The Bone Keeper

by Luca Veste

  No.

  She had shut off her phone at that point, stared into the dark and shook her head. It would be a meeting filled with pointless questions. Making her examine feelings and all that rubbish.

  She was better than that.

  Yet it was becoming more difficult to ignore what was happening to her. What had always been there, beneath the surface. Or that it was getting worse. It wouldn’t be long before people at work started to notice. If they hadn’t already, of course. She had no idea if people were talking behind her back. If she was the subject of gossip being passed around.

  She thought Shipley would have told her if that was the case.

  The sound of the phone ringing still filled the car, as her focus came back. Reality began to sharpen, her breathing returning to normal, as she pressed on the screen and answered. Wished she’d checked who was calling before she’d keyed the button.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me,’ said the voice on the other end of the phone. ‘Are you on your way down?’

  Louise bit down on her bottom lip before responding to the detective sergeant. ‘On my way where?’ she replied, catching a glimpse of herself in the rear-view mirror as she checked behind her and pulled back into a gap in the traffic.

  ‘No one else has been in touch yet? Bloody hell . . .’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Louise said, cutting off the beginnings of what sounded like an oncoming rant.

  ‘A woman found wandering the streets in Melling. She’s been assaulted and paramedics are working on her now. Doesn’t look good. You need to get yourself down here.’

  ‘What’s the address?’

  DS Paul Shipley reeled off the road name. ‘How long will you be?’

  Louise looked around her, the unfamiliar street she was on not exactly helping. She tried to remember where she’d been heading before she’d pulled up, but was struggling.

  ‘I’m on my way, sir,’ Louise said, and ended the call. She continued to drive in as straight a line as she could, hoping to find a familiar landmark or road sign. Eventually she gave up and pulled over again. Pressed the address into her satnav and got back on the road.

  The radio had kicked back into life, some mindless, soulless track playing. She ignored it, concentrating on what was in front of her. Anxiety was quickly being replaced with anger, the two emotions more interchangeable than ever, it seemed.

  She hoped the person who had attacked a woman on the street was still around when she got there. That would be helpful.

  Another twenty minutes and she was arriving at the scene. All previous thoughts disappeared from her mind – professional mode kicking in. Boxed off her personal feelings and focused on what lay ahead. The crowded street, the multiple vehicles, police livery stark and on show.

  Her job.

  A residential area with a few shops scattered here and there. The old corner shop, now a Londis. Post office next door. Old-style zebra crossing, globular lampposts on either side. Waddicar Lane, which Louise enjoyed whispering to herself as she sat in the car.

  Waddicar.

  She left the car parked up on a side street, half on the road, half on the pavement. She could already hear someone standing outside their house grumbling at her arrival as she made her way towards where the main hive of activity seemed to be concentrated. She pulled her coat tighter around her body as the wind picked up and swirled around her.

  ‘DC Louise Henderson,’ Louise said to the closest uniform to the crime-scene tape still being strung up. She held up her ID for him when he gave her a withering look. ‘Victim still on the scene?’

  The uniform gave her a nod, then looked towards the ambulance parked up nearby. ‘They usually take people in her state with them when they go back the hospital.’

  Louise stopped herself replying with a similarly sarcastic remark, and instead made her way towards the figure standing a few yards away, ending the power trip the uniform was displaying for no one’s benefit but his own.

  ‘Sarge?’

  ‘Louise, finally,’ DS Shipley replied, glancing in her direction and then back towards the paramedics she could now see more clearly. ‘Start taking statements from the closest witnesses. I don’t trust these uniforms to catch everything. And get that lot over there to stop bloody filming everything we’re doing.’

  Louise looked across the road to where a group of people had gathered. A few had mobile phones raised up, pointed in her direction. She instinctively raised a hand in front of her face, but dropped it before – she hoped – Shipley noticed.

  ‘What have we got here?’ Louise said, trying to work out what exactly was being asked of her. ‘Just so I know what to ask.’

  Shipley breathed heavily through his nostrils and placed his hands on his hips before crossing his muscular arms over his chest, all in one supple movement. He was taller than Louise – him being just over six foot, her in the mid five range – but he didn’t loom over her as other superiors had in the past. He was lean and simply unthreatening. ‘Young woman, found walking up this road. She’s in a right state. Paramedics were on the scene first. Looks like she collapsed right around here. Someone has done a right job on her. Beaten and stabbed by the looks of it. There’s a trail of blood up the road. They’re trying to stabilise her now.’

  Louise scanned the surroundings, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary, but it couldn’t have looked more usual if it had tried. A normal road, lined with houses. White double-glazed bay windows at the bottom, a double pane above them. Red bricks and a patch of grass in front of most of them. It would be idyllic at another time, but now, the police vans and cars, an ambulance and a bunch of onlookers spoiled the quiet.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘No idea,’ Shipley said, already eager to get on, she thought. He uncrossed his arms and ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up a little, the side parting not settling quite right. ‘She didn’t get to the point of introducing herself to us.’

  Another sarcastic remark, Louise thought, but didn’t show any reaction. This was how it always was. Everyone hid their true feelings from each other.

