Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  She did not add that the problems of her teenage years, after the premature death of her father, her flirtations with eating disorders and her desperate attempts to control something—anything—in her life, had compromised an already borderline capacity.

  Max, to his credit, had no words of recrimination or regret. He put a hand on her shoulder and when he spoke, his voice was filled with anguish. She knew a little was for himself, yes, but mostly it was for her. “Oh, darling…”

  Grace sat staring at her computer screen without seeing it, aware of a sheen across her eyes that turned it all into a blur. She reached up and squeezed Max’s hand and they stayed like that, silent in the gathering dusk.

  76

  Two things stood out to Blenkinship as he drove into the cul-de-sac and neared home. The first was Susanne’s car on the driveway. The second was that there were apparently no lights on in the house.

  He felt the familiar tightening in his belly, the hollow feeling up underneath his ribcage that he always got when he’d been out for a skinful with his football teammates, most Saturday nights in his youth. The feeling that came just before he threw his guts up.

  He swallowed back the bitter taste in his mouth, fumbled in the door pocket for another antacid tablet. Last one in the pack.

  Better start buying ’em in bulk if this goes on much longer…

  The prospect of it stopping—of what would be the only possible cause of it stopping—made him feel sicker yet.

  He hit the button for his garage door but he’d mistimed it, and had to brake sharply on the drive, waiting for the door to rise to the end of its travel. He glanced over at the silent house. No glimmer of light showed from anywhere within.

  Inside, he shut down the engine and climbed out as the door lowered behind him. He stood for a moment once it was down, listening for sounds of occupation. None came. After a minute or so, the automatic light shut off, plunging him into darkness.

  With a muttered curse, he blipped the car alarm on, which caused the indicators to flash enough to light his way to the internal door to the house.

  As he stepped through into the darkened hallway, he opened his mouth to call Susanne’s name but something stopped him. Instead, he toed off his boots and slipped quietly through the rooms on the ground floor, checking.

  Initially, he thought the lounge was empty but then a shape solidified on the sofa. He felt for the switch by the door, snapping it on. Susanne sat up and winced against the sudden flood of light from the overhead bulb.

  “What are you doing, pet, sitting here in the dark—?”

  His words died away when he saw what was on the coffee table in front of her. His coveralls. The ones he’d worn the night he arrived back from Mallerstang—that night—and cleaned up the underside of his car.

  He’d stripped them off and dumped them in the laundry basket, not thinking twice about it. He’d seen Susanne loading the washing machine with a text book in one hand often enough, half her mind on the job and the other half planning tomorrow’s lessons. Why should this time be any different?

  But, clearly, it was.

  She’d laid the coveralls out as you would evidence, front-side up, with the dark smears on sleeve and leg prominently displayed. At the time, he hadn’t noticed the marks were there. Hardly surprising, when he thought about it.

  “What’s all this?” he asked, hiding his unease behind a touch of belligerence.

  “I had a call from Julie today,” she said.

  “Julie?”

  She gave him a brief, reproving glance. “Of Julie and Steve—remember them? The friends you had supper with last week?” The sarcasm dripped through her tone and the acid in his gut churned in response. “The night I got landed with all that extra admin for my promotion?”

  “All right, all right, I’m with you. What about it?”

  “She wanted to know if you were OK. Said it had been all over the news, about that boy being killed—the one from the river. That same night. She said she’d been a bit concerned about you driving yourself home—that you’d all been drinking.”

  “They were drinking. Like I told you, I had a couple of glasses of wine with the meal, that’s all.”

  Susanne ignored that. “She also said that you left around eleven but you didn’t come to bed ’til gone two.” Her eyes were very bright, her body very tense. “So where were you, Chris?”

  “Come on, pet, where do you think?” He pushed a note of exasperation into his voice, tried to be convincing with it. “It’s fifty-odd miles and I wasn’t in any mad rush. I took it steady, eh?”

