Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  The big gorgio said, “That don’t follow.”

  “What?”

  “Just ’cause the big man can’t fight, it don’t follow that there’s no fight at all, eh? Must be someone else from his…tribe, or whatever, who’s up for it? Always up for a bit of a scrap, you people, eh?”

  “Oh, now, it’s not as easy as all that. Those two had a bit of a blood feud going, if you catch my meaning? It was sure to turn the fight we talked about into something special. A settling of scores. There’s not many wants to get in the middle of something like that.”

  The man said nothing for a moment, merely dipped into his pocket, deliberately enough to send Vano’s pulse rate soaring, and brought out a pack of cigarettes he didn’t offer round. When one was stuck between his lips and lit, he blew out his first breath and glared through the smoke.

  “Fair seems busy,” he said then.

  Alarmed by the sudden swerve the conversation had taken, Vano eyed him cautiously, trying to spot the traps he just knew lurked behind the words, before responding. “Aye. It is a good year.”

  The big man took another drag and snorted the smoke out through his nostrils like steam. “So, what with all these folk here, you really tellin’ me you can’t find nobody else prepared to take your lad on? That good, is he? Funny how you never mentioned that before, eh?”

  Vano caught a gleam of low cunning slither behind the man’s eyes. He gave an inward curse that he’d made the old mistake of seeing a slow body and thinking a slow mind.

  “’Course he’s that good,” he said, robust. “But against a man like Jackson, well, it’s hard to measure up. I mean, the man is, after all, literally a giant. I tell you what, let me see what I can do, hey? Don’t hold out too much hope, what with the time we have, but I’ll ask around, see if—”

  “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that none, eh. Sorted it, haven’t I?”

  “Sorted it?”

  “Aye, a mate of mine knows somebody who’s a bit handy, like. And he’s more than willing to go up against your lad. Gagging for the chance, he is.”

  Vano’s tongue was so dry it had glued itself to the roof of his mouth. He was forced to swallow before he could ask, “And who might that be?”

  “Lad called McMahon. Reckons he knows your boy from way back—before he was all respectable, like. Bit of history there, too, I’d say.”

  “McMahon?” Vano whispered. He cleared his throat. “Now, not so hasty, pal—”

  “What’s your problem, eh?” the gorgio demanded. “We wanted a fight and you promised us a good ’un. If there were as much bad feeling between them two lads as you reckoned, what’s the difference now, eh?”

  When Vano didn’t speak, he loomed closer still. Close enough to smell the cigarettes on his breath, the garlic of his last night’s meal. Vano felt rather than saw the other two surround him. He forced himself to calm, not to start anything that would end badly for him.

  “One fighter or another—what’s the difference?” The gorgio shrugged and then went on, more meaningfully, “that’s supposing it was all fair and square, like? Because, if you was trying to pull a fast one on us, well, there are some as would really take exception to that, eh?”

  “Of course not!” Vano smiled broadly. “Why would we even think of doing something like that to the Gentile folk here, who welcome us back year after year?”

  The gorgio grunted. “Better not.” He stepped back, turning slightly as he did so. Afterwards, Vano realised it was so he wouldn’t see the coiling of one long arm, nor the bunching of a hand not much smaller than Jackson’s.

  As it was, he knew nothing until that fist was buried knuckle-deep in his belly. The air burst from his lungs. He dropped and folded like wet cloth slipping from a line. And he stayed there, hands in the dirt while he fought for his next breath. The three gorgios stood around him, looking down.

  “Take that as a taster of what will be coming your way if you try anything stupid, like,” the big gorgio said, bending toward him. “Not just you, but your ‘pal’ Bartley, an’ all, if he thinks of changing his mind.”

  “All–all right,” Vano managed, still struggling to pull in enough air. “He’ll fight your man… I guarantee it.”

  “See that you do,” the big gorgio said. He straightened, waited until Vano was recovered enough to get one foot under him, at least. Then he added, “Because, that’s a pretty wife you’ve got—and a prettier sister, eh?”

