Bones In the River

by Zoe Sharp

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Now, who else might be in the frame for Liddell?”

  Pollock straightened again. “A Traveller called Vano Smith, ma’am. He had a long-standing grudge against the victim and was known to be in the vicinity around the time Liddell was last heard of.”

  “Vano Smith? Not him again.” She swung in Nick’s direction. “I understand you found a way to speak to him about Jordan’s death without causing a riot, detective constable.”

  “In a way, ma’am,” Nick murmured.

  “Well, whatever method you employed before, go and do it again.”

  “We need to bring Smith in and question him under caution, ma’am,” Pollock said. “Whatever Nick gets from him otherwise will be hearsay.”

  “All right. Weston, go and invite Smith to come and help us with our enquiries.”

  “And if he declines that invitation?” Pollock asked, saving Nick from trying to find a way to voice the same question. His relief was short lived.

  “Oh, I’m sure Weston will use his initiative to ensure a satisfactory outcome, detective inspector,” Waingrove said, baring her teeth. “Despite the lack of Shera Rom, this year’s Fair is almost over and has so far passed off without major incident. It will stay that way. Is that understood?”

  Pollock huffed out a sigh. “With all due respect, ma’am, you’re tying my hands here.”

  “With all due respect, detective inspector,” she shot back. “Tough.”

  96

  Queenie packed up the wagon ready to travel without the usual feeling of regret that the Fair was almost done. The truth of it was, she couldn’t wait to be on the road home. The vardo was as much home as anywhere else, this was true. As long as she was with Bartley and Ocean and Sky.

  All together.

  Safe.

  And this year she would not feel safe until Fair Hill, Appleby-in-Westmorland and all it contained, was a distant speck on the road behind them.

  She’d brought out the little carpet and was beating the dust from it, perhaps more fiercely than was needed. But Bartley and Ocean had taken the mare and the colt down to The Sands for the last time. And she didn’t need to be told that they would return richer in luvvo but poorer in gry.

  Right now, Queenie knew she’d rather keep the horses and may the devil take the money they would fetch. But as her husband and her son had led them away, with even the old piebald bellowing his despair, she couldn’t find her own voice to call them back again.

  Sky had begged away from her chores to have a final hour or so with the other tawnie yecks, the little ones. It was only then it struck Queenie that Ocean hadn’t wished to do the same. She thought of the hiding he’d taken from the boys of Jackson’s clan.

  Maybe Queenie wouldn’t be the only one glad to see the back of this Fair.

  She gave the carpet a final whack, carried it back up the steps to the porch and unfurled it onto the polished wooden floor, straightening it just so.

  When she alighted again and turned, there was a woman waiting for her.

  Queenie hid the jolt of surprise it gave her behind a haughty stare.

  “What would you be wanting this time?” she asked.

  “Want? Nothing,” the woman, Grace, said. “Actually, I’m here to give something to you—the ending to a story.”

  Queenie continued to stare, although she’d be the first to admit that something of her haughtiness softened. “And in return?”

  “I was hoping you might be able to tell me the parts of the story that are missing.”

  She was dressed much the same as she had been when Queenie last met her, at the old lady’s house up the hill, her mother’s. And she still looked tall and cool and elegant. Not like a woman who’d just been sweating over a dusty carpet in the sun.

  Queenie eyed her for a moment longer, then jerked her head toward the wagon.

  “Come,” she said, nerves making her brusque. “We’ll sit.”

  She climbed the steps herself first and Grace followed her up. Queenie was interested to note the woman toed off her boots on the front porch, left them there.

  When she caught the glance, Grace said, “I wouldn’t walk dirt into my own home, why should I do so into yours?”

  Queenie gave a nod of thanks and gestured her onto the locker seat next to the bed. She took the other, opposite the stove and nearer the door.

  As she settled herself, Grace looked about her with an appreciative eye. “The work in here is quite beautiful,” she said, in a detached tone that gave no hint of talking down.

