Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  Blenkinship had never enjoyed attending post-mortem examinations. He wasn’t squeamish, far from it, but it all took up valuable time, which, he considered, would be far better spent otherwise engaged.

  To his mind, if you had a decent pathologist on staff, you let them get on with the job and didn’t interfere—not something he had managed to get across to all the people on his team. So, it had not occurred to him, when he pulled rank on Grace McColl, that the prospect of watching Dr Onatade about her work on this particular case would cause him undue anxiety.

  But it had.

  In fact, he got as far as the outer doors before his nerve failed him. As he reached for the handle, he noticed that his hand had a slight tremor. The next thing he knew, he was doubled over the nearest waste bin, bringing back his last meal in racking painful heaves.

  “Christopher? Are you all right?”

  It would have to be Dr Onatade herself who found him, of course. Even if her voice held nothing but concern for his welfare—however much he suspected she might laugh about this with her colleagues later.

  She brought him inside, sat him down with a hot damp cloth to wipe his clammy skin, a paper cup of water to wash away the vile taste in his mouth, some gum. Considering she was more used to ministering to the dead than the living, she took care of him with enough thought and skill that he found himself unaccountably emotional.

  At last, she perched on the edge of the desk in her office, where he half-sat, half-lay, sprawled on the visitors’ sofa. She eyed him critically, as he imagined she did with most of her work. The only difference being that he wasn’t about to leave here with a large Y incision decorating the front of his chest—or so he hoped.

  “Sorry, doctor. I’m holding up proceedings,” he managed at last.

  She dismissed his apology with an airy wave. “My patient will be just as dead an hour from now as he was an hour ago,” she said. “It’s you I’m concerned about, Christopher. Are you sick?”

  “Might have been something I ate, maybe, eh?” he suggested. “Anyway, we best get on.” He tried to rise. The room tilted wildly, seeming to whip the sofa out from under him. If Dr Onatade hadn’t grabbed his arm to steady him, he doubted he would have found it again on the way down.

  “You are staying put,” she said firmly. “Have a nap or something—you won’t be disturbed here.”

  “Away with you. I’m fine—”

  She gave him a hard stare and there was no mistaking the grit in her voice. “Don’t make me go over your head, Christopher, and have you declared unfit for duty.” She patted his shoulder. “I know how important this case is to you—to all of us. I’ll put his clothes to one side for you to bag up and I’ll come to find you as soon as I have the results.”

  “The body is that of a young boy, aged approximately eight to ten years old,” Dr Onatade began in a measured tone. “His injuries are…extensive. There is major trauma to the head, chest, and torso, and considerable damage to the limbs. Also, bruising and abrasions on most areas of the body. At this stage it is not immediately apparent which of his numerous injuries might have been fatal.”

  She stopped, rested her gloved hands on the steel table in front of her and fixed Blenkinship with an implacable eye across the boy’s corpse.

  “My goodness, Christopher, when you do something, you certainly go all out, don’t you? What did you do—back the car up and run over him again?”

  Blenkinship gaped at her, the buzz of shock zipping over his scalp. Before he could form a response, the boy sat up and turned toward him, his one remaining eye wide open, milky. He tried to speak, his ruined jaw unable to form the words. All that emerged was a wrenching gargle. He tried to lift his arm, to point an accusing finger, but the bone of his upper arm was fractured clean through. It first began to tremble, then gradually to droop from the fracture site. As it did so, the sheared end of the bone became visible through the torn skin.

  Horrified, Blenkinship lurched back away from the table, hands up to ward him off. He saw Dr Onatade watching the scene calmly, as if this was entirely normal. As if this happened all the time during her post-mortem examinations.

  She put a hand on the boy’s shoulder—in the same way she had with Blenkinship, only a short while before—and hushed his inarticulate moans.

  “Don’t try to speak,” she told him. “I promise that I will speak for you. Grace and I will speak for you.”

