A Book of Bones

by John Connolly

  St. Cuthbert’s was open daily to visitors from April to September, and otherwise at weekends. Most pilgrims were respectful, others less so, but all left some trace of their passing, even if only in the form of dirty footprints, and the occasional forgotten National Trust leaflet or piece of discarded litter. It was Karenza’s habit, therefore, to enter the churchyard via the lychgate each evening—or sometimes, if she was feeling tired, to arrive early in the morning, as on this day—to clean and tidy, and check for any signs of new damage.

  She commenced a single circuit of the exterior, silently greeting each of the yews in turn. Karenza found nothing odd in this. These evergreens were living creatures, and the sacredness—or sanctity, spirituality, call it what you will—of the site was partly their doing; of that much, Karenza had no doubt, her matter-of-fact Anglicanism easily accommodating this dash of pantheism.

  She proceeded to the rear of the church, to pay her respects to the oldest of the yews. A murder of crows had gathered nearby, alternately alighting on the tilted gravestones before rising again to circle the tree without passing above it, or coming to rest on its branches, as though attracted by the yew even as it repelled their attentions through the force of its great, time-earned will. It was not unusual to see birds behaving in this way around the yews of St. Cuthbert’s, although Karenza could not recall ever glimpsing so many acting in unison.

  Karenza might have loved the trees, and found their presence a source of reassurance and continuity in a world that had long been moving too quickly for her liking, but she was also wary of them, for the common yew was among the most poisonous plants to be found in the English landscape. Every part was lethal, save the pulp surrounding the seed, and any animal foolish enough to feed on it was likely to be seriously sickened, if not killed. In a curious twist, dead yew branches were even more dangerous than the limbs of the living organism, revenant discards seeking vengeance for their severance.

  Karenza drew closer to the tree. The morning light deepened the redness of the bark in spots, like the shadows of clouds fixed upon it. She picked up movement on the scaly bark, and a low, insistent buzzing. Masses of flies were stuck to the red sap oozing from the trunk, except the yew had been dry only the previous day, and rarely leached so copiously—not like the old yew at St. Brynach’s in Nevern, said to weep in mourning for the crucified Christ, which was a leap of faith too far even for Karenza. Yet this was not the pink of the sap at St. Brynach’s, or of other yews she had seen, but a vivid scarlet, the natural color of the fluid seemingly intensified by some new element.

  Higher up, Karenza glimpsed a whiteness, although it was not uniform. Like the trunk, it was streaked with shadow. She moved so near to the tree that she could smell its essence and hear the movement of its branches, could almost feel the slow progress of its regeneration, the inverse of her own gradual, inexorable decline.

  A man was lodged in the hollow heart of the yew, his naked body banded with blood, his flesh torn where the wood had scourged him as his legs were forced into the recess, so that the tree appeared almost to be consuming him. His arms were draped over the iron rods holding in place the branches of the ancient organism, and his head lay against his right shoulder, exposing the long, jagged incision at his throat. His eyes had been scoured from their sockets, as though whoever was responsible for his death had wished him to stumble blindly into the underworld. Flies swarmed furiously around him, already laying their eggs in his concavities, so that the cavern of his mouth was near black with them.

  And the yew, recognizing neither the supremacy of Christian over pagan, nor man over beast, held Karl Holmby in its grip, and accepted his sacrifice.

  CHAPTER LXXXIX

  In his reading room of the British Library, quieter at the weekend than on other days, Bob Johnston worked his way through the latest series of books he’d requested. Some were held off-site, so he’d been forced to wait a day for them to be delivered. Now, though, he was immersed in their contents, aided by Latin and Dutch dictionaries, and the Internet, courtesy of his battered old laptop. His mood was light. He’d had coffee with Rosanna Bellingham that morning, and she’d kissed him goodbye when they were done; just a peck on the cheek, but close enough to his mouth that the corner of her lips touched his. He thought it might have been intentional.

  Hoped it might.

  Johnston returned to tales of blood, glass, and atlases.

  And unbeknownst to him, moved closer to the time of his torment.

  CHAPTER XC

  Hynes had started to wonder if he’d ever see his bed again, and if he’d still have a wife with whom to share it when he got there. At the very least, she’d probably have changed the locks.

  He’d slept in an empty cell at the station the night before, too tired even to contemplate getting behind the wheel of his car, and concerned at waking Charlotte by thumping in late just to grab a few hours between the sheets. He’d texted her before turning off the light, and tried calling that morning, but Charlotte hadn’t answered, which made him angry because he was bone weary, hungry, and currently looking at the naked body of a boy jammed into the hollow of an old yew tree. He didn’t need her being in a strop with him on top of all that.

  Then, just as he was simmering nicely, Charlotte called him back. She’d been out buying the ingredients for a chicken korma, she told him, which she planned to prepare and leave in a pot on the stove, because she knew he liked a homemade curry. He could heat it up when he got home, whenever that might be. She hadn’t been able to get to her phone in time when he called, but was glad to hear from him because she’d been worried, what with all the trouble she’d seen on the television.

