Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  Queenie abandoned stealth and ran. The attention of the other pair was on the giant. The one closest never knew she was there until she boxed his ears for him and shoved him aside. He gave a roar, and Jackson’s head jerked up, stepping back from the man he had pinned. Bartley wrapped his arms around his body and fell back.

  The top of Queenie’s head barely came up to the giant’s chest but she’d no need of height for the target she had in mind. Without a pause, she reached for the crotch of the thin tracksuit pants Jackson wore—one of the few items off the shelf that fit his frame—grabbed tight and gave a vicious upward twist.

  Queenie’s youth had been spent training horses, carrying water buckets and three quarter-hundredweight bales of hay and straw. Of holding the reins of a bolting pony and not letting go no matter what. She had the iron grip of a farrier despite the size of her hands.

  Jackson’s eyes bulged in his cadaverous face. He tried to pull back and found out the hard way what a mistake that was. His colour drained, his mouth fell open and his Adam’s apple bounced convulsively in the telegraph pole of his throat.

  “For the love of God, Queenie—” Bartley managed but it was too late. The red mist was on her.

  She got right into the giant’s face and told him what she thought of him. At the top of her voice. People came running, her brother among them. But the crowd stopped a safe distance and didn’t try to intervene.

  Only when she’d run out of curses and was starting to repeat herself did Vano finally edge close enough to rest his hands upon her shoulders.

  “Queenie, the man’s sorry for your trouble,” he said, speaking loud and slow. “Aren’t you, Mr Jackson?”

  Jackson made a small sound of assent, rigid and sweating now. Vano’s hands slid down her arms to her elbows. His touch appeared gentle but, where the onlookers couldn’t see, he dug his thumbs deep into nerves that sprang her fingers open as though he’d picked a lock.

  Jackson gave a strangled groan as she released, stood bent over with hands braced on knees while he tried to catch his breath. Vano steered her away from him, caught her wrists and ducked to stare into her eyes as if checking she was still inside herself.

  “Very sorry,” Vano repeated. “Very sorry indeed. Isn’t that right, Mr Jackson?”

  “Oh yes,” Jackson agreed, fervent.

  Vano nodded. “Then that’ll be the end of it, whatever it was.”

  There was laughter. Jackson’s pals slunk in to help him away. Vano offered his hand to Bartley, heaved him to his feet. The crowd, recognising the show as over, began to drift with nods and a few bawdy remarks.

  “You want to tell me what that was all about, my sister?” Vano asked, more quietly.

  “It was nothing,” Bartley said quickly. “A misunderstanding, that’s all it was. Queenie…misheard and came in all guns blazing like the little firecracker she is. Isn’t that right?”

  Queenie did not miss the note of pleading that crept into Bartley’s voice. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded without speaking.

  Vano continued to stare for a moment longer, not fooled and not pretending that he might be. He was half a head taller than Bartley, more open of face, and a far better liar when he wanted to take that road.

  “Well, if—”

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for Vano Smith.”

  They all turned as if uniting, all differences aside. The voice was a mix of Manchester and London, but it was the tone that sent a warning through Queenie’s head.

  It was…official.

  The man wore jeans and boots, a waterproof jacket slung over one shoulder and his shirt sleeves rolled up. His eyes went from one to another of them with focus like a hawk on a hare. Pale blue eyes, electric, piercing. She shivered.

  “Oh, you’ve just missed him,” Vano said without missing a beat. He glanced across the field, gave a vague wave of his arm. “I think he was heading over that way.”

  “Really? Well, perhaps you can help me then,” the man said. His voice slipped from silk to steel as he added, “since you must be his identical twin.”

  “Ah, but you can’t be too careful these days.” Vano’s grin was unabashed. “Was you wanting to buy a horse? I’ve a couple of real beauties I might be persuaded to part with, if the price was right.”

  “Would those be the horses you had with you down on the Mallerstang road the night before last—at Water Yat?”

