Silence of the Bones: A Murder Force Crime Thriller

by Adam J. Wright

  “No, I didn’t get much sleep either.”

  “Thinking about our meeting with Mrs Gibson?”

  “Something like that.” Actually, he’d been watching dating advice videos on the Internet, but he wasn’t about to tell Dani that. And, although he’d spent a couple of hours watching various dating ‘gurus’ dispense advice about meeting the opposite sex, he hadn’t really learned anything he didn’t already know.

  “I’ve got a good feeling about today,” Dani said.

  “Penny Gibson isn’t going to break down and confess everything to us,” he reminded her. “If she’s suffering from psychosis, as I suspect she is, then she probably won’t give anything away.”

  “But you’ll know, right? If she’s psychotic, you’ll know.”

  “Well, there’s one thing I know for sure.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We need to be very careful. If she’s the person who dug up those bodies, she’ll be experiencing delusions, hallucinations, and she’ll probably be violent.”

  “I don’t like that word, Tony.”

  “What? Violent?”

  No. If. From what we know, Penny Gibson has got to be the person who left Daisy and Joanna for us to find. Her dead husband is probably the killer.”

  “From what we know, I agree. She’s linked to Mary and her husband recently died, which fits my theory. But what about the things we don’t know?”

  She scowled at him. “Like what?”

  “Well, by definition, we don’t know what we don’t know. But there’s bound to be something. It can’t be so cut and dried.”

  “You need to give yourself more credit. You had this entire thing figured out.”

  “Hmm.” He wasn’t so sure.

  “Anyway, we’re nearly there,” she said, turning off the main road and following a narrow country road that was lined with hedgerows and trees. When gaps appeared in the hedges, Tony could see fields, and the river the police reckoned Mary Harwood had drowned in.

  Following the SatNav’s instructions, Dani steered the Land Rover onto an even narrower road that wasn’t much more than a dirt path. The vehicle bumped over ruts and potholes. Tony was glad they hadn’t come in his Mini; the exhaust would have probably been ripped off.

  “Very isolated out here,” Dani observed.

  Tony nodded. He noticed a lot of woodland, and wondered if, somewhere among those trees was the clandestine graveyard that had been represented by the Xs inside the skulls of the two girls they’d found.

  The path led to a house that had seen better days. Tony decided that the word ramshackle described the place best. The roof looked to be in a state of disrepair and the windows were dirty. The entire structure seemed to be leaning to one side, as if its foundations were slipping.

  There was no vehicle anywhere to be seen, and no sign of life.

  “Dammit!” Dani said. “It looks like she isn’t here.” She guided the Land Rover to the gravelled area at the side of the house and cut the engine. Getting out, she said, “I’ll knock on the door, you have a look around.”

  “All right.” He got out of the car and strolled to the rear of the building, trying to look casual in case anyone was in the house, and was watching him from the windows.

  The back garden was overgrown and unkempt. Vines and weeds had taken over and strangled the life out of everything else long ago, by the look of it. A wooden building with a sagging roof sat at the edge of the patch of weeds that might have once been a lawn.

  Tony went over to it. The door didn’t appear to be locked. Taking hold of the rusted metal handles, he pulled. The doors opened.

  After taking a look inside, he waved at Dani, who was standing by the front door. “There is a car, after all,” he told her. “A silver Lexus.” He looked back at the vehicle and frowned in confusion. The car didn’t fit in with the run-down house and the overgrown garden. It seemed out of place among the tools and woodworking machines in the sagging wooden building.

  Tony walked over to Dani. “Any luck?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve knocked half a dozen times. No one’s in.”

  He went to the window and peered inside. “That’s odd.”

  “What?” she asked, joining him and cupping her hands against the glass to see better.

  The room beyond the window was a kitchen. Like the exterior of the house, it had seen better days. But it wasn’t the kitchen that had caught Tony’s attention. “See that open doorway?”

  Dani squinted and then nodded. “Looks like a laundry room. I can see a washing machine.”

  “Look what’s hanging on the line.”

  “Men’s clothing.”

  “And it looks damp. I thought James Gibson died a week or so ago.”

  “It could belong to the son.”

  “True. Does he live here?”

  “I don’t know, but neither him nor Penny appear to be here at the moment,” Dani said, stepping back from the house and craning her neck to look at the upper windows. “You said there’s a car?”

  “Yes, a silver Lexus. Looks out of place.”

  “All right, let’s have a look at it.” She went over to the building that housed the car and took out her notepad to make a note of the number plate. “I’m going to get this checked,” she said, going back to the Land Rover. Her earlier enthusiasm had vanished now that it was apparent Penny Gibson wasn’t here.

  “Find out if the son lives here, as well,” Tony said, making his way around the back of the house again. He didn’t believe he possessed much intuition, and he certainly wasn’t psychic as Dani had suggested, but something about this house felt off. The place felt lonely, and not just because of its isolated location. There was no life here. Everything was dead.

  He found another window and peered inside. A living room with a single armchair in front of an old television set. The rest of the room was cluttered with old furniture—such as the dusty bureau sitting in the corner—and yellowing newspapers.

