by Luca Veste
Shipley held up his hands in front of him, palms facing her, but didn’t say anything. Louise began to say something more, before his phone cut her off.
‘Really? Where? . . . We’ll be right there.’
Shipley pocketed his phone and turned to Louise with a smile.
‘You won’t believe this.’
‘He’s some crank,’ DI Locke said, as Louise tuned back into the conversation that had been going on for the past few minutes now. She’d been an inactive participant in it; she’d left the talking to Shipley, hoping he’d recognise the task for what it was. A way of keeping the new bods out of the way, as the Major Crimes Unit began tightening its circle.
‘I just need you two to take his statement and send him on his way once we have proof he wasn’t involved.’
‘Sir, isn’t it just a waste of time though?’ Shipley said, almost pleading with the DI not to be shuffled off to interview some weird guy who had decided to confess to something he couldn’t possibly have done. His excitement had faded as quickly as it had arrived, once he’d been told of the circumstances behind the arrest.
‘It might be, but we can’t be too careful,’ DI Locke replied, checking his watch for the fifth time since they’d been standing there. ‘Look, just get it done and then we’ll see where we all are. I imagine his story will fall apart pretty quickly. We’ve got a major press conference scheduled in fifteen minutes. I need to check in with the rest of the team beforehand.’
Shipley waited for DI Locke to leave them before turning to Louise. ‘Bloody idiots. We bring this to them on a plate and now we’re getting sidelined.’
‘Not really,’ Louise said, wanting to reach out and touch Shipley’s arm. Soothe him. He didn’t know the truth of all this. How pointless it would all be. He was simply trying to become something he couldn’t, somewhere he didn’t really belong. ‘Look, we can get this done in an hour and be back before they know it.’
‘I know what these nutters are like. We’re going to be stuck listening to his crap for ages.’
‘He was holding a knife he says was the murder weapon,’ Louise said, reading the notes from the guy’s arrest. ‘It’s being tested now, but results won’t be back for a while.’
‘It’ll be his own blood, I reckon. Pointless, waste of time. We should be out there in the thick of it. Finding that Rhys Durham, talking to those people . . .’
Shipley trailed off, his anger and frustration getting the better of him, Louise thought.
If only he knew.
‘Come on, let’s get this over and done with,’ Louise said, reaching up and giving him a quick pat on the shoulder. ‘The quicker we get it sorted, the quicker we can get you back, super-detective.’
Shipley smiled in spite of himself, Louise accepting its warmth for a brief second before they set off.
They made their way down to the ground floor meeting the custody officers in the hallway which led to the interview rooms from the cells. Louise had sneaked her first look at the suspect at that point, unimpressed by what she’d seen.
After they’d led him into the room and sat down opposite him, she was even less impressed.
She busied herself with the recording machine as Shipley reeled off the usual spiel. His rights, his options. He had again confirmed he didn’t want or need a solicitor, which hadn’t surprised her. Attention-seekers usually didn’t want to be interrupted by someone trying to protect them. She wondered if they should have the same care, but didn’t think it was the time to bring that up.
He was young. That much was obvious just from looking at him. Far too young to be the man they’d been looking for. She expected Shipley had already made that observation, even if the man hadn’t given the custody sergeant any more than his name when they’d booked him in. He had scraggly hair, unkempt and messy, which she suspected was his usual look, rather than just the result of spending a few hours on a thin mattress in a cell.
His clothes had been taken from him, sent for the same tests that would be done on the knife. She found herself looking for marks on his body where he could possibly have harmed himself, drawing blood to stain the black shirt and jeans he’d been wearing.
His cheekbones protruded from his face, jarring and pointed. Stubble on his face in random patches, as if he were still a teenager. Looking into his eyes, Louise could see he was a little older than she’d first thought, but he couldn’t be more than twenty, twenty-one, she decided.
‘Please state your name for the recording,’ Shipley said, once Louise had given him the nod.
‘The Bone Keeper.’
Louise could hear the waver in the youngster’s voice, as if he’d prepared for this moment but, now it was here, he was unsure.
‘And your actual, given name?’
The lad hesitated, as if he hadn’t expected the follow-up question. ‘It’s . . . Steven. Steven Harris.’
‘Why do you call yourself the Bone Keeper?’
‘Because that’s who I am. That’s what I’ve been made into.’
Louise exchanged a look with Shipley. He rolled his eyes at her. ‘And you’re here to confess to a murder.’
‘Not just one,’ Steven said, more animated now. ‘Loads of them. I did them all. That’s who I am. I kill people.’
‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ Louise said calmly. She tried to maintain eye contact with Steven, but he suddenly couldn’t sit still. ‘Why did you go to town today and begin this confession?’
‘I couldn’t stop seeing them.’
‘Seeing who?’
‘The two people in the bedroom. The man and the woman. They kept talking to me, telling me I had to confess to what I’ve done. It was the longest night of my life.’
‘And who are these people, Steven?’
‘I’m the Bone Keeper,’ Steven said, his voice echoing off the walls around them. Shipley tensed up next to Louise, pushing his chair back a little. ‘That’s who I am now.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Louise replied, holding out her hands in front of her. ‘Explain to us why you think you’re the person who did this.’