  Queenie found herself fiddling with the folds of her skirts. “You said you had a story.”

  “I did,” Grace agreed. She reached into the canvas bag that was over her shoulder and brought out a photograph, handed it across. “It starts with this man—Owen Liddell. And, I believe, with you.”

  Queenie took the picture. There was the face she remembered from so long ago. Her first love—her first lover, come to that. Behind him was the old car he’d so treasured and, in his arms, a child. She smoothed a thumb over both the faces as if hoping to sense something more than the shiny surface of the paper. Nothing came.

  “Yes.” She swallowed. Her eyes lingered on the baby. “So, he…took a wife, did he? Had a family?”

  But Grace shook her head. “No,” she said, voice gentle. “He did not.”

  Queenie looked up sharply. “But who—?”

  Grace held her gaze. “How about I tell you what I know, and you can stop me if I’m going wrong, yes?”

  Just for a second, Queenie hesitated. Sometimes the not knowing was better—safer. But then she remembered her words to Bartley, when he’d kept the news of Owen’s death from her. She nodded.

  Somewhere in Grace’s clothing, a phone began a muffled buzz. She reached into the leg pocket of her cargo trousers and silenced it, without looking to see who might be calling.

  And then she began to speak. She wasn’t entirely accurate in the story of Owen’s presence at the Fair, his fondness for the horses, his first meeting with Queenie, their becoming lovers. But she was close enough for Queenie to sit with breath caught in her throat, not wanting to break the spell.

  It became harder to listen to the calm voice recounting Queenie falling with child, her fear—both of the consequences of her condition and the wrath of her father.

  “No,” she said then. “Not wrath. Not my father. Had he known, he would have been disappointed, yes, but never angry.”

  “So who were you afraid of?” Grace asked.

  “My brother,” Queenie whispered. “It would be Vano who would have killed me, if he’d known. Him and—” She stopped abruptly, aware she’d almost said too much.

  “And Patrick Doherty?” Grace supplied.

  “Yes. Patrick, too.”

  “And because you didn’t have a mother, or an older sister or aunt you could turn to, when your waters broke, early, while you were up here for the Fair, you were understandably frightened.”

  “I was terrified,” she recalled. “Thought I was dying.”

  “So you went to Agnes Trelawney, who was known and trusted by the Travellers, as is her daughter, Wynter, now. And she delivered your son.”

  “Mine and Owen’s.”

  “Did he know?”

  Queenie shook her head. “Appleby the year before, that was when Vano and…and Patrick laid about Owen, broke his arm, warned him off. We met up a few times between—the Traveller Fair at Kenilworth in the September, and again just before Christmas. And then I saw nothing of him until Appleby in June.”

  “By which time you were how far along? Twenty-nine weeks or so?”

  She nodded. “Thereabouts.”

  “So he was premature,” Grace murmured, almost to herself. “No wonder he was tiny.”

  The hair began to prickle at the nape of Queenie’s neck. “What do you mean? How do you know that about him, if…if…” But she couldn’t finish.

  Grace looked at her and som
ething passed through her face, her eyes, like the shadow from clouds across the sun. And when she spoke her voice was careful.

  “Queenie, what do you think happened to your baby?”

  “He died,” she said, the burn in her throat rasping in her voice. “My fault… All my fault. I didn’t even know I was carrying him, not for months. Just thought I was getting fat. Cut back on my food when I should have been eating more… Eating for the both of us.”

  Giving her a look Queenie couldn’t fathom, Grace asked, “How did he die?”

  “How? I don’t know. Can a soul truly die if they have never even lived?” She sat very straight and very still, refusing to let the sorrow in her voice reach her eyes. “All I do know is that I struggled too long and too hard to bring him into this world. I know that now. I was so scared—of everything. Of having him, of not having him, of him living or him dying. Hours. It felt like days. And by the time he was out of me, I craved him gone with all my heart.” She tried to smile but her mouth would not curve. “They tell you to beware of what you wish for…”

  She took a last look at the photograph and offered it back to Grace, who shook her head. “Keep it, if you want to,” she said. “I admit, when I first saw that picture, I thought the baby might be Ocean. That he might be Owen’s child.”

