The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1)

by SW Fairbrother

  ‘Sureish.’

  ‘Sureish?’

  ‘He wasn’t where he was supposed to be,’ I said, although that wasn’t the truth of it. I wasn’t sure Ben Brannick would head to that island after he died. That didn’t feel right either, but it was as good an answer as I had.

  ‘He could be a zombie.’

  ‘Could be.’ I tested my head by moving it from side to side. ‘I better go. I’ve got to get Stanley’s van back.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘That’s it, really.’

  Dunne pressed the lock button on the doors just as I pulled the handle. ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t forget I’ve arranged for you to see Berenice’s foster parents and house this afternoon at three. I’ll pick you up at two thirty.’

  ‘Right.’

  I wondered if I should call Haddad and ask her about it, but I didn’t want to get Dunne into trouble, and I wanted to see what connection Ben had to the missing girl.

  I was aware of Dunne’s eyes following me as I crunched back to the van. The snow had stopped, but the sky still had a yellow tinge: more to come. I shuffled into the driver’s seat and pulled out my mobile while I waited for the engine to warm up.

  When I’d told Dunne I wasn’t knowledgeable on Homo Penna physiology, I was telling the truth. I’d done a couple of courses on meta-natural physiology, and the winged had been included in one of the few lectures I’d actually attended. I just didn’t remember any of it. It was a little like trying to remember the facts about sabre-toothed tigers—all you really remember is the teeth.

  I scrolled to the number on my phone attached to the name Gretel Hopewell, the professor who’d run the course. No one answered. I took a chance and decided to visit her directly.

  It took me an hour to drive from Mitcham to the UCL Anthropology Department near Euston Square, another half an hour to find parking, and another half to find my way through the maze of the building to Dr Hopewell’s office.

  She had what should have been a coveted corner office, but it was small enough that the trestle table functioning as a desk stopped the door from opening all the way. Bookshelves took up three walls. There was only one chair, and it was occupied. Dr Hopewell watched me with an amused look on her face. She’d let her grey hair grow since we’d last met. It suited her.

  I twisted into the empty space in front of her desk. ‘You still haven’t got them to move you?’

  ‘Deters the students.’ She smiled, showing teeth too white to be real. ‘What are you doing here, Vivia? Finally going to sign up for a proper degree?’

  I’d enjoyed the course, but what with Sigrid, Stanley, and the ever-present necessity of needing to make money, I didn’t have the option of doing much more. I figured I was learning enough about all the weird and wonderful working for the Lipscombe.

  ‘No, actually I wanted you to take a look at something.’ I passed over my phone. She scrolled through the photos and cringed.

  ‘Ow. I assume these belonged to the winged boy who’s been all over the papers.’

  I nodded.

  ‘And the rest of him?’

  ‘That’s the question,’ I said, taking the phone back. ‘What are the chances of him surviving something like this?’

  ‘You understand I’ve got nothing to refer to? We had to bury the only winged specimen we had—court order.’

  I made a sympathetic noise. She turned in one movement and got a book off the shelf behind her without getting out of her chair.

  ‘The wings themselves aren’t much more than cartilage and small bones. Most of the muscle is in the chest and back, and there are no major arteries involved. Even so, there’d be quite a bit of blood loss, so he’d have been left weak. The biggest danger is probably infection.’

  ‘That’s assuming he got immediate medical attention. And if he didn’t?’

  ‘Then he needs it ASAP. Like I said, infection is a real risk. He’s going to have open wounds on his back. He’ll need them cleaned properly, and a strong dose of antibiotics. If it were an operation, I would expect the surgeon to put him on an antibiotic drip for something like that.’

  In other words, if he was still alive, find him damned fast. I thanked Dr Hopewell and left her marking assignments. She was only swearing slightly, which was likely an improvement on any work she’d ever had from me.

  I walked back to the van, thoughtful. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do something like that to Ben. If they’d wanted to kill him, where was the rest of his body? I was so absorbed in my thoughts, I almost missed the newspaper.