Steven flashed a smile at her, his teeth revealed, stained and black in parts. ‘Because I did it. I did it all.’
‘This is a waste of time,’ Shipley whispered, loud enough for her to hear but hopefully not loud enough to be picked up by the recording software.
‘Tell us what you did exactly,’ Louise continued, ignoring Shipley’s remark.
‘I waited and did exactly what I was supposed to do,’ Steven said, his voice now measured, almost as if he were remembering it all as it happened. ‘I stood in the garden, opened the door and went in. They were in bed. I went upstairs and killed him first. Then her.’
Louise pulled the crime scene report out, began scanning it in the silence. Very few details of the murder had been released until that point, but even a preliminary report had told her enough about the scene. The memory of it was still fresh in her mind, of course; it had only been a few hours. The day just felt like it had lasted a week. ‘Tell me about the bedroom, what did you see?’
‘There was a double bed, flowers on the duvet cover. Built-in wardrobes opposite. They both had bedside tables beside them. His had an alarm clock on the top of it. Hers had a lamp, and her phone. The carpet was like a beige-type colour. When I stuck the knife in his neck, he didn’t make a sound. He pissed himself though. I could smell it.’
Shipley sat forward next to her as she listened, becoming increasingly wide-eyed. If he were making this up, he was doing a fine job of it. Louise pushed the file closer to Shipley so he could see the details. So far, Steven Harris hadn’t missed a single thing.
‘I wrote on the walls with their blood.’
And there was the confirmation. Shipley was sitting bolt upright now, a slow breath of air released from his mouth, as Louise tried to work out exactly what they were dealing with.
A copycat?
‘So, you’re the Bone Keeper,’ Shipley said, glancing at th
e file and then back at Steven. ‘Last night, you killed two people in their beds. Then what did you do?’
‘I watched them for a while,’ Steven replied, pulling one sleeve of his ill-fitting sweatshirt over his hand and stroking the side of his face with it. ‘I don’t know how long for. It was a long time. Too long. That’s probably where I went wrong. I went back to the woods, but it wasn’t quiet enough. I walked after that. Ended up in town. I need to make this all stop. I keep seeing their faces.’
‘You didn’t go anywhere other than the woods afterwards,’ Shipley said, sitting back in his chair now, as if he’d finally had enough. ‘Didn’t go to the south of the city and do anything there?’
Steven shook his head. ‘I killed those people. I’ve been there for others as well. The bodies you found in the woods near Speke, I knew they were there. I put them there.’
‘All of them?’ Louise asked, beginning to put the pieces together. ‘How old are you?’
‘The Bone Keeper is as old as the city . . .’
‘Yeah, yeah, but how old are you actually?’ Louise said, interrupting Steven before he could begin eulogising on the legend. ‘When were you born?’
‘I’m twenty-one,’ Steven replied, a little despondently, as if he were on clearer ground when talking about anything else other than his actual life. ‘But I feel much older.’
‘Are you saying you killed and buried a body in those woods when you were five or six years old?’
Steven shaped to answer, then closed his mouth and didn’t respond.
‘Tell me more about the people you killed in that house. What street was it on, what did you see?’
‘I’ve told you, I was there. I did it. And I’ll do it again. And again. Unless you put me in prison now. Test the knife. It still has their blood on it. That’s what I used.’
‘What did you do to the woman, Steven?’ Louise said, leaning forward closer to the younger man. ‘Tell me about that.’
Steven shifted a little in his seat. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘You read about the people we found in the woods, didn’t you? And you got things a little muddled up, thought you could do something you’ve been wanting to do for a long time and pin it on the same person. That’s the truth, isn’t it? You’ve got nothing to do with those bodies in the woods. Have you?’
‘Yes I have,’ Steven replied, shouting at Louise now. She gave him no reaction, knowing that was what he wanted. ‘I know all about it. We’re all one. Everything the Bone Keeper has done, I have done. That’s how it works.’
‘Why did you kill them, Steven?’ Shipley tried, as silence threatened to overpower them all.
Steven shrugged. ‘I just wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. Being the Bone Keeper helps me do that.’
Louise sat back, taking it in. The whole story. Shipley was already thinking Steven was a copycat, that was self-evident. It was difficult to think this was anything other than that.
Then she thought of the dark eyes that Nathan Coldfield’s mother had spoken about. The familiarity of it, the knowledge that she had seen that type of eyes before.
The photograph in a box on her bed at home.
The same eyes peering into the lens, expressing nothing, as if a light had gone out and could never be repaired.
Thirty-Seven
Caroline walked out of the hospital with a destination in mind. The only one that made sense to her.
Back to the woods.
Not the ones from which she had barely escaped a few days earlier. She knew nothing remained there now.
Further north in the city.
It had been surprisingly easy to sign herself out. Against the doctor’s wishes, of course, but it seemed like they were happy enough to let her go. An empty bed finally, which they could use for someone else they’d want to be rid of soon enough, she thought.
