Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  She turned back for the Nissan, unlocking it and rifling in the door pocket for a notebook and pen as she answered the call.

  “Ah, hello Ms McColl, it’s the forensics lab,” said a girl’s voice, sounding tentative. “You were expecting the results of a priority DNA test through today, yes?”

  “Certainly,” Grace said. “What do you have for me?”

  “Oh, right. Just to let you know that the profile you asked for has been sent.”

  “That’s wonderful, although I can’t get to my email right at the moment,” Grace said, doing a quick mental calculation of time and distance. “Would you mind giving me a quick run-through now?”

  “No problem. We actually recovered two distinct DNA samples from the asthma inhaler. One was male, the other female.”

  “Ah, I thought that might be the case,” She recalled the little girl, Ollie, who seemed to have a magpie-like approach toward anything that belonged to her brother. Grace could imagine that extended to his asthma inhaler as well. “The male sample—was it a match to our victim?”

  “Yes, no doubt about it.”

  “Thank you.” Grace let her eyes close briefly. “Not the news his parents were hoping for, but at least they’ll have some closure.”

  “You’re welcome. Please contact me if I can be of any further assistance.”

  “Of course. Oh, the female sample—that was his sister, yes?”

  “No…” The girl sounded hesitant. She said something else but Grace was distracted by a shout from Frost, down near the river. She tucked the phone against her chest while she called, “Just a moment!” And then lifted the phone again. “I’m sorry, I missed that?”

  “I said, different parents.”

  “Really? That’s odd. In theory, they should be full siblings.”

  “Well, I ran the tests myself.” The girl’s voice frosted. “There’s no chance of error at this end, I can assure you.”

  “No, no, I didn’t think that for a moment,” Grace said quickly. “I know how professional you are there.”

  “Ah, well,” the girl said, somewhat mollified, “I did make a pass through the database with both of them, actually, just out of interest.”

  “Oh, that could be rather useful. Did anything show up?”

  “Yes, although I’m not sure if it helps you or makes life more complicated,” the girl said. “We got a familial match on the female sample—one Dylan Elliot, Cumbria address. We tested and logged his DNA after an assault charge about eighteen months ago.”

  “When you say ‘a familial match’ are we talking immediate family?”

  “That’s right—father and daughter.”

  “Well, that makes sense, although, as you say, it does complicate things somewhat—particularly if Dylan Elliot is no relation to the male sample.”

  “No…he isn’t.”

  “Ah, I wonder if—?”

  But Grace’s words, and her train of thought, were derailed by another shout from Frost, slightly more urgent this time.

  “Grace! There’s something down here. Looks like a bit of the boy’s clothing maybe, but if we don’t grab it pronto, we’re going to lose it.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, I’m needed and I have to go,” she said to the girl at the lab. “Thank you very much. I really appreciate your speed on this one.”

  “Oh,” the girl said again. “Oh, well, thank you. It’s my pleasure, although your boss, if you don’t mind me saying so, could do with an attitude adjustment.”

  “Yes, he certainly could,” Grace agreed. “And I’ll be sure to mention that to him…”

  She ended the call, already hurrying toward the river where she could see Ty Frost leaning precariously over the rocks at the edge of the waterfall.

  Something about the conversation rubbed at her like a new boot on a raw heel. Perhaps it was simply that here was someone else Chris Blenkinship had annoyed.

  Whatever it was, she decided, she would deal with it later.

  58

  The Elliot farmyard was deserted when Nick pulled up. He sat in the car for a moment, surveying the scene. He was getting used to the style of buildings on the eastern side of the Lake District, hunkered down into the landscape. The rugged stone farmhouse, built solidly to withstand the harsh Cumbrian winters, and the stone barn looming nearby.

