Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [72]
“There’s no skull,” Dawlish was saying to Hawkins. “And no pelvis, as I told you. Only the little bones, and that leg bone yonder. Can you tell anything about it, sir?” Someone was bringing a lantern over to them, its light spilling across their feet, and then their faces.
Hawkins knelt. “You’ve looked for the skull? Or ribs?”
“Aye, sir, all through the rocks. Nothing.”
“Carried off then, by wild dogs,” he said, running his fingers over the smaller fragments. Lifting the leg bone, he brought it closer to his face, then adjusted the lantern in the holder’s hand so that it fell the way he wished it to. “This was broken. Here.” He pointed to a jagged fracture line in the bone. “Died before it began to heal. Caught a foot in the hole by the rock, I’d say, and couldn’t get out again.” He got up and went to the fire, using that and the lantern to better judge the bone.
After a few minutes he said, “Just as I thought. Sheep carcass. That’s what you dragged me out here for!”
“There was no knowing for certain, sir. With nothing larger than that one bone to go by,” Dawlish said apologetically.
“Next time, bring the damned things in to me.”
“No,” Rutledge said, countermanding that instruction. “I want to see them in place. Not on a laboratory table. And as soon as they’re found.”
Hawkins glared at him, went to fetch his bicycle, and Rut-ledge had to hurry to catch up with him—or stay on the moors with the searchers, as Dawlish was doing.
Halfway back to the village, Rutledge heard Hawkins say, “You’re a damned fool. You know that, don’t you?”
“I’m a policeman. I do what I have to do. No more, no less.”
“You could go back to London and leave us in peace! Half those men out there in the rain will be sick before the week’s out, and they’ll still have to work the nets or tend their sheep or dig in their fields. The boy’s long dead, and God alone knows where he could be. Murdered by gypsies, down one of the mine shafts—”
“I thought those had been searched.”
“Yes, of course they have. But a boy that age is small. He could crawl where a man can’t go. You could walk by him a thousand times over and never realize it. Predators carry off small bones—birds and animals could have taken his remains anywhere. Dawlish should have explained all that.”
“Nevertheless, I’m going to continue. Until I find him.”
Silence ruled until they were nearly back in the village again. Rutledge, remembering a case he’d handled before the war, asked, “How long before the flesh rotted off a child’s body and you could move the bones? Or crush them beyond recognition, before scattering them?” It was worth considering—a husband had nearly gotten away with murdering his wife, experimenting with temporary burial and a very permanent exhumation.
Turning to look at him, Hawkins nearly skidded in a puddle, then swore again and straightened the wheel in time. “You’re mad, d’you know that? Stark, staring mad!”
He turned in at his gate without another word.
Morning dawned fair, though cooler after the rains, as if summer’s heat had been washed away. The first task Rutledge set himself was to search the churchyard for flowers growing there.
In his experience, English churchyards, unlike those he’d seen in Europe, were seldom planted with flowers. Along the walls, sometimes, or by the path to the front door of the church. Occasionally by the gates. But not on or around the graves themselves or close to the headstones. The English still preferred their yews as funereal offerings. These had first been set out in churchyards in the days of the long bow, as a source of raw materials, and become a habit. Their shape and somber dark green seemed to suit the mood and the gravity of the place better than a riot of color.
Flowers were more acceptable in tall vases inside the church. Rutledge could remember as a small boy going with his mother to do the altar flowers when it was her turn. He’d sat on the cold stone floor, running his fingers in the deep crevices of the memorial brasses