by Luca Veste
‘You’ve got that right.’ Louise was up the path ahead of him in a few strides and knocking on the door within seconds. The sound echoed around the street, and she imagined a few blinds being parted by the more nosy neighbours living there. Shipley stood a few steps behind her. She gave him a quick glance, but he was looking towards the upper floor of the house itself. He then stepped to the side, looking up the small path and back gate that lay there.
‘Probably should have had someone watching the back,’ Shipley said, seemingly to himself. ‘There’s only train tracks back there, but still.’
‘You think someone in here killed Nathan Coldfield and attacked Caroline?’
Shipley shrugged at her, stepping back onto the path behind her. She looked at him for a few seconds more, then turned back to face the door. She thought about the body they had pulled out of the woods. About Caroline lying in a hospital bed. The dark dead eyes of Rhys Durham.
Probably should have come with backup.
Louise ignored the voice in her head, straightening herself up, ready for whatever lay behind the door in front of her.
She didn’t have chance to mull it over too long; the door opened in front of them, revealing an older woman, struggling to pull the door back and keep a dog from rushing out towards them.
‘Get inside, Rufus, what are you like?’
Louise stepped to the side as Shipley moved instinctively backwards away from the opening door, away from the bark which was becoming louder and more insistent by the second.
‘Get down, what are you playing at?’
Louise shook her head mockingly towards Shipley, then turned back to the door and extended her ID in front of her. ‘Hazel Durham? I’m Detective constable Louise Henderson and the guy disappearing down the path behind me is Detective Sergeant paul Shipley. Can we have a word, please?’
The dog seemed to be more under control now, but was still being held tightly by Hazel Durham as it strained to get away from her. ‘Do you have a warrant?’
‘Do we need one?’
‘Depends what you’re after.’
Louise thought for a second, then tried a disarming smile. ‘We just want to have a quick conversation about your nephew, Rhys. Won’t take up much of your time.’
‘Haven’t seen him in years. Don’t know why you would think I have.’
The smile hadn’t worked, which Louise wasn’t exactly surprised by. It was obvious this woman had dealt with police in the past. Possibly more than a few times.
That fact didn’t bode well for them.
‘Well, we wouldn’t mind asking you a few questions about him, if you don’t mind,’ Louise continued, risking an extremity and stepping closer to the door. ‘Just to clear up some things in an ongoing investigation.’
Hazel Durham didn’t flinch, but eventually subsided and allowed them past. Louise went first, Shipley coming slowly behind her. He speeded up as Hazel Durham opened another door from the hallway and shoved the dog inside. She closed that door, then shut the front door behind Louise as she showed them the way into the living room.
‘As I said, I haven’t seen him in years. I’m not going to be much help.’
‘You don’t know what we’re going to ask yet,’ Louise said, taking in the living room in one quick glance. Shipley hovered in the doorway, allowing Hazel to pass him before disappearing into the hallway without her noticing. ‘When was the last time you saw him?’
‘Must be more than two years ago now. We didn’t exactly see eye to eye on most things, but he took it too far.’
‘Took what too far?’
Hazel moved to stand across the room from Louise, one foot tapping as she folded her arms over, standing near a white mantelpiece. She couldn’t look more the part if she tried, Louise thought.
‘He wasn’t the brightest spark. He thought I wouldn’t realise, but I did. I put it all together. He took too much this time.’
Louise was beginning to lose patience, but took a breath and asked her again. ‘What did he take from you?’
‘Everything,’ Hazel replied, her arms dropping to her sides with a slap. ‘He took everything from me. He took my son.’
Louise was about to answer, but didn’t get the chance to as Shipley appeared at the living room door. ‘You’re gonna want to come and see this.’
Behind Shipley, Louise could hear the dog still yapping away, but her focus was on her DS.
And the look on his face.
Twelve
There was a couple of seconds when Louise couldn’t see why Shipley was excited. Then she spotted it on the wall, just as she crossed the threshold and entered the bedroom. The darkness of the ink, the way it appeared to almost lift from the wall. The artistry, the horror of it. She blinked, but could still see it in her vision.
It could have been Nathan Coldfield’s bedroom, if he had been born a decade later. Hazel Durham was a little more house-proud than nathan’s mother Barbara had been. It looked as if she tidied and dusted more often. A shrine kept absolutely pristine. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a musty smell lingering in the air. The aroma of a room that hadn’t been entered in a while. A coolness to the air, empty of life.
Not that the condition of the bedroom was the first thing you would notice. On one side, old posters and faded wallpaper. On the other . . . well, if Shipley wasn’t sure, Louise knew.
‘This must have taken some time. What do you think it is exactly?’
Shipley was still looking pale, but had regained some of his colour. ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s freaking me the hell out.’
‘Pun intended?’
‘It wasn’t intentional.’
The main visage was a close approximation of a devil mask. A giant drawing, etched directly onto the wall. In black marker, faded in places but still as effective. Shaded in red around the mouth and eyes. Strands coiled from the features like tendrils, springing forth from the hateful mask onto other parts of the wall, smaller illustrations of the same kind dangling from them.