  Hynes’s vision grew blurred. He was forced to turn away from the body, the tree, and the CSI team, even as the final touches were being put to the tarp that concealed Karl Holmby’s remains from view.

  “Can you hear me?” Charlotte asked. “Hello?”

  “Yes,” said Hynes. He was struggling to speak. A chicken korma: amazing the things that got to you. “I’m still here.”

  “I thought we’d been cut off.”

  “So did I,” although he meant it another way, one he couldn’t have explained except to say that after twenty-four hours filled with rage, cruelty, and violent death, he had felt estranged from normality, from all that was good and kind, as though he had crossed from this world into a more vicious realm; and it had seemed impossible to him that his wife could be part of such an existence, let alone navigate its depths in order to find him, and speak with him once more.

  “What’s happening?” she said. “Where are you now?”

  “Beltingham. We’ve found Karl Holmby. He’s dead.”

  The local morning news reports were already naming the body found in an apartment in Newcastle the previous day as that of Gary Holmby. Before the day was done, they’d be naming his brother, too. Hynes didn’t share with his wife the precise nature of the boy’s death. That would be made public in time, and she didn’t need to know, not right now. Sacrificed to a tree: whoever was tasked with filling out the CID10 form on the killing would go down in police history.

  “Oh no,” said Charlotte. “Their poor mother.”

  “Yeah.”

  Gackowska was back with Mrs. Holmby. The hard men and women continued to surround the house, but this time Gackowska had been admitted without difficulty, and permitted to stay. Clement Holmby, the estranged father of the victims, had shown up intoxicated shortly after midday, only to be forcibly removed half an hour later. He was currently in custody at Heron Hill, where he was sobering up in a cell prior to being interviewed, just in case he had anything worthwhile to share.

  Hynes saw one of the CSI team beckoning to him.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “So will you be home tonight?”

  “I hope so,” he said, and not just because his back ached after a night in a cell. “That korma won’t eat itself.”

  “I’ll wait up for you.”


  “You don’t have to do that. I don’t know what time I’ll be back.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I can always snooze on the couch if you’re late.”

  He told her he loved her, and she told him that of course he did, and not to be daft, and he felt a little better about the world when he hung up.

  He returned to the entrance to the tarpaulin, still wearing his protective clothing and booties, and joined the small group gathered around the deputy pathologist, Lerner. She would replace Sisterson when he retired, which was good news all ’round, Lerner being reasonably accomplished when it came to civil conversation—remarkably so, when compared with her boss. Also present, along with the members of the CSI team, were the vicar, who’d been forced to cancel services for the day and send his parishioners elsewhere, and a local tree surgeon named Maxham. Lerner took Hynes aside for a moment and spoke quietly to him. She was nearly as tall as he, so Hynes experienced the rare pleasure of not having to lean down in order to hear someone speaking softly.

  “The body is lodged pretty firmly in that hollow,” she said. “He wasn’t a heavy lad, but it would still have taken some effort to hoist him up there, and force him into the heart of the tree. Climbing it wouldn’t be too difficult, though. Lots of handholds.”

  “Are we talking two people?”

  “Possibly, although I can see what might be rope marks under his arms, so I’d hazard a guess that he might have had a loop slung around him before being pulled up. Hard to tell for certain, though, and there are multiple abrasions to contend with, but one strong person could have been able to do it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He was already dead by then. We’ve got blood at the north base of the trunk, a lot of it. I think his throat was cut there, and he was allowed to exsanguinate before being moved again. He was then positioned over the hollow of the trunk, and pressed into the gap.”

  “Pressed how?”

  “Both clavicles appear fractured, and there’s extensive damage to the ribs, sternum, and scapulae, along with all of the tearing I mentioned a moment ago. His neck is also broken, as is his nose, although that may have occurred prior to death. I’d say someone stamped repeatedly on his sides and shoulders from above to get him in there. I can also see what appear to be stab wounds to the torso, but I’ll need a proper examination to be sure.”

  Hynes was already considering the possibilities for evidence recovery. They’d be looking for fragments of clothing from the killer, and pieces of shoe rubber or leather, maybe even blood or tissue in case he—or she, because one couldn’t go making assumptions—had suffered injuries while stamping on Karl Holmby. They might get full or partial tread marks from his skin. Also, the killer must have held on for balance to the branches or their metal supports. It was unlikely that prints could be obtained from the wood; they’d try, but they might have more luck finding hair, tissue, or fibers. All this would have to be done before Holmby’s body was removed, which raised the question of how the extraction was to be achieved. He and Lerner returned to the main group, and listened as Giordano, the head of the CSI team, addressed the problem.

  “The yew is at least nine hundred years old,” said Giordano, “but probably much older. There’s no sense in damaging it more than we have to. Mr. Maxham here has been working on these trees for decades, and says the hollow is mostly old decaying wood, so he can cut into it without doing any harm to the yew. He’s confident he can create enough space for us to lift out the body, but he can’t do that until CSI has finished its work.”