  Vano glanced at him sharply. “Now just wait a minute! You leave my family out of this.”

  The gorgio nodded, as if they finally understood one another. “Oh, I will, mate. Unless you force me to do otherwise…”

  The three men watched the Gypsy stumble away along the edge of the playing field, arms still wrapped around his stomach. By the time he reached the far end, where the school had opened up its hard standing for visitors to park their cars, he’d recovered enough to put on a show of nonchalance that was almost convincing.

  “Nice punch, Karl,” one of them said. “You didn’t half put the wind up him.”

  “Had it coming, though, didn’t he?” Karl muttered. He finished his cigarette with one last pull and ground the butt underfoot.

  “D’you reckon he’ll keep his word?”

  “Better had do, or there’ll be real trouble if he don’t. They think they can walk in here mob-handed and do what they like. Well, if they try that with me, they’re in for a big surprise, eh?”

  51

  The first thing Nick noticed, when he pulled up outside the address Grace had given to him, was the horse tied to the front porch.

  A sturdy looking piebald, it wore no saddle on its back, and the reins of its bridle were buckled around one of the main timber posts of the porch roof. Nick hoped the animal didn’t decide to take off, or there was an outside chance of it pulling part of the house down.

  So that was what she meant when she said “You can’t miss it.”

  He edged cautiously between the flowerbed and the horse’s rounded rear end, but it didn’t stir beyond a swish of its tail against the flies. One hind hoof rested jauntily on its toe. Nick, who had no experience of horses, wasn’t sure if that meant it was completely relaxed or poised to kick out.

  He removed his sunglasses and rang the doorbell, keeping a wary eye on the horse while he waited. He couldn’t see the animal’s eyes at all to gauge its intent. Between the mass of forelock covering more than half its long face, and the blinkers that formed part of the bridle, they were completely hidden.

  The door was opened by a very well-preserved and upright older lady.

  Nick smiled at her. “Ah, I’d know you for Grace’s mother anywhere. She has your bones, ma’am.”

  The woman blinked in surprise and then laughed.

  “Well, I can’t make the same claim for you, young man, because you’re not quite what I was expecting, but you have to be the upstart detective she tries so hard not to talk about all the time.”

  His smile eased into a grin without effort. “Guilty as charged, ma’am.”

  “Oh, please, call me Eleanor.” She opened the door wide. “We’re in the kitchen. Do go on through.” He stepped past her, carefully shuffling any dust off his shoes on the mat, and noted the little sideways appraisal as she added in a murmur, “And as we’ve been handling things with kid—or perhaps even velvet—gloves, I do hope that doesn’t mean you’ve come to play the iron fist?”

  Nick paused. He’d left his suit jacket in the car, parked in the driveway behind Grace’s truck, had loosened his tie and folded back the cuffs of his shirt. He guessed it did serve to make him look as if he meant business.

  “Believe it or not, I can be amazingly domesticated when the mood takes me.”

  “Oh, I do believe you,” Eleanor said lightly. “After all, you even wiped your feet…”

  She motioned him on toward the back of the house. Nick was reminded of the contrast between this gracious home and the Elliots’ dark and dingy farmhous
e. The hallway was decorated in shades of pale green and grey, lined with what looked like old family photographs. Nick took in a brief glimpse of a small girl with pigtails in one picture and wondered if it was Grace as a child.

  Then he stepped through into the large kitchen that faced out into the rear garden. He got a snapshot of granite countertops and shaker-style cabinetry. In a bay window to one side was a circular oak table, where sat two women.

  One was Grace. If he didn’t know her better, by her pose he might have thought she was relaxed. But because he did know her well, he saw the watchful air.

  The other woman at the table was also not entirely a stranger. And if her startled reaction when he entered was anything to go by, she recognised Nick as easily as he recognised her.

  It was the mouthy Gypsy woman from Fair Hill. The one who’d made him for a copper and accused him of hate-crime, when he’d made his abortive first attempt to speak with Vano Smith.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  Grace regarded her calmly. “You said you’d talk to a friend of mine, Queenie. This is Nick Weston. He’s—”

  “Oh, I knows what he is, all right,” she muttered. “Ocean!”