She had assumed the police would be told and have something to say about her leaving, but she was out of the door without any problem at all. Caroline wondered if she’d known this was the plan all along. That the reason she had used a different surname at work, and for the police, was because at some point she would need to disappear.
Caroline was her name, but Caroline Rickards didn’t really exist.
She had wanted to be someone else for a long time. Had decided to do it and leave her past behind her.
Maybe it was simply so she didn’t have to answer any questions about what had happened two decades earlier.
What she planned to atone for.
First, she had to do what she should have done a long time ago. Something she had allowed to fester.
If she was going back, she needed to see her one last time. In case she couldn’t escape again.
As she left the taxi and stepped onto the pavement, there was a moment when she felt like walking away from it all. Abandoning everything and never thinking about what she would leave behind. There was a part of her that wanted more than anything to simply be able to do that. To live her life without a care about her past.
About why she had to go into those woods.
She took a deep breath and opened the gate at the end of the path, feeling the sting of nostalgia as she did so. The house in front of her, so familiar and yet so far removed from her life now. As if the memory had become a stranger to her.
She remembered standing at the end of a different path. Back when it all began. The feeling of loss, in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t have known then. No one could.
Caroline walked, twinges of pain in her stomach from the skin that was continuing to knit together and heal.
Knocked on the door and waited for it to open and her past to envelop her.
Thirty-Eight
They waited outside as Steven Harris was led back to his cell. They had tried to get more information out of him, but it became pretty clear that they weren’t going to get much more viable information at that point. If talking in circles ever became an Olympic event, Louise would bet Steven could win a medal.
‘He killed that couple,’ Shipley said, shaking his head, then leaning back against the wall. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, sir, but I can’t see how he would know what he does about that scene unless he’d been there last night.’
‘Right,’ DI Locke replied, one hand on the back of his neck, trying to rub out a knot, Louise thought. She could tell he wasn’t going to forget their names in a hurry now. Shipley had got his wish.
‘He’s how old?’ DI Locke continued, his voice almost pleading for some scrap of good fortune to suddenly come his way. ‘Any chance he’s older than he says?’
‘He’s saying twenty-one and I think he’s telling the truth. If you’re close up to him, you can see how young he is.’
‘Plus, he’s in the system,’ Louise said, speaking for the first time since they’d left the interview room and found the DI waiting outside. ‘He isn’t lying. He’s too young.’
‘And he confessed to the couple?’
‘Yes. The whole thing,’ Shipley said, looking over at Louise and then back at DI Locke. ‘No doubt about it. But why would he confess to that, but not Hazel Durham on the same night?’
‘Because it wasn’t him?’ Louise replied, moving a little to stand next to Shipley. It was quiet now, away from the main offices and the rest of the cells in the corridor. Steven Harris was back in his cell for now, but she didn’t think he’d be there very long. ‘You tell me. Any other signs of sexual assault on Hazel Durham? No. Only this one.’
‘Meeting room, five minutes,’ DI Locke said, shaking his head again, his shoulders seeming to sag even further. ‘He’s a copycat, that’s all. But we’ll still have to waste our time on him.’
Shipley shook his head as DI Locke turned away from them and walked away. Once the DI was out of earshot, he spoke to Louise. ‘He’s too young to be involved in any of them, surely? Unless TBK has a son he used to take on his murder trips into the forest. We can take his mugshot to the hos
pital, see if Caroline recognises him, but I think it’s pretty clear. He’s a copycat. An opportunist. One with a mental health problem, but an opportunist all the same. I’ll put the report in on the interview once we’ve had him checked over again. I don’t want his confession being thrown out because he suddenly decides to accept he’s got problems.’
‘So you don’t think there’s any link at all?’
‘Do you?’ Shipley replied, almost laughing as he spoke. ‘He’s just taken the chance to do something he’s been thinking about for a long time. Turned out, he couldn’t deal with the reality of raping and killing someone. I’m just glad it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Now, we can get back to the real case.’
Louise didn’t say anything, allowing Shipley to carry on believing the two cases weren’t connected.
She didn’t agree with him. Something told her everything was connected. That there was no such thing as coincidence. There was instinct. Her instinct. Telling her that nothing made sense any more, unless all of this was related.
Shipley walked away and Louise followed him back up to the main office of the Major Crimes Unit, still thinking about the week’s events. How each murder, each discovery kept leading to the same places. The woods, where the stories about the Bone Keeper had begun long ago.
‘Forensic reports are back on the initial bodies,’ Shipley said, looking over his shoulder at her, before going back to reading from the scrawled notes on the large whiteboard at the end of the room. Everything was detailed there, each victim unearthed or found injured on the street. Her eyes found Caroline’s in the photograph taken in the hospital bed the woman had called home for three days now.
‘Eight bodies dug up now,’ Shipley continued, turning back to the board. ‘Most have even got names.’
‘Adam Porter’s mother was on television this morning,’ a DC said, sidling up alongside them. ‘Barely spoken to us, of course.’
‘I imagine she blames us for his death,’ Shipley replied, throwing a grin in the DC’s direction. ‘Still, if she’s complaining to someone else, it gives us a chance to find who killed her son without any interference.’