The Bone Keeper

by Luca Veste

  The Bone Keeper.

  The hatred and disgust she instantly felt about the moniker. The myth. The story.

  She stared at her knuckles as they turned white against the grey of the fridge door handle. Louise released her hand, an imprint of the handle now embedded into the skin of her palm. She looked at it for a while, watching it fade and return to normal.

  Someone was using the name. That’s all. Some evil, screwed-up killer had assumed the mantle of a local folktale and was passing himself off as someone he wasn’t.

  That was all.

  He wasn’t real.

  Louise stood in the kitchen and made a snap decision.

  She didn’t have to be alone.

  The hospital corridors were quieter than they had been when they’d visited last, in the daytime. Less foot traffic, fewer people milling around. The lights seemed dimmer, as if at night someone had decided they would hit a switch and bathe them in a pale glow.

  Louise paused at the door, wondering if she was doing the right thing, then decided to ignore her worries. She pushed down the handle and went inside. The room was almost in darkness now, but she could hear the soft noise from the television hanging on the wall.

  She made her way closer to the bed, trying to keep her movements quiet just in case, but she knew it wasn’t necessary really.

  ‘Hello,’ Caroline said, shifting herself up in the bed, grimacing at the effort. ‘I didn’t think you’d be here this late. Has something happened? Have you found something?’

  ‘Sorry, that’s not why I’m here,’ Louise replied, pulling over a chair closer to the bed and sitting down. ‘I thought you could use some company, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Caroline said, confusion sweeping across her face before being replaced by a slight smile. ‘Thank you. I have been getting a bit bored stuck in here.’

  ‘I bet you are. Late-night TV is awful. And it’s not like you get hundreds of channels of choice on these things.’

  ‘I never thought I’d miss Netflix this much,’ Caroline said, a chuckle escaping her lips, before a sharp intake of breath at the pain that followed. ‘Sorry, I won’t be much fun. The painkillers take the edge off, but I’m still quite sore. Probably best you don’t make me laugh.’

  ‘I’m not much of a comedian anyway,’ Louise replied, leaning over to Caroline’s bedside cabinet and handing her the bottle of water sitting there. ‘Are you feeling any better at all?’

  ‘Loads, weirdly,’ Caroline said, swigging quickly from the bottle before twisting the cap back on and leaving it lying close to her on the bed. ‘I know it doesn’t look like it, but honestly, I didn’t think I was going to ever feel normal again. I’m getting there. Slowly. The skin will heal, they reckon. No need for skin grafts hopefully.’

  ‘They’ll leave some amazing scars though. You’ll have something to talk about forever.’

  ‘True. I’ll never be the boring one again. Kind of wish I’d taken up juggling or something instead though.’

  Louise looked over at the television, watching the flickering images of a film she didn’t recognise. ‘Have you slept at all?’

  Caroline shook her head. ‘A couple of hours here and there. Bit difficult when people come in and check on you every five minutes. I’m looking forward to getting out of here and getting a good night’s sleep at some point.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Although, I don’t know if that’ll come easy. I keep finding myself back in that . . . place.’

  Louise didn’t say anything, glancing back at Caroline, who was now looking towards the ceiling. Now she was closer to her, dark rings were visible under her eyes.

  ‘I didn’t think you could be that scared and still live, you know,’ Caroline said, her voice faltering a little. ‘I thought my heart would have given out at some point. I’ve never felt anything like it.’

  ‘We can live through more than we ever give ourselves credit for, I’ve found. We all have that sense of survival instinct within us.’

  ‘That’s just the thing,’ Caroline replied, moving her head down to look at Louise. Her eyes were green and had the sheen of coming tears across them. ‘I didn’t want to survive. I wanted it to be over. All the pain, the agony . . . I was so scared. I just wanted it to stop, but it wouldn’t. I was ready to die.’

  Louise kept silent, letting Caroline get the words out. Allowed her training to take over, when everything within her wanted to reach out to the woman and tell her it was going to be okay.

  That she was going to find whoever did this to her.

  ‘You must have seen things like this before,’ Caroline said finally, sniffing back emotion. ‘Probably all the time in your kind of job.’

  ‘We get our fair share,’ Louise lied, deciding to make her feel a little comfort that she wasn’t the only one out there to have gone through something as horrific as she had. ‘It doesn’t mean we treat it any different. We treat every case the same.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting—’

  ‘No, I know what you mean,’ Louise said, interrupting her before she could finish the thought. ‘I just want you to know we’re working hard to find who did this to you and make sure he can’t do it again.’

  ‘That’s good to hear,’ Caroline replied, relaxing back into her pillow. ‘Although, I don’t think I’m the first this happened to, or the last. It was too calm. Like it was planned out. I keep remembering little things, but I never saw a face. Just a presence. I’m just sorry I can’t be more help.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. You just concentrate on getting better.’

  ‘It just sounds so ridiculous, you know? I think about what I’m telling you about what did this to me and it’s just . . . stupid.’

