Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  Right in the middle of the grille was the largest pile of recently-deposited excrement Blenkinship had ever had the misfortune to encounter. The flies were spinning themselves into raptures over it.

  “And you saw nothing suspicious?” he asked, pulling on a second pair of nitrile gloves. There were times when you really couldn’t be too careful.

  The manageress, Maisie, glowered at him. “Do you honestly think, if I’d seen somebody taking a dump on our barbecue, that a) I wouldn’t have screamed blue murder at ’em, and b) it might have slipped my mind?”

  “All right, pet, I have to ask,” he muttered. Maisie gave a muffled expletive and took a rapid step back as he opened an evidence bag and, for want of an alternative, picked up one end of the stool between finger and thumb.

  It lifted almost as one long sausage link of ordure. He dropped it into the bag and peeled off the outer gloves, sealing them inside, too. If things went as far as forensic examination, he was more than happy to let the lab techs deal with separating them.

  “Gawd, I wouldn’t have your job, mate,” called one of the pub regulars. A group of them had ventured outside to watch the entertainment, most of which was coming at his expense. Blenkinship noted that they stayed well out of olfactory range, though.

  “So, d’you have any thoughts on who might be responsible for this?” he asked as he initialled the label.

  Maisie folded her arms. “I hope you’re not inferring that I might be able to recognise anybody by the shape of their shit.”

  “No, pet, I’m not implying anything. You’re the one who’s inferring it,” he corrected. “What I meant was, have you had any trouble lately? Anybody you think might be holding a grudge against you or the pub?”

  “It’s them gyppos,” another of the regulars said. “Stands to reason, don’t it?”

  Blenkinship turned toward them. “What does?”

  “A group of ’em came in earlier, bold as brass, like nothing had ’appened,” the man said. “But our Maisie, she wasn’t ’aving none of it.”

  Blenkinship sealed the ‘evidence’ inside a second bag, just to be doubly sure none of it escaped, and glanced at the manageress again. “Were they causing a problem?”

  “She didn’t give ’em no chance to!” The man was in his stride now, aware of his appreciative audience and determined to make the most of the tale in the retelling. “Told the thievin’ bunch straight out as how they wasn’t welcome ’ere no more and as how they should take their business elsewhere.” He gave a rueful laugh. “And they wasn’t ’appy about that, was they, lads?”

  “No, and it looks like one of ’em brought some of his ‘business’ back here, eh?”

  He glanced around for support, received several nods in agreement. They jostled each other and grinned. Blenkinship wished suddenly for a Taser and free licence to use it with impunity.

  Meanwhile, he tried to keep his attention on Maisie.

  “Why the change of heart about letting them into the pub?”

  She reddened. “We heard about that little boy they drowned,” she said, lowering her voice. “Threw him in the weir at Kirkby Stephen, so I heard. Well, I could hardly let them keep coming into the Lady Anne after that, could I? The locals wouldn’t stand for it, and I’ve got our reputation to consider for the other fifty-odd weeks of the year.”

  “Too right,” agreed the spokesman. “About time we banned ’em altogether. Coming ’ere every year, bringin’ nothing but trouble. If it’s not red hot or nailed down, they’ll be off with it, quick as a flash.”

  Blenkinship knew he should correct the wilder assumptions but… If the general feeling was that the Gypsies were responsible for the boy’s death, well, that took suspicion further away from him, didn’t it? He turned back to Maisie. “Had stuff stolen previously, have you?” And he was unable to keep the cynical note out of his voice entirely.

  She set her jaw. “When the Fair was on, the year before last, they unscrewed every door in the gents’ loos and carried them off for firewood,” she said tartly. “After they’d gone, we found the handles and hinges among the ashes on the camping field. Good solid doors they were, too—and not cheap to replace.”

  “How on earth did they manage to get out of the place carrying a load of doors?”

  She jerked her head toward the rear of the building. “Back way—the fire regs insist we keep it unlocked during opening hours.”

