Cage of Bones

by Tiana Carver

  Fennell closed off his earpiece, turned to the rest of them. ‘The trucks will be passing us at any moment.’

  They watched. Several seconds later – although it felt like minutes – two trucks carrying metal containers passed them.

  ‘There we go,’ said Fennell.

  They let a certain amount of counted time pass, then followed at a distance.

  117

  Donna walked to the window, pulled back the curtain, looked into the street. Satisfied there was no one watching her or the house, she let the curtain drop, returned to her seat.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Don, ‘you’re safe here.’

  She nodded. Wanting to believe him. Knowing it was going to take more than words to make her feel that. Especially after what she had been through these past few days.

  They had eaten, Eileen making a huge bowl of pasta carbonara. Both Donna and Ben had had thirds. She thought Ben would have just kept going if it hadn’t run out. And it was good, too. Proper food, she thought. The kind she only ever saw on TV, or other people eating in a restaurant.

  And wine with it. Not the cheap stuff from Ranjit’s on the corner that she glugged by the bottleful and that left her burning inside for days afterwards, but proper stuff. Good stuff.

  She had wanted to drink all of that, too. But had stopped herself. Made do with just one and a half glasses. Didn’t want her hosts staring at her.

  Don’s wife had been very kind to her. She didn’t seem to mind the fact that Don had invited her and Ben along both for dinner and to sleep the night.

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ she had said. ‘We’re always looking after Phil’s daughter. And we used to do this a lot. Take in children, especially. When we were fostering.’

  Donna had nodded. ‘Right.’

  She could remember what foster homes were like. Or the ones she had been in when her mother couldn’t cope. Nothing like this one.

  She had given a small smile. ‘Don and Donna,’ she’d said. ‘I could be your daughter.’ Her voice had trailed away.

  Eileen had made a fuss of Ben. Got him something to drink, asked him if he wanted a bath, what his favourite TV show was, all of that. He was wary at first, not wanting to answer in case it was a trick. But Eileen had spoken to him clearly and honestly, and he had responded. He was now curled up in a bed upstairs, fast asleep.

  And now she was sitting with Don and Eileen, in their living room, sipping from another bottle of wine. The room felt lovely. Warm. Safe. The armchair nearly big enough to sleep in. Donna could have done.

  She could get used to this, she thought. Just stay here. Always.

  She felt herself tearing up. Didn’t want to cry. Struggled to hold it in.

  She looked across at Don. He seemed friendly too. He had the feel of an ex-copper about him, but he didn’t shove it in your face the way some of them did. Like some of her clients did, even. But now he seemed on edge, distracted.

  ‘You heard from Phil?’ Donna asked.

  Don looked up, startled, as if she had woken him from a dream. ‘No. No. I don’t … don’t expect to. Not tonight.’ He slumped back into his own thoughts.

  Eileen leaned forward. ‘So, Donna … what about you? What are you going to do next?’

  Donna had thought about that. She had followed Ben upstairs, had a bath after him. Lay there thinking. She couldn’t go back to the way things had been. Not any more. Not after what she had just been through. She didn’t want to go home, either. Not after everything that had happened there.

  Maybe it was time to get herself sorted, she had thought. Get her head, her body straightened out. Maybe.

  ‘I don’t know, Eileen,’ she said. ‘I can’t … I don’t want to go home. Not after … you know.’

  Eileen nodded.

  ‘And there’s Ben …’ She sighed. ‘I suppose he’s …’ She trailed off.

  ‘You’re all he’s got,’ said Eileen.

  She was right. He was Donna’s now. Whether she liked it or not. Her responsibility. And she had to act responsible.

  Donna smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll write about what’s happened,’ she said. ‘Get it turned into a film.’

  Eileen smiled along with her. ‘That would be fun.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Donna, nodding, ‘maybe I’ll do that.’

  Don stood up, went to the kitchen. She heard the fridge door open and close. Heard him rummaging around in a drawer for a bottle opener. The glug of beer into a glass. He returned with a pint, took a large mouthful, set it on the table beside him.