  The boy snarled again and she nodded, somehow understanding what he was struggling to say. Like a dentist communicating with a patient in the chair when she had both hands and a drill in his mouth.

  “I know,” Dr Onatade said, her voice almost a croon. “You can tell me and we will tell the world. Grace and I will make sure that everyone knows what he has done to you.”

  “But…” Blenkinship’s voice trailed away. What could he say? That only parts of the boy’s injuries were down to him? That none of it was intentional? That if he’d known the damage the river would do, he would have…what?

  Not done it? Not consigned the body to the Eden and watched as the darkness swallowed him like the water?

  And he knew, to his shame, that the answer would still have been yes.

  The boy continued to wail but now his limbs flopped and flailed, also. Dr Onatade ignored the erratic movements. She carried on preparing for her task, laying out her instruments—scalpel, saw, and rib-spreader.

  Blenkinship moved forward again, realised as he did so that he was up to his ankles in water. He glanced down, thankful he was wearing rubber boots and wondering when he’d changed into surgical garb. The water level was rising rapidly, floating detritus from around the room. A box of latex gloves bobbed past, a half bottle of whisky. The same brand he’d been drinking that night.

  I had only the one! Or was it two…?

  The water was up to his knees now, flooding over the tops of his boots and drenching his feet with biting cold. Dr Onatade appeared not to notice that her autopsy table was starting to lift gently with the rising tide.

  The double doors leading out of the suite began to rattle fiercely. He eyed them with apprehension, trying to climb onto a cabinet to escape the encroaching water level. He slipped and fell back with a splash.

  “Doctor!”

  As he shouted, he looked for her, found both her and the boy now perched on top of the steel table which was hovering somewhere up near the ceiling, bumping against the extractor unit, well clear of the water. Three eyes stared down at him.

  Treading water, fighting the forces pulling him under, Blenkinship coughed, managed, “I’m sorry!”

  “So am I, Christopher,” Dr Onatade said. “But you must realise that you have only yourself to blame.”

  Then the doors finally gave way and a tidal wave crashed in, crushing him with the weight of his own guilt.

  Blenkinship jerked upright, deafened by the rasp of his own breath. His lungs felt sodden and his clothes soaked through. They clung to his body as he shivered.

  “Are you all right?” Dr Onatade asked from the doorway.

  He glanced about him, slightly dazed. He was in her office, sprawled on the visitor sofa. Everywhere was dry and still. She moved into the room, still in her scrubs, although minus gloves and disposable apron. He wasn’t sure if that meant she had finished or was yet to begin. All sense of time had left him.

  “Erm, what…?”

  “Here, I’ve made you some ginger and honey tea. No, don’t pull faces. It will help to settle your stomach.”

  He took the proffered cup with bleary thanks, checked his watch and was momentarily dumbfounded by the time that had passed.

  A dream. It was just a dream.

  Or a nightmare.

  He scraped a hand across his scalp, tried to force his brain back into gear. At least he no longer felt in imminent danger of throwing up.

  Or he didn’t, until he asked, “So, how did the PM go? What did…you find?” He so nearly phrased it, “What did he tell you?” but managed to
switch course at the last moment.

  Dr Onatade frowned and leaned back against the edge of her desk again. “It was…hard to say.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Of all the times for her to sound uncertain, this was not one where he wanted to invite speculation. Clear-cut, brief, final—that’s what he’d been hoping for.

  Now, she sipped her own drink, some kind of fruit tea by the smell of it, before responding. “A huge amount of…damage was done to the body, much of it either at or immediately after the time of death,” she said then. “It has served to obfuscate matters—which may have been our killer’s intention.”

  “Aw, come on, pet. He was hit by a vehicle, plain and simple—knocked off his bike, dead, into the river. End of story.”

  Her eyebrows, visible over the rim of her cup, shot up. She put down her tea, very precisely, onto a coaster on the desktop, before she spoke.

