Aaron Elkins - Unnatural Selection

“And he actually threatened to kill him?” Clapper asked as Gideon finished the story. “With witnesses?”

“No, I wouldn’t call it a threat, and he didn’t say it to the guy’s face. He was with some of the other members right here at the Bishop and Wolf and muttering in his beer-” Gideon lifted his own half-pint of bitter and sipped. “-and he said he’d like to kill him, which, I agree, wouldn’t ordinarily mean much of anything, but Williams seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth since then, so I thought it was worth mentioning to you. You might want to see what you can find out about him.”

Clapper laughed. “Oh, right, give me fifteen minutes and I’ll have it done.”

“I gather there’s a problem? I mean, I know it must be a fairly common name-”

“Fairly common? Gideon, ‘Williams’ is the third most common name in Great Britain, following closely on the heels of ‘Smith’ and ‘Jones.’ And if I’m not mistaken, ‘Peter’ comes right after ‘William’ and ‘John’ as a Christian name.”

“Still, I thought you’d want-”

“I do, of course I do. But I’d have appreciated it if you could have come up with a more unusual name.” He hauled out a notepad. “Where is he supposed to live?”

“I think somebody said London.”

“Naturally,” Clapper said wryly. “And he’s a writer, you say?”

“Well, not really. I gather this was his first book.” He snapped his fingers as the previous night’s conversation at the Bishop and Wolf came back to him. “He was an auto mechanic, he worked in a garage. That should make it easier, shouldn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s excellent,” Clapper said, yawning. He entered a final scribble in his notepad, reached for a menu, and pulled it to him. “Now then. Fancy a spot of pudding? Let me recommend-bloody hell, that’s mine.”

His cell phone had signaled. It was stowed in the pocket of his topcoat, which hung from a coatrack, its hem trailing on the floor, so he had to unwedge himself from behind the table and get up to answer it. “Is that so? Well, I’ll let you tell him yourself.” He handed the phone to Gideon. “Kyle.”

“Dr. Oliver?” Robb piped happily. “I don’t like to interrupt your lunch, but we’ve found some more. Only about a foot down. Appear to be hand or foot bones, I’m not sure which. Maybe both. Those little finger bones-”

“Phalanges.”

“And then some of the funny-shaped little ones you mentioned. And also the bottoms-I mean the distal ends-of the tibias, or maybe it’s the, er, ulnas, depending-”

“That’s great, Kyle. Okay, we’ll be right there.”

Clapper took back his phone, clicked it shut, and cast a last wistful look at the menu. “So much for pudding,” he said.

The new hoard that Tess had uncovered, now resting on the length of screening, did indeed consist of a mix of left and right hand and foot bones, plus the distal ends of both tibias, one fibula, and one ulna.

“I count thirty-five hand and foot bones altogether,” Gideon said, kneeling over them. Are you pretty sure you got them all? Could any of them have migrated a few feet one way or the other, beyond where you looked?”

“Not according to Tess,” said Hicks. He was sitting on the sand, elbows around drawn-up knees, smoking his pipe. Tess sat beside him, watching with polite interest.

“I dug up a pretty big area,” Robb said uncertainly. “How many should there be?”

“Twenty-seven in the hand, twenty-six in the foot. And parts of both hands and feet are here, so that would be a total of, ah-”

“One hundred six,” Clapper promptly supplied.

“The rest have probably been washed away,” Hicks offered, “or possibly the shrews got them, or the crabs.”

“Or the seals,” said Gideon, “or the crows, or the gulls. Or other people’s pet dogs. Well, it’s not a bad haul, considering.” He got to his feet and brushed off the knees of his trousers. “If Tess is finished, then, I’d like to have a chance to look it all over in detail. Mike, you said you had someplace for me to work?”

“Actually, the final quadrant hasn’t been searched,” Hicks said, unwrapping one arm from his knees to point to the rock-littered upslope at the far end of the beach.

Gideon followed his gesture. “That’s pretty unlikely to turn up anything, Mr. Hicks. Too many rocks, too much brush. People digging holes for dead bodies prefer easier terrain.”

“Yes, that was my thinking. That’s why I left if for last, in case we couldn’t get to it. Poor Tess is thoroughly knackered at the moment, I’m afraid.” He massaged the ruff of her neck. “And I’m feeling my age as well. I think we’ll pack it in. Maybe we’ll try again tomorrow.”

Clapper shook his head. “That’s doubtful, Trus. If the fog gets much worse, which I don’t doubt it will, even Ron won’t be able to get you here tomorrow.”

Hicks got creakily to his feet. “Well, we’ll see, shall we?” He paused. “I don’t suppose the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary would have it in them to buy a hungry old man his pottage, now would they?”

“Absolutely,” Clapper said. “I apologize, Trus, I wasn’t thinking. You must be starving. You too, Kyle. Kyle, I want you to take Mr. Hicks to any dining establishment of his choice, courtesy of the department, and give him a truly memorable lunch. Anything he wants. And remember: expense is not a consideration.”

“Why, thank you, Michael,” Hicks said. “I’m quite touched.”

“Anything up to and including a pound,” Clapper said grandly.

“Will this give you enough room, then?” Clapper asked. They had just finished arranging the unoccupied cubicle opposite Robb’s office, clearing the desk of storage files and assorted debris and shoving the stacks that were on the floor up against the walls to provide more room around the desk.

“It’ll do fine,” Gideon said, placing the sacks of bones on the desk.

“We can put the coffeemaker elsewhere, if you want.”

“No, leave it on the desk, it won’t bother me.”

“I wouldn’t recommend drinking any, however, at least not in the afternoon after it’s been out a while. Takes a bit of getting used to.”

“Mike,” Gideon said, laughing, “stale coffee and bone dust go together like bees and honey. Don’t worry about me.”

“Very well, then. Anything you need to get you started?”

“Yes, a magnifying glass. And I need something to measure with-a ruler; a tape measure too, if you have one. Calipers would be too much to hope for, I assume.”

“They would, indeed.”

Gideon blinked up at the fluorescent tubes overhead. “And an adjustable desk lamp, if there is one-something to counter the flat lighting.”

Clapper nodded, moving toward the doorless entry of the tiny cubicle.

“Oh, and where’s the tibial fragment I brought over on Monday? Is it in here someplace?”

“No, it’s still in my office. I’ll bring it.”

While he was gone, Gideon sat down, opened the bags, and began arranging the bones, sorting left from right, and placing them roughly in their anatomical relationships. When Clapper returned, Gideon took the partial left tibia-the upper four-fifths of the bone-from him, and set it against the partial left tibia-the lower portion-that they’d found today. Carefully, he set cut end to cut end. As he then demonstrated, they fit together so perfectly that, kept upright, they didn’t have to be held in place.

“There you go,” he said with satisfaction. “Couldn’t be a neater fit, could it? You can even see how the breakaway spur from the one from the museum fits right into that little cleft in the new one. These are from the same person, absolutely no question about it.”