  It was stuck between two railings, dumped by some commuter too lazy to drop it in the recycling. The cover was almost completely taken up by a blown-up photo of Berenice Nazarak’s face. It was the same picture Dunne had shown me in the ZDC.

  The headline read ‘Murdered for Daddy.’

  Oh no. I tugged it out and smoothed it flat with my hand. Somehow the tabloid media had got wind of the idea that Ben might have supplied the human flesh by pretending it was rabbit. Page two was nothing but speculation as to how Ben might have done it, and page three contained a photo collage of known child murderers.

  I balled it up and hurled it into the nearest bin in a fury.

  30

  I deal with difficult situations every day. I tell people I can’t do anything to stop them losing their home or access to their children. Or I tell them that the judge has ruled against them, but this was the first time I’d had to face a mother whose child had been mutilated. I was spared delivering the news at least. That was Dunne’s department, and I certainly didn’t envy him.

  Before I could raise my hand, Annie knocked on the door from the other side.

  ‘Who’s out there?’

  ‘It’s me, Annie. It’s Vivia.’ I backed away from the peephole so she could see me.

  ‘ID.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put your ID up to the door.’

  I’d put her previous antsyness down to worry, but now I wondered whether she was missing some pencils from her box. I held up my Lipscombe ID card a few inches from the peephole, but it was five minutes before she opened the door.

  She stood aside enough that it counted as an invitation to come in. The little room stank of fish and something else, a meaty scent I couldn’t identify. I’d caught her in the middle of a meal. There was a milky mug of tea and a plate holding a half-eaten kipper on the stained coffee table.

  ‘The police have already been if you’re here to tell me about Ben.’

  ‘I wanted to check you’re okay.’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine. I came all the way here, and I don’t know what for. I was just sitting here while my boy was chopped into bits. And now I’m just doing more sitting. I can do that at home just as good.’

  Her face went blank for a split second, then her mouth turned up at the edges in that strange smiley way some people have before they start crying.

  She sat heavily, her face in her hands. She gasped as she cried. I took the seat opposite her and took her rough hands in mine.

  ‘I don’t think he’s dead. You know I can tell. There’s still a chance.’

  She looked up at me with tear-stained eyes. ‘But you don’t know.’

  A memory of the cottage came to me. The fresh-faced Annie and the youth outside. ‘Annie, do you know if Ben had a charm? Three blue beads on a bit of leather string?’

  ‘What?’

  I described it again in detail. She looked at me as if I were crazy. ‘Where did you find that?’

  ‘With Ben’s wings.’ And in the underworld.

  ‘That was Drew’s.’

  ‘You said Drew hasn’t been in contact with any of the winged.’

  ‘He hasn’t. No one’s seen him in fifteen years. Why would Ben have Drew’s charm?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. The winged were a close community. I couldn’t think of any reason one would leave them. ‘Why hasn’t anyone seen Drew?’

  S
he blew her nose and stuffed the handkerchief back in her pocket. She shifted on her chair. She began to shrug out of the coat. ‘God, it’s about broiling in here.’

  She rolled her shoulders. Her wings were as big as her son’s—great grey-white things that rolled with her shoulders. She let out a little huff of air and gave me a sad smile.

  ‘Drew cut off contact because he was angry with me. You know there’s only a few of us left.’

  I nodded.

  ‘We’ve had arranged marriages for years, to maximise the blood lines, stop close family marrying. I was supposed to marry Drew, and I was happy about that. Even if he was a stubbie.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A stubbie. His wings weren’t right—just little stubs of things.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. My theory that the severed wings might have been Drew’s dropped away.

  ‘It didn’t matter to me, but it bothered him. He didn’t want to stay on the island. It can be wonderful when you’re flying, the cliffs and the sea, diving and swooping. He couldn’t do anything like that. He persuaded me to come to London with him. Told me it would be better here. He should have been Ben’s father.’

