by N. C. Lewis
Whispered Bones
N.C. LEWIS
© 2021 by N.C. Lewis
This is a work of fiction. The characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies or events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except with brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Contents
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Author's Note
Chapter one
Viv Gill came late to the Pow Beck bridge.
It was 9:00 p.m. Friday, when she tottered out of her one-room flat, red stilettos clicking on the bare wood steps, her strappy gold handbag across her shoulder. A sheen of thin mist covered the lane like a freshly spun spiderweb. Her hurried footsteps left tiny smeared dots behind. She didn’t want to be late to meet the Dragon.
It was dark and frigid. In the distance, the sea crashed against the cliffs. The squat stone cottages in the village of St Bees huddled together as if for warmth. Viv hoped no one peered through their windows into the lane. She didn't want to be seen, couldn't risk that. The village was like a giant fish tank, with everyone peering and watching each other. What would they think? What would they say? She tightened the belt on her coat and pulled up the hood.
But at this time of night, the villagers would be settled in with a warm cup of cocoa and glued to the television. Or reading a book in front of the fire. That thought eased her, but she kept her hood up, just in case. She had to be careful. She slowed to pick her way around the rough patches. Should she even be doing this? This isn't what normal people do. Her feet kept walking, although her mind warned her to go back home.
A patchy fog blew in from the sea. Viv knew the path by heart. Still, she slowed to a crawl. As she picked her way through the dense darkness, she suddenly had the feeling she was being watched. She stopped, listened, and slowly turned around. A lamp post's orange hazy light was too weak to reach the path. Stone cottages lined this part of the lane, the glow from their windows like eager eyes. From some unseen house a dog barked. A front door opened and closed. Other than that, the lane was silent. Viv carried on, unable to shake the feeling of being observed.
At last, the fog gave way. She hurried on until her shoes clacked on the wood slats of a thin footbridge. It spanned the gurgling waters of a stream locals called Pow Beck.
The Dragon stood waiting.
It was too dark to see his face, but Viv knew he wasn't happy. The Dragon, that's what he liked to be called, looked more like a toad. A sour toad at that.
The Dragon blew cigar smoke. Tight curls like hissing steam.
"Sorry I'm late," Viv said.
The Dragon sucked on the cigar till its tip glowed orange, then let the smoke out slowly but didn't speak. Viv knew this meant trouble. What did he expect? It was bloody freezing, and with all that fog and wet, how could he expect her to be early? He paid her less when she was late. She'd have to work harder now, get him in a good mood.
Viv said, "I'm in school uniform, as you requested, sir."
It had been a long time since she was in school. Thirty years would be a generous count. But blokes around here weren’t that choosy, and in the fog and the dark… well, they could use their bloody imagination, couldn’t they? Anyway, she'd worn her hair like Marilyn Monroe, with bright red lips and giant lashes. The Dragon liked the wide-eyed look. Paid well for it when he was in a good mood.
And she knew how to get him in a good mood. Viv Gill knew how men ticked.
Viv took a step closer, hand on the side rail to steady herself. Come close, so Mama can take the candy from the baby, she thought. Her lips curved into a seductive smile. She fluttered her lashes and unbuttoned her coat. A gust of wind flapped it wide like a cape. Another frigid blast tore through her braless blouse, and cold swirled around her nether regions. The miniskirt offered no resistance against the icy tentacles. "Bloody hell," she grumbled. Why do the blokes with cash like to do it in weird places?
But she needed to do this despite the icy chill. She wanted the money and had to get closer to get a good look at his face. See if he was smiling. That would tell her how hard she'd have to work tonight. So she tottered forward, everything frigid and frozen, but somehow managing to swing her hips.
It was the sharp clink Viv heard first. Through the gloom, she caught a glimpse of something metallic. Pointed.
Edward bloody Scissorhands, she thought. Well, he'll pay double for that. She continued to totter forwards, hand on the rail and her coat flapping open like the cape of some ancient mystic about to give a blessing. She stopped; a sudden confusion filled her face.
"Who the hell are you?"
Time slowed to a crawl.
She took in the wild eyes and savage grin. And those hands. Each finger glistened with a blade designed to shred. Her feet became lead, her body ridged.
The figure lunged.
The quick movement threw Viv out of her frozen trance. She screamed and ran, kicking off her stilettos. Her bare feet pounded against the footbridge. She might have been long in the tooth for a schoolgirl, but she moved like a whippet.
And got away.
The figure hurried behind, blades snip-snipping like the claws of some hideous crab. Viv's flailing coat snagged on the side rail. For a moment, her legs turned to water. She struggled with her coat. The fight turned her insides to acid. She yanked and broke free. It only cost a second. Might as well have been an hour. The blades were upon her.