  “He has something of the look of my yeckoro chavo, as a baby—my only son. But Ocean was born a year after I married…”

  Grace frowned. “I thought he said he was ten.”

  “Ah, how fast they wish to grow into men. He’s barely nine.”

  They both fell into silence until Queenie said, “Now, have you decided?”

  “Decided what?”

  “If you’re going to tell me the ending to this story that you promised. It will bring no happiness, will it?”

  “I thought Gypsies fortune-telling was a myth,” Grace said.

  “Ah, I’ve no need of dukkering to know evasion when I see it,” Queenie said. “So tell me, straight and tell me quick, before I lose all my nerve.”

  Grace seemed to take a breath and gather herself. Then she came forward off the locker seat and went to her knees in front of Queenie, grasping both hands in hers.

  “Hold onto me,” Grace said when she would have pulled away. “With what I’m about to tell you, trust me—you’ll need someone to cling to…”

  97

  “Stop! Please. Don’t you hurt my mummy!”

  Dylan already had his fist cocked and loaded for another blow, when the little voice finally penetrated his rage. He became aware that fists much smaller than his own were beating a furious tattoo against his thigh. Looking down, he found Ollie, face flushed with effort and anger, attacking him.

  Irritated, he hoisted his daughter up by both wrists and swung her away.

  “Will you give it a rest,” he growled, throwing her onto the sofa.

  She landed in a flurry of arms and legs, thumping against the cushions, letting out a shriek.

  That, finally, got a reaction from Yvonne. She levered her head from the carpet and glared at him through the eye she could still open.

  “Leave. Her. Alone.” The words came out slurred past the split lip.

  “Don’t.” Dylan stabbed a finger at her. “Don’t you tell me what to do, ’Vonne. How many times do I have to tell you, eh? How many times do I have to say it—you don’t tell the cops nothin’! And still you just have to go shootin’ your mouth off, don’t you?” He shook his head. “You brought this on yourself. Don’t try and make out otherwise.”

  “Leave both of ’em alone.”

  The echoed order came from a different voice, a different direction. Dylan turned to find his eldest, Jess, hovering in the doorway. She was seventeen now, tall for her age. And she’d been learning tae kwon-do, after hours at the Grammar School in Kirkby Stephen. Not that Dylan would ever allow himself to be wary of any woman, let alone one little more than a child. But even so…

  “Or what?” he sneered. “Goin’ to take me down with that Japanese nonsense you been learnin’, are you?”

  “It’s Korean,” Jess said.

  “What?”

  “Tae kwon-do—it’s Korean, not Japanese.”

  “Who cares? What gives you the right to think you can question anythin’ I do in my house, eh?”

  “Not your house, is it?” Jess said, her voice scornful. “It’s Mum’s. Came from her nana and granddad, didn’t it?”

  “Why you cheeky little—”

  “Jess, please,” Yvonne croaked. She’d managed to get a hand under her enough to sit up, the other pressed to her ribs. Ollie slid off the sofa and latched her arms around her mother’s neck. Yvonne winced but didn’t make her let go. “Please, love…don’t wind him up even more.”

  Jess’s chin came out, even if her bottom lip gave a betraying wobble. “He can’t keep doin’ this to you, Mum…”

  “I can do as I please and don’t you forget it!”

  Jess glanced over her shoulder and, just for a second, Dylan worried who else might be out there in the hallway, listening, unseen. He never hit ’Vonne that much—not where it would show—but she’d really provoked him this time. He’d have to make sure she stayed in the house, just until the black eye and the bruises faded.

  Another figure sidled into view, then another, and he realised all his daughters, barring the baby, were here now. Watching him, judging him. He saw the condemnation in their eyes and it infuriated him beyond measure. What right do any of them have? He wanted to lash out and keep doing so. To stamp and punch and kick and throw until everything was broken. The depth of his own anger surprised him.

