Catch the Fallen Sparrow

by Priscilla Masters

His glance moved to the mouth of the cave. ‘There’s police outside,’ she said, ‘lots of them, poking around. Looks like they’re staying.’

  He looked enquiringly at her. ‘Not army again?’ he asked.

  ‘No. The army, they was here earlier, like they are sometimes, creeping on the ’ill. These be different. P’lice.’ She stared at him hard, squatted down on her huge haunches by the dead embers of a recent fire. ‘Somethin’ ’appened,’ she said earnestly. ‘This morning, afore dawn ... The soldiers,’ she began, ‘’twas them found it.’ She cackled a dry laugh. ‘Screamin’ like they was possessed.’

  Jonathan Rutter scratched his head. ‘Found what?’

  ‘The child’s body,’ she said patiently.

  Jonathan jerked to his feet and accused her. ‘You been dreamin’ – or drinkin’?’

  ‘Look for yourself.’ She pursed her lips and sat, Buddha-like, her eyes watching him as he moved low and with monkey agility on his haunches, to the mouth of the cave. There he lay, furtively peeping out, down the grey-green moorside to the navy figures dotted at the bottom, near the road. It did not do to be seen. Others mocked their status and their home, failed to understand their reasons for living apart from the rest of their race, high up here in the cave, watched only by the Winking Man. People persecuted those they did not understand so they had let them believe they had left their cave. But they hadn’t. They had remained here and were still here in their rightful home. What did they care for such unnecessary things as taps for water and switches for electricity. Water came from the sky. Warmth and light from the sun when it chose to shine. All they needed was here, in this one dark but dry room, hollowed out of rock.

  Jonathan watched the movement of the police far below, then half-turned, silhouetted against the hazy light that shone into the cave. ‘What happened, Alice?’ he asked.

  ‘The soldiers must have seen it,’ she said, still staring out across the landscape – high peaks, wide valleys, pale sunshine streaking down in broad stripes, lemon and black. ‘Or else they smelled it. They started running and screaming.’

  ‘They always does that.’

  ‘There was smoke comin’ from him,’ she said.

  He stared at her then from beneath thick, tangled eyebrows. ‘Why burn a child?’ he asked.

  She looked at him pityingly. ‘There’s reasons you burns bodies,’ she said, ‘eatin’ or gettin’ rid of, or sacrifice maybe.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘So which were it?’

  She shot another look at him.

  ‘Who was the child?’ he asked. ‘How did he get there?’

  ‘He was brought,’ she said, ‘on someone’s shoulders.’

  ‘Poor child,’ he said. ‘Poor child.’

  ‘You haven’t worked it out, have you, Jonathan,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t you know? It’ll mean people. There’ll be more people ’ere in the next few days than all the ones what came in the last year. And for folks like us what’s different people means trouble. They’ll come,’ she said softly, nodding her head so long straggles of iron-grey hair escaped and hung like thin ropes each side of her face. ‘They’ll come,’ she said confidently, ‘and they’ll cause us trouble. You watch, Jonathan.’

  But Jonathan was the optimist. ‘They’ll not bother us,’ he said slowly, still peering down the slope. ‘Why should they care about us?’

  She gave him another almost pitying look. ‘They’ll come because they’ll either think we done it or we know who done it.’

  ‘But we don’t.’

  Alice tightened her lips.

  The couple looked at one another, their eyes anticipating the threat of intrusion to this wild and lonely place. They stared down to the bottom of the crag and watched the small red car which moved quickly up the moors road, drawing to a halt in the lay-by. They watched the woman with black, gypsy hair blowing around her face and the tall man. They watched as the two began to climb towards the clump of policemen guarding the small mound underneath the blanket.

  It was a stiff climb to the gully and the scent of charred meat still clung to the damp, morning air – a faint scent but unmistakable. It turned Joanna Piercy’s stomach. The two scene-of-crimes officers were already there, together with a slim woman with pale hair. She stared unsmilingly at Joanna and held out her hand.