  “Since when, Christopher, do we dictate the evidence rather than letting it dictate to us?”

  He rubbed a frustrated hand around the back of his neck. It was still clammy to the touch. “That wasn’t what… Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it—what happened, I mean?”

  “Oh?” Rarely had one word been so imbued with scepticism.

  Aware of the sheer size of the hole he might be digging for himself, nevertheless Blenkinship plunged in.

  “Well, take the bicycle. Grace McColl examined that and came to the conclusion—all right and proper, I’ve no doubt—that he was hit by a…vehicle of some kind, that ran over the frame of the bike. There was transfer from both the vehicle and the vi—the boy”—he amended quickly—“onto the bicycle.”

  “Agreed. I’ve seen Grace’s report. It was very thorough.”

  He nodded. The room was beginning to rotate again and was suddenly very hot. He was aware of the sweat blooming at his armpits and around the waistband of his trousers where his shirt tucked in.

  “So, it’s logical to assume that…that whoever hit him, realised he was dead and…and…”

  “Dumped him in the river like a piece of trash?” Dr Onatade had a way of enunciating her words very clearly when she was annoyed, or upset. She was doing it now. “We all know what happens when we assume, Christopher. And why would he—or she—bother to check? After all, the perpetrator had just run over a child. They must have known what they had done, or why did they stop—not to call for help, as you or I would have done—but for the sole purpose of disposing of the incriminating evidence?”

  Blenkinship silenced the mental alarms going off inside his head and ploughed on, dogged.

  “You surely cannot think that, having stopped, as you say, they put the kid into the river without wanting to make absolutely certain that the poor little bugger was actually dead? I mean, maybe they did stop to help, like, but when they realised they’d…what they’d done, they panicked, weren’t thinking straight?”

  “Perhaps they had been drinking, you mean?” She looked thoughtful. “It’s a possibility, I suppose, but choosing to get behind the wheel of a motor car when you’re inebriated makes you fully responsible for all that happens next, in my opinion. Anyway, speculating on the mind-set of the criminal is rather outside my purview. And yours, too, I would have said.”

  “But, at least you can confirm that he was dead before—”

  “Not at all,” she interrupted. “That’s just it, Christopher. The entire body underwent severe trauma, as I said. In fact, it would be easier to list the bones that are unbroken rather than the ones that are. The chest cavity has been ruptured and the lungs compromised. Any foam that might have been present in the bronchial passages would have washed away. This makes it impossible to say with any degree of certainty if he died as a result of injuries sustained in the initial collision, or if what actually killed him was being put into that river while he was still alive…”

  46

  Queenie had just checked on the mare and her colt. The little feller was still unsettled from his run-in with Jackson’s Clydesdale, looking tucked up and nervous whenever anybody came near. She couldn’t help but regret that they’d brought him to this year’s Fair, despite all Bartley’s persuasions.

  It took the colt a while to emerge from sheltering behind his dam to investigate her pockets. She felt sad for him. That he’d learned so soon the world outside the paddock where he’d been born could be a scary and dangerous place.

  Walking away, she turned to stare back at him for a few strides, still frowning over this knock to the horse’s confidence.

  Maybe that was why she didn’t see him.

  As she turned, head down, an arm dropped around her shoulders, dragging her to the side. Instinctively, she drew in a sharp breath to scream but a hand clamped over her mouth.

  She thrashed, lashing out, until a voice growled in her ear, “Queenie! For pity’s sake, woman!”

  It took her a moment to recognise her brother’s voice. It didn’t stop her from stamping hard on his instep, just to reinforce her anger at this downright stupid move. There were simpler ways to get her attention, if that’s what he was about.

  And, if she were honest, she’d admit that it was a relief to be able to take out her frustration on someone, however brief an opportunity that might be.

  She stilled and his hands dropped away, but hesitantly, as if he expected her to start on him again. For maybe half a second, she was tempted to do just that.