  ‘Don’t get drunk,’ said Eileen.

  ‘I’m not going to get drunk,’ said Don, a trace of irritability in his words.

  Eileen turned to Donna. Dropped her voice. ‘Don’s never left the police force. Not in his heart. It’s difficult when he knows there’s something big going on. Still wants to be there. In on the action.’

  ‘I can hear you, you know.’

  Eileen turned to him. Smiled. ‘I know you can.’

  Donna saw love in that smile. Silence fell.

  ‘Well I don’t know about you,’ she said, ‘but I’m glad I’m not there. Too much excitement. And not the right kind, you know what I mean?’

  ‘I quite agree,’ said Eileen.

  Don sighed.

  ‘Let’s see what’s on the telly,’ said Eileen, searching for the remote.

  They heard a cry from upstairs. Donna stood up, ready to run.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Eileen. ‘It sounds like Josephina turning over in her sleep. Nothing to worry about.’

  Donna sat down once more. Eileen was still looking for the remote. She found it, but before switching on the TV, she turned to Donna. ‘You responded like a mother,’ she said.

  Donna stared at her. ‘What? What you on about?’ But she knew. She could feel her face reddening at the words.

  Eileen smiled once more. ‘That’s what a mother would do. Her first thought. Protect her child, whatever.’

  Donna took a mouthful of wine. Another. Until she had drained the glass.

  She thought about Eileen’s words. Her own actions.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, heart full of love, full of fear. ‘Maybe I’ve … maybe I’ve gained a son.’

  She stopped speaking. Felt herself tearing up once more. Wouldn’t allow it to happen. Forced herself under control.

  Eileen looked away. Fumbled with the remote, turned the TV on. Spooks. Impossibly beautiful spies saving the world in implausibly ridiculous ways.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, more to fill the silence than anything else, ‘I like this. Although I thought it was better when that handsome one was in it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Don, bitterness curling the edges of his words, ‘let’s watch someone else save the world, shall we?’

  The three of them fell into silence once more.

  Eileen looked over at Don. She felt for him. Donna could see why. It couldn’t be easy to feel redundant. Especially when he’d been in the bar with the rest of them earlier on. Especially when it was all he wanted to do.

  ‘So you’ve gained a son?’ said Don, quietly, apology in his eyes as he looked at Donna.

  She nodded.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Very good. You look after him, mind.’

  ‘I will.’ And she knew, as she said the words, that she would.

  Don sighed. ‘I just hope I’ve still got one …’

  The three of them fell back into silence and watched while the impossibly beautiful people saved the world.

  118

  Phil clawed his way down the tunnel. Slowly, elbows tucked underneath his body, arms and shoulders scraping the sides as he pulled himself along, his body being dragged over the uneven, jagged rocks. The ceiling was low. He could barely bring his head up to look forward.

  Someone had been along this tunnel before him. That didn’t make it any easier, though. The rocks were centuries old, not about to be smoothed down any time soon.

  The tunnel twisted, turned. Phil
, torch clamped between his teeth, had no option but to follow it. He noticed other fissures in the walls as he went, the beam of light swinging from side to side as he turned his head in the cramped space. Some were larger than others; a couple looked big enough to get his body into. He wondered whether he ought to try one of them.

  Then he stopped. The tunnel forked before him. Two rocky pools of darkness ahead, leading off in different directions. He tried to look behind him. Couldn’t. Wondered if he could crawl backwards, shuffle back the way he had come. Marina might be there by now, Calling down to him, throwing a rope for him to climb up.

  He tried. Elbows moving in reverse, pushing his body backwards over the rough rock, away from the light in front of him, back into the darkness. His shoulders hitting the low ceiling as he went, scraping pain down his back, gasping, crying out.

  He stopped, unable to move any further. Flattened his body out, dropped. Sighed. Dust flew up in front of him.

  He tried not to panic. No good; he could feel it bubbling up inside him. He hated confined spaces, felt claustrophobic even in a lift. Why had he done this? Why had he subjected himself to it?

