“Barclay, you take this.”

He thrust the mattock at his subcontractor.

“Break this up, as much as you can. Try not to puncture the blanket. Robin, go to the other end. Use the fork. And mind my hands,” Strike told Barclay. Sticking the torch in his mouth so that he could see by its light, he fell to his knees in the dirt and began to move earth aside with his fingers.

“Listen,” whispered Robin, freezing.

The sound of the terrier’s frenzied barking reached them once again through the night air.

“I yelled, didn’t I, when I overturned the rock?” whispered Robin. “I think I woke it up again.”

“Never mind that now,” said Strike, his fingers prizing dirt away from the blanket. “Dig.”

“But what if—?”

“We’ll deal with that if it happens. Dig.”

Robin plied the fork. After a couple of minutes, Barclay swapped the mattock for a shovel. Slowly, the length of the pink blanket, its contents still buried too deep to remove, was revealed.

“That’s no adult,” said Barclay, surveying the stretch of filthy blanket.

And still, the terrier continued to yap, distantly, from the direction of Chiswell House.

“We should call the polis, Strike,” said Barclay, pausing to wipe sweat and mud out of his eyes. “Are we no disturbing a crime scene, here?”

Strike didn’t answer. Feeling slightly sick, Robin watched his fingers feeling the shape of the thing that was hidden beneath the filthy blanket.

“Go up to my kit bag,” he told her. “There’s a knife in there. Stanley knife. Quickly.”

The terrier was still yapping distractedly. Robin thought it sounded louder. She clambered up the steep side of the dell, groped around in the dark depths of the bag, found the knife and slid back down to Strike.

“Cormoran, I think Sam’s right,” she whispered. “We should leave this to the—”

“Give me the knife,” he said, holding out his hand. “Come on, quick, I can feel it. This is the skull. Quickly!”

Against her better instincts, she handed over the blade. There was a sound of puncturing fabric and then a ripping.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, watching Strike tugging at something in the ground.

“Jesus fuck, Strike,” said Barclay angrily, “are ye tryin’ to rip off its—?”

With a dreadful crunching noise, the earth gave up something large and white. Robin gave a small yelp, stepped backwards and fell, half-sitting, into the wall of the dell.

“Fuck,” repeated Barclay.

Strike shifted the torch to his free hand so as to shine it onto the thing he had just dragged out of the earth. Stunned, Robin and Barclay saw the discolored and partially shattered skull of a horse.

66

Do not sit here musing and brooding over insoluble conundrums.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Protected through the years by the blanket, the skull shone pale in the torchlight, weirdly reptilian in the length of its nose and the sharpness of its mandibles. A few blunt teeth remained. There were cavities in the skull in addition to the eyeholes, one in the jaw, one to the side of the head, and around each, the bone was cracked and splintered.

“Shot,” said Strike, turning the skull slowly in his hands. A third indentation showed the course of another bullet, which had fractured but not penetrated the horse’s head.

Robin knew she would have been feeling far worse had the skull been human, but she was nonetheless shaken by the noise it had made when released from the earth, and by the unexpected sight of this fragile shell of what had once lived and breathed, stripped bare by bacteria and insects.

“Vets euthanize horses with a single shot to the forehead,” she said. “They don’t spray them with bullets.”

“Rifle,” said Barclay authoritatively, clambering nearer to examine the skull. “Someone’s took pot shots at it.”

“Not that big, is it? Was it a foal?” Strike asked Robin.

“Maybe, but I think it looks more like a pony, or a miniature horse.”

He turned it slowly in his hands and all three of them watched the skull moving in the torchlight. They had expended so much pain and effort digging it out of the ground that it seemed to hold secrets beyond those of its mere existence.

“So Billy did witness a burial,” said Strike.

“But it wasn’t a child. You won’t have to rethink your theory,” said Robin.

“Theory?” repeated Barclay, and was ignored.

“I don’t know, Robin,” said Strike, his face ghostly beyond the torchlight. “If he didn’t invent the burial, I don’t think he invented—”

“Shit,” said Barclay. “She’s done it, she’s let those fucking dogs out.”

The yapping of the terrier and the deeper, booming barks of the Labrador, no longer muffled by containing walls, came ringing through the night. Without ceremony, Strike dropped the skull.

“Barclay, grab all the tools and get out of here. We’ll hold the dogs off.”

“What about—?”

“Leave it, there’s no time to fill it in,” said Strike, already clambering out of the dell, ignoring the excruciating pain in the end of his stump. “Robin, come on, you’re with me—”

“What if she’s called the police?” Robin said, reaching the top of the dell first and turning to help heave Strike up.

“We’ll wing it,” he panted, “come on, I want to stop the dogs before they get to Sam.”

The woods were dense and tangled. Strike had left his walking stick behind. Robin held his arm as he limped as fast as he could, grunting with pain every time he asked his stump to bear his weight. Robin glimpsed a pinprick of light through the trees. Somebody had come out of the house with a torch.

Suddenly, the Norfolk terrier burst through the undergrowth, barking ferociously.

“Good boy, yes, you found us!” Robin panted.

Ignoring her friendly overture it launched itself at her, trying to bite. She kicked out at it with her Wellingtoned foot, holding it at bay while sounds reached them of the heavier Labrador crashing towards them.

“Little fucker,” said Strike, trying to repel the Norfolk terrier as it darted around them, snarling, but seconds later the terrier had caught wind of Barclay: it turned its head towards the dell and, before either of them could stop it, took off again, yapping frenziedly.

“Shit,” said Robin.

“Never mind, keep going,” said Strike, though the end of his stump was burning and he wondered how much longer it would support him.

They had managed only a few more paces when the fat Labrador reached them.

“Good boy, yes, good boy,” Robin crooned, and the Labrador, less enthusiastic about the chase, allowed her to secure a tight grip on its collar. “Come on, come with us,” said Robin, and she half dragged it, with Strike still leaning on her, towards the overgrown croquet lawn where they now saw a torch bobbing ever nearer through the darkness. A shrill voice called:

“Badger! Rattenbury! Who’s that? Who’s there?”

The silhouette behind the torchlight was female and bulky.