  “Vano! What the devil d’you think you’re playing at, brother?” she demanded, shaking herself free of him. He looked about, grabbed her wrist and towed her between two wagons where they were mostly out of easy view.

  Then he said meaningfully, “Ah, and I could be asking you the very same question, sister.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “That horse of Jackson’s—what did you do to him?”

  She jerked her arm round and out to break his grip. “Nothing. Of course not. Did you not see him come right to me? I caught him, that’s all, and walked him about until he’d got over the shock that big oaf put him through—”

  “Not then—not after,” Vano said. “I mean before they went anywhere near the river. Did you…intervene with him, like?”

  “Did I what?”

  She knew what he was getting at, of course she did, but, made truculent by his behaviour of late, she determined to make him spit it out, all the way.

  “Oh, come on, Queenie. You know very well what I’m asking. There are those who say they saw you yesterday with the horse—that you were talking to him.”

  She laughed to hide the increased beating of her heart. “Since when is that something to be ashamed of? I’ve just been talking to the colt, too. Are you going to take me to task for that?” She waited but he didn’t answer. “No, I thought not.”

  “Queenie, you know I’m not a big believer in the old ways but you’ve always been good with the horses. They do things for you…somehow without you ever having to ask. And there are those who think there’s more to it than just an ordinary skill. Look at how the big horse jumped aside when it looked for all the world as if you’d be trampled. And now there’s talk—that you had something to do with the accident.”

  “Put him up to it, you mean?” But even as she scoffed, she remembered asking the horse to take care of ‘me and mine’. Is that what he did? She felt the fight go out of her like water from a leaking bucket. “Well, I never asked him to hurt anyone.”

  “Oh, Queenie. You know how that’s going to sound to some of them.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Will he be all right—Jackson, I mean? After his ducking?”

  “Well, he sank like a rock, so I guess we can say for sure he’s not a witch,” Vano said. Still, the levity of his words did not quite reach his voice. “The doctors reckon he’s got the concussion, seeing two of everything, and the headache from hell. They’re keeping him at the hospital for a few days. Then he’ll be doing nothing more strenuous than laying down for a week or two.” He star
ted to turn away but Queenie put a hand on his arm.

  “There’s more going on with you than this. What is it?”

  “Nothing.” Vano’s smile came too quick and was gone too fast. “It’s just…ah, the timing stinks.”

  “Why? At least Bartley won’t have to take him on over some stupid…” Her voice trailed off as she watched the flit of emotions across her brother’s face. “Oh, no, what have you done, the two of you?”

  “It’s nothing that need concern you.”

  “Oh yes it is, brother. When it’s my man you’re using in your latest scheme. Tell me, or…”

  “Or what? You’ve nothing to hold over me on this one.”

  Not now our father’s passed on…

  “Tell me,” she repeated, icy, “or I’ll start running my mouth that you and Bartley had this fight between him and Jackson fixed.” She saw his start of surprise and her eyes widened. “You didn’t! Oh, you pair of fools. You’d start chingaripen between the clans—now?”

  He bristled, checked again for eavesdroppers anywhere close by, stepped in. “You watch that mouth of yours, my sister. It wasn’t like that. As if I’d do anything to cause strife between the clans. I met with some local gorgio who wanted a little private entertainment for the purposes of placing bets, that’s all. We were to provide the fighters in return for a cut of the take. We thought if it seemed like a genuine feud being settled, they wouldn’t…you know.”

  “Suspect the fight was rigged, is that it?” she finished for him. “And no doubt you were planning to make a pretty penny on the outcome, seeing as how you’d know it in advance.” Queenie tried not to groan out loud. “So, how are you intending to get the pair of you out of this fine mess?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged a restless shoulder. “Jackson’s in no condition to fight. And even if he was prepared to risk it, who’d bet on a man who can’t tell which of the two opponents he can see he ought to aim for?”

  Her eyes sharpened. “Who else knows of this…arrangement of yours?”