  Because he’d heard a cry, the rational side of his brain told him. He’d heard something that sounded like a person in pain. Or an animal.

  Or a child.

  And finding the skeleton back there had given him no choice.

  He sighed once more, craned his head upwards as far as he could, looked in front of him.

  The torch fell from his mouth, slick with saliva. He groped round for it in the semi-darkness, his hand still tucked under his body, unable to move too much. Found it. Tried to wipe away the grit and dust the handle was now coated with, replace it in his mouth.

  He looked ahead once more. The fork in the tunnel. Which way to go.

  He closed his eyes, listened. Any sound, any cry …

  Kept listening.

  Heard nothing.

  Panic attacked him once more, clawing at him, making his body want to get up, jump around, stretch. Kick out at being enclosed. Scream.

  He bit down on the torch handle to stop himself from doing that. Let out a strangled cry instead, forced his body to remain still. Not to kick. He wouldn’t just injure himself; he could bring the whole cave roof down on his head.

  The wave of panic subsided. He lay still, breathing deeply, not caring about the grit, the dust he was inhaling. He moved forward towards the fork, still listening.

  Nothing.

  He tried something else. Taking the torch from his mouth, he turned it off. Lay there in absolute silence, pitch blackness.

  Maybe this is what it’s like to be dead, he thought. Lying all alone, still, cold, in the darkness. In nothingness.

  No. That wasn’t death, he thought. That was just self-pity. He wasn’t dead yet. He had a job to do. He listened once more. Waited while his eyes focused on the darkness, studied the two tunnels ahead of him. There was a faint, flickering light coming from the one on the left. That was the one to aim for.

  Turning the torch on once more, he crawled towards it with renewed vigour.

  It was even narrower than the previous tunnel. Lower. Phil struggled to pull himself along. Started to worry whether it was going to get narrower still, whether he would just end up wedged inside it. Whether that was the sound he had heard: a child or an animal that had gone exploring and become trapped down here, stuck immovably in the rock. Wondered whether that would be his fate.

  Tried to shake those thoughts from his head, keep going.

  He felt air on his face. A small breeze, blowing towards him. It didn’t last long. There was something at the end of the tunnel. Adrenalised by this, he tried to ignore the pain of the rock as it gripped him harder, squeezed him tighter, and began to move faster towards the air, the flickering light.

  He rounded another corner. And saw the exit ahead of him.

  Smaller than the entrance, but he could still get through it, if he pushed himself. He had to. He reached it. Pulled himself through. Ignored the pain screaming from his shoulders, his ribs, the jagged rocks as they cut into him through his clothes; just kept going. He managed to pull his legs out. And he was free.

  He lay on the stone floor, gasping for air, willing his injured body to mend.

  Eventually he opened his eyes. Looked round.

  And felt his body shiver.

  It looked like a chamber dug beneath a graveyard. Skulls and bones lined the walls. He wasn’t sure if they had been piled there or if they were actually the walls themselves. There were a lot of them. The floor he was lying on was flagged, old. He recognised it, but couldn’t place it. It was strewn with flowers.

  He pulled his body into a sitting position, ignoring the pain as he did so. He knew what he would see next. Wasn’t disappointed. An altar. And beyond it, a cage of bones.

  And in the cage was Finn. Cowering, terrified.

  Phil tried to pull himself to his feet, cross the floor to help the boy. He stood up, head throbbing, spinning. Heard a noise behind him.

  He turned.

  And there was the figure from his dream.

  A hood of sacking and a stained leather apron. In his hand, something sharp and gleaming.

  Moving quickly towards him.

  Phil raised his hands, tried to stop him, tried to cry out. But his body wouldn’t move, his mouth wouldn’t work. He wanted to fight him off, call for help.

  Nothing.

  The figure was in front of him now. Eyes like darkness. Eyes like death.

  He raised his hand.

  And Phil was back in blackness again.

  119

  ‘Here it comes …’

  Fennell’s voice once more.

