A Book of Bones Page 11

  Shortly before we retired to our tents, some passing remark of Hodges’s caused Goetz to leap at him, and the latter landed a blow before Morgan and Clement managed to separate them. By now I had endured enough, for I could see no sign of relations between the two students improving under the present circumstances. I ordered both of them to return to Oxford first thing the next morning, where they would be given ample opportunity to explain their behavior to Pitt Rivers. In the meantime, Clement, Morgan, and I would remain on the moors to conclude our observations, as an example of how gentlemen and scientists—even those of the amateur persuasion—should behave themselves. We all repaired to our rest in varying degrees of ill temper, and after a time the night was still.

  * * *

  I opened my eyes. The noise, when it came, was unmistakably human. It was the sound of sobbing.

  I ignited my lamp, and for the second evening in a row departed my tent in darkness to investigate a disturbance. As before, it came from the ruin that housed the well. I stopped in the doorway. By the light of moon and lamp, I could see that the slab had been removed from the mouth of the well, and to my right a figure was crouched against the wall. It was Goetz.

  “What are you doing out here?” I asked, but Goetz did not reply, and only continued to produce low, regular sobs, while his whole body shook. His gaze never left the well.

  I moved closer to the hole, and saw a man’s boot lying by the edge. It was dark brown, and made by Tricker’s of London. Only one of our group wore such a boot: Hodges. Beside the boot was a broken lamp.

  I rushed to Hodges’s tent, calling his name, but just Clement and Morgan answered my call. Hodges’s tent was empty. Together, all three of us returned to the well, and Goetz. I knelt before him.

  “What happened? Goetz, where is Hodges?”

  Goetz pointed at the well.

  “Die Wurzeln,” he said. “Die Wurzeln nahmen ihn.”

  “What’s he saying?” asked Morgan.

  I looked back at the well.

  “He says the roots took him.”

  * * *

  I sent Morgan for the police at first light. We were all questioned, although Goetz would speak only German—I could not tell if this was a deliberate attempt at obstruction on his part, or a genuine result of shock; the police suspected it to be the former, and I the latter—and so I was forced to translate as best I could. He stuck to his story, which was that he had heard Hodges get up during the night. Some instinct, perhaps the lingering bad blood between them, had caused Goetz to go after him. When he arrived at the well, he found Hodges standing before it, the slab already removed from the hole and lying some three or four feet away, although it would have been too heavy for Hodges to have shifted it so far alone.

  “I heard something,” Hodges said to him, and then Goetz heard it, too, or so he told us. It was a scratching, like nails or claws on a wall. It was coming from the well. He watched Hodges approach the hole and lift his lamp. Hodges peered over the edge, and Goetz saw a dark tuberous length wrap itself around his right foot. Hodges tried to pull back, which was when his unlaced boot came off, and he fell to the ground. Before he could cry out, a second root coiled around his head, gagging him.

  And then Hodges was gone.

  * * *

  They tried Manfred Goetz for the murder of Walter Hodges. He was found guilty, but avoided the gallows due to the intervention of some senior figures in the German government—it appeared he had not been lying about the Bismarck connection after all—aided by the fact that there was no body, and hence only circumstantial evidence of his guilt. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in Pentonville, but in the end lasted only a year before killing himself with a noose fashioned from bootlaces.

  Did Goetz murder Walter Hodges? I do not know. All I can say is that I hope he did, pushing the younger man into the well, and Hodges broke his neck when he eventually hit the bottom, or fractured his skull against the walls on the way down. I do not care to think about the other possibility. I do not want to believe that Goetz was telling the truth. I think of that woman’s remains, bound by tree roots. I think of the warning on the stone.

  I think of them all the time.

  These impressions I shared only with Pitt Rivers in his study one night over brandy, not long after Goetz’s death, and now I am committing this account to paper. What Pitt Rivers made of my version of the tale I cannot say, for he could be most taciturn when he chose, except that he suspended all further investigation of the Familist site on the Hexhamshire Moors, a decision that has remained in force even after his passing. For many years, the Hodges family made a pilgrimage to the settlement on the anniversary of the boy’s disappearance, and placed flowers by the well. I came to know Hodges’s younger brother a little, after he went up to Cambridge. He told me the flowers would begin to die as soon as they were laid, and were withered entirely before the last of the prayers were said. Make of that what you will. As for me, I have lived for many years on a top-floor flat off Church Street, close to the university that I love. I chose the house because it has no garden.

  Make of that, also, what you will.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  As they moved across the moors, Priestman noticed that Hynes had fallen behind, and paused to allow him to catch up.

  “You’re puffing like a steam train,” she said.

  “I didn’t sign up for a hike,” said Hynes. “If I’d known, I’d have taken precautions.”

  “What kind of precautions?”

  “I wouldn’t have come into work this morning.” He leaned over, his hands on his knees. “Why would anyone choose to live out here?”

  “I think it’s beautiful,” said Priestman.

  “Might be, if they put a roof on it.”