  ‘But you met Malcolm instead.’

  ‘Yes. We didn’t have anywhere to go. No money. Someone told us about the Lipscombe, and we went to them for help. They didn’t have any space in any of the shelters, so Malcolm and his wife took us in for a few days. That was the first wife, the one who died.’

  I could imagine what happened next. I shook my head. Malcolm was a bloody fool and dodgy to boot.

  Annie rubbed the corners of her eyes. ‘When I found out I was pregnant, Drew lost it. He was so unhappy. He never wanted anything to do with St Kilda, and then he wanted nothing to do with me. He just walked out. I never saw him again.’

  And he was a stubbie, I thought. That meant he could pass as human. And somewhere Ben had met him, and taken or been given his charm.

  And then Drew did what? Got his revenge fifteen years on, on a boy who was blameless? I didn’t know, but I was becoming more and more sure that whatever had ended with Malcolm in the pit had started much earlier.

  31

  I had just enough time to drop the van off at home and have lunch and a quick shower before Dunne arrived for our appointment.

  I’d called Obe, but he had no record of any contact with Drew Gillies after he walked out on Annie, and I was ruminating on whether to pass the information to Dunne or let it percolate with our contacts a while longer. I was still holding out hope that Ben was alive, and if he was, we still needed to get to him first.

  Berenice Nazarak had lived in a top-floor flat in a converted Victorian. The front door opened straight onto a living room cluttered with piles of ironing, toys, DVDs, and newspapers. Her dog was a growly, yappy little thing, and it gave me a painful nip on the ankle as I walked through the door.

  A red-eyed woman scuttled forward and snatched up the dog. ‘Ssh, Widgy, don’t be so rude.’ She turned to me. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I rubbed at my ankle. ‘It’s okay.’

  A baby sat in the middle of it all, banging wooden blocks together with a level of concentration that locked out the rest of the world. He had a pair of horns emerging from his curly brown hair, and very hairy legs: a satyr.

  The red-eyed woman was introduced as Berenice’s foster mother, Nicky. We shook hands.

  ‘I just wanted to see Berenice’s room again. We won’t be long,’ Dunne said.

  The woman nodded. She picked up the baby and held him on her hip, then led us through to the back of the flat. She opened a door at the far end of the hallway and waved us in.

  The room was as characterless as it could possibly be. The plain wood floor was uncarpeted and even unrugged. A single bed with a white duvet and single white pillow lay at the far end under the window, which was hung with plain beige blinds. A white-painted cupboard sat opposite. The only thing that wasn’t purely functional was a yellow stationary bike in the corner of the room. That was it. No pictures, no books, no knickknacks.

  ‘She stayed here?’ I asked.

  ‘I know it looks a little bare,’ the woman said, ‘but this is the way she wanted it. Berry had a lot of control issues.’

  I recalled the dead girl in Malcolm’s house. ‘And the bicycle?’

  ‘Her therapist suggested it. He thought physical exercise would help her deal with stress. We were making real progress... Let me know if you need anything. Excuse me.’

  She closed the door behind us, but it didn’t mask the sudden sound of sobbing. Dunne was still waiting for the lab report that would confirm identification of the remains in the freezer, and I was reminded that officially Berenice was not dead but still missing.

  I dragged my eyes away from the exercise bicycle. He thought physical exercise would help her deal with stress. That it had.

  I ran my finger over the edge of the bed. Military lines—there wasn’t a wrinkle. ‘Why was she in foster care?’

  ‘Usual nastiness. Mother was a troll and had drink problems. Stepfather was human. He had drink and drugs issues. She was on the care register from birth, but there was never enough evidence to take her away until she ended up in hospital with multiple injuries including a broken pelvis at age eleven. They think there was sexual abuse too, but not enough proof to ever charge anyone.’