  The Elliots’ small-holding was made up of old corrugated iron sheds, the sheets dark with rust and their roofs sagging. One had collapsed altogether and been left to die where it foundered. There were a couple of old railway goods wagons, too, which might have been worth something if their timbers weren’t slowly rotting into the ground on which they stood. Plastic tanks lay discarded here and there, their purpose undefined, their sides stained green with lichen and mould. And where repairs had been attempted with tarpaulins, wind and weather had ripped them to fluttering tatters.

  There was so much to be done to get on top of the place that Nick felt the energy being sucked out of him, just sitting there looking at it.

  He climbed out of the car and approached the house. He could hear the sounds of children in the garden, raised in some kind of dispute. A woman’s voice shouted at them to no obvious effect. Nick detoured through a rickety wooden gate that led down the side of the house. He emerged on an area of lawn, balding in places and divided by a washing line draped with bed sheets, which a pair of girls, perhaps in their early teens, were squabbling over the best way to peg out. Another, smaller child—Nick recognised Ollie from his previous visit—was making their life more complicated by trying to scale the sheet like a makeshift assault course, and shrieking with glee while she did so, to the overall annoyance of their mother.

  Nick’s appearance, however, brought an abrupt halt to the proceedings. He was aware of the silence as all eyes turned in his direction. He could see the family resemblance, echoes of Yvonne’s face, shades of Dylan’s, too, in their cheekbones, their mouth and chin.

  He took a step forward and, spell broken, the children dropped the sheet where it lay and scattered as if trained for it. They left their mother standing by her re-dirtied laundry, looking close to the edge of temper.

  “Not you again. What d’you want now?” she demanded.

  “A quiet word, Mrs Elliot, if you wouldn’t mind.” His tone did not make it a question.

  More high-pitched squealing broke out, this time from inside the house through the open French windows.

  Yvonne gave him a look that was too tired to be as defiant as she no doubt intended. “Well, this is as quiet as it gets round here.”

  “Is your husband at home?”

  “Dyl? He’s in his workshop, most likely. Said as how he had some weldin’ to do on a trailer. Why? Have you found him—our Jordan? What’s the little bugger got to say for his’self?”

  And Nick realised then the significance of his mistake in coming straight here. He’d got Grace’s phone call about the lab results and, as he was still in Appleby and only a few miles away, had come straight here. He suddenly realised that news of the DNA confirmation of Jordan Elliot’s identity had clearly not yet made it along all the necessary official channels, and that his parents had not actually been informed.

  He swallowed.

  “I have to tell you, Mrs Elliot, that we’ve had positive identification of a young boy whose body was pulled from the River Eden this morning, near Kirkby Stephen. It is Jordan. I’m so very sorry.”

  It was not the first time Nick had been obliged to deliver such bad news. He’d seen most reactions from heartbroken sobbing, to rage, even hysterical laughter.

  Yvonne just stood, frozen, gaze turned inward as if replaying a life not yet lived and finding few highlights to treasure. She gave a single, listless nod. An ‘it figures’ kind of gesture, as if things had always turned out badly for her, and this was just another in a long line of tragedies and failures that she’d long since learned to accept.

  “Mrs Elliot? Can I…get you anything? Call somebody to come and sit with you, pe
rhaps—a relative, or a friend?”

  “No, no, there isn’t anyone… I’m all right.”

  The harsh note had gone from her voice. What was left behind was thin, almost without substance, as though only her anger had been sustaining her.

  Nick spotted a stack of four grubby plastic chairs near the back wall of the house. He wrestled one loose and planted it behind her.

  “Sit down,” he coaxed. Before you fall down. “Please.”

  She complied, her legs folding so suddenly that she flumped into the seat.

  He moved round in front of her and her gaze tracked him now, silently pleading for the words he knew she wanted but he was unable to say.

  That it was all a mistake. That it hadn’t happened. And he knew she would be trying to cling to the fragment of time before he appeared, before she knew. When there had still been room for hope.

  He crouched in front of her, took her limp hands in his. “We will do everything we can to catch whoever did this to Jordan, Yvonne. I promise you that.”