  Hood had kept walking, and was about to crest a small hill, Oakenfold and Grant close behind.

  “Hold on,” Hynes called out, before adding under his breath—or what was left of it—“unless you want another body out here.”

  “We don’t have time to stop,” said Hood.

  “And why is that?”

  Hood pointed to the sky. The clouds looked darker, the sheets of rain closer. “Wind’s changed. It’s going to bucket down before long.”

  “Jesus,” said Hynes. “As if things weren’t bad enough.”

  “You’ve got a coat,” said Priestman, “and it’s waterproof.”

  “The coat may be, but I’m not.”

  “God, you’re a moaner.”

  She returned to Hood, and prevailed upon him to wait for her sergeant.

  “Thank Christ,” said Hynes as he drew level.

  Yet Hood was not looking at him but at a hollow in the earth.

  “Christ won’t want your thanks for this,” he said.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Parker spent the best part of three hours in the witness box, much of it dodging barbs from the defense, before being permitted to go about his business. Tracey Ermenthal walked out with him, and they conducted a brief postmortem on his testimony. The two accused had displayed no emotion as the recording of their conversation was played to the court, but its effect on the jury was obvious. One of the female members was crying by the end, and a couple of the males looked as though they wanted to tear the defendants apart.

  “They’re gone,” said Ermenthal. “It’s just a question of for how long.”

  Parker had no pity for the two men, not after listening to them boast of what they’d done, but neither was he experiencing any sense of triumph, only a vague depression. It wasn’t entirely due to the nature of the case, although that was part of it; mostly it was a consequence of exposure to the workings of the legal system. Anyone who spent time in a courtroom emerged with scars. The only variables were quantity and depth.

  “You tell Moxie he has a favor to call in, if he ever needs it,” Ermenthal continued.

  “Then I guarantee you’ll be hearing from him. What about my favor?”

  “Your favor?” Ermenthal began
to laugh. “Prosecutors in half a dozen states have a hard-on for you, and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York thinks you should be arrested on sight if you ever set foot in his jurisdiction again. Your favor is that you’re not in jail.”

  She was still laughing as she walked away.

  CHAPTER XXV

  Priestman stood on the verge of a pit in the moors, like the aftermath of a meteor strike. The ground sloped down toward an uneven plateau at the center, accessed by a series of rough-hewn stone steps, now largely overgrown. The steps led to nothing, because the core was empty, but it had not always been so. Priestman could make out an order to the disturbance of the earth, a pattern to the growth of the grass. She felt profoundly discomposed, as though she were guilty of some form of trespass, and whatever had once occupied this place might take offense at her intrusion were it to return and find her there. She did not consider herself to be an overimaginative person. She had never liked dark fantasies or horror films. She didn’t find them frightening; they just did nothing for her. But here and now, she thought she might have some inkling of what they did to others.

  She finished pulling on her shoe covers, and raised the hood of her jacket so that it covered her hair. Below, Hynes and Grant were squatting by a patch of ground. Although dusk was gathering, the shadows here were different from the rest.

  “It’s blood, all right,” said Grant.

  Priestman turned to Douglas Hood, who was standing nearby, the dog at his feet, its head on its front paws as it watched the activity with interest.

  “Thank you,” she said, as she prepared to call in the discovery and get the rest of the CSIs moving.

  “Better tell them to not tarry,” said Hood. “Won’t be long before the rain comes to wash it away.”

  She nodded, made the call, and descended to join the others.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  The federal government had booked a hotel room in Houston for Parker, but he decided he’d spent long enough in the west and southwest. There were no direct flights to Portland, and the ones with stopovers made him want to weep, so he caught the 4:30 p.m. United flight to Boston, and from there took a Concord bus north. The screens above the seats were showing a golfing movie, which he did his best to ignore. He could think of few things worse than actual golf, but watching a movie about it came a close second. Instead he kept his eyes on the road, and used the silence to consider Quayle.

  He could, he supposed, have left the lawyer to rot in whatever dusty corner of Europe he had chosen for his fastness, there to while away his days until inevitable mortality solved the problem of his existence. Louis might not have liked it—Mors had hurt Louis, and Louis wanted to hurt her in return—but Parker had no personal stake in Quayle’s continued liberty. On the other hand, if he were to intervene in cases that only affected him personally, he would essentially be washing his hands of moral responsibility, and become complicit in atrocities through inaction.

  And Parker had an advantage: he possessed something that Quayle wanted very badly. Parker, after all, was one of only a handful of people to have been in contact with the original copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales sought by Quayle, the book into which three additional vellum pages had been sewn, fragments of an older work the nature of which Parker was still trying to establish. While he had been forced to surrender two of the vellum inserts during his last encounter with Quayle, the third was locked away in a safe deposit box. As yet, Quayle did not appear to know this, but it was possible he might soon begin to suspect. Most of those who had handled the pages were now dead, killed by Quayle and Mors. Only Parker, a book collector named Bob Johnston, and Leila Patton, a young woman in Indiana, remained alive, and Mors had already tried, unsuccessfully, to harm the latter. Parker did not want Mors making a second attempt should her employer decide that Patton might know something about a missing page. All of which meant that, at some point in the future, Quayle might return to the United States to resume his search. It would be best if he were dealt with before then.