  Queenie reached for her brother, clinging to his sleeve as she murmured, “Gavver.”

  The stranger flicked those unnerving eyes to hers. “Yes, I am a copper,” he said. “And I’m here because a young boy was knocked off his bicycle, near where you were camped that night, and has been missing for two days.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir,” Vano said calmly. “I certainly didn’t go knocking any children off their bicycles and if you’d any proof that I had something to do with it, you’d have been down here mob-handed, so—”

  “Your prints were on the bicycle,” the copper said, cutting across Vano’s smooth denial. “So was the boy’s blood.”

  Queenie went cold, despite the increasing glare of the sun. She was suddenly aware of movement, looked about her quickly and found the crowd had re-formed around them and moved in close. Arms were crossed, heads were tilted and expressions stony.

  “Anything goes wrong and you blame the Gypsies, is that it?” she demanded. “You should be ashamed, picking on us. That’s not just lazy, that’s racist, that is. That’s a hate crime. You should be investigating yourself.”

  There were mutterings of agreement. The man’s gaze moved steadily over the people ranged against him. Not scared—not yet—but definitely wary and right to be so.

  Queenie saw his eyes widen a fraction and lift. She turned and found Jackson and his mates had returned, were now standing behind Vano and Bartley.

  There’s nothing like a common enemy to bring the clans together…

  The copper sighed. “All I want to do is eliminate you from our enquiries and move on,” he said. “The bicycle was found in the skip put at Water Yat for your use.”

  “That proves nothing,” Vano said. “Anyone could have put whatever they liked into that skip. Sitting there on open ground, wasn’t it? Not locked.”

  The copper raised an eyebrow. “Could anyone have put your prints on the bike, too?”

  Vano said nothing.

  “Look. If you simply found it and dumped it, it would help us to know where you found it.” He looked at the faces again, saw no help in any of them. His glance returned to Queenie. “I don’t care if you’re Gypsies or Martians. All I want to do is find the boy, or find out what happened to him. If you have children of your own and you care about them, then you’ll help us to do that. It’s the human thing to do. Anything else really would be a hate crime, don’t you think?”

  22

  The rain has stopped but the river rages on.

  It runs fast and fat, greedy for its share of field to either hand. The water, churning silt turning it white-coffee brown, boils along the twisting course. It skips the apex of every bend, then whirls back on itself to take another bite.

  At the outside of each turn, the river grabs and gouges, voracious in its appetite. It rebels against the confines of its banks, rides up and over, and spills across the open ground. Exploring field and home and road and garden without discrimination.

  In less than five miles, from Outhgill down to Kirkby Stephen, the valley drops more than two hundred and seventy-five feet—almost eighty-five metres. No surprise, then, that the run-off from Edge and Fell thunders onward, downward, like a wagon train and bolting horses.

  It takes most of the night for the swollen waters to ease back. Residents along the upper course of the Eden emerge into a new dawn to face deluge, damage and dirt, with determined forbearance. This isn’t the first time and won’t be the last.

  Farmers make rounds of fields and hillsides on quad-bikes and in their four-by-fours. From elevation i
t is easier to note the places where the river has re-routed itself, side-stepping by as much as twenty feet and scouring a new track through the bank to do so.

  One man spots a gleam of something he fears might be the carcass of fallen stock down in a crook of the river’s displaced elbow. He approaches slow, wary that further sections of the banking might give way beneath him.

  He doesn’t get too close to the crumbling edge but doesn’t need to. Even a brief glance tells him this is no dead sheep the rains have revealed. Shocked, he moves back a safe distance, as though to ward away some nameless contamination.

  The farmer re-mounts his quad and pulls his mobile phone from his pocket, stabbing his thumb three times on the nine key.

  “Emergency Services. Which service do you require?”

