Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  “What—?” she began before she heard the fast clip of hooves on the road surface. The boy had swung himself up onto the pony’s back and was now disappearing in the direction of Appleby, leaving Wynter alone in a tiny paddock with…something wrapped in a blanket.

  She approached the shape carefully, edging closer, noticing how trampled the grass was around it and how wet. Whatever it was, it had come from the river.

  Leaning down, she took hold of a corner of the woollen cloth between forefinger and thumb, lifted it slowly and with great care. She was not aware of holding her breath until she saw what was inside the bundle. Then the air gushed out of her like a pricked balloon. She dropped the blanket into place and scuttled backwards half-a-dozen paces, until she felt the wooden fence at her back.

  She fumbled in a pocket for her phone.

  Then it was her turn to tell those who answered: “Come quick!”

  34

  Alone in the workshop at Carlisle HQ, Blenkinship was absorbed in his task and thankful for it. It stopped him having to think—or worry—about anything else.

  He’d been over every item recovered with the bones of Eden Man and prioritised two—the mobile phone and the medallion. The phone, he’d dropped off with Ty Frost in Penrith. He’d chased him a couple of times but knew doing so was likely to make Frost work slower rather than faster, paranoid about making a mistake.

  So, reluctantly, he’d forbidden himself to check up again until he’d finished with the medallion.

  It was round and flat with a small hole at one side, almost like the kind of tag you’d put on the collar of a dog or a cat, engraved with the owner’s telephone number. The thin chain on which it had been threaded was so delicate with age and corrosion that it practically fell apart on the bench, but the disc itself was made of a thicker material—perhaps stainless steel.

  That didn’t mean it wouldn’t rust, of course—there were many different grades of stainless. But at least this had stood up to being buried next to a watercourse better than most metals. Maybe, he speculated, it had been hidden inside clothing, which offered a small amount of protection until that, too, had rotted away.

  Blenkinship had already soaked the disc in a mix of acids, ferric chlorides, and water to clean away much of the looser surface material. Now, he clamped it in place on the bench and began very gently rubbing one side with waterproof abrasive paper, lubricating it as he went. He moved through progressively finer grades of paper until the surface began to smooth out and gleam, meticulously documenting his process in both note form and photographs as he went.

  When he had the disc polished to an almost-chrome finish, he set up his camera on a small tripod, with a flash mounted off to one side, and photographed the surface in detail.

  There was nothing to see.

  Blenkinship swore and stood up, stretching out his aching back and flexing his fingers. He peeled off the disposable gloves, revealing sweat-swamped hands with prune-like fingers. He washed and dried them, made himself a coffee, and thought about putting through another call to Ty Frost. He managed to talk himself out of doing so.

  Instead, he stripped another pair of gloves out of the dispenser, turned the disc over, and began work on the reverse.

  With no obvious back and front to the thing, he knew it was pure luck which side he’d worked on first. But, by the time he was halfway through the polishing process, he knew that his earlier efforts had never been going to reveal anything.

  “Hah, Sod’s Law,” he muttered.

  But the gradually emerging outline was enough to keep resentment at bay. Particularly as it looked as if the medallion might have been engraved with a pair of initials, the right-hand one of which appeared to be a slightly flowery capital G.

  He redoubled his efforts. The left-hand side of what he now realised was the front of the disc was more corroded, but he slowly managed to coax an image out of it. To begin with, he thought it might be a back-to-front capital C, but then it appeared to have an extra, smaller curl at the top, so that it could even have been a reversed capital E, or the number 3.

  Whatever the two letters were, they had been placed back-to-back, overlapping to form a single spine up the centre. And sprouting inside the curve of each letter was what looked like the wings of a butterfly. The one inside the C—or 3, or whatever it was—was the Eye of Horus. The one inside the G was a Lotus flower. Or as far as he could tell, anyway.

  Blenkinship photographed the revealed image, then took to the internet in search of meanings.

