The Bone Keeper

by Luca Veste

  ‘What’s the song?’ Louise said, ready to give up and go back outside and make herself useful.

  ‘The Bone Keeper song,’ the boy replied.

  Louise rocked back on her heels slightly, but didn’t show any other reaction. She remembered the song; it came to her mind quickly and easily. The familiar rhyme, the sound of the voices that had sung it all that time ago. She hadn’t heard it in years, but just this reminder was enough for it to replay clearly in her mind.

  ‘The Bone Keeper song?’ Louise said, wanting to be sure.

  ‘Yes,’ the boy said, his eyes now locked on his grandfather’s. As if he were scared of his reaction, or maybe just wanted his approval. ‘She was saying it over and over. Then she fell over, just outside the shop.’

  There it was in Louise’s mind. The song, being sung off-key. A child’s voice, thick with scorn, trying to scare her. The horrible rhyme, full of death and fear.

  ‘Did she say anything else?’

  The boy looked back at the floor, scraping his shoes against the linoleum. ‘She said he was coming back for her. That he was going to get her. I ran away and hid at the back of the shop.’

  Louise stood up, her knees clicking as she did so. She turned back to George, who was standing behind her, arms folded, but unable to keep the fear from his face. She looked back at the boy, who had shrunk further into himself.

  ‘You did good, lad,’ she said. For some unknown reason she had the urge to ruffle his hair, but she resisted. ‘Thank you.’ She turned back to George, giving him the same smile she’d given the boy, but he didn’t return it. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone you said anything.’

  She left them there, her mind racing as memories flooded back to her. Children’s voices, singing and playing. The squeak of swings and the braying of boys’ laughter. The sounds you only hear deep in the woods, as the trees become closer together and the wind struggles to dent them. One single thought came through more than any other.

  Why would a grown woman be singing that song?

  Three

  Louise stood in the hospital corridor, a bored-looking detective sergeant opposite her, pacing up and down and muttering to himself. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, but she didn’t imagine it was anything good. Her experience of DS Shipley told her that he was annoyed and that he wouldn’t calm down any time soon. They had only been there for an hour, but already it was beginning to feel as if it had been ten. Nothing to do other than stand, lean against the wall and wait.

  Waiting was the worst part.

  ‘This is the part they leave out in training,’ Shipley said, looking at his watch for the hundredth time since they’d arrived. ‘All this standing around doing bugger all.’

  ‘Someone once said to me that the job is ninety-five per cent boredom, five per cent actual stuff happening,’ Louise replied, remembering the old inspector who had passed on that nugget of wisdom to her. He was dead now. Heart attack two years after retirement. She still remembered the look of disbelief on his widow’s face at the funeral, as if she couldn’t understand what she had done to deserve it. ‘You wonder why they don’t tell us that sooner.’

  ‘Probably worried about putting people off. Not that I would have walked away at that point.’

  ‘Neither would I.’

  She had never questioned her decision to join the police. It had just been the logical conclusion; given how mixed-up her childhood had been, and the trouble she’d got into as a teenager, it had seemed only right that she would finally find a home in the police service.

  No one had told her it was just as dysfunctional as real life.

  Now, she found herself staring at a wall, trying to work out what colour it was. Anything to take her mind off the smell. Was it white or cream? Off-white, maybe?

  ‘Not going to make the gym tonight at this rate,’ Shipley said, interlocking his hands in front of him and stretching. ‘About time I just put some equipment in the flat and stopped pretending this was a nine-to-five job.’

  ‘You’re getting addicted to the place anyway.’

  ‘I just like the way it makes me look,’ Shipley replied with a smile. He checked his phone again as Louise looked away. He was looking better for it, she thought. He’d never been overweight, but had been getting podgier in his mid-thirties. In the past year he’d joined a gym, shed the extra pounds and looked younger and better for it.

  The only issue was that he wouldn’t shut up about going to the damn place.