  “Well now, tha’s a good question,” the farmer responds. “Tha’d best send a policeman and yon ambulance. No rush, though. ’E’s not goin’ anywhere…”

  Part IV

  Friday

  23

  Vano might have been newly dead.

  Queenie, watching him from across the bow-top wagon, could barely even detect the sound of his breath. He lay utterly still in the bunk, sprawled on his back with one arm flung across his eyes. Didn’t fidget or twitch, like their father had done—didn’t snore and mutter half the night, either. Queenie knew some childhood chest infection had left her with a slight whistle when she slept. She’d never been able to shake it.

  But Vano? Vano had always been the quiet one. In the years after their mother passed, Queenie remembered waking often in the night and reaching for him, just to check he hadn’t slipped away and left her, too.

  Now, though, she was aware of time passing. She leaned forward on the stool she’d taken and called his name softly.

  For a moment she thought it hadn’t reached him. Then he gave a start and a snort, like a dog roused from a dream of rabbit chasing, and was instantly wide awake.

  He shifted the arm from across his eyes, saw her and let out a squawk, lurching up in the bunk and dragging the thin sheet tight around his waist.

  Queenie laughed. Vano swore at her in return.

  “Are you trying to give me heart failure, sister?”

  “You still wake as quick as you sleep, then?”

  “Did you think I’d be any different?” He rubbed his face with one hand to hide the smile, still keeping tight hold of the bed sheet with the other. “What a grasni shan tu.”

  “Oh, so I’m a mare, am I?” Queenie said tartly. “Well, my brother, what does that make you?”

  The smile went as quickly as it had arrived. “And just what are you meaning by that?”

  Queenie ignored the warning, such as it was. “The copper who was here looking for you yesterday—about the bicycle?” She paused. “With…the ratti?”

  The blood.

  “What is it you think I’ve done?”

  Queenie clenched her fists in frustration. “If I knew that, I would have no need to ask, would I? Just tell me, brother. How can I protect you if—?”

  “I’ve no need to hide behind a woman’s skirts.”

  A dig. A dig at her husband. She realised, belatedly, that Vano might use her intervention with Jackson against Bartley. Might? He would, unless she gave him cause to think twice.

  “I’ve been hearing that he disappeared—the boy with the bicycle. From Water Yat Bottom at Mallerstang, the night you were camped there.”

  Vano crossed his arms and stuffed his hands into his armpits as if to cover his chest. He was still clasping the sheet firmly.

  “They don’t know where he disappeared from,” he said now. “They’re guessing—trying to put the blame on us, just like you said.”

  “Did you knock him down, Vano?” Queenie asked, almost a whisper. “Is that why you left so early to come on to the farm? Wynter said you got her out of bed and she’s up with the lark.”

  Vano gave a twitch like he was about to strike but thought better of it. He let out a long, annoyed breath through his nose.

  “I never saw the lad,” he said. “I found the bicycle, that’s all. Found it by the side of the road. Saw the damage and the blood…” He broke off, gave a helpless shrug. “I knew, if I left it there, the first gorgio happening by would see it and see us and—”

  “Think the same as the gavvers,” she murmured, thinking of the man with the electric blue eyes who’d so unsettled her. Not least because clearly he knew the Romani word for copper. That didn’t bode well.

  “So I got rid of it. Never thought they’d go through what we left behind, not if it was all tidied away.”

  Queenie bit her lip. “It makes it look like you were trying to hide it, purposeful, like.”

  “What else could I do, sister? You know what they’re like, some of the gorgios around about here. Always after an excuse to bad mouth us, do us down and move us on. You were right, it is hate crime.”

  She reached across, put a hand on his foot, sticking up under the sheet, gave it a reassuring squeeze. Vano smiled at her again but the light wasn’t behind it this time. He glanced about him as if realising only now that they were alone.

  “Where’s my Nell?”

  “She’s taken Sky and the baby down to see the river,” Queenie said. “If the water goes down enough, perhaps they’ll stoop to letting us take the horses in to wash them this afternoon.”