  The Dutch angle was interesting. Parker still believed Quayle to be English, but he obviously had contacts in the Netherlands. The dumping of the woman’s body in Lagnier’s junkyard suggested to Parker that the feds’ inquiries had caused alarm over in Europe, with the result that a planned diversionary tactic had been employed in the form of the dead woman.

  Now Ross wanted to use Louis to dig deeper. Parker decided that Louis’s willingness or otherwise to travel to the Netherlands was unlikely to be an issue. If it offered him the chance to hunt Mors, Louis would make the trip in a heartbeat. The only difficulties were the aftereffects of Louis’s own injuries, and Angel’s chemotherapy treatment. It resembled, Parker thought, the plot of a very violent soap opera.

  The bus was largely empty. Parker counted only a dozen other passengers, and they were all seated toward the front. He was at the very back, so he didn’t feel too bad about using his cell phone, although he kept his voice low both for reasons of courtesy and because he was about to ask Louis if he was prepared to take a transatlantic trip with the ultimate aim of ending two lives.

  Louis picked up on the second ring.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “On a bus.”

  “If you’re broke, you can ask me for money. I won’t give you none, but you can ask.”

  “It’s a long story, and involves a body.”

  “Do I want to hear it?”

  “I think you should. It concerns our English friends.”

  Parker detected what might have been a growl from the other end of the phone.

  “Are they back?”

  “No—or not yet, but they entered the United States on Dutch passports, and at least one of them also left on a Dutch passport. A little bird suggested you might have contacts in the Netherlands, the kind that might be able to help.”

  “Does this little bird have a name?”

  “Ross.”

  “That little bird knows more songs than I’d prefer. Someone should break its neck.”

  “I’ll admit he’s hard to warm to. Is he right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You still have sources over there?”

  “Good ones.”

  “You interested in going back?”

  “Maybe. When?”

  “Soon.”

  “I got shot.”

  “I know.”

  “In the groin.”

  “And elsewhere.”

  “Fuck elsewhere. A man’s groin is, like, sacrosanct.”

  “Yours especially.”

  “You think you’re just being funny, but it’s the truth.”

  “I believe you.”

  Another pause, another growl.

  “Angel has chemo.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “He’s resting now. I’ll talk to him in the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  Louis hung up. Parker stretched out his own injured leg. He’d busted his foot while jumping out a window during that final confrontation with Quayle and Mors. The damage was minor but—as the doctor had informed him—after fifty there really was no such thing as “minor.”

  He closed his eyes, if only to shut out the golfing movie, and eventually the bus reached Portland. He caught a cab to the airport, picked up his car from the parking garage, and drove to Scarborough.

  Home.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  Sellars was woken by the alarm clock at 3:00 a.m., and instantly silenced it so as not to wake Lauren. She stirred in her slumber, and mumbled something, but he paid her no heed. She was used to his early starts after eight years of marriage, although she no longer minded when he spent nights away, not like she did when they first got together. Back then, she couldn’t bear the emptiness on his side of the bed, said it made her feel sad: not only because she missed his presence but also because it reminded her of how her life would be after he was gone. You know, when he was dead, like. He’d always thought
it was an odd thing to say, but she was a strange one, Lauren. That might have been what attracted him to her, right from the start. She wasn’t the same as the rest of the girls on the estate. They all had big mouths on them, and swarmed together like wasps. Lauren was quieter, always at the edges of groups, never the center. She liked it better there, she said. Made it easier to get away.

  She was clever, too. She read all sorts of books. Had her own box at the local library, she read so many. The librarians just threw in anything they thought she might enjoy, along with whatever she asked for herself, but they still couldn’t keep her satisfied. She’d never been bored, she said, not once, not while she had a book to read. She lived in them, and saw the world through their pages. That might have been part of the problem with their marriage. She’d had her head filled with all kinds of nonsense about love and romance, stuff that just wasn’t true, couldn’t be true, because no one was like that, not in real life, or no one they knew.

  He got up, went to the bathroom, and dressed once he was done with his business. He’d been ill with a nasty tummy bug the day before, taking to his bed in the morning and moving between it and the toilet for the duration, but he felt a bit better now.

  He looked in on Kelly and Louise. He was tempted to kiss them goodbye, but if he woke Louise he’d be the worst in the world. He contented himself with gazing on them for a while before closing the door, leaving just a little gap so Lauren would be able to hear if Louise cried out. Still in his stocking feet, he walked downstairs, put the kettle on, stuck some bread in the toaster, and turned on the television to BBC News, the sound barely above a whisper.

  He saw the images from the moors.

  He saw the police.

  He saw a body being carried to a waiting ambulance.

  “What did you do, Holmby?” he said. “What the fuck did you do?”