  There was a rustling behind the open pantry door and a boy appeared, chewing, with a lump of sticky cake in his hand. He was dressed in jeans and a yellow waistcoat. The waistcoat was unbuttoned and his lack of shirt underneath it showed the livid bruises forming all over his skinny torso.

  Nick glanced at him sharply. The boy glared back, his chin up, as defiant as it’s possible to be with a mouth stuffed full of lemon drizzle. The action showed the Steri-Strip dressings holding together a cut on his forehead.

  Mindful of Eleanor’s warning, Nick kept his voice neutral as he asked, “So, would anyone like to tell me what’s going on?”

  The uneasy silence that followed was broken by Eleanor, breezing in with a small shirt in her hands. “There you go, Ocean,” she said, holding it up for his inspection. “A quick sponge and a press and it’s good as new. Ah, I see you found the cake. Excellent. I made it fresh this morning.”

  The boy, Ocean, slipped off the waistcoat without a word and turned to slide his arms into the sleeves of the shirt she offered out to him. Nick’s eyes narrowed as he saw the discolouration of the boy’s skin continued onto his back.

  When Nick turned his attention back to the woman, Queenie, he found her scowling at him.

  “He was set upon, so don’t go thinking the worst of me and mine,” she said. Her eyes went to Ocean, buttoning up his shirt. “What do you say to the lady?”

  The boy swallowed his cake and gave Eleanor a shy smile. “Paracrow tute, baba.”

  Eleanor looked to her for a translation but it was Nick who said, “I believe ‘paracrow tute’ means ‘I thank you’ and ‘baba’ means”—he glanced at Queenie, saw her blush—“‘grandmother’, among other things.” It also meant ‘old woman’ and ‘hag’ but he wasn’t about to tell Eleanor that.

  “Where did you learn your Romani?” Queenie asked him and for the first time her voice had lost its edge.

  “Oh, I picked it up here and there.” Dealing with rogues who made the occasional foray onto the Met’s patch, mainly. Nick had always found it an advantage being able to understand what was said around him.

  He pulled out a chair and sat alongside Grace, careful not to face the other woman directly and turn this into an interrogation. But still, he couldn’t prevent himself from asking, “What happened to Ocean?”

  Queenie’s scowl was back at once. “Like I said, he was set upon. So don’t—”

  “Mum and I were on our way back from town when we came across the altercation and were able to…intervene,” Grace said. “We brought Ocean back here to patch him up a bit and persuaded him to let us call his mother, Queenie. Queenie Smith,” she added.

  “Ah, any relation to Hezekiah Smith?”

  Queenie nodded. “My father. And yes, before you ask, Vano Smith, for whom you were searching when we last met, he’s my brother. You wished to speak with him about the boy from the river?”

  Nick nodded. “I do. The boy was last seen out on his bicycle—a bicycle which was later found in a skip at Water Yat, with his blood on it, and your brother’s fingerprints. We need to talk to him about how that came to happen, so we can try to piece together a timeline—a sequence of events.”

  “Things are…difficult at the moment. I know he would not agree to speak with you. But,” she added when Nick couldn’t suppress a sigh in exasperation, “Vano has already spoken with me of what happened. I can tell you what I know. Good enough?”

  Nick paused. “Yes, good enough.” For the moment.

  “He had already picked up the bicycle before he saw the blood. He knew it for what it was, so he threw it away, knowing that if it was found in his possession then accusations would be laid against him. We are an easy target—the root of all evil.”

  “I understand that your brother lives in Sheffield when he’s not travelling. Did he come by horse and caravan all the way from Sheffield, just for the Fair?”

  If Queenie was surprised by the sudden change of subject, she didn’t show it. “Not this year. His wife just had the baby. They motored to Scotch Corner and came on from there.”

  “And what about you?”

  “We walked all the way, with the horses and the wagon.”