  She frowned, as if he’d offered to paint the grass purple. “What’s the use of that? Still be gone, won’t he?”

  Nick found he had no answer to give her, so he just squeezed her hands and said nothing.

  Whole minutes ticked past. She didn’t cry, just stared sightlessly over his shoulder at the patchy grass and rocked gently in the chair.

  The breeze picked up, rippling the sheets like sails on the line. He heard the cries of distant sheep and the buzzing of insects. Even the shrieks of the other children seemed muted.

  “Mrs Elliot?” he said at last. “I’m sorry, but I do need to ask you some questions. You realise that, don’t you?”

  He got to his feet. Her eyes tracked him, which was something, even if they held no more comprehension than before.

  “What questions?”

  “Well, can you think of anyone who might want to…take Jordan—or to harm him?”

  “’Course not,” she mumbled but it was a knee-jerk response with no thought behind it.

  “Someone your husband’s had a…disagreement with, perhaps?” he persisted.

  She gave a snort.

  “I know Dyl’s no saint, but he ain’t the bloody mafia, is he?”

  Nick hesitated, then asked, “And what about Dylan—how well did he and Jordan get on?”

  That earned him a sharp glance but any words of reproof remained unspoken.

  “Did Dylan know, for instance,” Nick went on carefully, “that Jordan was not his son…?”

  She shoved free of him and scrambled to her feet so fast the chair flew backwards. It bounced off the bone-hard lawn with a crack. He half expected her to run but she rounded on him, poised as if to attack, her voice crackling with fury.

  “You sayin’ I was unfaithful to my husband, are you? Never!” she spat. “We wed in church. I said my vows before God and I meant ’em. I’m not the one who strayed—”

  She straightened and closed her mouth with a guilty snap, eyes suddenly feral.

  “So Dylan has a wandering eye,” Nick said. “When was this?”

  She backed a step and he saw the leap of fear.

  “When, Mrs Elliot?” His eyes narrowed as his mind made the jump after her. “The night Jordan went missing, perhaps? You told us he was here but that wasn’t so, was it?”

  He moved a step closer. She tensed to run, lips pulled back almost in a snarl as, finally, the tears came. “You can’t prove it! You can’t prove nothin’.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised what we can prove. Modern forensics are amazing.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, regarded her coldly. “Lying to the police is a serious offence, Yvonne. Could get you into a lot of trouble. And if we find—”

  “What the bloody hell is going on here, then?”

  Nick turned, aware of the sudden flare of his own guilt. Behind him, at the corner of the house, was DI Pollock, with Dylan Elliot at his shoulder. It was Pollock who’d spoken but when it came to which of the two men looked the more furious, there was very little to choose between them.

  59

  Dylan waited until after DI Pollock had finished giving that jumped-up DC of his a right arse-kicking before he went after Yvonne. She’d fled indoors the first chance she got—wouldn’t say boo to a chicken, that girl, never mind a goose.

  Most times, his wife’s timid nature was a source of mild irritation to him, but on this occasion it had actually turned out to be an asset. After all, old Pollock wasn’t to know that ’Vonne was likely to dissolve into tears if he so much as raised his voice to her. And Dylan would be the first to admit that occasionally she pushed him further than that.

  Sometimes, the girl was just begging for a good slap.

  But right now he was more interested in what she might have said to that bugger Weston. She wasn’t good at keeping secrets, either, which was why he never told her much about his business. Not that it was any of her business, what he did or didn’t do. She stayed at home and looked after the kids, like she was supposed to, and he never took that much interest, outside the bedroom and the kitchen, what she got up to.

  Or, so he’d thought.

  He was aware that his mind was shifting between random subjects and put it down to shock. He might not have liked Jordan much, son or no son, but he never thought he’d have to bury the kid. He still couldn’t quite believe it.

  But right now he had more important things to worry about—like if the dumb brood mare he was married to had said anything to the copper that might drop him in it…

  He flicked his eyes over the pair of them. Pollock had gone in close, got right in the younger man’s face while he tore a strip off him, so Weston had to blink against the flying spittle.