  The individual elements produced a mixed bag. The Eye of Horus was a symbol of protection. The Lotus flower meant ultimate perfection, a thing of beauty rising above the mud in which its roots were embedded.

  The letters were more difficult to define. A reversed and a forward-facing C, back-to-back with spines touching, was the anti-sigma character, part of extra letters invented and introduced by the Roman Emperor Claudius and meaning, as far as Blenkinship could discern, absolutely bugger all, except that the man was vain and powerful enough to do whatever he liked and get away with it.

  Blenkinship even searched on designer labels, such as Gucci and Coco Chanel, but none of them were even a remote match to the odd lettering on the medallion.

  And the butterfly wings, in various belief systems, meant change, joy, colour, the soul, or an advertisement of the availability of an unmarried girl.

  He sat back and rubbed his hands—they still felt vaguely pulpy from the gloves—over his face. His eyes were gritty from concentration and lack of sleep, despite the frequent caffeine boosts he’d been giving himself all day.

  He typed up a brief report with all the facts, such as they were, and digital images attached of the image on the medallion, with the recommendation that an appeal was put out to the media for the public’s help in identifying the man. They had no description other than an approximate height and age, but this insignia, whatever it was, might prove a useful additional factor. Might just jog someone’s memory.

  And then, finally—finally—he allowed himself to reach for the phone and call Ty Frost.

  “I think I’ve gone as far as I can with the serial number of the mobile, boss,” Frost reported. He sounded as weary as Blenkinship felt. “It was printed on a label inside the casing, so the bits that are missing are gone for good and there’s no way to retrieve them. The manufacturer was able to tell me which retail chain bought that batch, but that’s as much as I could do, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve done your best. I’ve managed to reveal an image on the medallion and maybe initials, so it gives DC Weston something to work on, eh?”

  Frost muttered a response that Blenkinship took to be hurt pride that his boss had outdone him. Well, only to be expected…

  Then his brain caught up with his ears as he registered part of what Frost had just said.

  “Run that by me again, would you?”

  “I said what a shame it is, that’s all—about the boy.”

  “What boy? What about him?”

  “The Elliot kid,” Frost said. “I thought you’d have heard by now. Grace left about an hour ago. We got a call from some woman just north of Kirkby Stephen—he’s been found…”

  35

  “Well, lass—is it him?”

  Standing just inside the crime-scene tape, Grace hesitated. “We think it might be, yes.”

  “You think?” DI Pollock repeated. “Might?” There was annoyed disbelief in his voice, until the ramifications sank in. Then he paled. “My God… How bad…?”

  “Bad,” Grace said flatly. “Dr Onatade is talking about another fast-track DNA test, just to be sure. I know, I know—it’s expensive,” she went on when Pollock would have spoken, “but, Brian…you don’t want to let the parents see him. Even if they could make an identification. Not like this…”

  Pollock was silent for a moment, then he nodded. “All right, lass,” he said, gruff. “Do what you have to.”

  He signed the log and
struggled into a set of coveralls, gloves and bootees. As he and Grace tramped across the grass to the tents, he indicated one of the police vehicles where a shaken woman sat, wiping her eyes.

  “Is that who found him, then?”

  “Well, she’s the one who called us…”

  “Oh?”

  Grace sighed. “I’m afraid, as contaminated crime-scenes go, this one’s a mess. I’ve been over the bank but there are almost a dozen different boot prints there alone,” she admitted. “The woman is Wynter Trelawney. She lives up on North Stainmore, looking after her parents’ farm up there. It’s been a stopping-off place for the Gypsies for years, apparently, on their way to and from Appleby. They trust her. So, when a group of them pulled a body out of the weir this morning, she was the one they called.”

  “And by the time our lads arrived…?”

  “They were long gone,” Grace agreed. “To be fair, she reckons they had all upped sticks by the time she got here. Just one boy left behind to mark the spot. And as soon as he’d done so—”

  “Don’t tell me—he scarpered, an’ all.”