  ‘I don’t know why we’re even getting this involved, now I think about it,’ Shipley said, walking slowly over and coming to a stop near her. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall. ‘Yeah, it looks bad, but odds are, a partner or an ex has beat her up and tried to properly mess her up. That’ll be all. We could do first statement tomorrow morning, instead of waiting around this late.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you’re probably right,’ Louise replied, not believing her own words. ‘But you tried that line on the boss and it didn’t work then either. Your instinct back at the scene was right. We were always going to end up here.’

  Shipley didn’t answer, just made some sort of guttural noise and resumed pacing up and down again. As if that was helping. He fiddled with the phone in his hand, turning the screen on, stopping to scroll through something, then pacing again.

  ‘Why don’t you just stop for a second?’

  ‘I don’t like this place, Louise,’ Shipley replied, coming to a stop next to her. Louise looked down at the phone in his hand as the screen came to life. He caught her looking and smiled. ‘Nothing substantial on the Echo website yet, just the bare bones. They’ve got a live update page going, but it just seems to be some reporter with a phone taking pictures of our vans.’

  ‘I’m sure that’ll change soon enough. Something more interesting will happen and they’ll move on.’

  Louise went back to staring at the wall, knowing she was stalling. She wasn’t allowing herself to remember the words the young boy back at the shop had said to her. Wasn’t going to allow those thoughts to return.

  History to come flooding back in.

  It was no use, of course. As much as she thought she was ignoring the thoughts, they were still there. Lurking behind a facade of carefully constructed bricks. A wall she had built purposefully, over a long period of time.

  She was an adult now. She didn’t believe in fairytales or myths anymore.

  They were fake memories, made into something more by a young mind, desperate for any sort of magic, or just attention. She couldn’t trust them. Louise felt her hand ball into a fist, banging against one leg, as she stood with her back against the wall. She uncurled it, glancing in Shipley’s direction to ensure he hadn’t seen what she’d been doing. His back was to her, his head shaking slowly from side to side as he checked his phone yet again.

  Louise turned back to the opposite wall. More beige than white, she thought. That was as close as she could think.

  It wasn’t real.

  It was another hour before they were allowed into the room. Somehow, even with hospitals as they were, they had managed to keep her off a ward for now. In her own private room in the A&E department of the largest hospital in the city. A nurse was still there, scribbling notes on a clipboard before placing it over the end of the bed.

  ‘She’s still quite out of it,’ the nurse said, speaking to Louise after taking a tired look at Shipley. ‘Not sure how much sense you’re going to get out of her.’

  ‘How is she doing?’ Louise said when it became clear her DS wasn’t going to ask. ‘What injuries does she have?’

  ‘It’s bad, I can tell you that much. She’s in a right state. Beaten black and blue, bruised ribs . . . that’s not the worst of it though.’

  Louise affected a look of concern, which she hoped didn’t convey her true thoughts. Just get out of here so I can ask her who did this. ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘She lost a lot of blood. He sliced into her,’ the nurse replie
d, almost spitting the words out. ‘Cut off the skin from different parts of her body. Like he was flaying her alive. Unbelievable what someone can do to another person.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll catch whoever did this to her,’ Shipley said, moving closer to the bed and standing over the woman lying there. ‘That’ll be all.’

  Louise eyed the woman in the bed as she slowly opened her eyes. She wondered how much she had heard as they had stood there, talking as if she wasn’t in the room with them.

  The nurse was about to say more, but moved towards the door instead. She turned as she got there, still only talking to Louise. ‘Make sure you do. Not sure I want to see what someone like this does next.’

  The door closed behind her, leaving Louise still hovering behind Shipley as he looked down at the woman lying in the bed. She could see some effort had been taken to clean her up, but there were still the remains of dried blood on her face. The room was stark in its blandness – a single window giving a little light, but not much, through the closed blinds. A couple of notices on the walls, a sink and a seemingly empty hand-soap dispenser. There was a single chair for visitors, but neither of them sat down, Louise choosing to make her way to the other side of the bed. She squeezed some alcohol rub onto her hands from the bottle hanging at the foot of the bed and covered her hands in it, being careful not to touch any of the equipment surrounding them.

