The Language of the Dead (16 page)

“Hello, Peter,” he said.

Peter's eyes widened. Before Lamb could take another step, Peter turned and ran up the hill along the dirt path, passing beneath the dead tree and disappearing, as if he were a rabbit fleeing a fox.

Lamb joined Pembroke by the place where Peter had slept. Peter had fled so suddenly that he'd left behind his notebook and net.

“I'm sorry, Chief Inspector,” Pembroke said. “I warned you.”

“I understand,” Lamb said. He turned toward the cottage. “Do you mind if I look inside?”

“If it's all the same, I'd rather you didn't,” Pembroke said. “This is his house, after all. Merely because he's different doesn't mean he would see your entering without his permission as any less of a violation of his privacy than would I—or would you, if the situation were reversed. In any case, I'm sure he's watching us, and if he sees you enter the house I'll have a devil of a time convincing him that it's safe for him to return there. Never mind the fact that if you so much as touched even a single thing of his in there, he would know. The placement of everything within that house is designed to serve a kind of order and predictability that is known to Peter alone.”

“I see,” Lamb said. He felt chastised, delivered a lesson in the proper sensitivities. He stared at the path up which Peter had fled. “Very well, then. I suppose the only thing left is to thank you for your time.”

Pembroke smiled. “Please don't take it personally, Chief Inspector. It's merely that most people never have met anyone quite like Peter. They expect him to act with something approaching normality, despite what they've been told about him. But when they finally actually encounter him, they are surprised to discover how truly unique he is. There's no preparing for it, really. I'm afraid it can leave one feeling quite confused.”

IN QUIMBY, RIVERS TOOK CHARGE OF THE WIDENED SEARCH OF
Manscome Hill. Harris met them by Blackwell's cottage and reported that Lydia Blackwell had not come home from work on the previous night and that Abbott also had not returned home.

“So she's gone away with the old man, then,” Wallace said.

“Looks like it,” Rivers said. “I said that those two were hiding something.” Rivers believed for certain now that Lamb had bollixed his initial chance to solve Blackwell's killing by being too solicitous toward Lydia and wasting time looking into the nonsense about the ghost dog on the hill.

Rivers had last been in charge of an investigation more than six months earlier, in Warwickshire. The case was one of murder—the wife of a prominent local man had been gunned down in the couple's bedroom. The man had told what Rivers believed to have been a
concocted story about a burglar having come into the bedroom in the dead of night and shot the wife when she'd confronted the man. The husband claimed that he and his wife had argued earlier in the day and he'd therefore slept on a sofa in his study and hadn't seen the burglar. The shot—which police later determined came from a .38-caliber revolver of American manufacture—had awakened him and he'd gone to their bedroom to find his wife dead. By then, the intruder had fled. An initial search of the house had turned up nothing incriminating the husband. Still, Rivers mistrusted the husband and, in probing his background, turned up a mistress—a stripper. He'd then broken into the house while the husband was away and found an American-made .38 lying in a suitcase and wrapped in a tea towel. The bloody arrogant bastard had kept the gun, certain that he was in the clear. And indeed he was—the case against him was thrown out, thanks to Rivers's transgression. At the time, Rivers had been up for an opening as detective chief inspector in Warwickshire. But the case killed his chances, and shortly thereafter his superintendent bluntly had told him that he was looking to transfer him.

Just as Lamb had been shocked to find Rivers standing with Harding in front of Blackwell's cottage two nights earlier, so Rivers had been stunned to learn that he was being transferred to Hampshire. Rivers had kept tabs on Lamb and knew that Lamb was a DCI in Hampshire. He had thought at first to appeal the transfer. Then he'd decided that avoiding Lamb amounted to a kind of cowardice. He intended to make a fresh start in Hampshire, Lamb or no. And if Lamb was unwilling to do what was necessary to solve the Blackwell case, then he was happy to step in.

He sent Sergeant Cashen, the constables, and Harris to search the hill from the place where they'd left off on the previous day, and Wallace and Larkin to search the wood.

Playing a hunch, he went to the pub, from where he called the coat factory where Lydia Blackwell was a seamstress. The man on the line said that Lydia had not shown for work that day, confirming his hunch. He then went to Abbott's cottage and banged
on the farmer's door, but received no answer. The old bastard clearly had done a runner. Still, there was no guarantee that he'd gone to Paulsgrove as Lamb believed. He went round to the back door and found it locked. Though he lacked sufficient cause, he could kick in Abbott's door. Were it not for the bloody rules, he could accomplish something, he thought. He bottled his anger and went down the trail to join Wallace and Larkin in the search of the wood.

Lamb arrived an hour later. He first went up the hill to check on the grid search. He was pleased to see that Rivers had deployed Cashen and his men correctly. He found Harris, who informed him of Abbott's and Lydia Blackwell's absence. Lamb asked Harris about Michael Bradford, the man who claimed that Will Blackwell had stolen from him the chicken they'd found on the altar in the shed. Lamb intended to speak to Bradford and the boy he believed was Bradford's son—the waif he'd encountered in front of Blackwell's cottage on the first night—and wanted to know what sort of man Bradford was. Rivers had described Bradford's cottage as unfit for pigs, and the filthy, ragged manner in which Bradford's children were dressed had distressed Lamb.

“He's a drunkard, sir,” Harris said. “His wife died of consumption two years ago and left him with the three kiddies. He squats in one of the old mill houses, across the bridge.”

“What's the boy's name?”

“Michael Junior, sir. ‘Little Mike,' they call him. He's a villain in the making. Minor vandalism, pinching trinkets and things from the shops—that sort of thing. Bradford leaves the three of them pretty much to their own devices.”

