by Mark Dawson
“So a fox was here,” Chester said. “That doesn’t tell us anything.”
“You’re not looking carefully enough. Here.”
He took another, longer stick and pointed it down, holding it just below the lowest branches. Mack dropped down to her knees and bent down enough so that she could look at what Atticus was indicating. A straight track had been scored through the mud next to the prints. It was too dark in the underbrush to see how far the mark extended into the brush, but the track was clearly visible in the opposite direction until it reached the lip of the hollow. From that point on, it, together with the paw prints, was lost in the mess and jumble of boot prints from the attending officers.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A fox would struggle to hold an adult femur in its mouth so that none of it touched the earth,” Atticus said. “It would have to drag it instead, so that one end scraped along the ground.” He pointed at the track. “Just like that. It was a fox, not a dog.”
“All right,” Chester said, not convinced. “But where did the fox find the bone?”
“Indeed,” Atticus said. “That is the question.”
He stood and went around the bush until he was able to find a clear space. He dropped down on his hands and knees and examined the grass and mud at close proximity, his face lowered so that he was just a few inches from the ground. He searched for several minutes until he let out an exclamation of satisfaction.
“There,” he said, pointing down. “And there and there. See?”
Mack looked. Atticus indicated the indentations in the grass and mud: paw prints and, in the mud, the same scored line. He opened the map on his phone. He put his forefingers on the screen and dragged down, scrolling the map to the north and the wide-open green space of the Plain. He turned the phone around so that Mack could look at the screen.
“We’re here,” he said, indicating the icon that denoted their location. “The fox approached from the north.”
He switched to satellite view so that he could take the terrain into account. The Plain was crisscrossed by a lattice of seemingly random tracks, with rows of trees and hedges delineating the patchwork fields. He moved his finger across the map until he reached the only settlement that was visible. The legend on the map relayed the name of the settlement—Imber—and showed a collection of buildings gathered on either side of a road.
“I’d look there,” he said.
Mack looked. “You know where that is, don’t you?”
“I do,” he said. “Have you been?”
“Never. The army only opens it now and again.”
“I’ve been. It’s a very interesting place.”
“But no one’s lived there for years.”
“Seventy years,” he said, enlarging the map and then centring it on a building at the south-eastern edge of the village. “But I was thinking, where might a human bone found in the middle of Salisbury Plain have come from? And then I remembered the church.”
“A church with a graveyard?”
“Yes.” He zoomed in closer, the legend on the map identifying St. Giles’ Church. “Two miles to there from here.”
Chester shook his head. “You think a fox dragged the bone for two miles?”
“They’ve been observed moving scavenged food much farther than that.”
The anthropologist shook his head, making no effort to disguise his disdain. “I really don’t think so.”
“Fine. You stay and wallow in the mud, but you’ll be wasting your time. Your body isn’t here. I’ll go and find it for you.”
Atticus stood and looked to the north. The Plain stretched away, climbing to a shallow ridge that rendered everything beyond it invisible. He unhooked Bandit’s lead from the tree and turned to Mack.
“Coming?”
9
They went back to the Range Rover. The narrow track headed to the north, but Mack said that she had been warned about the increasing possibility of unexploded ordnance the deeper into the Plain one wandered. It was safer to take the B390 and then the A360 to Gore Cross and follow the road west until it reached the settlement of Imber.
Atticus listened as Mack telephoned the station and asked them to make contact with the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, the body that was responsible for maintaining the military’s facilities on the Plain, so that permission to visit the settlement could be arranged. Atticus occupied himself by Googling for information about Imber and read it aloud as they headed north to Tilshead.
“There’s been a settlement since before the Iron Age. The War Office started purchasing parcels of land around it from the beginning of the twentieth century. Some landowners sold up; others stayed. They bought it all, in the end. Said they needed it for the Second World War. They used the whole Plain when they were training for D-Day. The locals were promised the opportunity to return to their homes once the war was done, but, of course, they got screwed over.”
“And since then?” she said as she turned off the main road.
“The army kept the village and used it to train soldiers in urban warfare. Most of the old buildings are still there—the church, the school, the manor house, the pub. The army has put up other buildings to simulate modern built-up areas. There’s a council estate and other buildings they use to practice clearing houses. They use Copehill Down for that now, too, but Imber’s still important.”
“When did you visit?” she asked him.
“Couple of years ago,” he said. “They have buses take people from Warminster. I thought it might be interesting.”
They reached a junction. A series of signs had been erected on a metal pole: one warned of tanks, and another of unexploded military debris. A paved road curved off to the left, bending around to a series of farm buildings and then continuing to the village beyond. Mack rolled onto the road and continued south. They reached the outer perimeter of the village after another mile.
“That’s where they park the buses,” Atticus said, pointing at a bus stop that advertised Warminster.