  ‘Cathy,’ she said. ‘Cathy Parker, pathologist. I’m covering for Matthew while he’s away.’ She gave another of her disconcerting stares. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  Joanna felt at a disadvantage. What had she heard? What did Matthew say about her? How did he describe her? Friend, girlfriend, surreptitious mistress? And now how? Future wife? She felt confused and uncertain. She shook her head, not knowing how to fend off the remark, then glared across the damp moor.

  ‘Have you had a look?’

  Cathy Parker nodded. ‘Just a very preliminary one,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you much. It’s a boy – not very old – rather small, probably ten, eleven.’ She grimaced. ‘Skinny. He’s been strangled – almost certainly manually. I can see definite finger marks on the throat. Then it looks as though someone tried to destroy the evidence.’ She glanced down at the hump beneath the police blanket. ‘There’s a strong smell of petrol.’

  Joanna too looked at the sheeted figure. ‘How long has he been dead?’

  The pathologist shrugged her shoulders. ‘Very hard to say exactly – the burning, the bleak weather up here. The army said it was freezing around dawn.’ She sighed. ‘I can only think it was some time last night. Right off the cuff, between nine and midnight – at the latest, one. He’d been dead for at least three hours before I got here. And that was at eight. By the way ...’ she glanced around, ‘he didn’t die here. He was brought here already dead.’ She looked apologetically at Joanna. ‘Lividity,’ she said. ‘You can see it on the face and here.’ She touched the tiny gold sleeper in the child’s ear.

  All that Joanna could feel was some relief that the boy had not lain here alive, dying through the night.

  ‘He was found by the army at five,’ Cathy continued. ‘By then lividity had already appeared. He was stored somewhere – on his side — then dumped here. We’ll know a lot more, of course, when I do the PM. Parts of the body are very, very cold but the lower limbs and most of the clothing were well alight.’ She looked at Joanna. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I shall have to speak to fire people but superficially it looks as though he had been burning for less than an hour – two at the absolute most. Wind can either fan flames or put them out. It’s rather difficult and the ground was very damp. There are some unusual circumstances and I shall have to do more research, but if the body had been burning for about an hour before five a.m. and he had lain somewhere for a time after death you can see midnight is around the latest he could have died.’

  Joanna had to ask the obvious. ‘Had he been molested?’

  Cathy Parker shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. His clothing isn’t torn. Of course I’ll have to take swabs and things back at the mortuary.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, ‘I don’t think even Matthew could have been more precise. We’ll have to wait for the PM.’

  Again the mention of Matthew’s name made Joanna feel uneasy. She closed her eyes for a moment and gave an irritated cough. Then she crossed the couple of yards to the body and lifted the sheet. Waxen face, eyes closed, fair hair, short stepped haircut, gold sleeper in one ear, ominous dark marks around the throat. The clothes had been old, scruffy, far too big, probably they had never fitted him. Now they were charred. He looked a neglected boy.

  She frowned. ‘He doesn’t look strangled,’ she said.

  Cathy gave a sad smile. ‘Most people think strangling makes the face blacken, the tongue protrude, petechiae around the eyes,’ she said. ‘It usually does. Nevertheless, this child was strangled and I think he actually died of a vasovagal attack – shock, if you like, rather than slow throttling. He would have died very quickly, lost consciousness almost immediately.’ She sto
pped for a moment, then said softly, ‘He was dead before he was burned.’

  ‘I see,’ Joanna said, and was glad. At least the boy had not suffered, had not lain out on the moor, freezing slowly, alone with his murderer, frightened in the dark.

  So his face was calm. She looked further.

  ‘Any ideas where his body was stored?’

  Cathy peeled her gloves off. ‘Not so far,’ she said, ‘but it’s usually a car boot.’ She stopped and glanced around at the grey moor. ‘How else would he have got the kid up here?’

  Joanna stared then at the hands and remembered Matthew’s pet theory ... in 90 per cent of murder cases the answers can be found in the hands. She studied the boy’s hands, already encased in plastic bags. Dirty hands with bitten nails, amateur tattoos on the knuckles. L-O-V-E on the right; H-A-T-E on the left. And on the second finger of the left hand – the one with the T – a ring. Careful not to touch it she bent over and stared at the monogram – entwined initials watched by an eye. The ring looked expensive and fine, solid gold and very out of place. It belonged on the fat finger of a wealthy businessman. Not on the small dirty hand of this scruffy, dead child.