  As coppers – detectives – they were better than most at doing that.

  Without saying another word, she left him to it, walking towards the group on the other side of the road. Not before she took a short detour, past the paramedics working on the woman. She couldn’t see much, but enough to know it was bad.

  Ripped clothes, torn and almost shredded. Blood on the ground beneath her, but not enough to pool – just spots, patches. Her eyes were closed, but she could see the rise and fall of her chest, which seemed non-erratic. The paramedics kneeling beside her worked in silence, the occasional murmur of support almost whispered into the woman’s ear.

  Louise looked away, scanning around her, looking for something. Anything that might give her a clue how the woman had ended up there. She had a vague sense of the area, but wasn’t as familiar with it as she now wished she was.

  She stared up the road, imagining the woman’s journey to the place where she collapsed. Ahead, she could see houses stretching into the distance, the look of the road not changing dramatically. Behind those, she could see green fields. Trees.

  Woods, she thought.

  She will have come from the woods.

  Two

  A light breeze rippled the police tape strung up across the road as Louise crossed over to the other side. More people were turning up at the scene. Some she guessed had just been passing by and wanted to see what was going on. Others would have been told about it and had come specifically to see what was happening on their doorstep. As she crossed she had caught herself before she looked both ways, realising there wasn’t any traffic able to travel down the road at that point. Not with all the police vehicles blocking the way. It took seconds to reach the growing number of people gathered there, all of whom were beginning to look a little uncomfortable. A uniform she recognised fell into step with her.

  ‘That’s en
ough now,’ Louise said, holding up her hands to the various members of the public standing around. ‘Going to need you to move further back over that way and stop filming.’

  ‘It’s our right, isn’t it,’ a voice said from the back. ‘Can’t stop us doing it. We’ve got rights. It’s a public place.’

  ‘Just listen and let us do our jobs,’ the uniform next to Louise said. PC Robertson, she thought. Her first name came to her mind just as easily. Andrea. A tall, stocky woman in her mid-thirties. Long, dark hair, tied back out of her way. ‘Let’s not create more of a scene.’

  Louise was about to speak again, but the loudmouth towards the back piped up again.

  ‘Can’t force us to do nothing. We’re not doing anything wrong. What’s the matter, you worried we’ll see you doing something you shouldn’t be?’

  That’s how it was now, Louise thought. Every move recorded, scrutinised. The victim didn’t matter to these people, just what they could capture on video or in pictures. They were more interested in posting on social media and gaining as many shares, likes, comments, whatever, as they could. They didn’t care who was affected.

  ‘Come over here,’ Louise said, her eyes growing darker. The tall lad at the back gave a quick smirk to one of his mates, then peeled away from the group and made his way over to the side where she was waiting for him. ‘Put that down for a second.’

  The lad couldn’t have been more than twenty, the cocky air of the young and foolish surrounding him. Black tracksuit pants on, one of the legs tucked into a faded white sock. He was holding his phone up, pointing it at her. ‘Don’t see why I should.’

  Louise smiled at him, which had the effect she wanted. A flush of red rose in his cheeks as he lowered the phone, switching it off and placing it back in his pocket.

  ‘Listen, we’re just trying to give her a bit of dignity,’ Louise said, her voice low so she couldn’t be heard by the rest of the people gathered. ‘You understand, right?’

  The lad hesitated, quickly looking her up and down. He grinned as his eyes rested on hers again. ‘You’re fit for a copper you know.’

  ‘Did you see anything, at least? Make yourself useful to me.’

  ‘I got here the same time as the first ambulance,’ he replied, his voice thick with accent and entitlement. ‘Just the bird on the floor, that’s all.’

  Louise tried to ignore the bird word, clenching her jaw to stop herself from saying something she’d regret later. ‘Are you going to stop getting in the way and back to whatever you usually do?’

  ‘What do I get out of it?’

  Louise could feel herself losing control of the conversation as she glanced back across the road, to the main hive of activity. She imagined grabbing the lad by the throat, slamming him into the ground. Smashing his head off the pavement, watching him cry, beg, plead for mercy. The images flashed through her mind in an instant. An explosion of violence she couldn’t control. She’d often heard it described as red mist descending – usually from some no-mark defendant in an interview room – but that wasn’t how she experienced it. It was more like darkness. The world turning black, punctuated by pockets of light, which contained horror within them.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ Louise said, blinking away the images and remaining calm. ‘I won’t search through your pockets and find the weed and whatever else you have on you.’

  ‘I’m not stashing anything—’

  ‘Save it,’ Louise replied, stepping closer to the lad now. ‘You reek of it. Just do us both a favour, get on your bike and bugger off out of here. We’ve got enough to deal with.’

  The lad thought about it for a few seconds, then walked away, jerking his head to a couple of the other men who’d been standing at the back of the group watching them intently. Louise waited for them to round the corner and then started breathing again.

  The rest of the group milling round looked back across the road as she returned to them. The phones had disappeared now, but she knew they wouldn’t wait long to start up again. It would be too late anyway, she thought. They would have enough to get as many likes and retweets as their hearts desired.

