Perfect Sins Read Online Free PDF Page B

remembered to scramble up the curved wall of the icehouse, and the view was as rewarding. She made herself comfortable, sitting cross-legged on the cool stones, and waited for the men to join her.
    The dog saw her first, bounded through the sedgy meadow, and joined her on her eminence, curled elegantly, enjoying the June sun on her white flank. Byrfield waved his spade.
    Hazel had entirely caught her breath before the men arrived, and she watched in tolerant amusement as they panted up the last bank. Of the three, Byrfield was probably the fittest—a farmer with a title is still a farmer, and it’s a physical job—and Ash the least fit. Not just because he was ten years older than Pete but because he’d spent four of them all but housebound. It was his therapist who talked him into getting a dog, so at least he was out in the fresh air. The indoor pallor that had marked his skin when Hazel first knew him was already less noticeable.
    â€œWell?” she demanded when she thought she’d been patient enough. “Are we going to open this mound or what? I’ve decided it’s a Saxon hoard, incidentally—gold jewelry, armor, weapons, all that. I want my name as cofinder on the plaque at the British Museum.”
    Ash was regarding the grassy hummock doubtfully. “Isn’t it a bit small for a ship burial? Unless rather lowlier Saxon chiefs got buried in a dinghy.”
    Sperrin took the spade and thrust it at an angle into the turf. “It isn’t a Saxon hoard,” he said, timing his sentences between efforts. “It isn’t a hoard of any kind. I’ve told you what it is. It’s either a Neolithic cist”—the steel blade rang dully on stone under twenty centimeters of grass and earth—“or a bloody great rock. And this,” he added, turning the spade to start removing the turfs, “is where we find out which.”
    It was easier than Hazel had expected. She hadn’t much interest in gardening, but she’d planted the odd shrub from time to time and knew that the ground was like iron if you wanted to dig more than a hand’s span into it. The surface of the buried stone, impenetrable to roots, unmoved by the weight of the overburden, must have created a natural weakness, because one after another the turfs peeled away to an identical thickness. Peering into the growing hole, Hazel saw only mud, but as the archaeologist labored, both energetically and with care, she saw a muddy surface appearing.
    Byrfield leaned over the hole, too. “Dressed stone rather than a boulder” was his diagnosis. “I think you’ve got your cist, David.”
    Only Ash wasn’t jockeying for a better view. He was watching his dog, aware of the tension of her slim, strong body, the way she’d pinned her long ears flat against her neck.
    â€œJesus, I don’t know,” swore Sperrin in breathless puzzlement. “It’s queer bloody stone. It’s not like stone at all, it’s more like…”
    He dropped the spade and groped in his kit for the water bottle and a sponge. On his knees, he reached into the hole and washed the mud away from a portion of the surface. Then he rocked back on his heels, confounded. “More like paving slabs,” he finished lamely.
    â€œPaving slabs!” exclaimed Byrfield. “Why would anybody bury some paving slabs?”
    In the silence that followed everyone heard the low, distant machinery rumble that was Patience growling in her throat. Ash said softly, “Because you can get them anywhere, without anyone asking why.”
    Hazel looked at him uncomprehendingly, her brows knit. “Gabriel? What do you think it is?”
    He considered for a moment. “I think it’s a burial,” he said then.
    Sperrin was shaking his dark head impatiently. “Don’t be stupid. They didn’t have garden centers in Neolithic times! If they’re paving slabs, it’s