more. It sweats up dust, splits and pulls back. The sheep are listless as they crop the grass short as baize on a billiard table. Horses stand close, heads low, nose-to-tail against the flies.

  The clamour of the insects is louder than the wind.

  And then, in the turning of a moment, it is not.

  It takes longer to notice the absence of the flies and the bees than their presence. The birds are first to know. The swallows, swooping in swathes through swarms of midges, now come up with beaks empty. The livestock are shaken from their lethargy to a skittish haste.

  In the oldest farmhouse in the valley, the oldest farmer rubs his weather knee and eyes the cloudless sky, then tells his wife to take the washing in. She looks askance but brings her basket all the same.

  The Travellers camped alongside the old Tommy Road that winds across the moors toward Ravenstonedale feel the dropping of the air and heed the warning. They live as much outdoors as in and can read the signs as well as any, and better than most. They send the largest of their number to hammer home the stakes that hold their horses tethered. Others tighten canvas tilts of the bow-tops, take in aired bedding and chairs, gather children and move kettles from fire to stove.

  Breeze turns to blow. The warm air rolls upward, funnelled by the valley walls. It meets with cooler, then colder, as it rises and keeps rising. Convection turns to condensation. The air first weeps, then cries, white cotton tears that mound and bloom outward into ever expanding cumulus clouds. An avalanche in the heavens.

  Ice forms in the freezing atmosphere, clashing drop to drop, splintering and sparkling as it collides, sparking with the charge.

  The jostle turns to shoving. A hammer to the anvil, striking outright jagged blows. The crack of a whip’s tail and the fearsome stamp of feet.

  Breathing hard now, and uneven, the storm comes of age, spreads his arms and towers over the valley huddled down below. He roars his might, a
nd smites anything that dares to raise its head. First with fire then with water.

  The parched earth has been crying out for moisture. A few sips, carefully poured, would have quenched its thirst. Instead he pounds the ground with a deluge so heavy it hits and bounces into mist, runs over dry lips too fast to be swallowed.

  Falling rain meets rising river. The Eden swells to the task, gathering all and pressing it onward, taking more and giving less.

  Except the body of the boy. The river’s been guarding him close, keeping him near. But now, attracted by this shiny new distraction, she pushes him aside. Tucks him into the crypt of a tree, exposed by the undercutting of the bank, pats his face and leaves him there.

  Waiting to be found, or lost, and found again.

  13

  Grace had forgotten the traffic detours that would be already in place through Appleby for the start of the Horse Fair. Just getting the participants to their designated camping grounds was an operation in itself, never mind the hordes of visitors who would soon descend on the town.

  She drove down Bongate to the steady beat of her wipers. As she passed the Royal Oak and crested the next rise, she saw the Road Closed signs were already out and manned by a couple of uniforms.

  She braked, buzzed down her window. The rain splashed in at her but the air still felt warm.

  “Hello,” she said to the nearest officer, a young lad who looked as if he might one day grow into his stab vest and helmet. “I’m trying to get up onto Scattergate, near the castle. Is there no way through?”

  The young constable looked dubious. His eyes slid to his partner, an older woman who was clearly the more senior of the two. She came over, glanced at Grace and then took a second look.

  “Oh…CSI McColl, isn’t it?”

  “Grace, yes.”

  “I doubt you’ll remember me. We met at Kirkby Thore, a month or so ago—”

  “Of course I remember,” Grace said, thankful that nudge was enough. “Someone had stripped a barn roof of its slate during the night.”

  “Don’t suppose there’s been any developments?” the woman asked without much hope.

  Grace shook her head. “Not much to go on, I’m afraid. It was too dry for decent tyre impressions or boot prints. And whoever they were, they knew what they were about.”

  The woman cast her eye heavenward, blinking against the rain. “Aye, well, I reckon this is set in for the rest of the day. You may be thankful for it by the end of the weekend.”

  Grace frowned, then recalled someone once telling her that nothing quelled civil disorder quite as well as heavy rain.

  “Are we expecting any particular trouble?”

  “No more than usual, so probably plenty,” the woman said wryly. “Still, I’m not complaining about the overtime, that’s for sure.”

  Another vehicle pulled up behind Grace’s pick-up. The young constable waved the driver round and off onto the designated detour road.

  “Speaking of trouble, has it started already?” the female officer asked. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “Not as far as I know. I’m actually off the clock and trying to call in on my mother—she’s only just moved back after years down south.”

  “Well, she picked her moment, didn’t she?” The woman stepped back. “On you go, then. Just watch for any idiots already racing those ponies up and down Battlebarrow.”

  “I will,” Grace promised. “And thank you.”

  She moved carefully around the barrier and continued down the hill onto an area by the river, called The Sands. Grace had always wondered about the name, as the only sand anywhere nearby was bagged and stacked in front of the local builders’ merchant opposite the bridge over the Eden. Her mother would probably know the origin. She collected obscure facts the way a squirrel collected nuts for the winter.

  As she drove across the bridge, Grace glanced at the river level. Sometimes it was barely a trickle through here. At others it flooded the road completely, not to mention the nearby houses and shop fronts. Today it was somewhere between the two.