  “Most of it’s motorway, so barely an hour door to door at that time of night—and that’s if you are taking it steady,” she shot back. “So what were you doing for the other two hours? And what the hell is that on your overalls?”

  He sighed, ran a hand over the top of his head, over the bristle of the buzz-cut he favoured. “I–I hit a badger,” he said at last, improvising wildly. “Decided to take a shortcut over the old Tommy Road. You know the one—cuts across the valley from Pendragon Castle over to the road down to the Fat Lamb Inn. Bloody animal ran straight under my wheels. Didn’t stand a chance to avoid him…it.”

  He paused, eyes on Susanne’s face. She was soft when it came to animals and, sure enough, he saw her face crease in sympathetic dismay. “Oh no, was it…dead?”

  He nodded. “Aye, ran right over the poor beggar. So, I stopped…did what I could but”—he shrugged—“there wasn’t much I could do. Anyway, when I got back here, I knew if you saw the car you’d be upset, like, so I cleaned it up before I came to bed.”

  “At that time of the morning?”

  “Would have been harder if I’d left it to…to the next day.”

  “Oh.” The relief in her face was plain. But it also highlighted the suspicion that preceded it, brought the two conflicting emotions into stark contrast. “Well, of course, I never thought for a moment you’d…”

  Her words lacked conviction.

  “No, no, of course you didn’t,” Blenkinship said.

  And his words lacked conviction, too.

  Part VI

  Sunday

  77

  Turning right off a dual carriageway was always a risky proposition, in Nick’s opinion. Doing so off a main cross-country route like the A66 was even more of a hair-raising experience. It was never empty of traffic unless it was closed because of snow. Even now, early on a Sunday morning, there were plenty of vehicles heading in both directions.

  When he indicated and pulled into the right-hand lane, the cars behind thought he was overtaking and accelerated after him. He waited until the very last moment before darting into the turn lane and braking hard.

  No wonder there are so many fatalities along here…

  The now-retired midwife Eleanor McColl had mentioned, lived out in the Pennine hills at North Stainmore. A quick records search had produced an address, which turned out to be a weather-beaten farmhouse, a stone’s throw from the main road. As he approached, Nick saw an old sandstone property, hunkered down in the lee of a cavernous barn. Various outbuildings were dotted around the foot of it with dry stone walls leading off in four directions, almost like guy-ropes, holding it down.

  The sandstone around here was local, he’d been told, quarried at nearby Alston and hard as iron. On the roof were stone flags, graduated from small at the peak down to huge great slabs the size of gravestones just above the guttering. They needed to be to withstand the hurricane-force winds that sometimes lashed across this desolate place, come winter.

  There were times when Nick wished for more isolation than was afforded by the Kendal flat, but this was going too far the other way. There was only so much bleakness a man could stand.

  Mind you, the flat had felt pretty bleak last night. He purposely stayed out late and bedded down on the sofa in the living area. He was woken early by Sophie clambering onto his legs and demanding that he read her a story. He found it hard to do so past the lu
mp in his throat, at the thought that time with his daughter, like this, might be limited.

  The door to his and Lisa’s bedroom remained firmly closed throughout. He vacillated over knocking, just to check she was actually there before he left, but then he heard the shower running. So, he kissed Sophie’s head as she sat crayoning a picture at the breakfast bar.

  “Look, Daddy. It’s you and me and Mummy!”

  He went before the tears in his eyes overran.

  Now, Nick parked up by the verge and climbed out of his car, suddenly aware of the thunder of trucks rolling past only a hundred metres or so away.

  Maybe a place like this has more drawbacks than simply the weather.

  Still, right now, with the promise of full summer on the way, it was magnificent, all far-distant hills and green fields between.

  He tugged on the old-fashioned bell-pull by the front door in the porch, listened to the answering clang. Somewhere inside, a dog began to bark and a woman’s voice shouted at it for silence.

