A Book of Bones Read online

  A clue as to Angel’s state of mind had come from the unlikely source of Paulie Fulci, who, along with Tony, his brother, had been employed by Louis as security, and occasional nursemaids, both during Angel’s surgery and for the initial period of his recuperation. Paulie had come across Angel with a box of marbles on his lap. The box, like the marbles themselves, looked old. Angel was moving the marbles one by one from the box to the blanket over his knees, then back again.

  “What are you doing?” Paulie asked.

  “Counting.”

  “Marbles?”

  “Days.”

  Paulie had left him to it, but informed Louis of the exchange upon the latter’s return to the apartment.

  “What do you think he meant by ‘days’?” Paulie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Louis replied, although he had his suspicions.

  “You know what I think?”

  Paulie paused, waiting for Louis to reply, and thus give him permission to continue. Most men—most women, too—would have considered the question largely rhetorical, and plowed on to reveal the answer. Paulie Fulci’s mind didn’t operate that way, but then, it wasn’t clear how Paulie’s mind operated, exactly. He and his brother had that much in common.

  “No,” said Louis, when the silence became too much even for him to bear. “What do you think?”

  “I think maybe when you go through what he’s been through, you start spending more time in the past. You do it because you’re not so sure you got enough days left for a future.”

  Louis looked very hard at Paulie.

  “What?” said Paulie.

  “Did you change your medication?”

  “It’s always changing.”

  “Does it ever work?”

  Paulie took some time to consider before replying.

  “No, but these new pills make me feel different.”

  Louis was interested now.

  “Different how?”

  Again, Paulie mused.

  “I need to piss more often.”

  At which point Louis stopped being interested.

  When he had gone in to check on Angel, the box of marbles was nowhere to be seen, and Louis elected, for reasons he could not have explained, to leave unremarked the subject of their existence. He had not been aware Angel possessed such a collection, and could only conclude that it was some relic from childhood. If Angel did not see fit to mention it to him, then Louis was disinclined to pry. After all, both men had their secrets.

  Music was playing softly: Egberto Gismonti’s “Ciranda Nordestina.” Louis had not chosen it, although it suited the mood and the hour; he had simply hit PLAY on the system, and had not been disappointed.

  Angel scratched absently at the PICC line in his arm, the other end of the catheter lodged somewhere near his heart. He seemed to be sleeping now. A further session of chemo was scheduled for the following day, after which they would leave the city for Maine, where Angel could gaze out on the waters of Casco Bay from the window of their Portland apartment.

  Gismonti faded away, to be replaced by Steve Reich and the first part of Tehillim. Angel shifted position in Louis’s arms.

  “Where do you walk, when you dream?” Louis asked.

  But Angel did not answer, and Louis both felt and heard the depth and regularity of his breathing, and was glad.

  It doesn’t matter, thought Louis, as long as I am there.

  As long as I am where you are.

  3

  Trackway and Camp and City lost,

  Salt Marsh where now is corn;

  Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,

  And so was England born…

  —Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook’s Hill

  CHAPTER XVI

  Darkness to the west, then: darkness in Arizona, darkness in New York, for these are both western places to the European mind.

  But darkness of another kind to the east.

  This is Northumbria, spanning Durham, Yorkshire, and Northumberland, the northernmost county in England. Here was once the frontier, the last place, where, in the second century, the Romans built their vast fortifications to hold back the Scots and the Picts: first Hadrian’s Wall, running from the banks of the Tyne in the east to the Solway Firth in the west; and later, in a fit of optimism—or arrogance—the more northerly Antonine Wall, from the Firth of Forth in the east to the Firth of Clyde in the west, before abandoning it in favor of a consolidation of the southern defenses. In time, the remains of the Antonine Wall will come to be referred to as the Devil’s Dyke, but by then the Romans will be long gone, their fortresses already falling into ruin, leaving the blood to dry, and the land to bear their scars.

  Because the land remembers.

  So the Romans depart, and chaos descends. The Angles invade from Germania, battling the natives and one another, before eventually forging two kingdoms, Northumbria and Mercia, only to see them fall in the ninth century to the Norsemen, who will themselves be defeated by the kings of Wessex.

  More blood, more scars.

  In AD 927, Northumbria becomes part of Athelstan’s united England. In 1066 William the Conqueror lands with his Normans, and crushes the Northumbrian resistance to Norman rule. The Norman castles rise, but they, like the Romans and the Angles before, are forced to defend themselves against the Scots. They leave their dead at Alnwick and Redesdale, Tyndale and Otterburn.

  The land has a taste for blood now.

  More conflicts follow—the War of the Roses, the Rising in the North, the Civil War, the Jacobite rebellions—and the ground makes way for new bones, but the blood never really dries. Dig deep enough, expose the depths, and one might almost glimpse seams of red and white, like the strata of rock: blood and bone, over and over, the landscape infused by them, forever altered and forever changing.

  Because the killing never stops.

  * * *

  SO THE SUN RISES on this Northumberland morning, but without the heat required to burn off the mist on the Hexhamshire Moors that lie between the Devil’s Water to the east and the valleys of the River Allen to the west.

