Peter Lovesey - Skeleton Hill

The next morning a woman called Miss Hibbert walked into Manvers Street Police Station with three greyhounds and a large bone. ‘I’ve always obeyed the law,’ she told the desk sergeant, ‘and I want to know if I can keep this.’

Sergeant Austin, with eighteen years’ experience, had seen some shocking things across this desk. He eyed the bone without much interest. ‘You want to keep it?’

‘For these chaps. They’re rescue dogs. Life hasn’t given them much in the way of treats. Do you have any idea of the disgraceful way so-called sportsmen treat greyhounds when they can’t race any more?’

Sergeant Austin sidestepped the question with one of his own. ‘Where did you get the bone, ma’am?’

‘Up on Lansdown. I give them a good run whenever I can. It’s the ideal place to take them. I thought it was a piece of wood at first, and then I saw it had the shape of a bone and I thought I’d better check with you in case it’s human.’

‘Human? Let’s hope not,’ Sergeant Austin said, turning the thing over in his hands.

Catching sight of the bone again, one of the dogs reared up and tried to take it back.

‘Get down, you brute!’

‘Who are you calling a brute? There’s no need for that,’ Miss Hibbert said. ‘He’s muzzled. He can’t bite you. Down, Hector.’ Sergeant Austin rubbed the back of his hand. ‘He got me with his claw.’

‘Your own fault. You shouldn’t have shown him the bone. Has he drawn blood?’

‘If you really want to know, he has.’

‘Then I’m sorry, and I’m speaking for Hector as well. It wasn’t intentional. We kept within the law by wearing the muzzle.’

‘It’s a claw mark, not a bite,’ the sergeant said, rubbing at the spot. ‘He needs restraining.’

‘I hope you’re not suggesting I tie up his paws as well as his jaw.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Let me see, sergeant.’ The speaker was the police doctor, who happened to be on his way into the police station to carry out more medicals. ‘One of these dogs attacked you?’

Miss Hibbert, outraged, said, ‘Absolutely not. Hector was being playful.’

To his credit Sergeant Austin said it wasn’t a problem.

The doctor said, ‘Let’s see. Just a scratch, then. Are you up to date with your tetanus jabs?’

A silence.

‘I’ll see to that shortly. I have some antitoxin on the premises.’

‘It’s nothing. I don’t need a jab.’

‘Sorry, sergeant, I must insist for your own safety.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ the sergeant said without any gratitude at all.

‘And what are you doing with that femur?’ the doctor said. ‘It looks human to me.’

The bone was taken into the CID office and shown to Peter Diamond. He had no training in forensic anthropology, but if the doctor thought the thing looked human it had to be taken seriously. He went downstairs to speak to Miss Hibbert, who by this time had taken the dogs outside to the car park. Silver-haired and sturdy, with a pale full moon of a face, she was in a Bavarian hat, tweed suit and brogues.

‘What I’d like to do,’ Diamond said, when he’d heard her story, ‘is go up to Lansdown with you and see exactly where you found the bone.’

‘I just walked all the way into town,’ she said. ‘That was downhill. If you think I’m tramping all the way up again, you’ve got another think coming.’

He offered to drive.

‘With the dogs? I’m not leaving them here.’

‘Are they all right in a car?’

‘They’re angels… if you treat them right.’

With the angels on the back seat, he managed the drive without anything worse than a damp nose prodding the back of his neck. True, in the excitement when he stopped the car he felt a drumbeat on his shoulders, but no permanent damage was done.

Lansdown was at its most enchanting under a cloudless sky.

Miss Hibbert said, ‘To hell with the law. I’m going to take off the muzzles.’

Diamond said, ‘I didn’t hear that.’

‘The muzzles,’ she said, as if to a deaf man. ‘There’s no one in sight except us, so I’m taking them off.’ And while he was locking the car she released the dogs altogether. They raced away across the open down.

The cool air at this altitude was as good as champagne after the humidity of the city. ‘I should come here more often,’ he said, filling his lungs. ‘Is this their regular walk?’

‘Every day, rain or shine. Thanks to you, they’re getting it twice over.’

He asked to be shown where the bone had been found. She led him across a field and down a steep incline towards a fallen oak tree much covered in lichen. It must have been down for some years. The fine parts of the root system had long since succumbed to the weather and children at play, leaving only the major roots exposed in a display reminding him of the Gorgon’s head in the Roman Baths Museum.

‘Here?’

‘I didn’t see precisely where they got it from,’ Miss Hibbert said, ‘but they were fighting over it when I caught up with them, so I think it was hidden here somewhere.’

On cue, Hector raced in and started burrowing in the soil below the roots. He was joined by the others. The ground looked soft. ‘Stop them doing that, will you?’ Diamond said. ‘This could be a crime scene for all I know.’

Miss Hibbert produced a rubber ball from her handbag. ‘Try throwing this down the hill.’

‘Me?’

‘They like you, I can tell. Besides, men are better at throwing.’ ‘I’m supposed to be working,’ he said, secretly pleased to win the dogs’ approval. He flung the ball as far down the slope as he could and the dogs chased after it. Gratifying. He’d never thought keeping a dog was worth the trouble of exercising it. Now he wasn’t so sure. His cat didn’t chase anything except birds and mice. Try throwing a ball for Raffles and you’d end up fetching it yourself, watched with disdain by a superior being.

He paced the area, studying the ground, thinking back to his lunchtime conversation with Wigfull about the missing cavalier. The re-enactment of the battle must have happened here or hereabouts. But he couldn’t imagine the femur having anything to do with the lost lecturer, Rupert Hope. The stained off-white appearance suggested it had been in the ground for years. Miss Hibbert’s greyhounds hadn’t had a meal from it.

His search produced nothing more suspicious than some cigarette-ends, a flattened beer can and an empty Smarties tube. ‘Have you ever seen anyone acting suspiciously here?’

‘Doing what?’ Miss Hibbert asked.

‘I don’t know. I’m asking you.’

‘I’ve seen children climbing on the trunk and running up and down, but I wouldn’t call that suspicious.’

‘How long has the tree been down?’

‘Years and years. As long as I can remember.’

The dogs returned with the ball and dropped it at Diamond’s feet and gazed up at him with confidence. ‘You win,’ he said, stooping. The ball was damp to the touch. He threw it downhill again. ‘I can’t keep doing this. Do you live nearby, Miss Hibbert?’

‘Only a short way off, in Upper Langridge. I gave my address to that policeman I first spoke to, the one who went for a tetanus injection.’

‘Anti-tetanus, I hope.’

‘I’m not going to get that bone for my dogs to chew on, am I?’

He smiled, admiring her nerve. Staunch single women like this, used to standing up for their rights, had his respect. ‘Not now we’re treating it as human.’

‘You don’t know for certain.’

‘That’s true. A fair number of the bones brought in to the police turn out to be animal. If that’s the case, you could get it back.’

‘If I’d been less public-spirited, no one would have known.’