Free Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie

where he was by indulging his rebellious streak—at least not very often.
    “Have a look for yourself, boss.” When Babcock was properly suited, Travis slipped a torch into Babcock’s freshly gloved hand. “A babe in a manger, you might say.”
    Sandra Barnett glanced at Travis and thumped down her camera case with unnecessary force. Babcock supposed he couldn’t blame her for being irritated by Travis’s irreverence, but it was one of the reasons he liked the man, that and Travis’s appreciation of the bizarre—and bizarre this case certainly was.
    From where he stood, Babcock could see the pickwork in the far wall, and in the opening, a scrap of pinkish cloth and what looked like a cluster of tiny brown twigs. Maneuvering carefully around the dropped pick, he stepped closer as Travis repositioned a light so that it provided better illumination. Suddenly, his brain assembled the component parts of what he was seeing into a coherent whole.
    “Jesus,” he said involuntarily, not caring if it earned a glower from Barnett. The twigs were the curled brown bones of a tiny hand. What he had seen as a clump of root filament was the tuft offine hair left above a wizened face. The empty and sunken eye sockets seemed to peer back at him.
    No wonder Juliet Newcombe had seemed shaken. Babcock had seen much worse in the course of his career, in terms of blood and mutilation, but there was something pathetically vulnerable in this little corpse. Who could have done such a thing to a child?
    The lower half of the child’s body was still encased in its mortar shroud, but from what Babcock could see, there was no obvious sign of physical trauma, nor any bloodstains on the blanket or clothing. Voices at the doorway alerted him to the arrival of the Home Office pathologist and he turned away, glad enough to have someone else take over the examination.
    Dr. Althea Elsworthy strode into the barn, disdaining Travis’s offer of a paper suit with an irritable flick of her wrist. She always carried her own supply of latex gloves, and paused just inside the doorway to stuff her heavy woolen pair in the pocket of her coat and puff air into the latex replacements before pulling them on. “Mummified, is it?” she said, directing her inquiry in Babcock’s direction, although she hadn’t acknowledged him. Before he could finish nodding, she continued, “No point bothering with the astronaut gear, then, and I’m not taking off my coat in this bloody cold. I’ll be buggered if I’m courting pneumonia on Christmas Eve without a bloody good reason.”
    As she paused to take stock of the room, Babcock studied her with the amazement he always felt. Tonight, her tall, thin figure was enveloped in what looked like a man’s ancient tweed overcoat, and her flyaway gray hair was covered by a navy wool watch cap. Her face, however, was as stern and uncompromising as ever. Although from her vigor he guessed her to be in her sixties, her skin was so webbed with fine lines that it resembled tanned leather.
    As she passed by him, he caught a faint whiff of dog. Her dog accompanied her everywhere, in all weathers, stolidly waiting in the back of her ancient moss-green Morris Minor car. The beast appeared to be a cross between an Irish wolfhound and the Hound ofthe Baskervilles, and Babcock had been known to speculate as to whether it was actually stuffed and permanently bolted into place as a deterrent against car burglars.
    But that the dog was alive and not taxidermically enhanced he could personally testify. He’d once made the mistake of accepting a lift from the doctor, and the dog’s hot breath had prickled his neck all the way back to the station. He could have sworn a few drops of saliva dribbled down his collar. Riding in Elsworthy’s car had been a mistake in other respects as well—the upholstery had been so coated with dog hair that its original color was indistinguishable, and it had taken him days to remove the thick gray mat from his