I looked helplessly over her shoulder towards where Handy and Spotted Eagle were finishing up, but there was no comfort for anyone to be found there. Father and son were staring, grim-faced, at their handiwork, and had no eyes for us.
The ground over the grave looked as though it had never been broken, if anything stamped harder than the earth around it. The sight reminded me of that other grave, in front of the shrine in Atlixco plaza. And that was when I realised what it was that had looked wrong; the thing that had looked out of place, or rather, that had not been in the place where it should have been.
8
By the time Gentle Heart and Cactus had left, the sun was well past its zenith. It was the time of day when labourers in the fields would be putting their lunch-bags aside and getting back to work.
I tried to explain to Handy what I thought might have happened to his brother-in-law. I was rewarded with a sceptical stare. ‘You’ve changed your mind, then,’ he remarked. ‘You thought he’d just run away before.’
‘I don’t know for sure,’ I said. I looked towards the doorway leading into the house, where Goose was listlessly going through the motions of some domestic task.. ‘I don’t think we should tell her until I’ve checked. So the sooner I can go and find out, the better.’
‘One of us had better go with you.’
‘It’s not necessary,’ I protested. ‘I’m only going to see your policeman, and he’s hardly likely to let me get into any trouble.’
Handy was not taking any notice, however. He was looking at his gateway, and his young sons running through it.
Snake and Buck were both panting slightly, having raced each other all the way back from my mistress’s house. ‘We found the place!’ Buck called out, when he got his breath back.
‘Only because I told you where it was,’ Snake gasped.
‘Liar! You got lost twice!’
‘How was Lily?’ I snapped impatiently. ‘What did she say?’
Buck stared at me as if he had forgotten why they had gone to Tlatelolco in the first place. His brother grinned at me. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t be you. She’s livid!’ From that I took it that one of them at least had had the wit to pass on the message.
‘What do you mean, livid?’ I asked, an odd mixture of trepidation and hope stirring in me.
‘I mean when I told her you were staying here to help us, she said who gave you permission?’
‘And who do you think you are?’ Buck put in.
‘And you can sleep out in the courtyard when she’s done dragging you home by the heels…’
‘…if she hasn’t pitched you into a canal on the way. And another thing…’ I never found out what the other thing was, because I was laughing too loudly to hear it. I went on laughing until the tears were running down my cheeks, heedless of Handy’s and Spotted Eagle’s mute, astonished stares.
The image of Lily in one of her immense, foot-stamping rages was funny in itself; but what was so much more precious, what made me laugh and weep until my sides hurt, was relief. For her to be that angry, I thought, she must be feeling better.
I was spared an escort when I went to see Kite. Both Snake and Buck were too exhausted after their run to do any more than collapse in a heap against the courtyard wall. In the process they brought down some of the hastily built-up masonry that had blocked the hole made on the previous night. While Handy and Spotted Eagle rushed into the billowing dust-cloud this produced, I took the chance to slip away, darting nimbly through the gateway and running along the canal-path outside until I was out of sight.
I had every intention of helping to find out what had happened to Star’s body. I had every reason to do so. It was not merely that I feared risking the anger of the dead woman’s spirit and pitied her surviving family. Whoever or whatever had attacked me during the night must have had something to do with the theft. At the very least it had scattered the men watching the grave for long enough for the thief to do his work. However, if the fear that had assailed me when I talked to Cactus the curer had any foundation, then what the thief had taken might make the monster that had hunted me still deadlier than before. An invisible, invincible warrior out for my blood!
As I trotted back to the centre of the parish I thought longingly of the relative security of Lily’s house in Tlatelolco, but I realised that safety was almost certainly an illusion. Neither I nor anyone close to me could afford to rest until the mystery of what had happened to Star’s body was solved.
The obvious place to look for a policeman in any parish in Mexico was in the parish hall. However, before I had reached the long, low building, skirting market pitches that were as oddly empty of traders and customers as they had been the day before, I realised that I would not need to go inside in