  It maybe even scared him, just a little.

  He would have gone to his grave rather than admit it.

  But now, the girls slipped past him, giving him as wide a berth as the confines of the room allowed, and went to their mother. They clustered around her, like a human shield, and stared him down.

  “You really want to do this, do you?” he asked, aiming his question at Jess, the apparent ringleader. “Really want to take me on?”

  “Why not? ’Bout time somebody did,” Jess threw back. Her voice turned soft and vicious. “Besides, you gotta sleep sometime…”

  In that moment, Dylan had no doubts about Jess’s parentage.

  She was every inch of her his daughter.

  “Ach, to hell with the lot of you! You’re none of you worth the effort.” He threw up his arms in apparent disgust. “I’m goin’ out.”

  And he whirled away before they saw the thin layer of his bravado for what it was.

  98

  “Grace! At last. Don’t you ever check your messages?”

  Ty Frost’s voice on the phone was a squawk in Grace’s ear.

  “I’ve been at the Elliot house in Mallerstang. You know how hit-and-miss it is down there for mobile coverage,” she said. “And then I was…tied up for a while.”

  She thought of Queenie’s reaction to her story, and wondered again at the kind of woman Agnes Trelawney must have been—to tell one mother of a new-born baby her child was dead, and then to tell another her dead child lived.

  Surely, she must have known it couldn’t remain a secret forever?

  And it hadn’t, she realised. Somehow, Owen Liddell had found out. The question was, how?

  “Grace, are you listening to me?”

  She shook herself out of her thoughts. “I’m so sorry, Tyson. Say that again.”

  “Chris Blenkinship. He came to see me—at home. I didn’t think he knew where I lived.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Well, he sort-of took me by surprise. I wasn’t really prepared…”

  “Ty, just tell me what he wanted.”

  “To let me know he didn’t believe I planted that evidence—”

  “Because you didn’t.”

  “And how he suspected Nick Weston might have had something to do with it.”

  “What?”

  How could he? Grace was suddenl
y aware of feeling a terrible misgiving. That she might have trusted a dishonourable man to do the honourable thing. Instead, was he taking the opportunity she had given him, to lay the blame at yet another’s door?

  “Oh, Ty. You…don’t really think that, do you?”

  “Grace, Mr Blenkinship is my boss.” She heard the anguish in his voice. “When he wants to, he can turn on the charm. He and I will never be mates, like, but…he’s a CSI. We’re here to, I don’t know, make sure cases can be proven in court by scientific fact—to see justice done. Not to…set each other up.”

  “I know,” she said, more quietly. “I know.”

  “He was after that SD card. The one out of his dash-cam. You remember—the one I gave you.”

  “Yes.” As she spoke, she tried to recall what she’d done with it. They’d been just about to launch the drone to find Jordan Elliot’s entry point into the Eden…

  Her hand went to the pocket of her cargos, reached right down into the bottom corner and found a small flat piece of plastic. Ah!

  “I–I’m afraid I might have mentioned to him that you’d got it.”

  “When you say ‘might have’ you mean…?”

  “Yeah, I told him. I’m sorry. Like I said, he caught me on the hop. It didn’t occur to me that I’d need to lie to him.”

  She could almost see him hanging his head and scuffing his toes into the carpet.

  “Ty, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” She paused. “Thank you for letting me know now.”

  “It wasn’t until after he’d gone that I started to think about it, and I realised there was just something off about the whole thing. Did you try running the card? I mean, is there anything on it or not?”

  “I don’t know,” Grace said. “We’ve been rushed off our feet. But I’ve got my laptop in the car, and a card reader. I’ll take a look now.” Just to find out what’s so important he went chasing off to find you, just to make sure…

  “I’m really sorry, Grace,” Ty said. She heard him take a deep breath. “I hope I haven’t put you in an awkward position. You know that’s the last thing I’d want.”