  “You make charms, don’t you?” Grace asked suddenly. “I believe we bought one of yours, earlier today, from one of the stalls at the Fair.”

  She laid a medallion on the table. Nick had last seen the design engraved into it as a corroded image on Owen Liddell’s murder board.

  Queenie leaned forward to study it, then nodded. “Aye, that’s one of mine.”

  “What does it signify.”

  She almost snorted. “You bought it without knowing?”

  “Well, the woman running the stall told us it was for protection.”

  “Ah, and so it is.”

  Nick nodded. “Thank you. That’s been very helpful.”

  “That’s it? We can go?”

  She started to rise until Nick said, “Oh, there was just one more thing…”

  She subsided back into her chair, her back stiffened. “Which is?”

  “I know your brother got himself into a bit of trouble about ten years back, with a local guy called Owen Liddell. Can you tell me anything about that?”

  “N–no.” She frowned. “The name is not familiar to me. Is that all?”

  “Almost.” He tried a smile. It bounced off. “Do you know anyone called Patrick Doherty?”

  “No.” Queenie pulled Ocean close toward her, wrapped her arms around the boy as if for comfort.

  Something about the action scratched at Nick’s senses. “Are you sure?” he persisted. “This Doherty used to hang around with your brother.”

  “At one time, perhaps,” she said, surer now. “But it is not a name I have heard in years. The man you speak of is no longer with us.”

  52

  Queenie hustled Ocean out of the house as fast as she could manage, hoping she didn’t look as flustered as she felt. They unsettled her, all of them—even the old lady, who acted friendly enough but was a sharp one, for all that.

  As they were leaving, she’d touched Ocean’s arm, smiled down at him and held out her hand, palm upward. For a second, Queenie had thought she was asking for some kind of hand-slap greeting, the kind the youngsters used. Then Ocean, with hanging head, dragged a small china horse out of his pocket and gave it back to her.

  Mortified that they’d caught him nicking, Queenie gave him a sharp poke in the shoulder. “Ah, you tawno chore!” She scolded him for the little thief he was. “I taught you better than that.”

  He twisted out between them, and busied himself unfastening the piebald’s reins from the porch, his back purposely turned.

  “Ah, he’s young,” the old lady said with an indulgent smile. “What age is he?”

  “Desh,” Ocea
n said over his shoulder, glowering. “I’m ten.”

  In fact, he was barely nine, but Queenie wasn’t going to correct him. His pride had taken enough of a hiding this day.

  “If you hear anything that might help us, please, call me,” the gavver said, offering her a business card. Queenie nodded and took it because it was hard to simply refuse. She had no intention of calling. From the look on the man’s face, he realised that well enough.

  They stood watching as she gave Ocean a leg-up onto the piebald’s broad back and vaulted up behind. Standing in the sun, the black part of the animal’s coat was noticeably hotter under her thighs.

  “Thank you, again,” she said to the red-haired woman. “We’ll not forget this.”

  She turned the old horse’s head toward the gateway and nudged him into action with her calves. He must have realised he was going back to join the others in his temporary herd because he almost broke into an ambling jog.

  Once they were out of sight of the house, Queenie wrapped her arms around her son, put her mouth close to his ear. “How could you?” she asked. And a beat later she added, “Let them catch you stealing?”

  “The old lady was sneaky,” he complained. “She acted like she wasn’t paying no mind to me. But eyes like the hawk.” He pouted. “That’s not fair.”

  Queenie slapped a big kiss on his ear. He squirmed in protest, giggling. She wanted to ask if he was sure he was all right but knew he wouldn’t thank her for fussing. Instead, she held him tight for a moment longer, then asked, more sober, “Who was it set upon you—gorgios?”

  Because she wouldn’t put it past them to engineer such a meeting, one where she was in their debt. Not after the way the gavver, Weston, had been run off the last time he’d tried to question her brother.

  But Ocean shook his head. “They was Romany,” he said sourly. “Jackson’s clan.”

  “Did they tell you for why?”