Frenzied.
Viv Gill's world went from red to brown t
o black.
Chapter two
Fenella couldn't believe it. It was 8:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. She swept her shoulder-length, grey hair into a tight bun and stood amongst a chattering throng on the Port St Giles beach. Frigid gusts from the Solway Firth swept across the sands under a clear ice-blue sky. It wasn't the time or the cold that she couldn't believe. It was that she had persuaded Eduardo, her husband, to come with her. Park runs were not his thing. Like a well-fed scullery cat, he preferred to curl up in front of the fire, except with a steaming mug of coffee, on his weekend mornings.
He'd done that for years and gone from trim to plump to fat. It didn't help that he worked as a comic artist. The job involved staring at a computer screen, where he'd munch digestive biscuits to help his creative inspiration. Nan's fried breakfasts, grilled lunches, and stodgy dinners with desserts, which usually involved custard or ice cream, didn't help his waistline either. Not that Eduardo minded. But Fenella did, and she got her mother, Nan, on board. There'd be no more fried breakfasts or grilled lunches at their cottage on Cleaton Bluff. Not until he'd lost fourteen pounds or one stone in old money.
Eduardo liked Nan's fried breakfasts and grilled lunches and stodgy dinners with sweet desserts. But one stone was a lot of weight to shift, so he stood with Fenella and Nan amongst the throng. He claimed he'd not lost his high school physique, but his old school shorts were too tight, and his thin, polyester, breathable T-shirt no match for the frigid January blasts. At least his old running shoes fit, although he wore his orange office socks rather than the usual garb of flannelled white or black.
"I'm freezing," Eduardo said.
"Do some jumping jacks," Nan replied. She wore thick, black leggings under her shorts, a long-sleeved tracksuit top with a scarf wrapped tight around her neck, and a blue bobble hat to keep her head warm. "That will get your blood moving."
"That's just the thing," grumbled Eduardo. "My blood was quite happy where it was: at the kitchen table in front of the fire with a steaming mug of milky coffee while I read the news on my laptop."
Fenella smiled. She didn't mind the complaints. This was their time, family time—a few days with her loved ones where she didn't have to think about work. Didn't have to think about the unsolved crimes. Or the pile of paperwork that sat on her desk at the police station. She switched off on the weekends. And what better way to begin than a brisk jog with her fellow townsfolk along the beach?
"You don't have to run, luv," Fenella said. "You can walk."
That was too good for Nan to let pass without comment. "Him walk? The bugger's so fat, he'll have to roll, and I ain't pushing."
Eduardo laughed and stretched out his arms and spun in a slow circle like a giant cannonball-sized ballerina. That was one thing Fenella loved about her husband: his sense of humour.
"Silly sod," Fenella said, giving him a hug.
They stood in silence for several minutes, listening to the low mumble of the crowd and the distant crash of waves against the shore. Port St Giles Park runs brought out all ages, from families with young children to pensioners with their grandkids. Everyone was welcome. Fenella liked that.
"Fenella, that you?"
Fenella spun around.
"Gail. Gail Stubbs. What on earth are you doing in Port St Giles?"
"Moved here about a month ago from Whitehaven. I'm working at the cottage hospital in town and was going to look you up."
They'd met years back when Fenella was in uniform and working a domestic violence case. She was the first officer to arrive on the scene, a derelict house in a run-down street in Whitehaven. She found a woman face down and lifeless at the bottom of the stairs. Her boyfriend sat at the top with his hands on his knees. It was his grin that sent a chill down Fenella's spine. She'd never forget the glint in his eyes and the satisfied look on his gnome-sized face.
Fenella took the woman to hospital, where she was nursed back to health by Gail. And the boyfriend? Fenella didn't know what happened to him. She wrote her report and passed it up the chain. Uniforms rarely got time to follow a case through the system. But she'd returned to the hospital, and a friendship formed with Gail, although they had lost touch over the years. When was the last time they had chatted? Five years at least, Fenella thought.
Fenella said, "Let's jog together. And if we don't push too hard, we can talk too."
The starter counted down and waved a flag. The crowd cheered and poured over the starting line as the five-kilometre event began. Some ran, others jogged or walked. There was even a group of teenage boys who hopped. But Fenella and Gail were both competitive and pushed hard as they ran over the starting line.
"I'll walk with you, Nan," Eduardo said. "We can take our time, so you don't get too tired."
"Catch me if you can." Nan power-walked off. "I'll not come in last."
