Charles Todd - A long shadow

"You're saying that whoever came out first-myself or Commander Farnum-whoever set up the casing would have decided that man was his victim?"

She didn't answer him.

"What if it was the doctor? He hadn't been in the war."

"Then it would have been someone else on another day."

It was a very interesting possibility.

But she didn't wait to discuss it. He got to his feet to help her into her coat, and with a smile she was gone.

The quiet room seemed to close in on him. He got up and walked to the door, looking at the lock that had no key.

He wasn't certain whether it was worse to think of himself as the target of someone with a grudge against him, or to see himself as a target of opportunity. A man with a grudge was at least comprehensible, could even be tracked down and stopped. Someone who had chosen him at random was like smoke in the dark, invisible until his victim stumbled into it.

It was late, and the afternoon light was waning when Rut- ledge found a rake and a pitchfork in the shed behind Hensley's house, just where he'd expected them to be. There was also a shaded lantern and a sturdy pair of boots.

The wind was still very cold, but dropped with sunset. By seven o'clock the shops were closed and the streets all but deserted. He put the spade and shovel into the motorcar, tested the shaded lantern in the kitchen, found his torch, and as soon as his dinner was over, he drove out of Dudlington.

He left the car very close to where he'd found Hensley's bicycle, then climbed the wall on the far side of the road and made his way across the fields toward Frith's Wood.

Hamish, a good covenanting Scot, kept up a grumbling monologue in Rutledge's head, reminding him that daring the devil in the dark of night in a haunted wood was little short of madness. "It isna' wise to open doors that have no business opening."

"I'm here to close one," he answered.

Somewhere a fox barked, twice. He walked on, grateful that there was no moon to pick him out, a lone figure on the brow of the rolling pastures.

When he reached the wood he stopped to take his bearings. He could see lighted windows here and there in the village, and even the weathercock on the top of the church spire reflected their glow.

There was no one in the pastures, no one following him from the road, no one ahead of him in the wood. All the same, for a moment he wished he could tell Hamish to set a watch, as he had done so many times in the trenches.

Three years, he thought. A long time for a body to lie among the trees, but there were a few bones that might survive even now, if he knew where to look for them.

He began by working through the brambles and vines, using his hands where he could, bringing up the rake or the pitchfork for areas he couldn't reach.

The shielded lantern was used sparingly, for as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see more than he would have believed possible.

He thought, this is how an archaeologist must feel, exploring one small square at a time, unveiling what lay below the surface-or didn't lie there-with great care.

Rotted trunks and fallen branches had turned into crumbled wood, and there was layer after layer of well-rotted leaves. The rake was deep into one corner when a skull came to light, small and with a pointed muzzle. A fox, he thought, crawling in here to die in peace. He buried it again and kept going. There was the scurry of mice in another place, and he overturned a nest of fur-lined leaves and four tiny white shivering bodies. Setting it back in place, he thought he heard something behind him, like the bones of dead fingers clacking together, but it was only the boughs and bare branches rubbing together in the wind.

He worked for more than an hour, then stopped to catch his breath. It was a hopeless task, he told himself. One man on his own… The wood had been searched, after all.

"By men who were afraid," Hamish retorted. "They wouldna' care to find the devil under a bush." There was some truth in that. The church clock had struck two in the morning, and he was tired. But he had begun to learn the way the ground under his feet was constructed. And where the brambles grew thickest, he could pass on, because they had been settled here far longer than three years, their canes deep in the leaf mold, and their bases thick as his wrist with old growth.

By three, he'd covered more of the wood than he'd expected, and he began to think, looking around him, that he might finish before the late dawn broke.

But by four, he had still had no luck, and this particular part of the wood had seen some wind damage in the past, for there were more downed trunks than elsewhere. He moved each one, shone his shielded torch along the length, sending beetles and spiders fleeing from his light, before letting it go again. Some broke apart in his hands, and others, wet with dew and slick with green moss, left an unpleasant miasma in the air and a slippery coating on his gloves.

He had worn heavy boots borrowed from Hensley and a pair of the man's corduroys hanging in the closet and two layers of sweaters over his shirt. Now he was sweating heavily, and his muscles were beginning to ache. His ankle had been ready to quit an hour ago.

"A wild-goose chase," Hamish said dryly. "Better a feather bed."

Rutledge chuckled, just as his pitchfork bit into something with a very different feel. Leaving the tool where it was, he knelt to clear away the earth from its prongs, smoothing and pushing gently by turns until he had found what he was after. He brought the lamp closer. The pitchfork had buried itself between a jaw and a shoulder blade, in what had once been a human neck. Rutledge rocked back on his heels. Hamish said, "The Saxon massacre…" But Rutledge didn't think it was. There was more definition in the bones than something from the Dark Ages. Whether it was Emma Mason or not, he couldn't judge. But it was time to call in experts who could. Covering his find carefully, so that it was neither visible nor vulnerable, he stood up and shouldered his implements. Hamish said, "Will ye stop now?" It was a good question. He had another two hours until daylight, and it was possible that he would never have a better chance. His muscles complained, his hands were cold through his wet gloves, he was tired enough to sleep on the open ground, as he'd done more than once during the war. Still, he went back to work, as methodically as before, and after another hour and three-quarters of digging, he hadn't made any other gruesome discoveries. He could see an opalescent light on the horizon as he trudged back across the fields, toward his motorcar. He and Hensley's tools were filthy from the digging, and he tried to clean his boots a little before stepping behind the wheel. The seat was cold and damp with the dew as he drove back to Dudlington and left the car in its accustomed place, and he could feel his fatigue as he stowed the tools where he'd found them. A hot bath helped to wake him up and took away some of the strain on his body.

And as soon as he had eaten his breakfast, he drove south to Northampton, where he could find a telephone.

His call to the Yard was patched through to Chief Inspector Bowles, who gave him a lecture on the speedy resolution of his cases.

"We don't have the time for arcane wanderings in the past, Rutledge. Whether there were Saxons on the rampage in the time of Alfred has no bearing on who shot Constable Hensley."

"I understand, sir-"

"No, you don't. I've been summoned by my own superiors, and all I've got to report to them is silence. What has this skull got to do with Hensley, pray?"

Rutledge took a deep breath. "If the skull is that of a missing girl, it may begin to explain why he was attacked. To prove that it is the girl, I need someone from the Yard experienced in skeletons. Mainwairing, for one. Can you spare him for a day or two?"