Whispers in the Mist Read Online Free PDF

gone but the name had stuck. It was only a five-minute walk back to the plaza but this side of the village was sparsely laid out and not well lit at night.
    Two men stood next to a harvester that stank of petrol and grease, and Danny imagined it belching its waste into the otherwise crystalline air. He used the image to help him regain his footing: detective sergeant, remote, official.
    It didn’t work. “Which one of you sorry bastards found the boy?” he said.
    The men smoked and stared. The older one performed a quick sign of the cross before nodding askance toward the younger one. Danny knew the look of an old codger who wanted nothing to do with events. He’d seen that flinty gaze and those sucked-in lips dozens of times over the years. Danny turned to the younger man, who extinguished his cigarette with his fingers and tucked it behind an ear.
    “That would be me,” the man said. He introduced himself as Milo, owner of an operation called Milo’s Silos, a for-hire grass harvester. He pointed out the man next to him as the owner of Blackie’s Pasture, who had arrived after Milo called him with the sorry news about the death. “I work all through Clare and Galway,” Milo said. “Quite the thriving business, I have.”
    “That’s just plummy,” Danny said. “Tell me, did you check the boy’s pulse?”
    “What the hell for? Even I know not to touch a dead body.”
    Danny gritted his teeth. “The boy was alive. Maybe he could have been saved if you’d called an ambulance when you bloody well found him.”
    Milo’s already buggy eyes went buggier. He stepped back, holding out his palms. “You can’t blame me—”
    Catching himself, Danny drew in a long breath. Milo may be more stupid than a box of hair, but Danny couldn’t blame him. Danny blamed himself instead.
    “Fine, let’s get on with it.” The remnants of a shiner told Danny that this git spent a good portion of his profits in the pubs. “A little late in the season harvesting this field, aren’t you?”
    The field owner made a spitting noise.
    In a subdued voice Milo stated that he’d had a family emergency this week. “I got part of the harvest done last week, and what’s today? Wednesday? Grant me leave to take care of me poor ma, will you?”
    The owner grunted what sounded like “fecking bollocks.”
    Upon closer questioning, Milo confirmed that he hadn’t visited the pasture since the previous Friday when he’d finished work for the weekend.
    “And neither of you had so much as peeked at the pasture since then?” Danny said.
    “And why would we?” Milo said. “I had me business, and this bag of bones lives with his cows over toward Doolin.”
    “So you with your pub mates never take to hauling off to a dark pasture for a business transaction of some sort?” Danny asked.
    “Transaction? As in drugs?”
    “You tell me,” Danny said.
    Milo’s googly eyes satisfied Danny that the man was as daft as he’d surmised. Still, he took down their names and numbers, and promised that one of his officers would be speaking to them in depth at a later time. Meanwhile, they agreed to wait for the scenes of crime techs to arrive for fingerprinting.
    In his notebook, Danny jotted the date and time of their conversation. He’d have to take care with this case because his career wasn’t exactly in high gear these days. Last year’s disastrous investigation, the one that had caused the rift between him and Merrit, had all but sunk him in the eyes of his superintendent.
    Across Blackie’s Pasture, a spasm of surprise jerked at the guards now gazing down at Lost Boy. A moment later, the sparrow flew out of the cluster.
    “Jaysus,” Benjy said when Danny returned. “You missed it. That bird hopped onto the victim’s chest, chirped a bit, and then flew away right as rain. Took our Lost Boy’s spirit away with it, I’ve no doubt.”

FIVE
    I N THE P LOUGH AND Trough, Gemma turned the milky blue stone over. It glowed from within as if