  ‘CSI have already taken what they could,’ Shipley said, looking across as Louise continued to rub her hands. He shook his head at her. ‘Hopefully it gets us something useful.’

  ‘Maybe we should ask her first,’ Louise replied, raising her eyes towards the woman in the bed, who was now staring at Shipley. There was a translucent quality to the look, as if her eyes were unfocused, seeing right through him. ‘If it is someone she knows, it’ll make this much easier.’

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Shipley said, looming closer to the woman. His voice was unnaturally loud in the small space, almost echoing off the walls. ‘What’s your name?’

  The woman continued to stare at Shipley, seemingly trying to work out who he was. What he was saying. He looked across at Louise, giving her the nod to try herself.

  ‘Hello, I’m Detective Constable Louise Henderson, this is Detective Sergeant Paul Shipley,’ Louise said, waiting for the woman’s head to turn in her direction. ‘We’re here to help you, okay? We just want to ask you a few questions, then we’ll get out of your way and let you recover.’

  Louise heard a sniff from the other side of the bed, but ignored it. Sometimes, it was left to her to work out the best way of approaching things, but she knew what Shipley would be saying as soon as he got back to the station. She imagined ‘woman’s touch’ would feature in that monologue.

  The woman was now staring at Louise, blinking up at her. Her eyes became more focused as she seemed to understand who they were. Why they were now on either side of her bed.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  The woman opened her mouth, then closed it again. She tried once more. ‘Caroline,’ she said, her voice a whisper. It seemed to take her a lot of effort to speak, but Louise could see she was ready to do it. ‘Caroline . . . Rickards.’

  ‘Hello, Caroline,’ Louise said, trying to give her a reassuring smile, even as she registered the pause before she’d revealed her surname. ‘Do you know why we’re here?’

  Caroline frowned for a second, looked past Louise and around the room a little. ‘I’ve been hurt.’

  ‘Yes, you have. We just want to ask a couple of questions about that, for now. Nothing major. We’ll let you recover a little more first. Is that okay?’

  Caroline gave her a small nod, her movement crinkling the thin pillow beneath her head.

  ‘What do you remember before getting here?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you remember the ambulance?’

  A shake of the head from Caroline. ‘I was running.’

  ‘Do you know where you were running?’

  ‘Down the road,’ Caroline replied, breaking her gaze from Louise’s and staring up at the ceiling. ‘I was hurt.’

  ‘Yes, that’s where you were found. What about before then? What do you remember before then?’

  Caroline’s face began to crumple, but no tears appeared. ‘There was grass and mud around me. Trees. It was there. It was hurting me.’

  ‘Who was, Caroline?’ Shipley said, ignoring Louise’s pleading looks to let her carry on. He was a battering ram sometimes, when what was needed was a light knock. ‘Who did this to you?’

  ‘It was him, it was him,’ Caroline replied, her voice rising to a shout now. ‘It’s real.’

  ‘Was it your boyfriend or husband, Caroline?’ Shipley continued, placing one hand on the bed next to her. ‘An ex or something? What’s his name?’

  Caroline ignored Shipley, turning back towards Louise. ‘It’s real. Everything they said was right. It lives there. In the woods.’

  ‘Okay, take it easy, Caroline,’ Louise said, reaching a hand out towards her. ‘Take your time.’

  Caroline’s right hand shot out and clutched Louise’s, with a tighter hold than she’d been expecting. The skin on her wrist shouted in pain as it was twisted in the woman’s grip. The room grew colder as Caroline forced herself closer to her, gritting her teeth with the effort.

  ‘It was the Bone Keeper. It did this to me. It’s real. And it’s going to come back and find me.’

  Four

  Louise rubbed at her wrist, glancing down at the redness that had sprung up there, silently admonishing herself. Caroline had been through something horrific, yet still had the strength to grip her wrist hard enough to leave a mark.

