Read Perfect Sins for Free Online

modern. It’s a joke—a hoax.”
    â€œHere?” Byrfield looked around him, taking in the absolute peacefulness of the lakeside scene. “Why bother? We might never have found it.”
    â€œThen whoever did it,” said Sperrin angrily, stabbing at the slabs with the crowbar, seeking a purchase, “had a funny sense of humor.” He straightened up, glaring at Byrfield. “I don’t suppose it was you?”
    Pete Byrfield was visibly astonished. “Me? You think I made a pretend burial and then paid you to come and dig it up? You think I’ve nothing better to do with my time and money?”
    â€œIt isn’t a pretend burial,” said Ash. His voice was hollow.
    In a flood of understanding Hazel realized what he was saying. What he suspected. “Listen,” she said sharply, “I think we should leave this for now—get someone out to have a look at it before we go any further.…”
    She might as well have talked to the stones. Sperrin jabbed again at the surface he’d uncovered, and this time he got the crowbar into a gap and threw his weight against it. As something inside the mound shifted, Byrfield added the edge of the spade and between them, sweating and gasping, they managed to lift one slab halfway onto another. A faint earthy smell, earthier than the mud, came out of the void at their feet.
    Sperrin reached behind him again, this time for the torch. He and Byrfield, and Hazel, leaned forward.
    The dog, still softly growling, backed away.
    Slowly, Hazel straightened up. “Okay,” she said carefully, “so now we know what it is. It’s a crime scene. Throw a coat over it. Don’t try to put the slab back, we don’t want to risk it falling in. I’ll call the police.”

 
    CHAPTER 5
    I N THE CAREFULLY constructed grave, made of paving slabs and once lined with blankets, was the body of a child—a boy of eight or ten years. It had been in the ground long enough to be entirely skeletonized, making it difficult to judge the sex on initial inspection, but there were things in the little tomb—David Sperrin would have called them grave goods—that made it more than an educated guess. Boys’ toys: a wooden train, a pair of cheap plastic binoculars, a yellow digger, a battered Frisbee. And though at first glance the clothes could have belonged equally to a boy or a girl, when Hazel leaned closer, she saw that both the jeans and the denim jacket fastened left over right.
    One might not have been significant, an item passed down from an older sibling; two were suggestive. DNA would prove the matter conclusively, but Hazel had no doubt that she was looking at the remains of a little boy, laid to rest by someone who loved him with as much care and dignity as could be managed without benefit of clergy or churchyard. It was a crime scene because it’s illegal to bury members of your family in the woods without telling anyone. The discovery launched a murder investigation because no one could think why anyone should bury in such a way a child who had died of natural or accidental causes.
    The senior investigating officer from the local division was a tired-looking middle-aged man whose Wellingtons had started to leak halfway across the water meadow. “Detective Inspector Edwin Norris,” he said, one slightly rheumy eye settling on Hazel. “You’re Constable Best?”
    She nodded. “My father works on the estate.”
    He went around the others, establishing who was who, why each of them was there. “Who opened the grave?”
    â€œI did,” said Sperrin.
    â€œWhy?”
    The archaeologist shrugged. “It’s my job.”
    â€œDigging up children’s graves?”
    â€œFinding unexplained lumps in the landscape and explaining them.”
    â€œI’ll be interested,” rumbled Norris, “to hear your explanation of this.”
    â€œNot exactly my