Above the image, the letters TBK seemed to bleed from the wall itself. Underneath the Devil, and the words ‘He’s real’.
‘Rhys’s work?’ Louise said, turning to the doorway, where Hazel Durham was now standing. She was looking at the floor rather than the two of them.
‘No, of course not. He couldn’t do something like this. He doesn’t have the talent to do something as artistic. He’d probably struggle to do a stick figure, never mind anything like . . . this. My son did it.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Jon,’ Hazel replied, quietly as though it were an effort to say the name. ‘His name was Jon.’
Louise caught the change. The past tense. ‘Was?’
Hazel shook her head, gave a tight smile that disappeared and was replaced with a scowl. ‘He died a year ago. I . . . I don’t come in here often. It’s too painful.’
‘What do you know about this?’ Shipley said, pointing towards the wall. ‘What does it mean?’
‘I don’t know, but I knew it wasn’t anything right. He thought it was art. I had to agree with him. He would get into something like this, some kind of subject, and it would be difficult to get him off it. It was all he would ever talk about, if he spoke at all. He was always in this room, working on his computer or writing stuff down.’
‘What is it?’ Louise said, moving closer to the drawings and other marks on the wall.
‘It’s the Devil,’ Hazel replied, as if Louise had asked a ridiculous question. ‘can’t you see that?’
‘Of course,’ Shipley said, through gritted teeth. ‘It’s not something I usually see drawn on someone’s bedroom wall, that’s all. Why did he do this?’
‘In the months before he . . . before, he became obsessed with a story. Would talk about him as if he were real. That stupid one we all heard about as kids. Another bogeyman to keep us scared. The Bone Keeper.’ Hazel shook her head and looked away. ‘I think some kids took advantage of the way he was and
filled his head with rubbish. He struggled with that kind of thing. He didn’t understand it was just a story, that it wasn’t real. I just put it down to being a bit isolated, later on. He would spend hours on his computer, playing games. Never really left the house, not once he’d finally finished school. I couldn’t really get any sense out of him. Then, that stupid story captured his imagination.’
‘The Bone Keeper . . .’ Shipley replied, and gave a heavy sigh. Louise was looking at the wall, but she could almost see him shake his head and place his hands on his hips. A look of incredulity as the name came up again.
‘There’s a few notes here talking about sightings,’ Louise said, cutting in before they lost Hazel for good. She pointed at the scraps of paper on the top of a chest of drawers next to the wall drawing. ‘places he had appeared and been seen by people. Different versions of the story. They’re all here. Did he talk about this, Hazel?’
‘Only all the time,’ Hazel replied, a thin smile appearing on her face. ‘He was obsessed with finding him. There’s a bunch of binders down there full of the same thing. He couldn’t let it go. He wanted to find him and make him stop. I remember him watching superhero films and taking notes, as if he was going to really stop this evil monster that didn’t exist. Rhys took advantage of him.’
Shipley stepped forward, then stopped short as Hazel shrank back a little. ‘What happened with Rhys?’
‘That’s where things really went wrong,’ Hazel said, after a few seconds of silence. ‘When he got involved, that’s when it went from bad to absolutely terrible. It’s my fault. I should never have asked him.’
‘Asked him what?’
‘To try and get him out of here,’ Hazel said, leaning against the doorframe. ‘I thought he could snap him out of it. Jon had looked up to him as a kid, and I wasn’t getting anywhere with him. He was . . . different. To other boys his age. They never quite worked out what was wrong, but he wasn’t like other teenagers. He was very young. In the head. He looked eighteen, but really, he was a little boy. Rhys was supposed to make him come out of his shell a bit more. He’d struggled at the same age, not surprising seeing what happened to him.’
‘What happened to Rhys?’
‘I thought you knew? His parents died within a year of each other. Drugs, they said. My sister – his mother, he didn’t have his father’s surname – was a different person once she met his dad. I never liked him. He led her astray, but she seemed glad to be led. She went first, heroin overdose. He followed a year or so later, running away from police because he had drugs on him. Got hit by a train. Rhys seemed to be okay, so I thought he could help Jon as well. Jon never knew his dad and he missed that male influence in his life sometimes, I thought anyway. Instead, it just got worse. And now all I have left is this room.’
‘Jon . . .’ Louise began, then crossed the room to get closer to Hazel. ‘How was Rhys involved with Jon’s death?’
‘He was a good boy, my Jon. He would have grown out of this . . . this obsession. He would have found something else. Something to make of his life. He was too good for this.’
Louise could sense that Hazel was about to shut down, becoming lost in her memories. ‘You need to help us understand here Hazel. We need to find Rhys. If he did something to Jon—’
‘He killed him. As good as, anyway. Filled his head full of bad thoughts and Jon couldn’t get away from them. They found him near oggie Shore.’
Louise felt a jolt at the name of the old shoreline that lay at the bottom of the Mersey. Another link to the south of the city. ‘What happened?’
‘They said he killed himself. That was the official word, anyway. I never believed it. They found him with the empty pill bottle beside him and a note. That was enough for them. I know the real story though.’
‘And what’s the real story, Hazel?’