  Blenkinship sighed. He could feel the tightening at the base of his skull that did not bode well.

  “So, who knew you were planning to use the barbecue today?” he asked.

  “Anybody who could read,” she said, jerking her head toward the traffic on the main road running past the pub. “Had it on a board out front, didn’t we? ‘Lunchtime barbecue—all you can eat’. We’ve done a few of them. Very popular. Or, it was. Not sure anybody’s going to want to eat anything that comes off that grille now.”

  Blenkinship sighed again. The chance of getting a viable suspect in the frame for this was marginal at best, but he knew he had to go through the motions. His lips twisted bitterly at his own unspoken pun.

  Yeah, in more ways than one.

  Much as he regretted not letting his phone go to voicemail when the call came in for this one, you couldn’t pick and choose.

  He checked back through the photographs he’d taken of the offending item in situ, and then studied the barbecue’s construction. Brick and block outer supports with ledges for the charcoal tray and the grille above. The grille was at worktop height, convenient for cooking over. And the bricks extended upward on three sides to stop the smoke blowing in all directions. There was no way, he reckoned, anybody could suspend themselves over the grille without leaning heavily on two of those walls to maintain the position—particularly if they had their trousers around their ankles at the time.

  He mimed placing his gloved hands above the bricks, looking at the angles. This was greeted by howls of laughter from the regulars. Blenkinship gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore the catcalls as he reached for his fingerprint powder and dusted the area.

  Sure enough, he managed to lift a couple of decent prints as well as numerous smudges and partials.

  He could have run the prints from his laptop while he was still out in the beer garden, but chose to retreat to his vehicle parked in front of the pub. At least he wouldn’t have a crowd of boisterous gawpers to cope with there.

  He was just squeezing through the bin area along the side of the pub itself when his mobile rang. Blenkinship fumbled for it, juggling his crime-scene kit and evidence samples, and just managed to get to the Receive icon before it went to voicemail.

  “Yes!” he barked.

  “Oh, er, is that CSI Blenkinsop?” asked a girl at the other end of the line, sounding hesitant.

  “Head CSI Blenkinship, yes.” He lifted the phone away from his face just long enough to see an unrecognised number on the display. “Who the hell’s this?”

  “Oh, er, I’m with the forensics lab. I’m just calling to let you know we have the results of the urgent DNA test on your unknown adult male and—”

  “Wait a minute,” Blenkinship cut across her. “I thought that had been cancelled. We’re ID’ing him via medical and dental instead!”

  “Ah, I see… Well, I don’t have anything to say that on my system. When did you say the cancellation was made?”

  “I don’t know! I…”

  But as he spoke, Blenkinship realised that he did know. It had been top of his To Do list before he’d been called out to this farce at the pub. He’d tried, mind you, but the line was busy and rather than sit all the way through the telephone system’s menu choices and finally leave a voicemail, he’d decided to do it later instead.

  Only, now, later had become too late.

  He swore under his breath, although judging by the girl’s sharp intake of breath, not far enough under his breath for her not to hear, and to assume it was aimed in her direction rather than at himself.<
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  “I’m sorry, Mr Blenkinsop,” she snapped. “But if there’s nothing on the system here, then the communication breakdown must be at your end.”

  “All right, pet, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Put me through to your manager, would you?”

  “No,” she said. “She’s not here today. In fact, I’m the most senior person in. You’ll have to try again on Monday morning. Goodbye!” And with a loud click, she ended the call.

  Blenkinship was still muttering, much less under his breath this time, when he reached his vehicle.

  The Lady Anne had a large car park at the rear, as well as a handful of slots for nose-in parking on the forecourt. These were usually the first to fill, so Blenkinship had left his car, with two wheels on the kerb, in front of one of the neighbouring cottages.