  Yeah, well, serve him right.

  But Weston wasn’t just standing there and taking it. His shoulders were bunched and his hands were tight and there was a muscle jumping at the side of his jaw. If he clenched his teeth any harder he’d crack the enamel on all of ’em.

  And when he began muttering back at his DI—and, more to the point, when Pollock stopped bollocking him long enough to listen—Dylan began to worry.

  He eased sideways and slipped in through the French windows.

  “’Vonne! Where the devil are you?” He paused in the hallway, listening, but heard nothing. “Don’t make me have to come lookin’!”

  He heard it then, the creak of the floor joists upstairs. She appeared on the landing, looking down at him with her thin shoulders stooped and her face a ruin from crying.

  “What have you been sayin’?” he asked, his voice a low growl, threaded with menace.

  Her face crumpled again. “I didn’t say nothin’!”

  He grasped the newel post and put his foot on the first tread of the stairs, watching the way she tensed.

  “An’ what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I didn’t say nothin’, honest I didn’t,” she repeated, almost gabbling now.

  He kept climbing. She backed up another step until she hit the bedroom door frame with a start.

  “If you’ve told the filth anythin’, ’Vonne—and I mean anythin’—you know what I’ll do to you, don’t you?”

  She didn’t speak until he was nose-to-nose with her on the landing, listening to her shallow gasps, the catch in her throat. Breathing in her fear.

  “Don’t. You?” he repeated softly.

  “Y–yes.” It came out as a whisper. Her whole body was trembling, so hard that if she hadn’t been pressed up against the door, he doubted she’d still be standing.

  “Yes, that’s right. And whose fault will it be, eh?”

  “M–mine.”

  “Yours, that’s right again. So, what you gonna do next time them coppers come callin’?”

  “Say n–n–nothing. Dyl’, I—”

  He reached for her, gratified by her instant silence, her flinch. He felt the goose-bumps form when his hand met the bare skin of her throat. He slid his fingers upward and around th
e base of her neck, tightening just enough to send her up on her toes, her eyes widening.

  “Mr Elliot? A word, if you please.” Pollock’s voice bellowed up the stairs. “Now, lad. Shift yer arse.”

  Dylan held onto his wife for a moment longer, just to prove a point, then let her go and turned away, sauntering down the stairs with all the bravado he could manage. Pollock stood in the hallway, framed by the light spilling in from the open doorway at the far end so he loomed, filling the space. Weston stood just behind his boss and slightly to the right of him, as if blocking off Dylan’s escape route. And he watched with narrowed eyes that Dylan didn’t quite want to meet.

  “You goin’ to say a few words of comfort to a bereaved father in his moment of grief, then, Mr Pollock?”

  “We’ll get to that in due course, lad,” Pollock said grimly. “But first, why don’t you tell me where you were the night your boy went missing?”

  “I already told you—”

  “I know what you already told us. But in light of some new information, I was wondering if you wanted to…reconsider your story, like?”

  “If you’re meaning my ’Vonne, well, she don’t know whether she’s comin’ or goin’, half the time.” He smiled, a quick baring of teeth. “Wouldn’t know her arse from her elbow, eh? Not the sharpest tool in the shed, that girl.”

  He heard a gasp from behind him, turned and saw that Yvonne had slunk halfway down the staircase behind him, pressed against the faded wallpaper as if hoping to blend in to the pattern and slip past him unseen. When she’d caught his last words, though, she’d let out that involuntary noise and was now glaring at him. He threw her a brief, meaningful glance, trying to inject silent warning into it.

  If you’re too dumb to keep your mouth shut, you’ll take what’s coming to you, stupid tart…

  “So are you telling us you weren’t out on the night Jordan went missing, then?”

  “Of course not. I was here, all night. Isn’t that right, ’Vonne?”

  She tensed, a hunted look about her. “I, er—”