  ‘You’ve been through a lot,’ Louise replied, wondering how much Caroline believed her own words. How confident she was about what she’d seen. What she’d encountered in those woods. ‘Don’t worry about how you sound to us. It’s your experience. Just keep trying to remember. Any little detail could be key to stopping whoever – whatever – did this to you.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Have you thought more about getting in touch with people? Letting them come in and visit? The company might help.’

  ‘No, I don’t want anyone seeing me like this. It’s all they’ll ever see whenever they look at me in future. I don’t . . . I don’t want to be only ever seen as a victim, if that makes sense?’

  It did to Louise, so she continued to sit by Caroline’s bedside, even as the anger grew inside her. The thought of whoever – whatever – had put Caroline in that bed, and who had placed Nathan Coldfield in a shallow grave, still out there. Consuming her thoughts, until all she could see was a man with no face, lying on the ground at her feet. A blade in her hand as she sliced into his skin.

  The idea excited her.

  Before

  The world spun, as she lay on the ground watching. Waiting.

  She felt as if she were in a dream. The sky above her black and orange. White tendrils reaching across her line of vision, as she willed her body to move.

  It remained there, broken and still.

  The previous moments were a blur, her pre-teen mind unable to order her thoughts coherently. She couldn’t comprehend what had happened. What she had allowed to happen.

  The air grew thick, her body reacting, finally, and coughing up nothingness. She willed her limbs to make any sort of movement, but they didn’t respond. Instead, they seemed to dig in further, not wanting to obey her commands.

  As if they knew that by lying there, by not moving, she could pretend that people weren’t dying near her and she was doing nothing to stop it.

  She continued to lie there, the soft ground beneath her cold and unforgiving. Objects in her peripheral vision turning and becoming distorted. Inhuman.

  ‘This is what you wanted.’

  The voice was low, gruff, a growl. As if something animal-like had peeled out of the bushes and prowled towards her
unseen.

  ‘You wanted them dead. Didn’t you?’

  She couldn’t move, couldn’t answer the voice. One so familiar, but now alien and distant. Unconnected to what was happening around her.

  ‘This is it. This is where you are born.’

  She wanted to scream, lift herself from the ground and do something.

  She wanted to believe the voice. To go towards it. Accept it entirely and do its bidding.

  ‘They’re dead and it’s your fault. You wanted this. You needed this.’

  There was a part of her that knew the truth, yet she struggled to accept it. That the words meant nothing, they were lies, designed to put her on a different path.

  Or, to guide her on the one she always knew was hers.

  ‘You have to walk with me now. We have to move on from here. You have to come with me into the woods and live your new life. Become just like me.’

  She refused to move. Shaking her head, as the world she’d known collapsed around her. Burning to the ground, until all that was left would be ashes. A life once so tangible and real becoming something dead and destroyed.

  Gone.

  All that was left was her. Lying on the ground, unable to move, unable to follow the voice into the darkness. Waiting for nothing to happen. For her life to end, just the same as the others.

  To not be alone.

  She closed her eyes, even as she could hear herself screaming into the night sky.

  ‘No. I don’t want this. I didn’t want this to happen. I want to die. I can’t live with this. LEAVE ME ALONE.’

  The voice disappeared at the sound of her scream, leaving her alone, lying on the ground, eyes closed to reality. A weight on her chest as she lost consciousness, truth leaving her on a stream of wind and smoke.

  She knew this was the end. That she would never live this day and night again. It was already disappearing, becoming nothing but a faded memory. One she would never remember clearly. Placing the events in a box and shifting it to a corner of her mind she would never explore.

  She heard the song as she drifted away, waiting for her own life to be taken.

  The song of death.

  Now

  Fifteen

  Three hours.

  That was all the sleep Louise had been able to manage after she’d finally left Caroline at the hospital. She had closed her eyes at 4 a.m., just as dawn began to break outside. Exhaustion taking over, despite her having felt that she would never sleep again.

  The body can trick you into anything.

  She had been thinking about the woods. The ones she’d seen in the pictures, back in Jon Durham’s bedroom. The familiarity of them, the way she could almost remember the feel of the trees as she lightly danced her fingertips across the bark of the trunks. A faded memory, one she couldn’t exactly trust.

  Outside of the estates, the built-up areas, dissected by roads and motorways in the city, there were pockets of those woodland areas. She had been to many of them over the years. Vanishing into the silence. Looking for answers to questions she couldn’t remember.

  Those thoughts had crowded her mind while she tried to sleep.

  The woods and fire.

  She had driven into the car park bleary-eyed, stopped and stared straight ahead at the brick wall in front of her. Allowed the red and brown colours to merge, blur.

  She could feel it coming now. The constriction in her chest, her breathing becoming more ragged. Shorter. Tighter. The world disappearing around her, as her body began to shake. She couldn’t breathe, but the inside of the car was filled with her exhalations.

  Panting, sucking in oxygen, as if it were about to run out. Edges appearing in her vision.

  The world was becoming dark. Darker. Darker still. She screwed her eyes tight shut, gripped the steering wheel and concentrated on her breathing.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  She could feel herself relaxing slowly. Thoughts flew through her mind. She was unable to pick out any single thing as important. Instead, she tried forcing herself to empty her mind.