  Eventually, the door was opened by a woman with long greying hair, held away from her face by an Alice band. She wore a long skirt and flowered top beneath an apron, which she was drying her hands on.

  “Mrs Trelawney?” Nick asked. There was a moment’s hesitation before she nodded. Only fractional but he caught it, all the same. “I’m DC Nick Weston with Cumbria police, ma’am. Nothing to be alarmed about, but I wonder if I could ask you a few questions in connection with an ongoing enquiry?”

  “Oh…well, yes, of course. Please—come in. Excuse the mess, won’t you? I’d like to give you some important reason for it but the truth is that housework bores me silly. Kitchen’s at the back, just keep going, and do watch your head on the beams. Can I offer you a cup of tea? I have herbal, if you prefer it?”

  She spoke in a nervous flurry, hardly seeming to pause for breath. Nick accepted her offer just to give the woman time to settle. She bustled about the crammed kitchen, shoving a kettle onto a camping stove on the worktop and putting a match to the gas.

  “Oh, I turn off the Aga during the summer, or it gets like a kiln in here,” she said, following his gaze. “Do you take milk and sugar? I think there’s camomile if you prefer? Or I have some peppermint—very good for the digestion.”

  “Just ordinary builder’s tea is fine,” Nick said when he could get a word in.

  When the kettle had begun to whistle and she’d fussed over mugs and teapot, milk and sugar, biscuits and cake, and insisted on taking a tray out into the garden at the far end of the house, she finally sat down and said, “I’ve been expecting you. Well, not you precisely but someone like you—about the boy.”

  “Ah, it was a boy then?”

  She looked taken aback. “You mean you didn’t know?” she asked faintly. “Oh, my lord, it was worse than I thought. I mean, I hardly did more than glance at him, but still, I didn’t realise…”

  “You hardly did more than glance at him?” Nick echoed, puzzled. “But I thought you delivered him?”

  “Well, it was more a case that he was delivered to me, as it were. I called you right away. As soon as I saw what it was they’d brought me to see—do you see?”

  Nick shook his head. “Mrs Trelawney… I think we may be talking at cross-purposes here. I’ve come about a child we’re trying to identify.” He reached into his pocket and drew out copy prints of Owen Liddell with the unknown infant in his arms. “This one, here.”

  “Oh,” she said abruptly. “Oh.”

  Her face paled then flushed, like the swell on a beach receding before crashing further up the shoreline.

  “What is it you thought I’d come to see you about?”

  “Well…” Her hands fluttered nervously over the teapot, removing the lid and stabbing at the leaves with a spoon. “The boy who was found in the river near Kirkby Stephen yesterday. I–I was the one who called you.”

  “You found him?”

  “Yes, well… No, no…not really.” She faltered into silence. “You can’t blame them, can you? I mean, most of the time the only contact they have with the police is when they’re evicted, moved on. And they’re often treated roughly. It’s appalling, some of the things they’ve told me—”

  “Who, Mrs Trelawney?” Nick cut in, aware of another layer peeled away from his patience.

  “The Romany,” she said. “Travelling people. They found the boy—pulled him from the weir and did their best but... Well, they could see it was already too late. So they called me, asked me to come and…wait for officialdom to arrive. And that’s what I did.”

  With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Nick said, “You’re not Mrs Agnes Trelawney, are you?”

  “Oh, goodness me, no.” Her relief brought laughter rather than anger, which in turn was a relief to Nick. “That’s Mum.”

  “I’m so sorry for the misunderstanding, Mrs Trelawney—or should that be Miss?”

  “Oh, no, I’m Mrs, too, but I’m Wynter. I got married, you see, but my husband’s name was Bottom and I wasn’t going to take that—Wynter Bottom, can you imagine it? So I kept my maiden name and then we divorced but it didn’t feel right to go back to being Miss and… It’s complicated. Last of the line.”

  Nick rubbed a hand across his eyes and rechecked his notes. “But your mother still lives here, yes? I understood she was the local midwife?”