  The evening before, the police and the animal welfare inspectors had gated off the sloping entrance to the Eden, by the bridge, saying the level was too high, the flow too fast and the risks too great. It had not gone over well with those who’d brought horses to sell and wanted them looking their best. Many tempers would be salved if they could get into the water today.

  “Then I’d best be up and see what I can do to help convince them, hadn’t I?” Vano said. He gave Queenie a stern look. “Off with you. Let me into my clothes in peace.”

  She rose. “You’ve nothing I haven’t seen before, brother. And many times, over the years.”

  “Well, there’s only two women see me naked these days. And one of them won’t remember after she’s grown her first tooth.”

  It was only as Queenie reached the bow-top’s front porch that she paused to ask a final question. “Why did you camp at Mallerstang that night, rather than come on to the farm? Surely, when you were so close—”

  “Will you stop your bloody questions!” Vano roared. “It was another ten miles, all right? The mare was tired, Nell was tired, and the baby wanted a feeding.”

  He threw back the sheets, regardless, slid from the bunk and grabbed his jeans and T-shirt. As he stalked past her in the narrow space, he veered close and stuck his face into hers.

  “You ask too many questions, sister. I’ve a mind to tell that husband of yours he needs to take his belt to you more often! Remind you of your place.”

  Queenie flinched back, averted her gaze while he stormed into his clothes and clattered down the wooden steps onto the grass.

  Only then did she realise that he’d come to Mallerstang from Scotch Corner, over on the east side of the Pennines. Unless he’d turned south at the old Tan Hill Inn, through Birkdale and past Nine Standards Rigg, the logical route would have taken him up closer to the A66, through Rookby, Winton, and Hartley.

  And passed only a mile or so from North Stainmore.

  By choosing to go down to Mallerstang, setting down there for a night, then coming back up to the Trelawneys’ farm the next day, he’d added maybe thirty miles onto the journey.

  As she climbed more sedately from the bow-top after her brother, Queenie worried over the reason for the detour.

  And she prayed that a missing child had nothing to do with it.

  24

  Blenkinship was late. He’d chosen to take the motorway south from Carlisle. It was the obvious route and, by rights, it should have been the quickest, too. Except for a broken-down caravan—straightforward grockle rather than Gypsy—in the roadworks going over Shap Fell. An alrea
dy restricted piece of carriageway was further reduced from two lanes down to one.

  He’d muscled his way through the tailback and the jam, losing time and temper in roughly equal amounts. It had always infuriated him that other drivers were so totally unaware of those around them, some of whom might have a genuinely urgent reason to get by.

  When he finally reached the crime scene, just up the valley from Kirkby Stephen, he was sweating despite the car’s air conditioning running full blast. He pulled onto the grass between a patrol car and the BMW convertible belonging to the Force Medical Examiner.

  Cumbria still had its own pathologist when Blenkinship had first started working crime scenes. Now they were all freelancers, contracted in when the need arose. Dr Ayoola Onatade lived in the Trough of Bowland, out in the middle of nowhere, on the other side of Lancaster. He’d hoped to beat her to the body, at least.

  The uniforms had already cordoned off a section of field alongside the river. In the centre of the area, right at the edge of the bank, were the white easy-up tents, protecting the find not only from the elements but also from any passing gawpers. Not that there were likely to be too many of those around here. Not without four legs, horns and a fleece, at any rate.

  He pulled on a fresh set of Tyvek coveralls and gathered his kit, aware of a tightness in his chest that was not his usual response to being called out on a job.

  It wasn’t hard to work out why this one was different.

  He was surprised, though, what with all the run-off and the rain, that the body hadn’t travelled further. Something must have snagged it, kept it back.

  Still…

  He traipsed across the grass, aware of a suddenly squidgy texture underfoot as the sodden sub-soil slithered under what appeared to be a dry layer of turf.