  The car was enough in the sun to be baking inside. He stripped half out of his Tyvek suit, knotting the arms around his waist, and climbed into the driver’s seat, balancing the laptop on the centre armrest. Cranking the engine, he twisted the air-con onto full cold and adjusted the vents. It took a few moments of feeling like a joint of meat in a fan-assisted oven before it began to take the edge off the stifling heat. At last, some semblance of calm prevailed.

  He had just finished uploading the prints and was running them through the database, when someone rapped on his driver’s window. He jumped, so sharply that the point of his elbow cracked against the hard plastic grab handle on the door.

  Rubbing it, he glared out at the man who appeared to be glaring in at him.

  Having attracted his attention—and possibly his wrath—the man took this as invitation to open the door and stick his head in through the gap.

  “Oi, what do you think you’re doing, parking there?” the man demanded, his moustache bristling with affront. “Don’t you think I have enough to put up with? My garden’s already become a complete no-go zone, what with the noise and the smoke and the fumes, and now you want to take over the front of my house as well!”

  Another strand of Blenkinship’s temper stretched, frayed, and snapped.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “How should I know that? You could be surfing porn sites for all I…”

  The man’s brain finally caught up with his mouth and his voice died away. He had belatedly registered the crime-scene paraphernalia spread over the front passenger seat, and the prominent Cumbria Constabulary logo at the head of the site visible on the computer screen. He stepped back, surveyed Blenkinship’s unmarked car with a frown.

  “Shouldn’t you be in a proper police van or something?” He still sounded aggrieved, as though the lack of decals and reflective tape was a deliberate attempt to trick him.

  “Why?”

  “So that ordinary members of the public—tax-payers like myself, who, after all, pay your wages—can identify you as police personnel from the outset.”

  Sparks lit flames inside Blenkinship’s skull. He clenched his fingers inside the remaining pair of nitrile gloves, attempting to resist the urge to squeeze them around the man’s scraggy throat as hard as he could manage.

  “Well, now you have identified me as police personnel, sir,” he said, with acidic emphasis, “perhaps you’d better identify yourself, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  “Stubbins,” the man mumbled. “Dennis Stubbins.”

  Blenkinship reached for a notebook and pen and wrote it down, just to make him sweat. “And the address?”

  With all the eagerness of a man giving up teeth, Stubbins jerked his head toward the house closest to the pub.

  “Thank you, sir. You may be aware that there’s been an offence committed at the Lady Anne’s Arms some time this morning. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about it?”

  The man squirmed and shook his head.

  “Well, I’ll have one of our uniformed officers pop round shortly to take a statement from you, all the same,” Blenkinship said. “Weren’t planning on going anywhere, were you?”

  “What! Why?”

  “This afternoon, sir,” he repeated innocently. “Are you going to be at home for the next hour or so?”

  “Oh! Oh, er, yes, I expect so.”

  “Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir. I have a crime scene to process.”

  Stubbins just managed to shift his fingers away from the top of the car door before Blenkinship slammed it shut again. In his door mirror, he watched the man scurry back into his cottage, glancing over his shoulder several times.

  “Shifty little bugger, aren’t you?” Blenkinship murmured.

  His eyes flicked to the door, where the man’s clammy fingers had left prints clearly visible on the glass.

  “Ah well, in for a penny…”

  And he reached for his crime-scene kit.

  50

  Vano Smith considered himself a careful sort of man. Never more so than when there was something he needed to be careful about. In this case, he was balancing on a fine edge between being seen about the Fair by the right people, and not being seen by those he was doing his best to avoid.

  Without, of course, being seen trying to avoid them.

  He’d just spent an hour or so strolling the horse lines on either side of The Sands, looking at animals with Nell and the baby, playing his part as the family man. He’d left Nell to gossip while he talked serious business with the men, weighed up breeding and condition and bone with a narrowed eye. And from the way they’d listened to his opinion, nodded in agreement when he spoke, he was quietly confident of himself.