Lamb then hunted down Rivers, who by then was helping Wallace and Larkin search the wood. “What's the story with Abbott?” he asked Rivers.

“Done a runner, obviously. The niece, too, I'd say. I called the place where she works and they told me that she didn't show this morning.” Rivers derived genuine pleasure from informing Lamb that he'd obviously been mistaken about Abbott and the niece. But
that was Lamb, Rivers thought—always wanting things his own way, even when it bollixed all else.

Lamb asked Rivers to show him where Michael Bradford lived, which surprised Rivers. Rivers considered Bradford unimportant but held his tongue. The two men descended the hill, crossed the stone bridge in the middle of the village, then headed back up the hill on the opposite side of the wood, toward the ruins of the mill and its attendant houses. At first, they walked together in an uncomfortable silence. Then Lamb spoke.

“What are you thinking, inspector?”

Rivers found the question odd. “About what, exactly?”

“All of this—Abbott, Bradford, all of it.”

Rivers wondered if Lamb was trying to bait him into somehow blundering. “Abbott and the niece did it,” he said. “I don't buy the rest of it. I say we search Abbott's house. There's evidence in there. I'll bet my last shilling on it.”

“We've no grounds to search it.”

“No. But there are ways around that. Accidents.”

Lamb thought of reminding Rivers that such an “accident” had led to him cocking up the case in Warwickshire and his transfer to Hampshire. But Rivers didn't need to be reminded of that. Still, he agreed that Abbott and Lydia might have run off together. If so, Lydia might eventually end up in some danger, if Abbott decided she had become an encumbrance or liability. If Abbott didn't return soon, they would have to enter his cottage. But Lamb wanted to do that legally, if possible.

“There won't be any accidents,” Lamb said. “But if we need to, we'll move.”

They reached the abandoned grain mill. Its windows were hollow, void even of wood framing, and its slate roof was on the verge of collapse. The low stone wall that surrounded the mill yard was crumbling and covered in moss and ivy; the iron gate that had opened onto the yard was gone from its rusted hinges, and the yard itself was overwhelmed by weeds, high grass, and a variety of industrial and domestic junk: machine parts; broken bottles; sodden, filthy rags.

Lamb stopped and turned to face the mill. “I want you to search it,” he said to Rivers.

Rivers didn't mask his surprise. “It's a bloody ruin. There's nothing there.” He wondered again if Lamb somehow was setting him up for a fall.

“All the same,” Lamb said evenly. He turned to face the cottages. “Bradford is squatting in the one farthest up the hill, then?”

“Yes,” Rivers said. Lamb hadn't really needed to be led to Bradford's house, he thought. Lamb had brought him up the hill merely to set him to the useless task of searching the mill.

Lamb turned back to Rivers. He believed he knew what Rivers was thinking.

“I'll see you on the way down, Harry,” he said.

The squat fieldstone houses faced Mills Run.

The yard of the one in which Michael Bradford had installed himself and his children was awash in rubbish. As Lamb approached the house, he saw that its door was open; he detected the lingering smell of fried kidneys coming from within. He saw no sign of Little Mike or his sisters.

He pushed open the gate and made his way through the yard to the door, called “Good morning,” and peeked inside. He saw a wooden table on which sat unwashed plates; just beyond the table was a shelf containing food. A worn wooden chair stood by the hearth, next to which sat a pair of boots. Bits of wood, paper, and sundry household items—including a rusting pot Lamb guessed was there to catch water leaking from the roof—littered the floor.

A small man appeared from the gloom to the right of the door. He was shirtless, barefoot, unshaven, though well muscled. He squinted at Lamb as if his eyes had not yet grown used to the light of day. “Yeah?” he said.

“Michael Bradford?”

The man put his hand to his brow and barred the door with his short, squared-off body. “Who are you?”

“Chief Inspector Thomas Lamb of the Hampshire Constabulary.”

“Police, then?”

“Yes.”

“You here about my chicken? The one old Blackwell nicked?”

“I'd like to speak with you about a couple of matters, Mr. Bradford.”

Bradford removed his hand from his brow. “My boy done something, then?”

“No,” Lamb said. “But I do think he might be of some help to me.” Before Bradford could answer, Lamb added, “There's still the matter of the twenty-quid reward to be settled.”

“That's the same as the other one told me. Said I'd get twenty quid if I cooperated and I did—told him as what Blackwell had done. Nicked my chicken and cut it up for one of his bloody sacrifices, like. But I haven't seen a penny of no reward.”

Lamb stepped across the threshold. Bradford took a slight backward step but didn't protest. “Come in, then,” he said. He did not offer Lamb a seat. They faced each other near the table. Lamb's eyes began to adjust to the light and he saw that Bradford's eyes were a clear, bright blue that hinted at intelligence.

“We're still sorting out the matter of the reward, Mr. Bradford,” Lamb said. “Had Blackwell stolen other of your chickens in the past?”

Bradford hesitated and looked away from Lamb for an instant. “Yeah.”

“How many times?”

“A couple. I didn't keep count.”

“Did you confront him about that? For most men, that would be a problem—someone stealing their food.”

Bradford glanced away again. “No, I didn't say nothing to him.”

“Why not?”

“I didn't want him to put one of his hexes on me, did I? I've got enough trouble.”

“Were you on the hill on the morning Mr. Blackwell was killed?”

“Nah. I was right here all morning.”

“Doing what?”

“This and that.”

“So you did not see Mr. Blackwell that morning, then?”

“Like I told you, I was here.”

“Did it surprise you that Mr. Blackwell was killed?”

“Surprise me? Well, I guess it surprised me, yeah. I knew as how some around the village didn't trust him—thought him a witch and up to mischief, like. But I left well enough alone. I figure Blackwell and his kind are like bees. You don't bother them, they don't bother you.”