  “How soon will that be?” asked Hynes.

  “We’re stretched,” said Giordano, “because we’re working both this scene and the brother’s apartment, but we’ll manage. At least the tree’s not high, so we can access it with ladders, and Mr. Maxham has offered us the use of his equipment as well. With luck, we’ll be ready to take him out by late this afternoon.”

  That would be good, Hynes thought. It was turning into a warm day, and he didn’t suppose Maxham had much experience of cutting around corpses that were beginning to smell. He called Priestman—he was contemplating buying another phone and leaving the connection between them open permanently, just to save him the trouble of hitting the redial button all the time—and brought her up to speed, but even as he did, he realized that they were now even further away than before from understanding what was happening.

  Priestman wasn’t familiar with Beltingham, so it was left to Hynes to describe the narrow, winding road that led to St. Cuthbert’s, and the handful of houses by the lychgate that gave entry to the churchyard. The lychgate had a security camera, but it faced toward the church, not the little green that represented Beltingham’s hub, and the footage from it revealed no sign of anyone coming or going since late the previous afternoon, not until the arrival of Karenza Lumley that morning.

  “Which means?” said Priestman.

  “Karl Holmby was taken to the churchyard from the north, through the woods. It wouldn’t have been easy, but the other option would have been to enter through the lychgate, and either disable the camera or risk being seen. We have officers working the woods now, and looking for points of entry. Whoever brought Karl here must have parked somewhere nearby. They didn’t walk all the way from Newcastle.”

  “Did Karl have prayer beads in his mouth?” Priestman asked.

  “No, or not that we’ve found. They might have fallen out while he was being stamped on, or they could be stuck deep in his throat. None on Gary Holmby’s body, either. Why?”

  “Just a thought. Romana Moon was killed at the Familist spot, and now Karl Holmby, who knew her, is murdered at one of the county’s oldest sites of worship, both with their throats cut.”

  “But Gary Holmby was shot,” Hynes pointed out.

  “Still, they’re connected, along with Helen Wylie, who was left at Canterbury, another holy site, and Kathy Hicks, wherever her body may be.”

  Priestman let Hynes go. Extra manpower had been drafted in so the canvass of the area could start, in the hope that someone might have noticed an unfamiliar vehicle in the vicinity of St. Cuthbert’s, or seen strangers acting suspiciously.

  Or anything; anything at all.

  CHAPTER XCI

  Since the discovery of Romana Moon’s body on the moor, Douglas Hood had made a point of spending time walking the land during daylight hours in order to monitor more closely those who might pass through it. He would have done so even if the detective, Priestman, had not requested it of him, but the fact that she had entrusted him with the task gave a sense of mission to what might otherwise have been another manifestation of his own anger at the despoliation of this place.

  Further fuel was added to Hood’s rage—and sorrow, too, because rarely did an hour go by without his brooding on Romana’s final moments, and her family’s ongoing grief—by the small but steady stream of visitors drawn to Hexhamshire by voyeurism, and the smaller but equally steady group lured there by a possible link between the murder and the long-departed Familists. Hood had already sent packing two lunatics in white robes, the speed of their departure accelerated by the implied threat of the shotgun hanging loosely over his right arm, and Jess’s bared fangs. The Lord alone knew what kind of idiots the most recent news reports might attract, with their talk of Muslim prayer beads and religious slaughter. Hood was already tired of images of bullet-headed thugs in tight shirts screaming obscenities at frightened women in veils, and of young men of different skin colors fighting running battles. If a Muslim was responsible for the killings, Hood thought, then to hell with him, and let the law have its way with a vengeance. But equally, he had no time for fascists. Let them try to rally their troops by the old Familist plot, on this land that he and his forebears had tended for so long, land that his kin had fought to protect from their sort during the last war, and he’d shoot them, and take his chances with the courts later.

  But if he was determined to patrol these reaches by daylight, he was less willing to walk them at ni
ght, not after recent events. He had pulled up all the withered bushes and shrubs in his garden, and set them alight instead of adding them to the compost heap, for fear that whatever had poisoned them might find a way to taint the land still further were it to be reintroduced. In addition, Hood was determined that Jess shouldn’t go out after dark, or no farther than the light from the porch extended, and then only at the end of her leash. To her credit, the dog now showed no particular inclination to roam, not once the sun had gone down. No fool was Jess.

  As though sensing she was in his thoughts, the dog nudged at his hand. They were not far from where the Familist chapel once stood, but it was time to be getting home. He patted her, and she nudged him again before turning toward the site and waiting for him to follow.

  “No, girl,” he said. “I hear the teapot calling.”

  Jess remained where she was, only briefly inclining her head in the direction of the old place of worship. Hood knew her every sound and action, and could gauge her moods and desires from them. Someone was over by the church site. Jess could smell them.