by S J Bolton
‘There hasn’t been one.’
I waited while Joesbury flicked through the stack of photographs, pulled one out and turned it to face me. It showed a figure lying on a hospital bed, beneath a transparent tent, grotesquely swollen and so completely enveloped in dressings it resembled an Egyptian mummy. Both arms were stretched out from her body at right angles. A spaghetti-like mass of wires and tubes seemed to be growing out of her.
‘She’s still alive?’ I said, without the faintest idea why that should be so much worse, only knowing that it was.
‘This was taken twenty-four hours after she was admitted,’ said Joesbury. ‘Nobody really expected her to survive. Three weeks on, she’s managed to fight off infection, avoid going into shock and hasn’t suffered respiratory collapse. She may even recover. How much she’ll be able to tell us though is a moot point. Her tongue was burned away.’
Not a lot you can say to that. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Read the file,’ he replied. ‘Think about it. Dana wants you to call her. She’ll be trying to talk you out of it.’
I looked up. ‘Will you be going?’ I asked. ‘To Cambridge, I mean.’
Turquoise eyes narrowed. ‘Not necessary at this stage,’ he said. ‘I’ll be popping in and out to keep an eye on you, but 90 per cent of the fieldwork will be down to you.’
It was how SO10 worked. Junior officers were sent into situations first, often for a year or more, to gather intelligence and report back. As a clearer picture emerged, the heavier guns got deployed.
‘Can you see me as an eccentric don?’ Joesbury was saying. ‘Bow tie and tweeds? Long flowing gown? Untidy wig?’
With his muscular frame and scarred face, Joesbury always reminded me of a half-tamed thug. He was smiling at me again. It was always the smile that was hardest to deal with. Better by far just not to look at it. Better to leave now. Business was done. On the table, the file had been closed, its contents hidden from view. The orange wig was a few inches away from me.
‘It’s very soft,’ said Joesbury. ‘Want to stroke it?’
I raised my eyes. ‘What are we talking about exactly?’
His grin got even wider. ‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he said.
Silence. Still staring at each other across the table. I really had to go.
‘Want to get some dinner?’ he asked me.
So now it could be a date.
‘Actually, I have plans.’ I looked at my watch. ‘I should get going.’
Joesbury leaned back on his chair, his grin gone. His right hand reached up and he began to rub the scar at his temple. ‘Would the plans include a trip across town to Camden, by any chance?’
When I’d first met Joesbury, Camden had been where I’d gone most Friday evenings. To meet men. I hadn’t been near the place since a certain night last October. And my plans for the evening were a Chinese takeaway and an early night with a Lee Child paperback.
‘Something like that.’ I got to my feet. ‘I’ll get back to you over the weekend.’
He watched me pick up my bag and slip the file into it. I let my eyes fall to the right side of his chest, to the exact spot that, last time I’d seen him, had been soaked in blood.
‘I’m glad you’re OK,’ I said. And left.
HALF AN HOUR later I was home, eating Singapore noodles from the takeaway carton and opening the Bryony Carter case file. The photographs I pushed firmly to one side, except the only one taken of Bryony before the fire. It showed an exceptionally pretty girl with strawberry blonde hair, pale skin and bright blue eyes.
First I read the CID report. It was dated three days after the incident and seemed thorough enough. At 9.45 p.m., just as coffee was being served in the great hall of St John’s College, a figure covered in flames had staggered in. A quick-thinking man called Scott Thornton, whom the report described as a senior member of the college, had grabbed the closest fire extinguisher. When it was empty, and Bryony was lying on the floor, he’d ordered the other guests to bring water. From jugs, bottles, ice buckets, even glasses, he’d encouraged everyone in the room to tip water over poor, prostrate Bryony while he summoned an ambulance on his mobile. Scott Thornton had almost certainly saved Bryony’s life. Whether she’d thank him for it was another matter.
