A cold treachery - Charles Todd [127]
An independent-minded woman like Maggie Ingerson might just do her bit to set him free.
But—who could have told her that he'd been taken into custody?
Rutledge looked out at the snow that still lay deep in corners, against northern walls, and wherever traffic hadn't trampled it into mud.
The storm had once covered every footprint. But even in this light he could squat on his heels and see fresh tracks. The hobnails of Drew Taylor's boots. The worn pattern of Cummins's Wellingtons. His own shoes. Miss Ashton's smaller soles. Beyond them the prints made by the search parties climbing the fell.
If the snowfall had been lighter, Greeley might have caught his man simply by tracking him. Case closed.
Rutledge turned to the house and his hand was already on the latch to the yard door.
Hamish was saying something, and he stopped to listen, but under the voice was something else. A memory.
He tried to bring it back. And lost it in Hamish's last words.
“Ye've got til teatime tomorrow. Ye canna' afford to sleep.”
Rutledge lay awake another hour, reviewing all he'd seen and done here in Urskdale, raking through his actions and his unconscious observations.
By four in the morning he had drifted into an uneasy sleep, drained by his failure.
And when dreams came, they were mixed and morbid, as if in punishment.
He could see the boy running, dragging his feet, and the Elcotts lying dead in the snow, scattered like soldiers after an attack, limbs bent and bodies trampled by sheep. Overhead an artillery barrage lighted the sky, and he could hear Hamish calling the boy's name, pointing to the mud where Rutledge could see his footprints clearly in bloody snow.
The artillery barrage was louder, the shells exploding in his face, and he came out of deep sleep with a start, his heart pounding in time with the pounding on his door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When Rutledge opened his door, the thin, balding man standing there rocked back on his heels and said in a high, clear tenor, “It was the very devil of a journey, and I'm going to my bed. You've been relieved.”
It was Mickelson. Behind his back his men called him Cassius, for his lean and hungry look. The name fit, for he was notorious for his ingratiating manner towards his superiors while behind their backs he ruthlessly promoted himself. A greengrocer's son, he had climbed high and expected to go higher.
Rutledge was left standing there while Mickelson strode to the door of the room Harry Cummins had assigned him.
Cummins cast an apologetic glance in Rutledge's direction as he asked his latest guest if all was to his liking.
Rutledge shut his door again and stood there. He felt empty. He had fought for six months—seven—to rebuild his career. And it had come down to this.
Hamish said, “You canna' be certain he'll do any better.”
But that didn't take away the stigma of being relieved. Of being seen as failing in his duty. Bowles would take pleasure in seeing that word got around, and he would never let Rutledge live it down.
“He's no' so clever. Only ambitious . . .” Hamish pointed out softly.
Rutledge took a deep breath. For his own sake, he must somehow find the answer that had eluded him from the start—that had eluded all of them. For his own self-respect.
Standing there, he remembered his dream. There had been something. He tried to recapture the swiftly fading memory of it. Artillery, and bloody snow. But the artillery had just been Mickelson pounding on his door, regardless of his sleeping neighbors.
And then he had it. Not the blood, not the dead lying about. What he had seen were the boy's footprints in the snow.
For he had seen them, those same dragging prints. In life. Not a child fleeing in terror, but a child shuffling in shoes too large. His heels leaving not a crisp mark like a man's but a blurred smudge.
Rutledge went back