She was a young woman, hardly more than twenty-five, slim, with short dark hair. ‘We need to scrape away the surrounding soil, check it for any trace evidence and then we’ll wash it,’ she went on. ‘It’ll be a lot easier to see when we’ve done that.’
‘Just the top?’ asked Harry.
‘That’s all they’ve found so far,’ replied the girl. ‘The bottom half could turn up later today. It’s quite a distinctive garment, though. Handmade, from what I can tell. No label or washing instructions and these animals seem to have been hand-embroidered.’
‘They were,’ said Harry, looking at the tiny figure of a hedgehog.
‘What’s on your mind, Vicar?’ asked Rushton.
Harry turned to the pathologist. ‘Could these be the remains of a twenty-seven-month-old little girl?’ he asked. ‘Been dead for about three years?’
‘Well, certainly nothing to suggest otherwise,’ said Clarke.
‘What’s going on?’ said Rushton. ‘Who do you think she is?’
‘She’s a child called Hayley Royle,’ said Harry. ‘Her mother is a parishioner of mine. She was thought to have died in a house fire three years ago.’
Everyone in the room was looking at him. Suddenly he wasn’t hot any more. A cold stream of sweat was running down his spine.
‘The pyjamas were a hand-me-down,’ Harry continued, turning back to Lucy’s corpse. ‘From that child’s mother, strangely enough,’ he went on. ‘Her aunt made them, they’re unique.’ They were all staring at him. He was probably making no sense whatsoever. Then Rushton turned to the pathologist. He didn’t speak, just held his hands up in a mute question.
‘There’s no evidence of fire damage that I can see,’ said Clarke. ‘How severe was the fire?’
‘It burned for hours,’ said Harry. ‘The house is just a shell now. The child’s body was never found.’
The police officers were shooting glances at each other.
‘The mother was convinced the child didn’t die in the fire,’ continued Harry. ‘She believed Hayley had got out of the house somehow, had wandered away on to the moors. Looks like maybe she did.’
‘Holy crap,’ muttered DS Russell. ‘Sorry, Vicar.’
‘No problem,’ said Harry. ‘If this child didn’t burn, how did she die?’
Clarke seemed lost for words.
‘Did she fall too?’ asked Harry, thinking of course she did. Hayley had fallen from the gallery of his church. Like Lucy had. Like Megan Connor had. Their blood would be on the stones, the police would look later in the day, they’d find traces of it. He closed his eyes. Millie Fletcher had almost become a fourth.
Clarke was talking again. ‘Yes, I’m afraid she may have done. She has injuries to her skull, facial bones, ribs and pelvis. She fell from a height and landed on her front.’
‘Oh, I think we can stop pretending these children fell,’ said Rushton.
53
‘IT CAN’T BE HAYLEY,’ SAID EVI, SPEAKING IN A LOW VOICE, even though the two of them were alone in a corner of the hospital’s main reception. ‘Her remains were found.’
‘No,’ said Harry, still uncomfortably hot in his black shirt and jacket and tight clerical collar. ‘According to Gillian, there was no trace …’
‘Yes, I know what she’s told you. She said the same to me. But she was lying. Oh shit, this is so inappropriate.’ Evi sat back in her chair and ran a hand over her face. ‘I really shouldn’t be talking about this,’ she said.
Harry sighed. ‘Isn’t there some exception to the rule, whereby if you believe someone’s life is at risk, you can break confidentiality?’ he asked.
‘Well, yes, but even so …’
Harry put a hand on the arm of Evi’s wheelchair. ‘Evi, I’ve just seen three dead infants, all of whom died in a very similar manner, two of whom should never have been in the grave in the first place. I really don’t think normal rules apply any more.’
Evi looked down at the floor for a second, then seemed to make up her mind.
‘I went to see the firemen who were on duty when Gillian’s house caught fire,’ she replied, without looking up. ‘They found Hayley’s remains the next day. Just ashes and bone fragments, very similar to what you’d have left after a cremation, but definitely human remains. The bones were examined.’
Harry felt as if she’d just hit him in the stomach. ‘Well, if that’s the case, I was wrong,’ he said. ‘The good Dr Clarke’s going to love me.’ They would all love him. ‘I was sure I’d heard Gillian talk about what Hayley was wearing that last night,’ he went on. ‘And after Jenny told me it was handmade by her