After the seriously injured girl had been taken away, uniformed police had conducted a thorough search of the college and its grounds. A petrol can had been found in a shadowed area of a space called Second Court and the ground around it was soaked in petrol. Bryony’s fingerprints, and hers alone, were on the can.
Her room a few hundred yards away was neat and orderly. She’d done her laundry that day and returned several books to the library. A typewritten note to her mother was on her bedside table. The receipt for the petrol can was found amongst various other receipts in the pencil tray of her desk drawer. On her bedroom floor were the pipe, mesh screen and funnel bowl she’d used to inhale the fumes of a powerful hallucinogenic drug.
Her room-mate, a girl called Talaith Robinson, had said in interview that Bryony had been unhappy and unsettled for a while, but that she really hadn’t anticipated her taking such a drastic step. The report had been prepared by a detective sergeant and signed off by his senior officer, a DI John Castell.
It’s become customary, I learned as I read, to conduct an in-depth investigation into the state of mind of suicide victims. As Bryony’s recovery was still very much in doubt, CID had requested a psychological report be prepared in her case too. Dr Oliver, as the psychiatrist with overall responsibility for Bryony’s mental health, had produced it.
Dr Oliver’s summary note at the front told me that Bryony Carter was a young woman who felt a strong need to be loved and taken care of, who wanted to surrender responsibility for her own life to another, kinder and stronger partner – a soulmate who would take care of her. The report talked about a strained relationship with both parents. The father, who had a time-consuming job, was rarely around and the mother never seemed particularly interested in Bryony, the youngest of her four children. Bryony had grown up believing herself to be the family nuisance.
The insecure, unhappy child had grown into a passive woman, aching for love and attention. Although bright and pretty, Bryony was clingy and vulnerable in relationships, even friendships. At Cambridge, she suffered from insomnia and bad dreams. Towards the end of term, she’d been missing most of her classes. She’d been prescribed the antidepressant citalopram by her GP, a Dr Bell.
The summary was followed by several pages of notes made during individual counselling sessions. I got up, took the empty carton to the sink and poured myself another glass of wine.
I skimmed through the medical report on Bryony’s condition, mainly because most of the technical detail meant nothing to me. A brief reference to the drug that had been found in her system caught my eye. Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. I’d never heard of it but a quick Google search told me it was just about the most powerful psychedelic drug known to mankind. A class-A drug in the UK, the substance is normally inhaled and produces short but very intense experiences in which perceptions of reality can significantly alter. Users reported seeing fairies, elves, angels, even God.
The more I read, the more I couldn’t help a sense of irritation. Bryony had a family, a good education, an opportunity to study at one of the world’s most highly regarded universities. She had an awful lot more than me and I’d never been tempted to ruin a perfectly good Christmas party by getting high and setting fire to myself.
On the other hand, if Dr Oliver was right, this vulnerable, needy girl had fallen victim to a group of people who got their kicks from the emotional damage and ultimate destruction of others. Who believed they were clever enough to cause pain without even getting their hands dirty.
EVI WOKE WITH a start, convinced someone was tapping on her bedroom window. She lay still for several seconds. Nothing. Just a dream, one of the bad ones, the ones that started with a strange, misshapen creature banging on th
e window. She had to get back to sleep before she started thinking, because otherwise she’d be awake all night. She turned over in bed, just as the tapping noise began again. She raised her head from the pillow to listen properly.
Fully awake now, she knew it wasn’t coming from the window. The cedar tree didn’t even reach this side of the house. It was coming from right above her head. From the room upstairs. She reached out, found the light and sat up.
Tap, tap, tap. There was a phone beside her bed. The police, or university security, could be here in minutes. If she told them she thought someone was upstairs they wouldn’t waste time. On the other hand, she’d feel a proper fool if she called out several hulking men in uniform to investigate a squirrel infestation.
She sat still in the bed, unable to make up her mind.
Did squirrels make that insistent, shrill tapping noise? The beak of a trapped bird might. The sound stopped. A second later it started again. Tap, tap, tap for a few more seconds and then silence. Only two choices really. Call help and risk looking ridiculous or investigate herself. Evi got up, tucked her stick under her arm and left the room.