  She looked further down. Charred black baggy jeans too big for this small, thin boy. And where the jeans had been burned away white stick legs, thankfully not badly burned. The scent of charred human flesh mixed with the peculiar dead smell made Joanna feel sick. It was so strong she could almost see it in the air, a yellowish tinge.

  She glanced at the shoes. They, too, were big for the boy’s thin feet. Also partly destroyed by the splashed petrol but quite new. And expensive. Underneath, the soles were surprisingly clean considering the black mud that clung to her own shoes.

  She replaced the sheet and spoke to the two scene-of-crime officers. ‘You’d better get to work,’ she said. ‘Bag him up. Leave the ring on. We’ll remove it at the mortuary.’ She hesitated. ‘Make sure you bag the shoes too,’ she added, wondering whether both they and the ring had been stolen. Or was there in the background a doting mother, an indulgent father? She looked back at the waxen face and shook her head. For this child there had been neither. If her initial instinct was correct there was no one in this boy’s life who was either doting or indulgent. And he had not been reported missing. She glanced down and knew this was a type of child the police were becoming far too familiar with – the drifters ... the shirtless ones ... street children ... the untouchables. All over the world there were children like this one – problems. In God’s name, she thought, where were their parents?

  She turned back to Mike. ‘We need the uniformed men to scour the area all around here,’ she said, ‘especially between here and the road. You know the procedure. I’ll brief them back at the nick in half an hour. Who found the body?’

  Detective Sergeant Mike Korpanski glanced at the two soldiers sitting on the back of the army lorry, still with their camouflaged faces. ‘Couple of soldier boys,’ he said, ‘from the army camp.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘They look young, not much more than kids themselves. It gave them a bit of a shock. At first they thought it was a barbecue.’

  Joanna nodded. ‘I’ll speak to them back at the nick,’ she said. ‘Have the photography boys finished yet?’

  One of them held up his camera and shouted back, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll want a good picture of the hands,’ she told him. ‘I want the tattoos – and the ring, too. Perhaps you’ll get a better picture of that when it’s removed by the SOCOs at PM.’

  The cameraman nodded. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Better light there too. I’ll come along.’

  She turned to Cathy Parker. ‘Have you finished here?’

  Cathy gave another of her strange smiles. ‘Yes. I’ll ring the coroner when I get back then do the PM. Two o’clock suit you, Inspector?’

  Joanna thought quickly. She nodded. ‘Fine. Seal the area off.’

  Mike was speaking to one of the uniformed officers.

  He called over to her. ‘Inspector, they found this near the boy’s body.’ He handed her a tiny bunch of heather, neatly knotted with the strong grasses that grew on the moors.

  Joanna studied it. It was expertly done, intricately knotted. Who on earth would have taken the time to plait a wreath for the dead child?

  ‘Who did it, Mike?’ she asked. ‘Who put it there? A remorseful murderer?’ She answered her own question. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, but all the same she felt as much of a cold, uneasy feeling at the sight of this tiny bunch of heather and grasses as she had at the sight of the body. She handed it to the SOC officer. ‘Bag it up too,’ she said.

  She met Mike’s eyes and voiced an outlandish thought. ‘Witchcraft...? You could believe anything up here,’ she said quietly, gazing around the bleak panorama.

  ‘I can’t think of any logical explanation.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t witchcraft. We know that. This is the nineteen nineties.’

  ‘So what do you think?’

  He simply shook his head.

  The SOC officer dropped the heather into his plastic bag as Joanna returned her attention to the boy and watched as they slid the body into the body bag and placed it in the van. A phrase pushed into her mind. Was it from The History of Mr Polly? ‘Once someone had kissed his toenails.’ Had anyone ever adored his little pink toes? Or had the neglect started from birth? A feeling of utter hopelessness washed over her. A child should have had a better bite of life than this.

  From her eyrie in the mouth of the cave Alice watched the slim figure hesitate, look around her, then follow the procession down the mountain to the waiting navy van. She watched as the policewoman and the policeman climbed into the small red car and wound their way from the valley, back towards the town. She turned to Jonathan. ‘They’ve gone.’