  “Oh, I see, when you said ‘delivered’ you meant… Ah, yes, she does—still live here, that is.” Wynter Trelawney waved a hand toward one end of the farmhouse. Nick could see another door at ground level, with its own letterbox and bell.

  He put his hands on his knees, braced to stand. “In that case, thank you for your time. It’s Agnes I really came to—”

  “Oh, you can’t see her,” Wynter said, her voice entirely matter-of-fact. She poured the tea with hands that weren’t quite steady. “Well, you could, but it wouldn’t do you any good.”

  Nick subsided again, wary now. “May I ask why not?”

  “Alzheimer’s. It was diagnosed about six or seven years ago and she’s gone steadily downhill ever since. She barely knows me, most days, when I go in to get her up and clean her and feed her. Mum just sits in her chair and smiles and strokes the cat on her knee, and then asks when her daughter’s coming in to see her, because she’s waited ages and the wretched girl never comes…”

  78

  As Grace pushed open the door to the CSI office, she almost ran headlong into Ty Frost on his way out.

  “’Morning, Grace!”

  “Good grief, Tyson, what’s the rush?”

  “Summons from on high,” he said cheerfully, still walking. “Mr Pollock wants me for something or other.”

  “Oh? Any idea why?”

  “Nope. I’ll tell you when I get back. See ya!”

  As she slipped into the chair behind her desk and booted up her computer, she was still smiling at his puppy-like enthusiasm.

  Her good humour waned a little at the amount of work awaiting her, both paper in the in-tray perched on the corner of her desktop, and in her digital inbox. She had gone straight home last night from her mother’s without going back to the office first. In retrospect, perhaps that was a mistake.

  Mindful of her last conversation with Dr Onatade, she looked first for an email with Jordan Elliot’s post-mortem exam report attached, frowning when nothing showed up. She was about to dash off a quick request for a copy, when she leafed through the mesh tray and found a print-out with a note from Blenkinship clipped to the top.

  Grace took a breath and tried to let go of her irritation. It was her case, even if Blenkinship had commandeered attending the PM. The fact that the report had gone to him and had to be delivered to her as an afterthought niggled at her. If nothing else, it made the timeline…untidy.

  Still, she couldn’t complain too much. After all, she had taken first look at the pictures of Owen Liddell with the mystery baby, and that was very definitely Blenkinship’s case. When she had not declined to stick her nose in,
how could she complain when he did the same?

  Besides, we’re a small department. We all have to muck in…

  She flipped through the report. As she studied Dr Onatade’s detached opinion, voiced in entirely matter-of-fact phraseology, she could not help overlaying it with the stark reality of the body as she’d photographed and detailed it at the scene.

  And when she reached the conclusion, she experienced a moment’s qualm at the definitive statement that the boy was dead when he went into the water. She made a mental note to ask the pathologist exactly what had tipped the balance for her, from probability into certainty.

  With a sigh, Grace got up, suddenly restless. She made herself a cup of ginger and honey tea before going back to her desk, needing a moment.

  When she turned her attention back to work, she did not return to the Elliot case.

  Not just yet.

  Instead, she clicked on the email from the forensics lab, with the results of the rush DNA test on the asthma inhaler. OK, they’d given her the gist of it when they rang the day before, but she still liked to read it for herself. Simply listening to someone else’s verbal summary was not the same thing at all.

  When she’d read the report on screen, Grace sent it to the printer and read it again on paper, pen in hand. Then she sat back in her chair and stared at a crack in the plaster above the doorway.

  “Hm,” she said out loud to the empty room.

  Whatever else she might have been about to say was lost to the ringing of her mobile phone. She checked the incoming number as she picked up.

  “Hello, Nick. How are you?”

  “Hi, Grace.” His voice sounded subdued. There was a low roar in the background. He was obviously driving somewhere. “Oh, I’m OK, I think.”

  She didn’t call him a liar outright but her pause said the words for her.