The house had been fitted with a stairlift but Evi hated using anything that made her feel both elderly and disabled, so she slept downstairs, using a guest bedroom and bathroom. She sat now on the chair and pressed the button that would take her to the top. When the mechanism halted, there was nothing but silence in the house. Evi realized she hadn’t brought a phone with her. If anything happened, she’d be trapped on the upper floor with no means of calling help.
The room directly above where she slept was at the end of the corridor. She could hear nothing. The door was closed. She pushed it open and switched on the light.
The room was empty. No en suite bathroom. Curtains drawn back. Nothing to hide behind. No sign of anything out of the ordinary, except stray ash and twigs around the fireplace. Knowing that a trapped bird or rodent could probably explain the sound she’d heard, Evi felt a small measure of relief. It would be a nuisance, getting the chimney swept, but hardly a big deal. She was halfway across the room when the tapping began again.
This close, there was no mistaking exactly where it was coming from. Not the chimney after all, but one of the beautiful fitted oak wardrobes to either side of the fireplace. The one to her right. Evi stepped closer. The sound was tiny, tinny. There was nothing to be afraid of, surely, from something that sounded so small?
Evi put her hand on the wardrobe door handle, knowing she was very afraid. Knowing also she didn’t have a choice. She pulled open the door.
For a second she didn’t see it. She’d been looking directly ahead, half flinching, expecting something to fly out at her. Then she looked down and saw the bone man.
BRYONY’S FIRST SESSION with the counsellor had been in the third week of term. Even that early in the academic year, she’d been struggling to cope, finding the rough and tumble of student life, the banter, the frequent practical jokes, difficult to deal with.
I finished my second glass of wine and wasn’t sure I could stay awake much longer. Then I got to the notes of Bryony’s third session with her counsellor and suddenly sleep seemed a very long way away.
During this session, Bryony had brought up her fear that someone was coming into her room at night and touching her while she was asleep. There were no transcripts of the sessions, so I couldn’t judge exactly how the counsellor had reacted to Bryony’s suspicions, but I had a sense, from her notes, that she wasn’t taking the girl too seriously.
On her fourth and fifth meetings with her counsellor, Bryony referred again to her fears, her belief that she wasn’t quite safe in her room. She’d suffered increasingly from sleeplessness and bad dreams, needing to catch up on her rest during the day. As she’d become more and more tired, her coursework had suffered. She’d gone on a downward spiral of exhaustion and anxiety.
In her notes, the counsellor used the word delusion more than once.
On her sixth session, Bryony had said she thought her night-time intruder had progressed beyond touching her, possibly even to having full-blown sex with her. She’d talked about being able to smell a man’s sweat, and his aftershave, on her bedclothes. She’d found scratch marks on her body, even the trace of a small bite on one shoulder. All of which, the therapist had noted, could easily have been self-inflicted.
I got to the end of the file and sat back to think. According to Joesbury, I was going to Cambridge to keep a lookout for any unhealthy subculture that might be unduly influencing young people. It was to be a routine, low-key operation, not really expected to unearth anything. He hadn’t actually said it was being done to placate the head of SO10 but I was pretty certain that’s what he thought. Now, it seemed there might be more to it.
NO, NOT A bone man, it couldn’t be a bone man. Bone men were a silly, rural custom, in a place she’d left behind, hundreds of miles from here. This was nothing more than a child’s toy. A six-inch-high skeleton with a wind-up mechanism like clockwork. Just a simple, common toy, the sort that was popular around Halloween. Wind the key and let the toy go. It would walk across a hard surface until the mechanism ran out or it hit an obstacle.
Hardly knowing whether she was still frightened or not, Evi picked it up. A small piece of Blu-tack was stuck to one half of the key. It looked as though the toy had been wound up tight, then stuck to the inside of the wardrobe with the Blu-tack. When the mechanical force of the key trying to turn had become too great, the toy had broken free of its sticky blue handcuffs.