  There was just one moment that troubled him. One of the fellers who had his eye on a pony for his daughter to cut her teeth on, asked if Queenie might give it the once-over. Vano had laughed, until he’d realised the man was serious. Then he’d quickly pursed his lips and said he’d see what he could do, as if considering the loan of a fiddle or some other fine instrument.

  As if she was his to control.

  Vano had long since realised that his sister followed her own star.

  Maybe it was something to do with losing their dieya so young. A girl learned from her mother, how to grow like her—in deed if not in thought.

  And yes, after a bit of a wild start, she’d taken to the traces of her life, as it were. She’d married the Romany chal her father had chosen for her, borne him children, kept their vardo looking polished as fresh paint.

  But still…there was something behind her compliance that didn’t always lay as quietly as it should. Times when Bartley gave her too much free rein. And if Vano pushed her occasionally, maybe it was by way of seeing how far she’d let him go before she pushed back. Like worrying at an aching tooth, hoping there would be one last explosion of pain and then it might, finally, subside.

  Only, he wasn’t too sure he wanted to be close by, if Queenie ever truly erupted.

  Now, he cut alongside the river on the footpath that ran between the woods and the playing fields of the grammar school near the top of the hill. He was heading for the flashing lane, and while he could have walked up Battlebarrow with the rest, somehow he’d rather just turn up from place to place, without being seen to hurry from one to another. It was one thing to have a definite plan of where he was going. It was another to telegraph it to the world.

  So he walked quickly between the trees, avoiding the muddy patches from the recent rain as he climbed the track. One hand was in his pocket, feeling the fat roll of cash there, which was always a happy happenstance.

  When a man appeared at the top of the path and halted, with every sign of both intention and intent, Vano felt his step falter. He glanced around out of instinct, saw another coming up behind him. Nothing casual about it—the man following was there with a purpose.

  No choice but to brazen it out.

  Even if, as he drew closer and recognised the feller waiting for him, he felt a tightening in his gut. He tipped the brim of his hat a little further up so he had a better view of the man’s face, and pasted on a cool smile.

  “
Now then, miro rye, what brings you here?” It hurt his teeth to call him “my lord” but Vano knew there was as much to be gained by the spinyor as the ran—the carrot as the rod. At least until there was no other option to be taken…

  “Heard about the big man, eh,” he grunted, straight to the point and no bothering with the niceties. It was something that the gorgio referred to Jackson as “the big man” when he was well over six foot himself, with bulging arms dangling from those wide sloping shoulders. Vano had once seen a great ape in some safari park years before, up so close they could almost have reached out and touched one another. The beast had moved with the same kind of deliberate, slow menace, as if it knew it could crush him without thinking twice about it, so what was the hurry?

  “Jackson? T’was indeed an awful shame, that accident,” Vano said, keeping his tone absolutely neutral. “A miracle he wasn’t drowned.”

  “Oh aye?” the gorgio said, not sounding convinced, regardless. His eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose. “Never mind can he swim—what I want to know is, mate, can he fight?”

  “Can he fight?” Vano repeated blankly. He glanced from the gorgio’s face to the man behind him. Now there were two of them—where had the third appeared from? A cold feeling pooled at the nape of his neck. “Man, he can barely see nor stand. A lesser man’s skull would have been cracked like a yoro—that is to say, an egg.”

  “So, he can’t fight?” the gorgio persisted, worrying at it like an old dog that barks and keeps on barking.

  “No, he can’t fight.”

  “Well, that’s unfortunate, eh? Seeing as we had an…understanding, like.”

  “We’re as disappointed as yourselves. And Bartley? Well, he was hoping to get a few decent blows in, to make up for the way Jackson’s had about him, these past few days. But what can you do?” He shrugged, palms up and out. “Maybe next year.”

  He made to step past then, but the big man lumbered sideways, blocking his path. The men behind edged nearer. Vano turned between them and they closed again, the threat all too evident now.

  Vano cast about but saw no-one. A part of him was dismayed by the lack of potential allies, and a part relieved there were no witnesses to his humiliation.