The Bone Keeper

by Luca Veste

  Not for the first time, she made the decision never to take on more responsibility than was absolutely necessary. She was quite happy at the level she was right now. With great responsibility comes greater sleepless nights and culpability.

  Unless you managed to get right up to a certain level.

  ‘We’re going to use the press in order to get more information on this Rhys Durham,’ DCI Sisterson said, sliding a hand back over his hair. Perfectly coiffed, the silver at his temples blending naturally with the rest of it, as if he dyed it on top only. Looked like a professional job, which didn’t surprise her. More money the further you moved up the ranks.

  ‘I know that’s been tried already, but I want his face absolutely everywhere,’ Sisterson continued.

  ‘So, you are taking the case off us,’ DI Hardy said, leaving the question mark off the end of his sentence. It didn’t require one.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any other option, do you?’ DCI Sisterson replied, deigning to look at the DI now. ‘This sounds like a major crime to me. And that is my forte.’

  ‘So we need to smoke him out,’ Shipley said, uncrossing his legs and sitting forward. ‘He’s not been seen, other than by the first victim’s mother, for a long time. Nothing pops up from forces around the country, so if he has moved, he’s kept himself out of trouble. I suppose though, if he’s not been seen around this area, chances are he’s been in other parts of the country.’

  ‘And now he’s come back?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Shipley said, wagging a finger in DCI Sisterson’s direction. He sat back slightly, seemingly pondering something. Louise thought about that scenario. Wondered how long it would take for them to realise it wasn’t the case.

  ‘Why now though?’ Shipley continued. In Louise’s view, he was enjoying himself. It had been a while since he’d had the opportunity to be listened to by top brass. As a DS, and working with her, an even lower DC, he was usually the dogsbody.

  ‘He would’ve had to have been following the news around here to know Nathan Coldfield’s body had been discovered quickly, and he has to think that the woman was talking about him as well. And even then, it wasn’t like the address was released.’

  ‘Yeah, but the Echo named the pub nearby,’ Louise said quickly, in response to Shipley’s stumble towards the truth. ‘He knows we found that place and now we’ve disturbed him in a different patch of woodland.’

  ‘He’s going to be on the run.’

  DCI Sisterson held a hand up, to stop the back-and-forth. ‘Who knows how he found out about it. I think it’s pretty obvious, for what it’s worth. And now, if he has been in hiding, he’s back out in the open. He’s not exactly hiding in plain sight. He’s apparently living in a hut in the middle of some woods. If the two are connected, of course. Either way, we have the possibility of a serial killer. We also have to face the possibility that we might never know the truth. That whoever did this burned in that hut in the middle of the woods.’

  Louise ignored DCI Sisterson’s comment about the two cases being connected. She knew everyone was on the same page now. No one would buy the idea of a coincidence, given enough time to think it over.

  ‘The way I see it,’ Shipley said, clearly in control now. DI Hardy had been forgotten, which Louise knew wouldn’t sit right with him. ‘All roads lead back to that story. The Bone Keeper. Caroline – the first person to be found, alive, says his name . . .’

  ‘This Caroline, what’s her story?’

  Shipley looked at Louise, prompting her to answer the DCI’s question. ‘She seems clean. Never had any cause to be in touch with police before, by the looks of it. Wrong place, wrong time. Uniforms visited her address and neighbours didn’t even know her name. Seems to keep herself to herself. Works for a homeless charity of some sort. The boss didn’t have a bad word to say about her. We can’t locate any family, and she’s not been helpful on that score. Listed her next of kin as an elderly neighbour who didn’t even know her surname. She wants to be left alone. No visitors or anything like that. Bit of a lonely life, by all accounts.’

  ‘Keep in contact with her. See if she remembers anything else that could help us.’

  ‘We’ve looked into the contents of Nathan Coldfield’s bedroom more as well,’ Shipley said, taking over from Louise. ‘There’s a picture with the initials RD on the reverse, which we think is of the woods in Speke. Then, we found Rhys Durham’s full name and an old number on another scrap of paper. So, it looks like they were in contact for some time. On the wall of Jon Durham’s bedroom, we have a mural in reference to the Bone Keeper and pictures of the woods in the south of the city. And now, someone sets fire to a body and we find another one buried. And, the same marks on the trees as were there at the first crime scene. Only, this time there were also dates on the trees. He wasn’t exactly hiding by doing that. He wants to do something.’

  ‘Confess?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’d like the two of you to join our team on this one,’ DCI Sisterson said, a finality to his sentence. ‘If that’s okay with you, DI Hardy?’

  ‘They’re grown-ups, suppose they can make their own decisions.’

  Louise wondered if DCI Sisterson would rise to the undisguised hostility, but he seemed to ignore it. ‘You two have been involved in this case from the beginning. It makes sense to keep you on board. I want you on the ground, moving around. Just get me something to work with. I don’t care if we need to contact every last copper in the country, I want to know if anyone has seen Rhys Durham. I want to know what he’s been doing all this time. We also need to find out if this burnt body is Rhys Durham and if not, put an end to this story.’

