Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(98)

Chapter 43


Sandford stood and stretched his aching back. He wasn’t built for the work, he told himself. He stopped to listen to the weather outside the window. The clatter of rain pellets on the tin roof meant that he knew the score; he was waiting for the weather to clear and he would be going back outside. Meanwhile he was having a nose through the farm-shop store next to Marky’s workshop, where all the produce for sale in the farm shop was kept. It was all neatly packed on three-feet-deep shelves. Sandford had shelf envy. He wished the shelves in the evidence room back at Fletcher House were this well constructed. He could never find a thing on them. He went back to searching through Marky’s workshop. So far all Sandford had found was Marky’s prints. He wanted to get this finished this evening to start afresh on Kellis House first thing in the morning.

The relentless rain filled the pit where Misty lay. The horse’s limbs were twisted under him where Stokes had tipped him from the digger.

Then rain soaked his mane and collected in the bite wounds on his neck. The crows hopped around over his body as his intestines began to fill with gas. As the soil slipped and moved around him, the side of the pit collapsed and rolled down to lie across his neck and head so only his muzzle and his bared teeth were visible above his shoulder.

The soil swept down and mud began to cover him. He began to bury himself.

The skeleton of a baby boy was curled on its side, turned towards the open jaw of Misty’s last squeal of pain and crush of Brutus’s hooves.

As one was buried so one arose.

Sandford paused, listened: Good – no noise on the roof; he needed to get outside, the smell of the fibre-glass was making him light-headed. He looked down towards the farmhouse and saw the lights on in the lower half of the house. His team were working their way outwards now. The last time Sandford had looked he’d seen Mawgan out feeding the animals, putting the rugs on the horses for the night. Marky was in his cottage with Jago and Towan was in the village at the police station. Sandford watched Mawgan as she took an hour to see to the animals and settle them for the night. From the doorway of Marky’s workshop he could see the stables, and Bluebell had come to watch Mawgan as she passed by. Mawgan took her time to rest her head on the horse’s neck and talk tenderly to her. He waited until she was back inside the house before walking down the lane and into the field where the crime scene tents stood so white and alien on the dark soil.

He walked across to the tractor and the pit where the horse was lying and stooped to enter the tent. He switched on the battery-powered light, moved onto the stepping plates and walked around to the far side of the pit to continue his search of the area. He wouldn’t do a lot more tonight. He just wanted to make sure he had protected things as well as he could from the elements to continue tomorrow. It was then he noticed that the mud was slowly collapsing in on Misty.

Damn . . . need to get a move on, he thought to himself. The elements were against him. As he was about to flick the switch on the light he nudged it with his leg and the beam of light bounced and rocked to illuminate the horse’s wide-open jaw and broken teeth, and Sandford stepped forward onto the furthest plate and squatted beside the pit. It was then he saw the skeletal hand of a baby reaching out from the dirt.

By the time Carter and Willis reached the farm Sandford had begun the excavation of the body. He’d placed more lights inside the tent and was gently scraping the soil and collecting it for analysis.

‘How old do you reckon?’ asked Carter.

‘This baby boy is newborn,’ answered Sandford. ‘The medical examiner can’t come out tonight but we’ll excavate the body in case we get badgers or foxes getting too interested in the night. I can’t tell you how it died.’

‘The horse seems to have sunk into the ground,’ said Willis.

‘Yes, it’s quite a weight and the ground is slowly giving way to it. But the pit is basically collapsing, that’s what it is.’

Willis nodded her head. She stared at the infant.

‘We may have found Kensa’s baby, then?’

‘We need a DNA match done as fast as we can now,’ said Carter.

‘Okay, I’ll start that off,’ said Sandford.

‘If I were Kensa I would feel glad that at least he could be given a proper burial now,’ said Willis.

‘Yes, but someone, probably Raymonds, committed an illegal act burying it here on the farm.’

‘Why here, I wonder?’

‘Things can resurface from the sea, I suppose.’

‘But Stokes couldn’t have known it was here, otherwise he wouldn’t have decided to bury the horse here.’

‘Could have just forgotten, I guess, forgotten where the baby was buried – whosever it was – it’s been here a long time. It’s thirteen years since Kensa lost her baby.’

‘What are you going to do with him tonight?’

‘I’ll finish excavating him then I’ll bag him and take him with me.’

‘What, into your hotel room?’

‘It’s either that or leave him in the car, and what if it gets broken into? Plus, it seems disrespectful.’

‘We can take it back to the police station; it’s all sorted in there. We still have to interview Towan tonight.’

‘Do any of the family know about this find yet?’ asked Carter.