Mack pulled over and parked next to the sign. Atticus got out and opened the back so that Bandit could leap down, then clipped on his lead and looked around. Imber was in the foot of a deep, wooded valley. Atticus had seen pictures from before the army had taken over. There had been a post office, a smithy, a pub—the Bell Inn—and a church with a substantial vicarage. There were five farms on the Plain that had offered work to the inhabitants. There had even been a cricket team. He had seen photographs of the men and women who had lived here, happy folk in their Sunday best, smiling for the camera. That was then, though, and the story was different now. There was a feeling of sadness in the air, a sense of melancholy that a village that would once have been busy was now deserted and bleak and unloved.
“The church is over there,” Atticus said, pointing.
They were about to set off when they heard the buzz of an engine and turned to see a quad bike approaching them from the road that led into the village. The bike pulled over, and a man wearing waterproofs and knee-high boots stepped off it and raised a hand as they approached.
“DCI Jones?” he said.
Mack nodded. “Morning.”
The man shook Mack’s hand and then turned to Atticus. “And you are?”
“Atticus Priest.”
“Police?”
“He’s working with me,” Mack said.
The man put out his hand, and Atticus shook it. “Major George Slaney,” he said. “I work for the DIO. I’m the training safety officer responsible for Imber and this part of the Plain.”
“And you got the call?” Mack said.
Slaney nodded. “You’re lucky I was in the area. We’ve had hare coursers out on the range. I’ve been trying to catch them before they get themselves shot or blown up.”
“Are you firing today?”
“Not until your officers are safely out of the way.”
Mack nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Sorry about that.”
“N
o need to apologise. The army is as keen as you are to get to the bottom of what’s been found. A bone, wasn’t it?”
“It was. There’s not much more to say about it at the moment.”
“So why do you want to look around the village?”
“I think it’s possible that the bone came from here,” Atticus said. “Specifically, the church. We’d like to check.”
“Well, we can certainly do that. It’s at the southern end of the village. This way.”
They set off, heading south through the village. The road around which the settlement had grown up was in the shape of a lazy S. The church was at the bottom of the S, and they had parked at the top. They passed a collection of unfinished brick-built two-storey houses, three rows with five houses in each row, their doorways and windows left open to the elements.
“What are they used for?” Mack asked.
“To simulate Belfast, originally,” the major said. “Then it was Balkan villages, and after that Basra and Sangin. Nowadays it’s Mali and South Sudan. It’s been very versatile over the years.”
Atticus gestured to the sky. “Not very African today.”
“We make it as realistic as we can. But there are some things we can’t change.”
They continued along the road until they could see the tower of St. Giles’ Church. A narrow, paved pathway cut between two fields and then through yew hedges until they reached a chain-link fence and a gate that was fastened with a padlock. Slaney took out a hefty bunch of keys, unlocked the gate and stood aside to let them through.
“How old is it?” Mack asked.
“Eight hundred years,” Atticus said. “The nave was built at the end of the thirteenth century.”
“Is it still used?”
“They have services here four or five times a year,” Slaney said. “The church took over the upkeep. It’s in pretty good nick.”
Bandit strained against the lead. “Is it safe to let him off?”
“It’s fine,” Slaney said.
Atticus unclipped the lead, and Bandit shot away from them, disappearing around the corner of the church.
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” Slaney asked.
“Any sign that the ground has been disturbed,” Atticus said.
“Take as long as you like,” he said.
Mack led the way into the churchyard. She went left, and Atticus went right. The building looked to be in good condition and, as he started to skirt around it, Atticus noted that the graveyard also looked well tended. The grass had been trimmed, and the gravestones and tombs, although often more than a hundred years old, were largely intact. He completed his half of the circuit without seeing anything that suggested that the graves had been disturbed.
He met Mack halfway around. “Anything?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
Atticus frowned. This had always been a hunch, but he was disappointed nonetheless. Bandit trotted up to him and waited while Atticus reattached the lead.
Slaney was waiting for them at the gate. “Did you find anything?”
“No,” Mack said. “Nothing.”
They passed through the fence, and Slaney secured the gate with the padlock once again. “Is there anything else you want to see?”
Atticus stopped and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “There’s another church, isn’t there?”
“There was a Baptist church, but the building was demolished in the seventies. There’s nothing there now.”
“Did it have a graveyard?”
Slaney nodded. “Still there.”
“We need to look.”
“We’re going back that way to where we parked. I think I’ve got the key with me.”
Slaney led the way back to the road and then turned left, headed northwest. They passed the spot where they had parked their vehicles and continued, turning left again and descending a grassy slope to an area that had been sealed off with more chain-link fencing. Slaney took out his bunch of keys, sorted through it until he found the one he wanted, and then used it to open the padlock that sealed the gate.
Bandit was pulling hard again, and Atticus leant down to let him off. The dog bounded off, quickly disappearing behind two tall yew trees that looked to have been growing here for years. Atticus stepped inside and looked around. The graveyard here had been allowed to fall into a state of some disrepair, quite different from the equivalent at St. Giles. It was difficult to guess how many burial plots there were; Atticus counted ten headstones that were still standing, but there was evidence of others that had fallen down or been removed. The stones were waist high with weeds and covered with moss and lichen.