  And now she was dead. One life complete. Short and nasty. I didn’t want to lie on the bed. There was something disrespectful about wrinkling it when it was so carefully neat. I lay down on the floor instead. Dunne didn’t comment. He sat down next to me and pulled his laptop from his bag and switched it on. I placed the sick bag next to my head. The floor was hard under me. I licked water from the vial.

  I closed my eyes.

  I opened them again.

  And saw Ben’s face in close-up as he knelt over me. He wasn’t real. And he didn’t have wings. He didn’t even have a hump. He wore a red T-shirt and looked like any normal boy.

  ‘Hello, Ben.’

  He cocked his head.

  I didn’t get up. I’d seen Berenice out of the corner of my eye. She sat on the edge of her bed, letting not-real Ben investigate me.

  ‘Hi, Berenice.’

  She nodded.

  ‘How’re you feeling? You look a little better.’ She did. The bicycle sat in the corner of the room as it did in the living world, and the frantic air about her had disappeared.

  ‘She’s better,’ Ben said.

  ‘You’re looking well too. Mind if I get up?’

  Not-real Ben shook his head and backed away from me a little. I pulled myself up and sat on the floor cross-legged. The room hadn’t changed from the living world. It was exactly the same. Not even a flicker.

  Ben went and sat next to Berenice on the bed and took her hand. She smiled at him, and it was a genuine one. Her eyes flickered away from me for a moment.

  ‘How do you two know each other?’

  Ben said, ‘Youth group. Berry’s a whizz at table tennis. She always beats me.’

  ‘And you get on well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he kill you?’

  Both gave me the same blank expression. I tried a different tack.

  ‘Do you remember what happened at Ben’s house?’

  ‘She came to visit,’ Ben said.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I think you need to go,’ Ben said.

  ‘Did you see Ben’s dad?’

  Berenice launched herself at me. She was a big girl, and the air left my chest in a whoomph when she knocked into me. I found myself gasping to breathe. She punched me in the face. I tried to push her away so I could crawl to the door. But she hung on and sat on me, raining punches down on my back.

  I rolled, and just as she came loose, I pulled the key from my neck and inserted it into the bedroom door. It changed and became mine, complete with stickers and poster. I turned the key. Berenice was screaming at me as I launched myself through the door and back into l
ife.

  I used the sick bag and lay back on the floor panting.

  ‘Well?’

  I held up a finger. I imagined the nausea seeping out of my body and soaking into the wood floor.

  ‘She didn’t like the question.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Girl attacked me. She really didn’t like the question. She had a not-real version of Ben in the room.’

  ‘That means she wasn’t cross with him?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Nicky gave the sick bag in my hand a curious look as she let us out. Dunne went downstairs to unlock the car.

  I shook her hand again. ‘I’m really sorry for your loss.’

  She gave me a wan smile. ‘Thanks. You know when you read in the paper how obsessed people get with closure after this sort of thing? I always thought that was a bit stupid. I mean, it isn’t going to bring them back, is it? But I was wrong. I want to know what happened to her.’ Her mouth turned down at the corners.

  I thought of all the dead in the underworld, thinking they were still alive and populating their worlds with not-real versions of their loved ones. The underworld wasn’t the final stop on the human death experience. I had no idea what came next, but I did know the dead needed to come to terms with unresolved issues in their lives before they could move on.

  ‘Closure is important,’ I said. ‘Dunne is doing his best to find out what happened.’

  She shifted the baby from one hip to the other. He tangled his fingers in her hair and began chewing the ends.

  ‘I hope so. I’ll be so sorry if it was Ben who killed her. She adored him so much.’

  Something in her tone gave me the impression she didn’t share Berenice’s opinion.

  ‘You didn’t like him?’

  ‘Oh, he was all right. Typical adolescent. He told her all sorts of stories that she just lapped up.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like his brother was a snake. And he could fly. Okay, maybe those were true. I know he was probably just trying to impress her, but she was... well, impressionable. He also claimed to know all sorts of famous people. She loved that.’