This time not only did the long bombardment give the Germans plenty of warning of the attack, it also breached many of the dykes and dammed most of the ditches. And it started raining. Even a general might have been expected to notice that. And the general of an army that had been bogged down, literally and figuratively, in Flanders for nearly three years might have been expected to have gathered a little bit of intelligence about the terrain. But, standing aloof in giant ignorance, Haig ordered the attack to be pressed, and kept on pressing it for three long months, across marshland, in heavy rain, with ditches blocked and dykes destroyed, and the whole devastated landscape pitted with shellholes like the surface of the moon, except that here was no dry volcanic dust but mud; thick, cloying, drowning, sucking mud. .
ii
Peter Pascoe stood and looked at the mud.
Where the water hit, it seethed and surged and wrinkled and writhed as if alive. He imagined being caught in its glutinous embrace, wrapped round, caressed, held fast and finally drawn down into dark slow-stifling depths. .
He turned away and found himself facing Death.
'Ingenious, though I say it myself,' said Arnold Gentry with a rare flush of enthusiasm. 'Three tanks with graduated filters. This first one is wide mesh. It will catch anything bigger than a half-brick. The second smaller, pebble-size. The third superfine, textile fragments, fingernails, hair even.'
'Great,' said Pascoe whose genuine interest in and admiration for Death's work had established a relationship particularly useful in view of Dalziel's ill-concealed abhorrence of the man. 'There's quite a lot of material to get through though, isn't there?'
He turned his gaze on the great mound of earth brought from Wanwood House and deposited alongside Dr Death's patent sluice.
'We will get through it much more quickly than half a dozen constables crawling around with garden hoes,' said Gentry bridling. 'And infinitely more thoroughly.'
'Yes, yes, of course,' soothed Pascoe. 'My point exactly. I wanted you to know how much we appreciate you taking it on and releasing our men for other enquiries.'
It was his emollient skills that had got him here. He'd turned up at the station that morning in good time, in fact a few minutes early, but any hope he might have nurtured of gaining a few Brownie points vanished when he read the scrawled note on his desk.
Nice of you to show up, especially as we're short-handed. George Headingley fell in a puddle and got himself on the panel with a cold in the head which must be pretty small to get in there beside the bone. If you can spare a moment from your mourning, you might take yourself down to the lab and see what yon mate of yours is doing with the muck from Wanwood. I'm off to see Troll down the knacker's.
Dalziel assumed his subordinates knew everything about all current cases.
Like many of his assumptions, it was self-fulfilling. Pascoe had managed to catch Sergeant Wield on his way out and get a quick update. Wield's résumés were famously more informative than other people's disquisitions. 'Let that bugger run Parliament,' Dalziel had once remarked, 'and they could all go home on a Tuesday, which most on 'em probably do anyway.'
In exchange Pascoe had offered the to him still incredible news that Dalziel might have found himself a lady love. 'You mean yon animal woman?' Wield had interrupted. 'Aye, I thought he fancied her. Mebbe she reckons he's an endangered species. Gotta dash. See you.'
So, reflected Pascoe, might Pheidippides have felt as he staggered through the gates of Athens to see a news placard reading: GOTCHA! Persians Stuffed at Marathon.
He and Gentry stood in companionable silence for a while, watching the water jets wash the first load of earth through the first filter. The level was getting low and various large stones and pieces of wood were becoming visible in the now almost liquid mud. Then something a bit whiter … in fact as the water hit it, very much whiter. . smooth. . bowl-shaped..
'Hold on,' said Dr Death excitedly. 'There's something, let me see..'
He picked up a long bamboo pole with a metal circle and a net on the end and with the expertise of a gillie slipped it beneath the object and lifted it out.
'There we are,' he said with pale delight. 'That should please Mr Longbottom and even Superintendent Dalziel too.'
'Yes,' said Pascoe looking down with a marked lack of pleasure at the human cranium in the plastic mesh. 'I suppose it should.'
iii
'Dem bones dem bones gonna walk around, dem bones dem bones gonna walk around, dem bones dem bones gonna walk around, now hear de Word of de Lord.'
Dalziel, recognizing his cue, said, 'You've missed a bit.'
Troll Longbottom turned sharply and said, 'My God, for a tun of lard, you roll soft, Andy.'
'Aye, and you start early. What happened? Flint up your jacksie kept you awake and you started thinking of breakfast?'
'I have been in my lab by eight o'clock every working day for more years than I care to remember,' said Longbottom reproachfully. 'What do you think?'
He stood aside so that Dalziel got a complete view of the bones laid out on the table. The Fat Man had been right about missing a bit. Wield's team had dredged up several more fragments before it was decided to accept Gentry's solution and use the sluice technique but the remains were still more than fifty per cent short of a full set.
'Good-looking fellow,' said Dalziel. 'How'd he die?'
'Not, I would hazard, by physical violence directed at any of the parts covered by, or indeed covering, the bones you see here.'
'There's some on 'em broken,' objected Dalziel. 'Or did you not notice?'
'Good lord, what it is to have a trained eye,' said Longbottom. 'Which one is it? The left? If you brought the other up to scratch, together they might have made the further observation that all these fractures are recent, caused I would guess when the contractors blasted, gouged, and bulldozed that strip of woodland in the summer.' 'So when will you be able to tell us owt useful?'
'Anything positive, you mean? Negatives too are useful, and I can give you some of them. Nothing has been detected yet in the organic matter recovered to indicate toxicity or disease..'
'Hang on. Organic matter?'
'Yes. Very little, but enough to work on in various little nooks and crannies.'
'This means it's not been so long buried then?' said Dalziel gloomily.
'Still hoping for prehistory, Andy? Sorry, that's definitely out. But dating is proving something of a problem for reasons too technical to puzzle your steam-age mind with. There are a surprising number of contradictions. . but as usual, I see you want positive information only. All right. Male, five-eight, five-nine in height, fairly slight of build. And that's it as far as positive goes.'
'They should pay you by the word,' growled Dalziel. 'Any sign of clothing?'
'Curiously, no.'
'Why curiously?'
'I'd have expected some fibres at least in association with remains such as these appear to be. Of course once dispersion started, bones are heavy, fabric's light. I understand you are following Gentry's recommendation of pursuing your search via his sluice?'