  ‘Can we help?’

  Louise turned to the two uniformed officers who had been waiting for her to come back. She looked them up and down, wondering how much use the dozy-looking pair would be, and shook her head. ‘Help Robertson there move the tape back. At least out of sight of the ambulance.’

  She didn’t hear their response, her attention drawn to the shop opposite. A few feet from where the ambulance was parked up, yet seemingly ignored. A figure stood in the doorway and caught her eye as she looked towards him, then turned away, disappearing into the shop. Louise frowned, then crossed back over, leaving the uniformed officers to sort themselves out. A few seconds later, she was stepping into the shop.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was no answer, so she continued to walk further in. It was a convenience store, which seemed to contain everything anyone could ever need for any eventuality. An alternative to one of the bigger supermarkets, which she knew were a hell of a walk from there. She imagined it was a favourite for the old dears who probably made up a high percentage of the local populace.

  ‘Hello?’ she tried again, raising her voice a little more. ‘I know you’re in here. I saw you in the doorway. I just need to ask a few questions, that’s all.’

  As she reached the counter, Louise heard the laboured breathing from behind it. The man she’d seen in the doorway was standing off to the side, hidden by the oversized scratch-card dispenser.

  ‘Hello,’ the man said, shuffling towards the counter now. He was older than she’d expected, face creased by lines and age. Leathery skin, which kept going back from his forehead, grey unkempt hair sprouting from the sides of his head. There was an almost imperceptible shake in his hands as he raised them and pointed towards the outside of the shop. ‘I don’t know what’s going on out there.’

  ‘Have you been here all morning?’ Louise asked, ignoring his plea. ‘You saw what happened?’

  The man shook his head, the shake in his hands becoming worse the longer Louise looked at them. ‘Please, I don’t know anything.’

  He had the look of someone from her past – an old guy who had run the local corner shop. Weathered and dishevelled. ‘There’s no trouble here,’ she tried, cocking her head and smiling tightly. ‘We just need to make sure we don’t miss anything, okay? We want to help. I’m Detective Constable Louise Henderson. What’s your name?’

  ‘George,’ the man replied. It was clear from his tone that that was all she was going to get at this point.

  ‘Okay, George, we just want to help the woman who’s been injured, now—’

  ‘I can’t help you.’

  Louise stopped smiling, working hard to keep herself from giving the man a good, hard shake. ‘Why don’t you just tell me what you saw before we arrived. What happened?’

  The man shook his head, more forcefully now. ‘I don’t want to get involved, I’ve already told them I didn’t see anything. I’ve heard the stories. You ask for my help and then suddenly I’m a grass, a snitch. Next week, they’ll put stuff through my windows and I can’t have that. You’re only placing me in danger. I’m not going to speak to you.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I don’t understand—’

  There was movement at the back of the shop, a sound like something shifting on one of the shelves. ‘Are you hiding someone back there?’ Louise said to George, who didn’t respond. She looked at the doorway quickly, then turned back in the direction of the noise. She walked towards it, waiting for any more movement or sound.

  A head poked around the door, saw her coming and disappeared again. Louise straightened up from the bent-over crouch she’d been walking in. ‘You can come out now, I’ve seen you.’

  A small boy, no older than eight or nine, peered around the shelves and then withdrew, but not as quickly this time.

  ‘I won’t bite,’ Louise said, st
opping a few feet short. ‘I want to make sure you’re okay, that’s all.’

  The boy shuffled out, staring at his feet as he did so. She could see some resemblance to George, who was still behind the counter but watching her intently.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  The boy didn’t answer, so Louise squatted down, finding his eyes and not looking away. ‘Mine’s Louise. Are you okay?’

  He thought for a moment, then nodded his head.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ Louise asked, trying not to sound like a teacher as she did so.

  ‘Teacher training day,’ the boy replied, his voice soft, a slight trace of a local accent, but nothing like some of the kids of that age she’d dealt with in the past.

  ‘You can check with the school,’ George said, appearing behind them. ‘They’ll tell you he never misses a day. I’m just helping out my daughter, that’s all. She can’t take him into work with her, so he’s come here to be my helper.’

  Louise ignored the interruption. ‘Have you been back there this whole time?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘I was in the doorway when the woman went past.’

  ‘So you saw her?’

  ‘Yes. She was bleeding.’

  ‘She was, but we’re helping her now. Did you see anything else?’

  ‘No,’ the boy replied, shaking his head. He was small, but stocky for his age. A hardness to his posture. ‘She was singing.’

  Louise felt her legs begin to protest as she continued to squat on her heels. She wasn’t ready to stand up yet, though.

  ‘What was she singing?’

  The boy’s eyes flashed to his grandfather’s, a watery film appearing over them and then being blinked away. Louise turned to George and met his stare. He gave a nod to the boy.

  ‘Was it a song you know?’ Louise said, prompting the boy now. ‘A pop song, or something like that?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘Not that kind of song. It’s one the other boys in school say in school, to frighten everyone.’

  Louise frowned, wondering what the hell she’d got herself into. Never take the word of a child, she heard DS Shipley say in her mind.