  At least Mum had the sense to buy something higher up the hill. Not that sense had much to do with it.

  Grace had learned long ago that trying to dissuade her mother from anything she had set her mind to was a waste of effort. Eleanor had been a force of nature when she first married at twenty and was still one now, some forty-five years later.

  During that time, she had buried two husbands. Grace’s father—when Grace herself was in her early teens—and the second husband she’d taken after Grace’s own marriage.

  In the belief that her daughter was safely off her hands, Eleanor had moved down to the south coast and become the mainstay of various societies and committees.

  And now she was back, and the two of them were still feeling their way toward balance in this new phase of their relationship.

  Grace pulled up in the driveway of the well-proportioned old house, built of the red sandstone so prevalent in the local area. Any suggestions she made about the wisdom of looking for a modern bungalow had been quickly brushed aside.

  As she climbed out of the Nissan and dashed for the shelter of the front porch, she noticed that her mother had already made a start on the somewhat neglected garden. She was still frowning over this when the door opened to the bell.

  “I hope you didn’t move those planters by yourself, Mum. They’re far too heavy.”

  “And a good afternoon to you, too,” Eleanor said, but there was a smile in her voice. Grace had inherited her mother’s height and her colouring, and something of her inner composure. The older woman was still very upright and precise in her movements, putting her feet down like a dancer. She wore a long chenille sweater that was somewhere between mustard and gold. Her hair was set and her dress and make-up were lessons in flawless understatement. As always, Grace felt dowdy by comparison, ill-suited to her name.

  Now, her shoulders dropped at the inferred rebuke. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t much of a greeting, was it?”

  “No, but I’ll forgive you, darling. How’s your day been? Was it very bloody? Would you like some tea? I’ve just made a pot of Earl Grey. Come through to the conservatory.”

  And with that Grace was swept to the back of the house where a structure more like an orangery jutted out into the substantial rear garden.

  “You’ve been busy here, too, I see,” Grace said, noting the cut grass and pruned trees.

  “Ah, well, I admit to having some help. I don’t disregard all your advice, you know.”

  Grace was just about to ask who when it came to her. “Max,” she said, rather flatly.

  “Indeed.” Her mother’s smile was close to a grin. “For such an urbanite he’s not afraid to roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty, I will say that for him. The man’s a gem.”

  “Mother—”

  “Ooh, I know I’ve got under your skin when you call me that.”

  Grace paused, took a deep breath and steadied herself. “Mum, please don’t give Max any cause to hope that things… Well, that we might get back together. We’re divorced. It’s over. And I’ve had quite enough trouble convincing him of that fact without you encouraging him.”

  Eleanor folded herself neatly into a chair without giving away anything further, and lifted the china teapot.

  “Milk or lemon?”

  Grace sighed as she took the chair opposite. Pursuing that line of questioning, she knew, would get her nowhere. “Milk, please. So, are you all prepared for your first Appleby Horse Fair?”

  “Hardly my first, darling.”

  “Things have changed since you moved away.”

  “Not so much. Half the businesses in the town rub their hands with glee about all the extra income, and the other half shut up shop and treat it as an enforced holiday. Nothing new in that.”

  “It will be difficult driving in and out while the Fair’s on. I only managed to get through now because one of the officers on traffic duty recognised me.”

&n
bsp; “In that case, I shall use your name shamelessly to cut a swathe—”

  “Mother.”

  She laughed. “Oh come on, Grace. Don’t be so po-faced about it. The Fair has been going on here for centuries. It’s a fine tradition—one we should celebrate, don’t you think?”

  Grace sipped her tea. “You don’t see the side of it that I see.”

  “What, you think there hasn’t always been a bit of bother on the periphery?”

  “There was more than a ‘bit of bother’ last year, I seem to recall—fighting, gambling, assault. Not to mention the amount of vandalism and theft that goes on.”

  “Ah, well, you must ask yourself how much of that is the fault of the incomers and how much of it is down to the locals,” Eleanor said. “It’s a well-known fact around the area that if you have a falling-out with your neighbours, then now is the ideal time of year for settling those scores.”

  “Because you can get your own back and blame it on the Gypsies,” Grace murmured, almost to herself. She looked up, gave her mother an assessing stare. “I trust you haven’t been here long enough to annoy any of your new neighbours quite that much?”

  “No, but one or two of them have really annoyed me…” She flicked up a warding hand before Grace could speak. “I am joking, darling.”

  “Still, if you have any problems—this week or at any time—please, call me.”

  “I shall.” Eleanor slipped her hand over Grace’s, gave it a squeeze. “And don’t worry too much about your ex-husband. I know going back would be a mistake—for both of you.” She sat up and lifted her teacup delicately. The action did not quite hide her smile. “But if he’s prepared to come and labour in my garden in the hopes I might put in a good word for him, well, who am I to turn him away?”

  “Mother!” Grace said again but laughing now. “You are utterly shameless.”

  “Yes, I suppose I am, rather, aren’t I?” Eleanor agreed placidly. She put down her cup. The smile had gone. “I heard today and I wanted to ask you… Is there any sign of the Elliot boy—the one who’s missing down at Mallerstang?”