[Ian Rutledge 02] Wings of Fire by Charles Todd

Author:Charles Todd [Todd, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

In a city there’s never true darkness in the night. But in a place like Borcombe, where people still used oil lamps and clouds obscured what little starlight there was, the blackness was nearly absolute. Rutledge bumped into the bicycle that one of Dawlish’s men had leaned against the wall by the inn door, and swore feelingly.

“You’ll make better time with that,” Dawlish was saying, “than going in your motorcar. We can take some of the paths. Shortcuts.”

Still rubbing his shin, Rutledge nodded, then swung the other leg over the saddle. Side by side the two men pedaled down the wet road, coming to a halt at Dawlish’s signal by Doctor Hawkins’ surgery. The doctor, rumbling with bad temper, came out leading his own bicycle, then without a word, joined them.

It was a long, wet ride, and Rutledge, who didn’t know where he was going, had to follow the shadowy figure of the Constable while Hawkins, still grumbling, brought up the rear. Hamish, of them all, seemed to be most comfortable with the night. The Highlander, keeper of sheep and cattle before turning soldier, had been bred to it.

The moors were several miles away, even by the shortcuts that Dawlish took over fields, across hummocky meadows— once startling a herd of sleeping cows—and through one stand of trees.

The moors were not what Rutledge had expected. Bare, yes. Barren, yes. Rolling, yes. But there were rocks and marshes, rills that tumbled into pools, and scrub growth here and there that rose up like humbled spirits out of the ground. The silence he noticed most. There was a whispering wind that seemed to be saying something just under the range of human hearing, but it didn’t displace the quiet. A ghostly white flock of sheep went scurrying off over a hill like disturbed spirits, jostling each other in their haste, and leaving behind a strong aroma of wet wool that mixed with the wind from the sea and the smell of rotting earth like a miasma.

It was nearly two hours before they reached their destination, and Rutledge was never quite sure how the constable had found his way across the featureless expanse. Tracks there were, but they seemed to go where they willed rather than in any discernible direction, to any discernible destination.

A great pile of rocks loomed up, ruins of a colliery, Rutledge thought, peering at it through the darkness. And then the sputtering fire that the men had lit to keep warm if not dry. The rains had stopped, but there was a drizzle in the wind that clung to everything. It was easy to understand why a small boy might die out here of exposure, even in summer.

In the lea of a boulder, where erosion had widened the crevice over the years, there was a pile of bones, pitiful in their smallness. Rutledge could see the whiteness of a longer one behind the others. He dismounted, leaving the bike in the charge of a roughly dressed man who appeared out of nowhere to take it.

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