  Dani came around the side of the house and joined him.

  “I don’t think a woman lives here,” he told her. “Look at the state of the place.”

  “Isn’t that a bit sexist, Tony? You should see what my cottage looks like when I haven’t bothered to clean for a week.”

  “This is more than a week’s worth of dust and a couple of takeaway cartons on the worktop,” he said. “This is real neglect. The person who lives here probably spends most of their time in their own head. Reliving memories that seem more tangible than the real world. That’s why the house is the way it is; there’s something more important to the occupant than keeping the place clean.”

  “Like killing girls, you mean?”

  He shrugged. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions. “It’s a possibility. James Gibson probably spent most of his time in the woods, with the bodies. Or in the house itself. Dennis Nilsen did that; he used to prop the corpses of his victims up on the sofa and watch TV with them.”

  She leaned forward and squinted at the living room through the window. “You think there are dead bodies in there?”

  “I’m not saying there are, and I’m not saying there aren’t. At first, I thought those woods would make an ideal burial ground, but he might have wanted to keep them close.”

  Dani shook her head. “No, that can’t be right. The bodies we found had been buried. So, you were probably right when you said the woods. Anyway, here’s another part of the puzzle. That car belongs to Eric Gibson.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “James’s brother. He lives in Exeter. Came up here for his brother’s funeral. His wife rang the police yesterday. Eric was supposed to return to Exeter, but he never made it home, and she can’t get hold of him.”

  “So, he’s a missing person.”

  “The police were going on the assumption that he might have had an accident on his way home.”

  “But he can’t have,” Tony said, “because his car’s here. He never left.”

 
She nodded. “There’s someone who might be able to shed some light on all of this. The son. Robert. Turns out he doesn’t live here after all. He lives in Hatherfield, a village not too far from here.”

  “Maybe he’ll know where his mother is.”

  “Let’s hope so. Have you seen enough here?”

  “More than enough.”

  “They’re sending over a couple of officers to have a look at that car, since it’s part of a missing persons case. I’m going to get a couple more uniforms to come over as well and have a scout around in those woods. You never know; if there is a graveyard back there, they might find it.”

  “Good idea.”

  “While they’re doing that, we’ll go and have a word with Robert Gibson. He should be able to tell us where we can find his mum.”

  They went back to the Land Rover and climbed in. Dani turned the vehicle around. As she drove past the house, and back towards the path, Tony shouted, “Stop!”

  She hit the brakes and they both lurched forwards against their seatbelts. Tony unbuckled his as quickly as he could and got out of the Land Rover.

  “What is it?” the DI said, following him.

  He hurried back to the house to confirm what he thought he’d just seen. When he reached it, he got to his knees and tried to wipe the glass clean with the cuff of his coat.

  Dani caught up with him. “What’s wrong?”

  “This window,” he said, still trying to clean the grime off the thin oblong of glass that was set into the house just inches above ground level. “It’s a cellar window.”

  “Okay. So, there’s a cellar.”

  He fumbled the pieces of crumpled paper out of his pocket. He found the one with eight Xs on it and held it so Dani could see it.

  “Look at the graves. The pattern of the graves. They’re in a square. If he’d buried the bodies in the woods, there’d be no need to group them together like this. They’re in a square because he couldn’t dig beyond the walls. The graves are enclosed. They’re inside.”

  She pointed at the cellar window. “They’re in there.”

  “Yes, they’re in there. All of them.” He’d cleaned the outside of the glass, but he could now see that the window was boarded up on the inside.

  “Okay, we need to get a search warrant,” she said. “But we haven’t really got anything compelling that would get us one at the moment. I suggest we find Penny Gibson and go from there.”

  “All right,” he said, getting to his feet. He looked back at the small window as he walked back to the Land Rover. If he was right, Mary Harwood was in there. The girl Colleen had told them about, the girl who had befriended Mrs Gibson, and probably sealed her fate when she visited this house for tea, and came to the attention of James Gibson, was just beyond that piece of glass.

  When they were buckled into their seats again, the DI hit the accelerator and they raced towards Hatherfield.

  “What the hell now?” Dani said as they approached Robert Gibson’s house. A police car was parked outside, and the front door was open.

  Tony felt queasy. He’d feared that the person digging up the bodies could be violent, and the scene before him seemed to confirm that. He just hoped no one was dead.

  Getting out of the Land Rover, he wondered what he was about to walk into. Would Robert Gibson be dead, killed by his own mother?

  He followed Dani into the house. Voices came from the living room, along with the crackling static of police radios.

  A woman was sitting on the sofa, clutching a balled-up tissue in her hand, tears streaming down her face. A female police officer in a hi-vis jacket was sitting next to her, comforting her, while her male colleague came into the room with a cup of tea for the distraught woman.

  “DI Summers,” Dani said, immediately taking control of the situation. “What’s happened here?”

  “This is Sonia Gibson,” the female officer said. “She’s been attacked by her husband.”

  “Is your husband Robert Gibson?” Dani asked, crouching down so she was at eye level with the woman.