  “That’s about the size of it.” She pulled aside the flap of the tent and stood back for Pollock to enter first. He took a deep breath and stepped inside. Almost immediately, he put a gloved hand up to his nose and mouth. Grace couldn’t blame him for that.

  Dr Onatade looked up, her eyes sombre above her mask.

  “Sorry about the smell,” she said briskly. “Clearly, the poor little chap has been dead for several days. In fact, from the level of decomposition, I’d estimate he probably died the same night he went missing.”

  Pollock stared down. Grace saw his throat move in a convulsive swallow and she heard his quiet, “Poor little bastard looks like he’s been savaged.” He lifted his hand away just long enough to ask, “Any ideas yet on cause of death?”

  “Plenty,” Dr Onatade answered, “but, as you can see, the body has been severely…traumatised. Until I can get him onto my table and examine him more closely, it’s hard to say with any certainty where one injury finishes and another begins.”

  Pollock scowled, although whether at the pathologist’s caution or the fact she was making him stay inside the tent for longer than he wanted to, it was hard to tell. He wafted his other hand against the irritation of insects that buzzed and crowded around living and dead alike.

  “The bicycle Grace found had been run over,” he said shortly. “All I need from you is to know if he was run over along with it.”

  “And I need the time and the facilities in which to examine the body in greater detail,” she returned. “I’ll do the post-mortem exam as soon as I get him back, and Grace can collect what’s left of his clothes the moment they are removed. They may tell us as much as the body.”

  “Hm, if he’s been in the water all this time, there probably won’t be much left to tell,” Pollock muttered, turning toward the tent flap again.

  “You should have a little more faith in your own people, Brian,” Dr Onatade said. “If there is evidence here to be found, then naturally Grace and I will find it.”

  She handed Grace the folded blanket the body had been wrapped in. Grace bagged and tagged it. Both of them knew the blanket had probably been in contact with the body for a short period—only since he was rescued from the river. The woollen material was wet but not sodden. But still it needed to be examined minutely, and samples taken and fibres analysed.

  As she left the tent herself, Grace was warmed by the pathologist’s matter-of-fact tone to Pollock as much as the words. It was a vote of confidence that straightened her spine and rationalised her scattered thoughts.

  Grace did not shock easily, but this one had shocked her, she admitted privately. The brutality that had been visited upon the body spoke of…hatred. More than that, it spoke of something deeply personal. She had always veered away from using the word “frenzied” in connection with an attack, but something about this one suited the description. Even outside the tent, out in the sunshine, she could still see the detailed injuries of the corpse burned into her mind’s eye.

  It was not the first death of a child she’d attended but it was the first one with such an edge to it. She swallowed and reminded herself that part of the reason she became a crime-scene technician in the first place was as a form of penance, not because it was the easy path.

  But the only way she could stay on that path now, she realised, was by concentrating solely on the task at hand. And by not allowing her imagination to run riot.

  Pollock was waiting for her by the crime-scene tape, talking to one of the uniformed officers who’d taken Wynter Trelawney’s statement. The detective inspector turned at her approach.

  “I suppose you’re going to want to search the whole bloody river between here and Water Yat,” he said gloomily.

  “About that—I’d like to bring in Ty Frost.”

  “I thought he was working on that mobile phone for the skeleton case? What is it they’ve dubbed him—‘Eden Man’?” Pollock queried. “Well, I won’t deny this has priority, but is it best use of the lad’s geek skills?”

  “When I left Penrith, Tyson had almost finished recovering the phone’s serial number,” Grace said. “I believe he was going to hand it over to DC Weston to follow up with the manufacturer.”

  “Right. So, does he have some secret obsession with sub-aqua that we’re not aware of?”

  “No,” Grace said. “But he does have a not-so-secret obsession with flying drones…”

  36

  Queenie sat on a blanket she’d laid out on the grass near the river, Sky alongside her, and watched the drama unfold. The Eden had been high—too high for the police, the animal inspectors, the officials, and the all and sundry who stuck their noses in, to allow anyone into the water. It was dangerous, they said.