Eduardo tried to keep up but dropped back after a few steps. He fell in with a group of pensioners who encouraged him to keep going.
Chapter three
Ten minutes into the run, and breathing hard, Fenella and Gail approached the barnacled pilings of the pier. It was a glorious January morning, crisp with a fragrant breeze from the sea. Farther out, where the waves lapped the shore, a handful of beachcombers scoured the sands. Fenella watched as they picked through their finds. It was like a scene from a timeless oil painting, so quaint that it brought a smile to her lips.
"So what brought the move to our out-of-the-way town?" Fenella asked as they passed under the pier and out onto the broad flat sands.
"A change, you know how life is."
"And how is Leo?"
"We split last year." Gail breathed hard. "Fifteen years of marriage gone with the flick of a judge's pen."
"Is it what you wanted?"
"Aye. It is. Leo and I drifted apart years ago. With no children to keep us together, it is for the best. That's why I'm here, to make a fresh start. Leo is still in Whitehaven, shacked up with a younger woman."
They ran on in silence for several minutes. A pair of guillemots wandered along the shoreline, their webbed, crimson feet like winter boots. A girl teenage played with a young toddler in a red coat. Fenella remembered the game. It was the same she'd played with her own children when they were small. They would run backwards and forwards to avoid the surf, their voices filled with laughter. She watched the teen and the toddler, remembering.
It was hard going on the soft sand, and Fenella wondered whether she could keep up the pace. She glanced at Gail, whose face seemed set and determined. That was Gail for you, knew what she wanted and went after it until she got it. Then Fenella thought about Dexter, her detective sergeant, twice divorced and with no girlfriend these days either. Her matchmaking brain cells whirred.
"Help me!"
The young teen's desperate plea rose above the crash of surf against the shore. Fenella's head turned automatically to the sea. A moment later, she ran towards the surf.
A toddler struggled against a wave and fell face first into the water.
Fenella sprinted. She hit the frigid sea hard and gasped in shock as she waded out to her knees. Another wave came. Bigger. The currents would make light work of sucking the child into the deep sea. In the frigid water and weighed down by winter clothes, there was no hope of survival. The churning waves of the Solway Firth prepared to take its next victim.
Fenella couldn’t let that happen.
She squinted through the salt spray and scrambled to reach the child. Her hands caught hold. Fingers stiff with cold, closed too slow. The child slipped away from her grasp.
The roar of the waves sounded like a stampede of horses. Fenella saw nothing but the white surf and the glint of a red coat spinning away from her.
She clawed at the coat as salt water again sprayed into her eyes. It stung like drops of bleach. Her fingertips made contact again, and she yanked with all her strength. The child spun and drifted closer. Fenella scooped the pint-sized body into her arms and staggered back to shore.
She p
laced the child on the dry sand—a little girl, her face tinged with blue. Now she and Gail went straight to work. There was no time to talk. They communicated through their actions.
"Oh my God!" cried the teen. "One minute she was with me, the next she was in the water. We finished playing jump the waves and had started on hide-and-go-seek. But I only turned my back for an instant."
In the distance, Fenella heard the sirens and saw the blue and red flashing lights. Someone had called it in. Help was on the way.
Chapter four
Fenella sat inside the closed doors of the ambulance and shivered despite the warmth, a thick blanket draped over her shoulders. Eduardo's arms held her close. They were alone for the moment. The quiet air was heavy with the scent of medicinal smells.
Eduardo squeezed Fenella and whispered, "You are a hero. You saved that young girl's life."
Fenella heard his voice but not the words. What would have happened if she slipped when she ran into the sea? Or grabbed at the child a mere split second later?
Eduardo said, "They've taken the girl and her sister to the cottage hospital. Gail went with them."
Fenella's heart thumped in her chest. It wouldn't slow down. She knew why, and said, "A moment later, and it would have been different."
"You saved her life."
"I was out for a fun run on the beach with a friend."
"You were there for the child when she needed help."
"I should have been there for Eve."
"Don't, luv."
"My sister vanishes without a trace; her husband dies, and I can't do a damn thing to help."
Seven years earlier, Eve had a terrible car crash on a narrow lane in the village of St Bees. She was with her husband, Grant. They were on their way to Port St Giles for an evening out, a meal and dance and chat with friends. They hit a patch of black ice on a bridge that crossed a narrow stream. The car skidded, tumbled, ending upside down on a grass bank.
Grant died.
They rushed Eve to hospital, but she vanished from the ward before Fenella arrived. No one knew where she went. Not the nurses or the doctors, but CCTV cameras recorded Eve stumbling along a hall, seemingly confused. Then she walked through a door and was never seen again.