Read In a Dry Season for Free Online

fall, his arm got stuck in it, and he pulled up a skeleton of a hand.”
    â€œHuman?”
    â€œDon’t know, sir. I mean, it looks human to me, but we’ll need an expert to be certain. I’ve read that it’s easy to mistake bear paws for human hands.”
    â€œ Bear paws ? When was the last time you saw a bear around these parts?”
    â€œWhy, just last week, sir.”
    Banks paused a moment, saw the glint in her eye and smiled. There was something about this woman that intrigued him. Nothing in her tone hinted at self-doubt or uncertainty about her actions. Most junior police officers, when questioned about their actions by a senior, generally either let a little of the “did I do the right thing, sir?” creep into their tone, or they became defensive. Susan Gay, his old DC , had been like that. But there was none of this with DS Cabbot. She simply stated things as they had occurred,decisions as she had made them, and something about the way she did it made her sound completely self-assured and self-possessed without being at all arrogant or insubordinate. Banks found her disconcerting.
    â€œRight,” he said, “let’s go have a look.”
    DS Cabbot folded up her sunglasses, slipped them in her shoulder-bag and led the way. Banks followed her to the outbuilding. She moved with a sort of loose-limbed grace, the way cats do whenever it’s not feeding time.
    On his way, he stopped and talked briefly to the TV people. They couldn’t tell him much, except that they’d been exploring the area when they saw the lad fall through the roof. They rushed over immediately, and when they got to him they saw what he’d pulled up out of the earth. He hadn’t seemed particularly grateful for their assistance, they said, or even pleased to see them, but they were relieved he wasn’t seriously hurt. True to their profession, they asked Banks if he would mind giving them a comment for the tape. He declined politely, citing lack of information. As soon as he had turned away, the woman was on her mobile to the local news channel. It didn’t sound like the first time she’d called, either.
    The outbuilding was about six or seven feet square. Banks stood in the doorway and looked at the depression in the mud where the boy had landed, then at the two heavy slabs of stone on either side. DS Cabbot was right; Adam Kelly had been very lucky indeed. There were more slabs strewn around on the floor, too, many of them broken, some just fragments sticking up out of the mud. He could easily have landed on one and snapped his spine. Still, when you’re that young, you think you’re immortal. Banks and his friends certainly had, even afterPhil Simpkins wrapped his rope around a tree trunk, jumped off the top branch and spiralled all the way down onto the pointed metal railings.
    Banks shook off the memory and concentrated on the scene before him. The sun shone on the top part of the far wall; the stone glistened, moist and slimy. There was a brackish smell about the place, Banks noticed, though there was no salt water for miles, and a smell of dead fish, which were probably a lot closer.
    â€œSee what I mean, sir?” said DS Cabbot. “Because the roof kept the sun out, it’s a lot more muddy in here than outside.” She swept some stray tresses from her cheek with a quick flick of her hand. “Probably saved the kid’s life.”
    Banks’s gaze lighted on the skeletal hand curled around the edge of a broken stone slab. It looked like a creature from a horror film trying to claw its way out of the grave. The bones were dark and clotted with mud, but it looked like a human hand to Banks.
    â€œWe’d better get some experts in to dig this place out,” he said. “Then we’ll need a forensic anthropologist. In the meantime, I haven’t had my tea yet. Is there somewhere nearby we might be able to get a bite?”
    â€œThe