  They were dismissed, leaving DI Hardy still in his office with the DCI. Outside, Shipley gave Louise a quick look. A nod and a smirk. He’d got what he wanted, at least. Louise wasn’t sure if she could share his excitement. They wouldn’t exactly be at the forefront of the investigation, that seemed clear. Scut work and pounding the pavements, like they were back in uniform. That seemed to be escaping Shipley’s thought process, however. For him, she guessed, it was all about being there. In the city centre, a seat at the top table.

  She needed to remember these moments the next time she wanted to jump on him when they parked up outside her house at night.

  As they made their way back, DC Cavanagh shot upright from where he’d been perched on the edge of Shipley’s desk.

  ‘Been waiting for you,’ DC Cavanagh said, a piece of paper flapping in his hand. ‘Thought you’d want to be the first to know about this.’

  Shipley held his hand out for the paper. DC Cavanagh handed it over and crossed his arms, waiting for a reaction. Louise stood quietly beside Shipley, wondering what could be coming next. He read the details it contained and swore under his breath.

  ‘It’s not Rhys Durham. The body.’

  Louise frowned at Shipley. ‘Who is it then?’

  ‘Look,’ Shipley replied, handing over the single sheet to Louise and sitting down at his desk. ‘Guess we’re not as close as we hoped.’

  Louise read, and saw the issue instantly. ‘The body is that of a man in his late teens, twenty tops, apparently. Plus, while his body was burnt quite extensively, his facial features were intact enough for them to rule out Rhys Durham as the victim. I don’t think Rhys could be mistaken for someone as young as this guy looks. How old was he in that last mugshot?’

  ‘About mid-twenties’

  ‘He looked ten years older at that point.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ Shipley said, clicking his computer awake and typing in his password. ‘Have a look at the prelim on the woman.’

  ‘Flayed skin, cut open and removed from the body,’ Louise said, swallowing back her revulsion. ‘So we’re back to square one.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Shipley replied, swivelling in his chair and facing Louise. ‘We know his name and what he looks like. We’re one step ahead of where we usually are in stranger murders.’


  Louise wanted to feel as excited about this as Shipley, but couldn’t. There was something that didn’t make sense about Rhys Durham being the man they were looking for.

  ‘The earliest date on that tree . . . what was it?’

  ‘2001, I think,’ Shipley replied; he carried on grinning for a second, before his face fell a little. ‘He would have been about fourteen or fifteen. Plenty old enough to do something like this, right?’

  ‘Still, a little young don’t you think? Plus, he was getting into petty trouble after that. Hardly the way a serial killer would be working.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Shipley said, but Louise could see his mind turning now.

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘Look, it’s the closest we’ve got. We don’t even know if there’s any bodies buried there that are that old, do we? Could be just more madness.’

  Louise nodded, but she didn’t accept the explanation. Not just about the madness part – that wasn’t all there was here.

  This was more than that.

  Twenty-Two

  Normal people. Normal lives. All crowded together at the tape, the closest they could get without stepping into what the police had decided was a crime scene.

  They chatted together. Coming up with theories for what was happening. Right there, on their doorsteps. They had a right to know, that they could all agree on. Yet, no one was telling them anything. The occasional grunt from some bloke in a uniform who was standing watching them.

  The locals passed information around, as if they knew anything. A large woman, cigarette dangling from one of her chubby fingers, took a drag and pointed towards the woods with the glowing ember. ‘It’ll be some paedo I bet. Or some druggie. God knows what goes on in those woods at night. I never go near the place.’

  ‘I want to know what’s hidden in those woods,’ another woman said. No cigarette or exposed stout flesh on this one. She was almost painfully thin, protruding cheekbones jutting from her pale face. ‘Why all these police have come here. It’s always drugs usually. A meth den or something inside there.’

  There were around twenty or thirty people gathered now, all watching nothing but an empty field. Normal people with normal lives. Without anything better to do at three in the afternoon than this.

  Any of them could have been a victim.

  A young girl, no more than twenty, thin-faced and scarred. Her pockmarked belly could be carved open. A look of surprise on her face, as blood dripped from her skin and bones.

  An old man, who smelled faintly of cheap whisky and damp. Wisps of hair protruding from every facial orifice. Grey and wiry. Clothes that would have fit him a fair few skipped meals ago. The folds of skin at his neck could be compressed, his eyes bulging as the struggle for oxygen became too difficult.

  Something didn’t belong among this crowd.

  ‘I bet it’s nothing,’ a young lad with protruding front teeth and pale skin said. ‘Just a waste of money as usual. Either that, or a bunch of foreigners setting up camp.’

  There was tutting from a few of the crowd, but their attention didn’t waver.

  Something watched them all without them knowing. Something abnormal and malformed.

  Something they wouldn’t recognise.

  They thought they knew evil.

  They had no idea.

  Twenty-Three

  It was late afternoon by the time they reached the hospital. It was perfunctory at best, Louise thought. She didn’t expect Caroline would be able to give them any more information than she had already, but it was the first task their new boss had assigned them, so it had to be done.