  Sonia nodded. “He’s gone crazy. He attacked me with a knife. If I hadn’t called the police. If he hadn’t run away…” Her words trailed off and she began to sob.

  “Sonia,” Dani said, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Where has he run to? Could he be with his mother?”

  The tears stopped, replaced by a look of confusion. “His mother?”

  “Yes. Penny Gibson.”

  “I know who his mother is, but she isn’t around anymore. She left when Rob was just a boy.”

  The pieces suddenly fell into place in Tony’s mind.

  “What did Rob say?” he asked Sonia. “When he was here, what did he say?”

  She composed herself a little and looked at the tissue in her hand as she told her story. “I was mad at him because he hasn’t been home for days. He’s been ignoring me.”

  “He was at the house, wasn’t he? The house in Miller’s Dale?”

  Sonia nodded. “I wish I’d never heard of that place. When Rob inherited it, I thought great, we can sell it and make some money. But he seemed to want to hang onto it, for some reason. I don’t know why; the house is falling to pieces.”

  Tony crouched down so that he too was at eye level with the woman. “Sonia, this is very important. Did Rob say anything about why he was acting the way he was?”

  “He wasn’t making any sense. He said he was doing what he was supposed to have been doing his whole life. What someone wanted him to do.”

  “Who?” Dani asked. “Did he say who?”

  “His father,” Tony said.

  “His father’s dead.”

  “Yes, he is, but Rob is in a psychotic state, at the moment. He’s experiencing a break from reality. To him, James Gibson is still alive, probably egging him on.”

  The DI’s expression became grim. “What will he do?”

  Tony let out a breath. “He’ll do exactly what his dad did before he died. He’ll find a girl, abduct her, and add her to the collection.”

  Chapter 23

  Rob hunkered down in the Land Rover. He’d left Hatherfield behind and driven to Bakewell. Now, he was parked in the Co Op car park, watching through the windscreen as the people around him went about their boring lives.

  They were nothing to him; simply a herd of cattle from which he would choose the next to be slaughtered. She had to be right, though. Whoever he chose was going to become part of the collection, so she had to be perfect.

  The girls his father preferred had been mid-teens, and dark-haired. He was sure that if he sat here long enough, the opportunity would present itself for him to pounce on similar prey.

  Then all he had to do was get her to the cellar and do the thing he had fled from when he was young. It would be easy now. He was looking forward to it. After killing Eric, everything had changed. He had changed.

  Another half an hour passed, during which time he watched pensioners feeding the ducks on the river, and mothers pushing prams towards the park.

  Then he saw her.

  She appeared in his rearview mirror, walking across the car park with her head down, long black hair blowing into her face. She had a rucksack slung over her shoulder, and he got the impression she was walking home from school, perhaps for lunch.

  That wasn’t really important; the important thing was that she was alone. And she was walking right towards the rear of the Land Rover.

  He got out and walked to the same spot himself, timing his movements so that he reached the back of the vehicle a couple of seconds before she did, enough time to open the boot.

  When she was within a few feet of him, he said, “Excuse me. Can you tell me how to get to—“ He never finished the sentence. He smashed his fist into her face, sending her reeling. Before she staggered away from the Land Rover, he grabbed her and bundled her into the back.

  There was a roll of duct tape in there, a leftover from when his dad had driven the vehicle. Rob quickly and effic
iently bound the dazed girl’s hands and legs and put a strip over her mouth as well, just like he’d seen on the girl in the cellar years ago.

  He closed the boot and quickly got in behind the wheel, checking all the mirrors. No one had seen him. He wasn’t home free yet, but he’d done the hard part. Now he just had to get her to the cellar.

  He started the engine and pulled out of the car park. In the boot, the girl was coming to, kicking at the interior of the car and trying to scream. Well, she could do that all she wanted; it wasn’t going to get her anywhere.

  Grinning to himself, he got onto the main road and turned towards Miller’s Dale. His dad was in the passenger seat again, smiling at him with that huge, loving smile. “Well done, son. I knew you could do it.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Now let’s get her home and do what needs to be done to seal the deal. Taking her off the street is one thing, but killing her is something else entirely, and I’ve seen you balk at that part.”

  “Not this time,” Rob said firmly. “Not this time.”

  His dad looked at him with a serious expression. “Well, I’m looking forward to you not being a disappointment anymore, Rob. When you show me, you can do what needs to be done, I’ll be so proud.”

  Rob drove all the way to Miller’s Dale with a grin on his face. Even the banging in the back, from the girl kicking the back of the seats and bucking her body, didn’t faze him.

  The grin only faded when he was driving along the dirt track towards his house and he saw the police cars parked there.

  That bitch Sonia had sent them after him. Probably gave them some sob story about how he’d attacked her, and now they were here to have a word with him. Well, he wasn’t exactly going to pull up and have a chat with them when he had a girl in the back of his car. Even he’d have a hard time explaining that one away.

  He applied the brakes, turned around, and drove away. He could come back later.

  “And when will that be?” his dad asked from the passenger seat. “Later today? Tomorrow? Sometime never?”

  “I can’t unload her from the car and take her to the cellar while the police are there.”