  The van had followed the two trucks as they made their way to the lock-up. Not wanting to raise suspicion, they had driven past as the trucks turned in, went through the gates.

  Now they were parked up down the road, waiting for the other van to arrive.

  The road was deserted. Nothing out but the rain and them.

  The two other vans arrived. Clemens caressed the trigger of his gun. Mickey tried not to look at him.

  Instead he looked at Fennell. ‘What’s the signal?’

  ‘Wait for it,’ Fennell said. ‘We’re just checking everyone’s in position …’

  Mickey said nothing. Around him he was aware of the rest of the team, all pumped up and ready to go. Guns ready. Heads focused.

  He tried to look out through the windscreen, see what was going on beyond the gates. All he could see was a high metal fence topped with razor wire, arc lights aiming inside the compound. There was a large warehouse in the centre, where the two trucks had gone. The rest of the space was taken up with metal containers. Hundreds of them, piled tall and wide, like a modernist architect’s dream city. Multicoloured high-rises.

  The door of the warehouse was still open.

  ‘Not yet …’ said Fennell. ‘Wait …’

  Mickey kept watching. A green 4x4 drove up from behind a stack of containers. He frowned. A green 4x4 … Why was that …

  He knew. Finn, the boy, had been abducted from the hospital in a green 4x4. He would bet anything that this was the same one. He told Fennell.

  ‘Good,’ Fennell said. ‘A bit more evidence.’

  Still no one spoke. Everyone watched.

  Waiting for the signal.

  120

  ‘Phil? Phil …’

  Marina stood at the mouth of the cave, called inside.

  It had taken her longer than she realised to reach the car and get the rope. The forest had been treacherous, the rain making it much harder. She had slipped down bank sides, been hit and scratched by branches and walked round in circles twice. But she had made it back to the hotel and the car eventually and had returned with the rope.

  And now there was no reply.

  ‘Phil …’

  Nothing.

  ‘Stop messing about. Come on, Phil.’

  Still no reply.


  Marina was getting worried now. Maybe something had happened to him down there. Maybe he had hurt himself.

  Maybe he had been attacked.

  Wrapping the rope over one shoulder, she knelt by the opening, peered down. She had expected to see Phil’s torch down there, but there was nothing. She couldn’t see a thing. She was about to straighten up, take out her phone and try to call him, when she felt something being pressed into the back of her neck.

  Something hard and metallic.

  She knew a gun when she felt one.

  She also knew the voice that went with it.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ it said. ‘Fancy meeting you here …’

  121

  Phil opened his eyes. And felt panic begin to overwhelm him.

  He was in the cage.

  His nightmare had come true.

  He looked round. Next to him, Finn was curled as far into the corner as he could go. The boy’s eyes were staring, vacant. Shock, thought Phil. He didn’t blame him.

  Phil’s head was spinning from where the Gardener had hit him. He felt dizzy, nauseous. His body was tired and sore from the crawl through the tunnel. And the panic was still rising within him. Knowing it wouldn’t be of any help to give in to it, he tried to tamp it down, control it. Do something constructive instead.

  He looked through the bars of the cage. The Gardener was at the altar. Head down, waving his hand over twin candles at either side, reciting some kind of invocation. He hadn’t noticed that Phil was awake. Good.

  Finn managed to focus, stared at Phil. Moved further away from him.

  ‘It’s OK,’ whispered Phil, ‘I’m a friend. I’m here to help you. Get you out.’

  He saw the boy mouth the word ‘friend’. Hoped he could live up to the description.

  Phil grabbed hold of the bars of the cage. Twisted.

  Nothing.

  He kept going, twisting, pulling as hard as he could.

  Nothing. The bone wouldn’t give.

  Again. Harder this time, forcing it.

  And there it was. A crack. The smallest of splinterings in the bone. But something to work on. He kept twisting.

  The Gardener looked up. Saw what he was doing. Picked up one of the blades from the table, came towards him. Phil took his hands off the bars, stayed where he was.