  Sheep graze here, and in summer bog orchid flourishes. To the casual eye, the moors might seem beautiful, but there is a harshness to them that cannot be denied, and in this spot the line of the horizon to the west is disrupted by a series of ruined dwellings, barely more than a succession of jagged walls with half-recollected windows and doors, like rotten teeth in the dislocated jaw of the landscape. Perhaps, in more verdant surroundings, this settlement might have been reclaimed by nature, to be lost and ultimately forgotten amid woods and greenery, but on the moors it remains as exposed as the land itself. Raised in an age when the houses of many common folk were built to last only for a generation, it is strange that these dwellings should have survived, although upon closer examination their walls appear thicker than the norm, and more carefully aligned, with little reliance on timber and wattle-and-daub fillers for their construction. The windows are narrow, barely more than slits; designed for defense, one might say. Odd, too, that their stones have not been scavenged for some other purpose, or that most livestock, even in inclement weather, will not seek shelter among the ruins.

  This place was once home to a group of families who intermarried to such a degree that the original lines were difficult to identify even for those most intimately involved in their creation, and impossible for outsiders. For many years, they worshipped at St. Andrew’s, as required by law and the Church of England, although some of their fellow congregants whispered that they did so only under sufferance, and were paying lip service to a deity in whom they did not truly believe. And this was true, although the families were careful to give no cause for further investigation of their faith, even if mute testament to its alien nature stood not far from their hamlet.

  Because another church once gazed out over the Hexhamshire Moors, its stones at least as old as those of St. Andrew’s, its walls bearing carvings of faces with no connection to the Christian God, or to His So
n and saints. Here the families would offer up their prayers behind closed doors, until the threat of imprisonment and torture by the agents of the Reformation temporarily persuaded them to do otherwise. These strictures gradually eased, and greater freedom of worship became permissible, but by then the Familists, as their sect came to be termed, had decided to make a fresh start in the New World. They took their beliefs with them, and their church, its stones stored as ballast in the ships that carried them to New England, where it was reconstructed by Familist masons in a township that would come to be named Prosperous, in the state of Maine, and there the Congregation of Adam Before Eve & Eve Before Adam would endure—indeed thrive—into the twenty-first century, until its destruction by forces loyal to the private detective Charlie Parker.

  But that, like the past itself, is another country. To be clear: the remnants of this earlier Northumbrian hamlet are not haunted, or not in any conventional sense of the word. The Familists brought their ghosts to the New World, and their demons also, but they left behind poisoned ground, blighted by their beliefs and—yes—perhaps also by spilled blood, because the land, and their god, demanded it. Now the rising sun shines on these old buildings, on their long rooms and cattle byres, and on a deep well blocked with stones, as though to prevent not the drawing of water but the emergence of something from below, for this is the kingdom of the Laidly Worm, the Lambton Worm, the Sockburn Worm—monstrous creatures all—and it is better to be careful than regretful.

  Sun on grass and rock; sun on water and stone; sun also on the carapaces of the first of the ground beetles as they begin to explore their new territory, this previously unsuspected domain; the pallor of the exterior, and the redness of the interior. There is less blood than might have been anticipated, but the beetles are not troubled: the flesh itself is of a sufficiency to draw the smaller invertebrates on which they feed, although time will be required for the rot to set in, and the greater insect feast it will bring.

  But that time will not be given to them. A figure is approaching, stick in hand, dog by his side; a farmer, come to check on his sheep. His name is Douglas Hood, and he and his forebears are part of this heathland, as assuredly as the grass and stones. They have built on it, raised livestock upon it, and buried their dead in it, generation upon generation. Hood knows every furrow, every hill and decline. He rarely leaves the environs of his county—rarely moves out of sight of the moors—because this to him is a world choate. Its colors are near infinite in their variety yet remarkable in their particularity, so his eye is immediately drawn to a green that is not of nature, and a mound that is not of this place. As he draws closer, he sees the early-morning dew upon the plastic, and the shape beneath, imperfectly concealed. He might be mistaken, though. He wants to be. In his selfishness, he does not wish his moors to be despoiled in such a fashion.

  But he knows that he is not wrong, senses it on some animal level, even before he takes a handkerchief from his pocket so as not to leave any marks, placing it over the fingers of his right hand as he pulls back the layers of plastic, revealing hair, and a hand, and the roundness of a female breast. Beside him, the dog whines, and he reaches out to calm her, because she is a good creature.

  He rises, removes his cap, and offers a prayer, because he cannot think of what else to do for her.

  For this young woman in an old land, waiting to be named.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Skal and Crist arrived on time for Parker’s ride to the airport. It was a temperate morning, and likely to blossom into a pleasant day, although it would be more pleasant still, Parker thought, if he were greeting it in Maine, and not in Arizona.

  “Someone sent us pizza, a bottle of champagne, and a six-pack of beer last night,” said Skal, as they pulled away from the hotel.

  “Really?” said Parker.