‘Rhys forced him to do it. Somehow. He filled his head with all this rubbish and look where it got him. My son – my Jon . . . he was a good boy. He would never have done any of this, if it wasn’t for Rhys. He knew how to get inside his head. Make him think things were real that weren’t.’
Louise looked back at the mural on the wall. The black eyes of the devil mask staring back at her. That’s how the story was told sometimes – the Bone Keeper had a devil mask, or was the real Devil.
All parts of the same story, just with a variety of embellishments and fractured memories.
She began taking photos with her phone, being careful to make sure each item was captured. She did so without thinking, without wondering. Without listening to the voice inside her shouting to be heard.
How much of this story is real?
Shipley was still talking to Hazel, who Louise knew was lost now. She would still speak, but it wouldn’t make sense. Not to anyone who didn’t speak the language of grief. Of loss.
Louise listened as Shipley continued to try, although she wanted to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him not to waste his time.
‘Hazel, what happened to Rhys? Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hazel replied, slumping down the wall and coming to a stop when she reached the floor. Both of her hands ran into her hair, fingers interlaced with the strands, pulling lightly. ‘I never saw him. Not after the funeral. He wasn’t wanted around here, he knew that. Not after what he said.’
Louise knew Shipley was used to prompting, but she could see he was becoming more and more annoyed at the shorter answers, the things left unsaid. ‘What did he say?’ he asked, trying to keep the impatience out of his tone.
‘He said it had finally got Jon. That the Bone Keeper always gets what it wants. Then he just stood there with a horrible grin on his face. Like he was happy about it. I couldn’t even say anything back to him. I was just stunned. I told you lot about it, but there was no evidence, they said. Nothing that showed it was anything more than a suicide. I always knew though. Even if Rhys wasn’t there at the time, he as good as found the pills and forced them down Jon’s throat. It was all his fault.’
Louise turned back to the wall as Shipley continued. He may as well have been talking to the wall behind Hazel now. She wasn’t in any fit state to tell them anything more. The sobbing emanating from the woman was becoming louder, filling the small room with its despair.
Louise read the notes on the drawers near the devil mask. Took some photographs, but they would be taking them away that day, she assumed. ‘He walks among us, bathed in a deathly glow,’ Louise said, quietly to herself, reading the uppermost note. She turned her attention back to the wall, the icons next to the mask. Most were almost illegible; random words and symbols which meant little to her. A few stood out and jarred among the more random markings.
There was something about the symbols, the way they flitted around the wall surrounding the mask. Various colours, but mainly red and black. Her eyes settled on a picture, a blurred image which felt familiar.
It didn’t take long for her to recognise it properly. The same woods as in one of the pictures found in Nathan Coldfield’s bedroom. On the outskirts of the city, only a few miles from where they were standing.
Louise waited for Shipley to usher Hazel Durham back down the stairs and for him to return. She continued taking pictures, pulling the binders from their small cubbyhole, leafing through them and taking pictures.
They would have to take them away. There was just too much information in them to read and make sense of it all here. Most seemed to be longer thoughts on the more brief and brash headlines scrawled on the wall behind her. There were more pictures. Various woodland areas, maps, places circled in red.
She wondered if there really could be a link. A woman escaping death, a body found in the woods she’d fled. An old myth, passed around for years, now being considered as possibly having something to do with it.
It was ridiculous.
Still, there was something about the ritualistic way in which both victims had been marked. In Caroline’s case, Louise had no doubt she would have en
ded up in the same position as Nathan Coldfield. Yet, she had managed to get away.
How? He became distracted suddenly, right in the middle of slicing into her? That makes no sense.
Louise shook her head, ignoring the voice in it.
‘I’ve put a call into a family liaison,’ Shipley said from the doorway, then moved into the room to stand at her shoulder. ‘Wasn’t sure what else to do. She’s pretty upset.’
‘I think we’ve opened some old wounds.’
‘Beginning to think they were never closed. Anything in there that might lead us to Rhys Durham?’
Louise looked again at the pages in the binder, the reds and blacks on the pages. The violence, the hate, the dread dripping from every page. ‘I don’t know. I think Jon was a troubled boy, who got mixed up in a story. We can take this with us and see if there’s anything, but I doubt it.’
Shipley stared at the page, shaking his head as if he couldn’t understand the words written there. Louise knew it wasn’t that. It was the fact that they were now looking at something much more than they had been expecting.
‘If this case wasn’t weird enough before . . .’ Shipley said, exhaling loudly after his words, as if the rest didn’t need to be said.
Louise didn’t respond, her attention snatched once more by the wall. The dark, dead eyes at the centre of the mask. The horror that lay there, the evil which loomed over them.
‘Just a story,’ she whispered finally. ‘It’s not real.’
Thirteen
There had been more of these meetings than she cared to remember. Louise was usually quiet, letting everyone else speak while she listened.
Today, it would be different.
The case had taken a turn now and she wasn’t sure what it would mean yet. The binders from Jon Durham’s bedroom, along with the mural, didn’t amount to much really. At least not after they had left the house. Louise hadn’t managed to direct Shipley’s attention away from what she supposed was the more pressing matter of Nathan Coldfield’s body and the attempt to make Caroline into another victim.