  She wondered how long this would last. Whether they would be sidelined as soon as the case became Major Crimes’ lock, stock and barrel. There would be many other detectives more than happy – and experienced – to take up the slack.

  They could go back to burglaries, domestics and assaults. That would suit her much better, she knew. Yet, there was a big part of her that needed to be there now.

  ‘I keep thinking about that poor guy burned to death,’ Shipley said, turning the steering wheel and entering the hospital car park. ‘If I could have got there sooner, or maybe . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘There was nothing you could do. It was too late. There was obviously some kind of accelerant used. We had no chance – and anyway, he was probably already dead. It’s not like we heard any screaming.’

  ‘So you don’t think it was just some animal in the woods then? That you were chasing someone through those trees? Maybe even Rhys Durham?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Louise said, a grin stretching across her face. Shipley snorted in response. ‘I don’t know what I heard in there. It all happened so fast. I was only covering all angles. Even before we had a possible age of the victim.’

  ‘I want to be in and out here,’ Shipley said, pulling the car to a stop and turning to Louise. ‘We know there won’t be anything else she can tell us and I want to be in the first briefing in the city.’

  ‘Won’t get any argument from me.’

  ‘Should be easy enough. Show her the mugshot of Rhys again and get the same answer. She can’t remember, it was dark.’

  ‘Still, doesn’t hurt to check she hasn’t had some sort of epiphany overnight.’

  Shipley shot her a look, wincing at the suggestion, but then nodded. ‘I know, I know. I just think she’s told us everything she can. If she’d seen more, she would have said by now.’

  ‘I agree with you, but we have our orders.’

  Those they did have. DCI Sisterson was quite firm about what he wanted to know before moving on to the next part of the investigation. Louise wasn’t quite sure what that next part would be, but she was just being pulled along now. In a daze, almost.

  Her entire life had become a daze.

  There was a part of her that hoped the past few days had been a dream. That the ghostly quality to her vision was a by-product of that. That nothing was real – just the feverish dreams of a sick woman. Memories colliding with her current life and creating a new reality.

  It would be so much easier that way.

  She hadn’t been prepared for any of this.

  Louise followed Shipley’s lead, getting out of the car and walking behind him as they reached the hospital entrance and took the lift up to the room where Caroline had spent the previous few days. When they reached the correct floor, they were buzzed in by a nurse after a few seconds’ wait. She checked the board to make sure Caroline was still in the same place and then ushered them through.

  Louise had seen more of these hospital corridors than she cared to over the previous few days. Not that the place was alien to her – as a police officer, this wasn’t exactly a foreign country. She still remembered the countless hours she’d spent in various hospitals in the county while she still in uniform. ‘You know, part of the reason I applied to become a detective as soon as I could was to avoid these hospitals,’ she said.

  ‘You spend far too much time in them as a uniform,’ Shipley agreed. ‘It’s a struggle to make much of a difference.’

  ‘Just putting sticky tape over cracks in the ceiling.’

  ‘I always thought of it like I was balancing plates on a stick, always watching for something about to fall. Always reacting, trying to keep the peace.’

  Louise nodded slowly. ‘Instead, you wanted to provide justice.’

  ‘Exactly. What about your family? Any of them coppers?’

  ‘No, not that I know of,’ Louise replied, her mood dropping even further. ‘I’m probably the first one.’

  ‘You never talk about your family. Why is that?’

  ‘Nothing to say,’ Louise replied, hoping he would get the hint soon enough. ‘I don’t have any left to talk about, so it seems pointless. I had a nice childhood, got up to the usual teenage hijinks, but that ended quickly. Now, I tend not to think about them more than I have to.’

  ‘Too difficult?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t exactly
remember them all that well. I was young when I moved in with my grandparents.’

  ‘After it happened.’

  Louise looked at Shipley for a second, wondering if he’d looked up her past since they last talked. Whether curiosity had finally got the better of him. Delving into a past she couldn’t remember. Didn’t want to remember.

  ‘Yeah, after it happened.’

  Shipley stared at her for a few seconds, before she averted her eyes from his.

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up,’ Shipley said finally, and sighed. ‘I don’t know when to shut up sometimes.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Louise replied, wanting to keep talking to him. Open up about her past and what little she remembered about it. Tell him things she’d never told another person before. She wanted nothing more than to walk away with him there and then. Take him somewhere else, quieter, more discreet, and just talk. For hours and hours, before doing what she’d wanted to since first meeting him.

  She knew he felt the same. Maybe had done for as long as she had.

  Instead, the moment passed by in the blink of an eye.

  The room was brighter than before, blinds open and sunlight streaming through the now bare windows. It also meant Louise could see how still the air was; nothing fluttered in the light trails, as it would in any other room. Caroline looked a little brighter than she had the previous night, although she was still lying horizontally. The bruising to her face had started to colour – angry blacks and purples. Yellow tinges to some parts. Her jawline was also more swollen than Louise remembered, but then she hadn’t really concentrated on what Caroline had looked like.