  Outrageous, is what Queenie thought it was.

  The Gypsies had been coming to this spot, washing their horses in the Eden, for more than three hundred years. It was in the manner of a ritual, a cleansing—maybe even close to a religion. But still others thought they knew what was best.

  There were always these concerns, they called them. Not restrictions, not limitations, but always voiced just so, in such a way as to paint the Travellers in the wrong if they disagreed. Yes, there were risks, but sheer living was a risk. Getting up in the morning and putting on your boots was a risk, but nobody suggested you should stay all day in your bed.

  Well, maybe not yet…

  Further along the riverbank, near the slipway, she could see her brother arguing with the gavvers—the coppers—in charge. Well, perhaps ‘arguing’ was too strong a word. But she could tell by the angle of his head, the set of his shoulders, that he was doing his best to drive a bargain. He could be the devil of persuasion when there was something he wanted, she knew.

  And, sure enough, a few minutes later the barriers that had been blocking the slipway, closing it off, were dragged aside.

  The first man down to the water was perhaps the best one to check its depth and flow. There was no denying that Jackson was the tallest man there, and riding the tallest horse by a hand or three.

  The Clydesdale walked placidly down the angled concrete, head low for balance. At the bottom, he paused to sniff the water sliding past and blew out a noisy breath through his nostrils. Queenie, seeing the horse’s ear flick back and forth, seeking reassurance, got to her feet and moved forward, suddenly uneasy.

  Jackson didn’t like the hesitation, not when every eye was upon the pair. He gave the big horse a couple of kicks and a slap with the loose end of the lead rope.

  The Clydesdale dithered a moment longer, then half-stepped, half-jumped into the river in slow-motion, sending up a tremendous splash.

  The crowd cheered and Jackson grinned at them, lifting his hat. The horse kept going, still snorting loudly, lots of knee action. Through the shallows at the entry side of the river and heading for the deeper channel. Jackson tried to turn him but the horse ju
st bent head and neck to the side while his shoulders carried on moving him forward.

  Recognising the evasion for what it was, Queenie sucked in a breath. She murmured, “Pull him up, chal. Pull him up…”

  Jackson sat back and heaved. The horse’s head was round almost to his rider’s knee but he was still not for turning aside. The river level was past his belly now, and climbing fast up his flanks.

  A moment later, the Clydesdale stumbled on the uneven and rapidly deepening river bed. He floundered forward, loosing a huge bow wave, but with his neck pulled round so tight he had no chance to regain his balance. Horse and rider went crashing sideways into the water and completely disappeared beneath the surface.

  There came a great shout, initially of laughter, that the giant had taken a ducking. But a second later, the sound veered into alarm. Queenie stared at the churning water where horse and rider had fallen. From this angle, she could see nothing beyond the reflection and the chop. The only sign of Jackson was his hat, floating upside down like a makeshift craft, rotating slowly in the current.

  Then the horse reared upward, breaking surface like a breaching whale, coughing and gasping, with red-rimmed nostrils flared, and the white showing all around his eyes.

  Men were already running down the slipway, wading through the shallows toward him. They spread their arms, tried to snag the lead rope dangling below his headcollar without getting in the path of those huge feet. One man—she thought it might have been Vano—dived into the deep water after Jackson.

  The Clydesdale, thoroughly spooked now, dodged his would-be captors and, with another stumble and lurch, made it onto a high patch of shingle near the side of the river. Ears laid back, he put on a burst of speed, from trot to a near gallop, heading for the bank with a determined look in his eye. People on the grass scrambled out of the way, leaving shoes and bags and spilled drinks behind.

  The horse reached the bank in two long strides and launched himself up and out, his huge feet carving great divots of earth and grass as he powered up the steep incline, on a straight path for Queenie and her daughter.