toast and got out of the kitchen as fast as we could; when I got back from walking Melissa to the bus stop, Hugo and I went straight to work, with the study door closed and the curtains pulled. The study lights weren’t bright enough and it amplified the wartime feel, blackout, us hunched over and cold-fingered, flinching at every sound from outside.
Sometime around eleven, when I was starting to rub at my cricked neck and wonder if I could be arsed facing the kitchen to make coffee, there was a knock at the study door and Rafferty stuck his head in.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “Toby, could I have a quick word?”
He was wearing another very nice suit, but he looked rough around the edges, hair rucked up and a heavy dark shadow on his jaw. For some reason that stubble unsettled me—the implication that he had been up all night, doing vital detective things that he wasn’t about to let me in on. “OK,” I said.
“Thanks. Will we go down to the sitting room? So we don’t disturb your uncle’s work?”
Hugo nodded, vaguely—I wasn’t sure he really got what was going on—and turned back to his desk. I made a note of where I was in the census and followed Rafferty.
“What do you do?” he asked companionably, on our way downstairs. He was leading the way, which I was glad of, since it meant he couldn’t see me take the stairs, clutching the railing, foot lagging. “Yourself and your uncle?”
“He’s a genealogist. You know, like tracing people’s family trees? I’m just helping out while I’m here. I’m actually in PR.”
“Great study he’s got there,” Rafferty said, opening the living-room door for me. “Like something out of Sherlock Holmes. We should’ve given him a proper look at that skull, let him tell us if it came from a right-handed pipe welder with marriage problems and a Labrador.”
There was another man in the living room, settled comfortably in Hugo’s armchair. “Oh,” I said, stopping.
“This is Detective Kerr,” Rafferty said. “My partner.” Kerr nodded to me. He was short and stocky, big-shouldered, with an underhung bulldog face and buzzed hair not quite hiding the bald spot, and a suit that looked like he shopped in the same place as Rafferty. “Have a seat.”
He was already moving towards the other armchair, which left me on a sofa, knees up to my chin, gazing up at them. Kerr or someone had opened the shutters, which we had been keeping closed in case any more reporters showed up; they hadn’t, at least not right then, but the slice of street in the corner of my eye made me edgy. I tried to ignore it.
“You’ve been very patient about all of this,” Rafferty told me. “All of ye. We know it’s been a pain in the arse; we do get that. We wouldn’t put you through this if it wasn’t necessary.”
“I know,” I said.
“So”—he settled into the armchair—“let me tell you what we’ve been at, the last few days. You’re owed that much, amn’t I right?”
I made some meaningless noise.
“First off: we’re done with the garden. Bet you’re glad to hear that.”
Glad wasn’t exactly the right word. “Great.”
“Do you want us to try and put some of the plants back where they were? Or would you rather do it your own way?”
“We’ll deal with it,” I said. All I wanted was these guys gone. “Thanks.”
“Fair enough.” Leaning forwards, wide-legged, hands clasped between his knees, getting down to business and that was when I felt the first far-off blip of wariness: “So here’s the thing. There was a full human skeleton in your garden. You probably figured that out already, yeah?”
“I guess,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I had figured out. The thought of a whole skeleton, which should probably have made my skin crawl, seemed completely impossible, way too far outside reality for my mind to process.
“Don’t worry, it’s gone. The pathologist’s got it now.”
“Where was it?”
“Most of it was down the tree. We were missing one hand, so that looked interesting, but we found it buried under a bush—so we didn’t dig up the garden for nothing, if that’s any comfort. One of the uniform lads”—Rafferty couldn’t hold back a grin—“he was all into the idea that it was some Satanist thing, the Hand of Glory, yeah?” Kerr snorted. “He’s new. The pathologist found toothmarks on the hand, so she figures a rat dragged it off to work on it.”