  It had been too soon, they should have known that. The two of them going in there asking questions was probably the last thing she had needed.

  Still, that was the job they had to do.

  ‘Bloody lunatic, if you ask me,’ Shipley said, driving back towards the north of the city with little care to the rest of the road users. ‘She’ll be sectioned and we’ll never know who did this.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Louise replied, rolling her sleeve down and trying to ignore the stinging sensation she still felt. ‘Maybe something happened out there. There’s farmland and woods all around that area.’

  ‘What, you believe her?’ Shipley said, punctuating his point with a laugh. ‘She’s gone doolally, that’s all. Someone has beat the hell out of her and cut parts of her skin off.’

  ‘The kid in the shop—’

  ‘We’re not going to take that kid’s word for it, are we? So what if she was singing about the bogeyman? She wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind, was she?’

  ‘I’m not saying she was, but the kid wasn’t lying. And she said as much back there. She thinks she was attacked by . . . by whatever. We can’t exactly ignore that,’ Louise tried, knowing what the reaction would be before it even came.

  ‘Yes we bleeding can,’ Shipley said, then leaned on his horn as the car in front didn’t move away quickly enough from the lights they’d pulled up at. ‘Just the babblings of a mad woman. Don’t get sucked in, we’ve seen this loads of times. It’ll be some bloke who couldn’t handle a break-up or something. It’ll be off our desks by tomorrow morning, I bet.’

  Louise didn’t answer, instead thinking of the fear that had been emanating from Caroline, lying helpless in that hospital bed. Scarred for life, but lucky to be alive. She wasn’t as certain as Shipley that this would be shifted over to some unlucky team to deal with, along with all the other domestic incidents they had to investigate.

  ‘They’ll have found CCTV by now,’ Shipley continued, shifting into a higher gear and overtaking a slower car in front of them on the dual carriageway. ‘That will clear things up more.’

  He carried on talking but Louise stopped listening to his droning voice, preferring to stare out of the passenger-side window. The green fields, as they moved further out of the city, towards the wide-open sp
aces no one realised existed in Liverpool. The various woodlands and farming areas. The greens and browns replacing the grey and white of the city buildings.

  ‘. . . and you should have seen his face,’ Shipley was saying as Louise tuned back in. He pounded the steering wheel a couple of times as his laughter grew louder. ‘Honestly thought he was going to die or something.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Louise replied, wondering what she had missed.

  ‘You can make kids believe anything. Especially with a story as good as that one. Haven’t thought about that in a long time. Poor lad wet his pants, he was that scared. I’m telling you, the woods were great for that sort of thing.’

  ‘What type of thing?’ Louise said, turning towards Shipley.

  ‘Were you even listening?’ he asked, shaking his head at her. ‘I’m talking about the time we made some stupid kid who used to follow us everywhere think he was about to be caught by the Bone Keeper.’

  ‘Sorry, mind had wandered, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, it’s not as funny when I have to repeat myself,’ Shipley said, almost pouting at the gall of her not listening. She liked this side of him. The injustice he felt about her ignoring his braying. It made him more human. ‘Anyway, there’s this little kind of cave thing, in the middle of Sefton Park. We took this kid there and told him that’s where the Bone Keeper lived. You have to squeeze through these metal bars to get inside. Once you’re in there, it’s pitch black. Anyway, we let him go through first, then ran off shouting we’d seen him. You should have heard him squealing. We couldn’t stop laughing.’

  He was laughing now, but Louise didn’t join in. Instead, she thought of a frightened little boy in the dark. Feeling those walls closing in on him, the fear of the darkness and what it could hold. What horrors lurked in the unseen.

  Shipley wasn’t to know. To him, it would have just been a childish prank, playing on the fears of others.

  She was aware he had stopped laughing and was instead looking at her.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? It was just a little joke on some kid. You’re not going to start crying over that, are you? That’s the last thing I need.’