  He was at the back of the cave, huddled in a pile of rags. ‘All of them?’

  She shook her head. ‘They left some ’ere. They’ll be back – more of them. That woman with the dark hair. She will bring them back. ’Er’s the one bossin’ them around.’ She paused for a moment then commented, ‘They ’ave took ‘im now, the child.’

  ‘Better ’e go.’

  ‘We can’t have a fire, Jonathan. Not till they’ve gone.’

  He nodded.

  Jason had again noticed the empty bed the minute he’d woke up. God, Dean would cop it if he’d damned well absconded again. It was only a week since the last time and they’d been bloody furious then – threatened him with all sorts of things. The boy frowned and sat up in bed, thinking. They couldn’t do anything – not really. They had no real powers. There was nothing to worry about. It was just that he hadn’t thought Dean would take off again so soon. He was usually back for at least a week. And how long would he be gone for this time? A day – a week – a month? For a kid who looked like a goody-goody choirboy he was bloody clever at keeping out of the noseys’ sight.

  Where the hell did he get to? Jason’s lip curled. Dean was a quiet one – good at keeping secrets. Perhaps his ‘family’ were looking after him. And then maybe this time he wouldn’t come back at all. And who would want to to this dump? The Nest, he thought disgustedly. What a stupid name for a children’s home. If there was anywhere else in the bloody wide world he’d go there. Even the streets had to be better than this ... But at the thought Jason’s heart began to race. The streets ... that was what he feared more than anything – that underworld of penniless vagrants who would all claw at him. Here was not heaven but at least he was safe. Out there – who knew who might get him. So here he was – stuck.

  He frowned. Was Dean on the streets? No, he thought, Dean was off having adventures, like last time.

  The shadow across the doorway put a stop to his daydreaming.

  ‘Right, Jason, time to get up now. We have school today, don’t we?’

  It was said in a pleasant enough voice. Patronizing but pleasant. The trouble was Jason couldn’t stand him.

  ‘We haven’t got school,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Just I
have.’

  ‘I think you forgot the sir.’ Mr Riversdale’s plump face was unfriendly. As much as Jason Fogg didn’t like him; he, Mark Riversdale, hated Jason. ‘You have got school today, and what’s more I expect you to break the habit of a lifetime and actually go – unlike last week. You weren’t at school last Friday, were you? Mack phoned me.’

  Jason stared at the ceiling ‘What’s the bloody point?’ he asked. ‘I’m going to get no bloody exams and even if I did there’s no job at the end of it. There’s people been to university out there on the dole,’ he jeered. ‘What chance is there for me?’

  Mark Riversdale pushed his heavy glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘Unfortunately, part of my job, Jason, is that I’m expected to send you to school. Part of your job is to go. I get black marks if you don’t. You get black marks if you don’t. Understand?’

  Jason rolled over on to his stomach. ‘I don’t have to go to school to follow me chosen career,’ he said.

  ‘And what is your chosen career?’ Riversdale snorted. ‘Burglary, shoplifting, car theft, beating up the over-seventies for five quid?’

  ‘No – a drugs pusher. More money.’ Jason grinned. He loved to push Mr Reasonable right to the point where he snapped.

  Riversdale felt his patience begin to fray. ‘Oh – just get up for once without this stupid performance,’ he said, and glanced at the hump in the other bed. ‘And get Dumbo up over there.’

  Now Jason thought quickly. He shot out of bed. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, standing smartly to attention.

  The warden flushed. ‘Get some clothes on. Haven’t you ever heard of pyjamas, Jason?’

  Jason grinned and Mark Riversdale walked out. Jason crossed to the bed and patted the pillow. ‘I’ve just bought you one day, little Dean, by flashing myself to old Rivers. No more. One day – that’s all you got. Then they’ll find out and you’ll have to fend for yourself. Friends can only go so far.’ He knew Kirsty would agree. He’d tell her later – give her a laugh.

  There were five people in the mortuary – the two SOC officers ready to receive the clothes, the ring, the swabs to be sent to forensics; Cathy Parker, the pathologist, and the mortician to assist, as well as Joanna. She stood back and listened to Cathy’s clear voice dictating ...