  It was impossible, but it did allow her to keep concentrating on her breathing.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  Don’t force it.

  It felt like hours, but when she opened her eyes it had only been a couple of minutes. It hadn’t been one of her longer lasting ones, but the panic attacks were becoming more frequent.

  Eyes stinging, headache brewing, Louise dragged herself up to the office that housed her department. She ducked into the toilets before going in, checking herself in the mirror once she’d made sure no one else was in there. Ignored the dark lines under her eyes, the sallow look of the skin of her face. Those things came with the territory and wouldn’t be remarked upon. Instead, she was looking for any sign of anything unusual.

  Looked deep into her eyes, the flare of her nostrils. Opened her mouth, checked her teeth. Anything she felt could give her away and see her distanced.

  She had to be on this case now. She couldn’t afford to be pulled away now.

  She needed to know.

  There was nothing she could see; not that she really knew what she was looking for anyway. It wasn’t as if she was walking around with something etched into the skin on her forehead. Permanent marker, I’m not sure I can do this.

  She looked as normal as she ever did, she decided.

  Louise made her way into the open-plan office, walking straight to her desk and taking her jacket off. Slipped her bag under the desk and switched on her computer. Shipley was already seated on the opposite side of the room and Louise could feel his eyes on her as she sat down. She ignored him, fixing her eyes on the computer monitor and waiting for it to come to life.

  There were a couple of fellow detective constables on her bank of desks, but they hadn’t tried to engage with her. They never did. Not that she was too bothered – she had always preferred her own company.

  More so as she had grown older.

  Fragmented ideas, thoughts, words, images flashed through her mind, without her wanting them to. Louise pushed a fingernail into her thigh, wincing at the sharp pain that followed; but it worked – she snapped out of her head. There wasn’t time for any of this. She couldn’t put it off any longer.

  The thought had come to her overnight. The woods, the secrets they held. A hunch, if she was going to be truthful. A hunch predicated on some base facts, of course, but a hunch all the same.

  It had to look right.

  She couldn’t just drop it into conversation, as if it didn’t matter. She didn’t think Shipley would take it seriously. Not in the growing mood he was getting into the further the week went on. He was eyeing Major Crimes, which meant he was being too careful. She needed a plan.

  She stared at her screen, opening random emails and reading a couple of lines of each. Pretended to herself that she was acting normal, when everything within her didn’t feel that way. The opposite.

  This was a gamble. If she was wrong, when Major Crimes turned up Shipley wouldn’t bother bringing her along with him. She would be damaged goods. Someone with a ridiculous idea, wasting time they didn’t have.

  There was something in those woods. She knew it. There had to be.

  Louise watched the clock on the computer screen ticking off the minutes. She decided five would be enough.

  They stretched into eternity.

  She still had no plan.

  Three minutes went by. She imagined Shipley was looking her way less often now. There didn’t seem to have been any new information overnight, so she guessed the investigation was much as it had been when she left. All scurrying around, looking busy, but not really getting anywhere.

  Each question they answered seemed to generate another six in its place.

  Rhys Durham was the main focus now. They wanted to find him and hoped that the search would end there.

  ‘Louise, everything okay?’

  She didn’t jump, but Shipley’s voice was still a little startling. She realised she had bee
n staring at the monitor for at least two minutes. Maybe three.

  And she was still doing so.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, just miles away there,’ Louise replied, quickly looking at Shipley then averting her eyes. She wanted to plant another fingernail into her thigh, but decided against it. ‘How’s it going, anything new?’

  ‘No, nothing. We’re still trying to track down this Rhys Durham, but no luck so far. Did you see the news at all?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s not gaining as much traction as I thought it would.’

  ‘Probably because of the victim,’ Shipley said, folding his arms across his chest. ‘If we could put Caroline out there a bit more—’

  ‘I don’t think she’s ready for that,’ Louise said quickly, thinking of the way she’d been the night before. Still full of fear of what she had escaped back in those woods.

  ‘You’re probably right, but I imagine she’ll have to come forward at some point. The more I think about things, the more he sounds like our guy. Obviously he had an issue with Nathan Coldfield – a falling-out or something – and that’s how he ended up buried in those woods. Caroline was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all. We’re going to speak to her soon, see if she recognises the name or the photo. Hopefully that’ll clear it all up.’

  ‘Right. Sounds like we’re almost done with this then.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Shipley sounded about as convinced by that as she was. He was more wily than she had first thought. ‘Still, probably best to explore every possibility in the meantime?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re going over what we pulled from Nathan Coldfield’s bedroom now.’

  Now she had to tread lightly. ‘What about Jon Durham’s?’

  ‘What about it?’

  She took a breath, still trying to work out exactly what she thought might work best. ‘I’m just thinking, it couldn’t really do any harm to see if there’s anything in that wall display he had going on. Might give us a possible route to finding Rhys, if anything.’

  ‘Not sure I follow you. It was all random rubbish really. He wasn’t right in the head.’