  “Yeah. We had to call to make sure there wasn’t some mistake, but it seems it was all being billed to an account at the Westin.”

  “Wow.”

  “So, being federal agents, and noted for our investigative abilities, we dug a little deeper and found that it was SAC Ross’s room account.”

  “What a guy,” said Parker.

  “We thought,” said Crist, taking up the baton, “that maybe we should check with him, just in case.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But then,” said Skal, “we looked at the food, and the champagne, and the beer, and decided, like, you know…”

  “Yeah,” said Crist. “Like, you know.”

  “I know,” said Parker. “Like, maybe you might have embarrassed him by mentioning it, and so it was better if it just remained unacknowledged, to save his blushes.”

  Crist and Skal looked at each other. Clearly this was a better explanation for their silence than whatever they’d concocted between them.

  “That’s it,” said Skal.

  “Yes,” said Crist, “that’s it exactly.”

  They continued driving, watching Phoenix drift by.

  “I never drank champagne with just another man before,” said Crist.

  “Me neither,” said Skal.

  “Or not one sitting in a bed next to me,” said Crist.

  “Watching Jimmy Kimmel,” said Skal.

  “So that was kind of weird,” said Crist.

  “Kind of,” agreed Skal.

  Parker kept his eyes fixed on the landscape, and tried to think sad thoughts.

  “The crystal glasses were a nice touch, though,” said Crist.

  “Yeah,” said Skal. “We kept one each.”

  “As souvenirs,” said Crist.

  Parker gave up on sad thoughts, moved on to tragic, and continued to monitor his reflection in the glass until he was sure his face was straight. He watched the browns and beiges as the land rolled by. He saw only an insufficiency of green.

  “You sleep well?” Skal asked him.

  “Not really.”

  “Strange bed, huh?”

  “Strange bed, strange room, strange city,” said Parker. “If I was here for another night, I’d probably have slept okay.”

  “Yeah, why is that?”

  “It’s just a theory, but I think the mind is wary on a first night in a new place. It doesn’t know where the doors and windows are, and it isn’t sure that it’s safe to sleep for long, so it keeps you tossing and turning. But if you go back for a second night, the mind has its bearings, and so you sleep better.”

  “I never thought about it like that,” said Skal.

  “Me neither,” said Crist. “But it sounds right.”

  “And how did you sleep?” asked Parker.

  “Pretty good,” said Skal.

  “Me, too,” said Crist. “Although I woke up with a headache. I think maybe it was the bubbles.”

  “Yeah,” said Skal. “It must have been the bubbles.”

  Parker returned to thinking tragic thoughts.

  * * *

  PHOENIX SKY HARBOR AIRPORT hadn’t improved significantly since Parker’s arrival the day before, although it hadn’t deteriorated, either, which was something. He said goodbye to Skal and Crist, and thought he might even miss them. He knew that Ross had asked for a 6:30 a.m. wake-up, because they’d both booked calls at the same time the night before. He wondered how long it would take him to spot the additions to his bill. As it happened, Parker’s phone began ringing just as he was getting on the plane, and the caller display showed Ross’s name. He rejected the call, just as he did the three that followed. Finally, Ross resorted to text messaging. The message consisted of two words, the first of which was “You,” and the second of which was unbecoming of a senior federal agent. Parker was still smiling as he took his seat in first class next to an elderly woman who had a small dog in a carrying case by her feet.

  “You have a good time in Phoenix?” she asked him.

  “It started out badly,” said Parker, “but improved toward the end.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The Hexhamshire Moors have been transformed. Hikers are be
ing redirected away from the area in which the body was discovered, and a white tent now covers the spot: an alien object in a landscape rendered stranger still by the presence of the Northumbria Police crime scene investigators, all of whom are similarly clothed in white protective suits, their faces masked, their hands gloved. This has been a difficult location to access: the main road is some way distant, although a farm trail runs perpendicular to it, permitting the police vehicles to drive slightly closer to the body. The moors are also a Site of Special Scientific Interest, so additional care must be taken. Still, the first two stages of the police investigation—the visual inspection and the photographic recording—have been completed, and the evidence recovery plan has been established. They can now proceed to the forensic examination itself, although any fingerprinting will be left until last so as not to contaminate the scene.

  But bad weather is approaching. The investigators can see the clouds darkening to the east, the storm ready to roll in from the North Sea, so they curse it, and the believers among them offer a prayer to the heavens.

  Crime scene investigators are foragers, gatherers. They scavenge evidence. This is fingertip work, eyes on the ground. Of the four elements, fire and water are the principal adversaries, although air, in the form of strong winds, is no friend, either. Now two of those elements may be on their way, and the instinct is to rush, to salvage what they can before nature destroys it; but to rush is to err, and so they must proceed methodically, and hope.

  What is already clear is that the woman was not killed where she lies, nor did she die with this plastic beneath her; there is too little blood on the material for wounds so deep. Yet how did she get here? They can see no sign of a vehicle’s tracks, so someone must have carried her—no, dragged her, because it is the farmer, Hood, who points out some slight disturbance to the texture of the heath, northwest of where the body was discovered.