There had been a child here today, it was the only explanation. The cleaner, who had come on the wrong day, had brought a child. Maybe a child too sick for school and with no one else to take care of him. He’d played in the house, left a toy upstairs, put the fir cones along the path, left a heap of them on the kitchen table.
Evi looked through the rest of the upstairs rooms, found nothing, and let the lift take her back down. She left the skeleton toy on the hall table and made her way into the kitchen, knowing that even she didn’t believe her sick-child theory and wondering what on earth she was going to do about it.
If she’d switched on the light straight away, she almost certainly wouldn’t have seen the black-clad figure perched on one of the lower branches of the cedar tree, staring in through the kitchen’s uncurtained windows. Even with the kitchen in darkness, she might not have noticed the crouching form, so still it was almost melting into the shadows. She might never have known it was there, had it not been for the mask.
The mask was black too but with fluorescent paint picking out the contours of the human skull. There was just enough light for Evi to be absolutely sure that a bone man was less than two yards from her kitchen window, watching her.
West Wales, twenty-three years earlier
‘HUMPTY DUMPTY SAT on a wall.’
The boy flopped down the stairs, scratching his head, his armpit, his arse, in the usual way of teenage boys fresh out of bed.
‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.’
His overlong jeans slapped on the polished wooden boards of the downstairs hall. The tall old clock by the front door told him it was somewhere between half past eleven and twenty to twelve in the morning. It couldn’t be relied upon any more accurately than that. He vaguely remembered Mum saying something about going on to campus for a meeting; Dad would be in his study. His three-year-old sister was somewhere close, if the warbling was anything to go by. She’d want him to play fairies again. The latest craze. To dance round the garden and build fairy dens under trees.
‘Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall.’
She hadn’t quite got it yet.
The boy stopped outside Dad’s study door and sniffed the air. Stale coffee? Normal. Well-done toast? Normal. The loo his sister had forgotten to flush? Normal. Gunpowder? No, not normal.
A year ago, when he was twelve, his father had started taking him out shooting and his mother always complained that they brought the harsh cordite smell indoors with
them. Not cordite, Dad had corrected her, cordite hasn’t been used since the Second World War. Gunpowder is what we smell of.
But Dad hadn’t used his guns for six months now. ‘I don’t want your father taking you shooting until he feels better,’ Mum had said. And so the guns were locked away in a secure cabinet in the study and the boy had no idea where the key was kept. ‘Guns and teenage boys don’t mix,’ his mother reminded him regularly.
‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men.’
His sister was in the study. The boy pushed open the door, stepped inside and saw what was left of his father.
Saturday 12 January (ten days earlier)
‘IT’S TWO O’CLOCK in the morning, Flint.’
‘Were you busy?’
There was the sound of someone stifling a yawn. ‘Just dreaming about you as usual,’ Joesbury said.
I ignored that. ‘Why didn’t you tell me she’d been raped?’ I asked.
‘No evidence to suggest she had been. You won’t be investigating a rape, Flint, or any aspect of Bryony Carter’s attempted suicide. Your job will be …’
‘… to experience Cambridge student life for myself. Find out if there’s any substance to Dr Oliver’s subculture bollocks theory. Will I actually be studying something?’
‘Psychology,’ Joesbury replied. ‘Dr Oliver’s subject. That way we make it as easy as possible for the two of you to spend time together.’
‘How long will I be expected to be there?’
‘If you’ve absolutely nothing to report back on after three months, we’ll pull you out.’
I could hear bedsprings creaking and Joesbury making a very soft grunt in the back of his throat as, presumably, he pushed himself upright on the bed. And suddenly there were pictures in my head I could do without. ‘Who do I report to?’ I asked.
‘Me. Mainly by email. You won’t be expected to do any academic work, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know. So when your room-mate is hammering out her essays, you can write me nice long reports.’