“I don’t see anything,” Mack said.
Atticus stepped closer to a gravestone and laid his hand atop it. The inscription was for James Daniels and Eliza Daniels, who had died in 1920 and 1926. He sucked his teeth and was ready to abandon their trip as fruitless when he heard Bandit’s excited bark. It was coming from behind the stand of yew. Atticus led the way, pushing between a tangle of bramble that had grown up in the spaces between the trees. Mack followed, with Slaney behind.
Bandit was standing next to a patch of ground that had been disturbed. This wasn’t the rummaging of an animal, but a much more significant displacement of earth. A shallow crater had been torn out, and clods of earth, still topped by vivid clumps of grass, had been tossed around in all directions.
Slaney shook his head. “Looks like it’s been hit by a mortar.”
Mack gestured to the crater. “And that’s not supposed to happen?”
“Certainly not. The whole village is off the range for that kind of ordnance. Something landing here could only be because of a serious mistake. There’ll have to be an investigation. There’ll probably be a court martial at the end of it.”
Atticus drew nearer to the crater. It wasn’t deep—likely reaching just up to his knee—and not particularly wide, either. The mortar, if that was what had caused it, had struck it only a glancing blow, with the detonation firing laterally rather than straight down. A gravestone had been split in half, its jagged stump standing in place like a rotten tooth. Bandit was at the edge of the slope, his head pointed forward and one paw off the ground. His docked tail wagged excitedly.
Atticus went over to stand next to him and looked down. The earth was damp with moisture, and a puddle had gathered at the bottom of the pit. A handful of stones and rocks were visible, but it wasn’t those that had drawn the dog’s attention. Atticus saw a flash of white contrasting with the dull brown. It was a bone, long and slender, poking out of the fresh earth at a shallow angle. The visible end terminated in a bulbous shape that Atticus recognised as the head of the humerus, the long bone of the arm that ran from the shoulder to the elbow.
Mack arrived at the lip of the crater, and Atticus turned to her.
“Tell Chester that he can pack up and go home. We’ve found where your bone came from.”
10
Mack drove Atticus and Bandit back to Salisbury and dropped them off outside the office.
“Thanks for this morning,” she said.
He waved her gratitude away. “What are you going to do now?”
“We can probably put this to bed. I’ll speak to Fyfe—I’ll need to get him out to confirm that the bone we found matches the remains in the cemetery, and that’ll be that. What about you?”
“I need to go and visit my new client,” he said.
“The missing daughter?”
He nodded and opened the door.
“Let me know if you need anything,” she offered.
“It won’t be hard,” he said. “She’ll be with a boy. You know how it is—I’ll have found her by this time tomorrow.”
She said goodbye and popped the back for him to retrieve Bandit and his rucksack. The dog jumped down and followed Atticus to the passageway that led from the street. Mack pulled out, and Atticus raised a hand in farewell. It had been an interesting diversion, but he didn’t kid him
self; he had gone along in the event that there might have been an opportunity to spend a little time with Mack. More, he knew, he had wanted to impress her and, as he watched her drive away, he was satisfied that he had been able to do that. He wanted to revive their relationship, but didn’t have the first clue how to go about it. Showing off might not have been the most adult of strategies, but it was all he had, and he’d never pretended that maturity was one of his special qualities.
Atticus changed out of his muddy clothes, cleaned his boots and left them next to the radiator to dry, and went to leave Bandit with Jacob. He said that he would be back in the evening, and that the dog had had his exercise for the day and would probably only be interested in sleeping.
He went to his car and looked up the address that James York had given him. His farm was outside Broughton, a small town just off the A30 on the route to Stockbridge. Atticus drove to the northern edge of the village, following his satnav’s instructions to the narrow track he had seen when he’d Googled the address. He bumped along the track until he reached his destination and looked through the bars of a wrought-iron gate at the property beyond. A sign next to the gate advertised the property as Hatfield Farm. The farmhouse and outbuildings were approached along a gravel driveway that was bordered by laurel hedges to either side. The drive widened in front of the property to provide space for parking and turning.
Atticus got out and buzzed the intercom set into the right-hand pillar.
James York answered. “Hello?”
“It’s Atticus Priest.”
“Oh, of course. I’ll open the gates now. Just drive up to the house.”
The gates parted. Atticus got back into the car and edged through them. The buildings looked less impressive as he drew nearer to them. They were in a state of disrepair, with several of the barns close to total collapse. The farmhouse itself was in only slightly better condition; the roof was missing several of its tiles, and a ground-floor window had been covered with a plastic sheet. The drive continued around to the rear of the building, but Atticus turned into the parking area and slotted his Volvo next to the Ford Ranger that he had noticed the previous day. He got out just as James York emerged from the front door.