Rattle: A serial killer thriller that will hook you from the start

by Fiona Cummins

  For JJ, who believed

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  FRIDAY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  SATURDAY

  8

  9

  10

  11

  SUNDAY

  12

  MONDAY

  13

  14

  15

  16

  TUESDAY

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  WEDNESDAY

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  THURSDAY

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  FRIDAY

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  SATURDAY

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  SUNDAY

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  MONDAY

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  TUESDAY

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  100

  101

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  On still nights, when the curve of a winter moon is smudged in the flow of the River Quaggy, the dead clamour for him.

  He cocks his head and, through the whispering darkness, picks out the loosely formed sobs of the child.

  The boy’s mumbled distress pulls at him across the sweep of the city, and he fights the urge to leave at once. Even the passing of the years cannot quiet the shiver that swells through him as he contemplates a lifetime’s work.

  From every generation, a collection of its own. His father, his father’s father, and the men who walked before them.

  But now it is his time, his privilege and his duty.

  He savours the way the moon seeps through the slats in the blinds at his father’s house, and the wash of light on the bones.

  Ribbons and sheets of ossified matter. Stalagmites and bridges. Twisted plates and bony nubs. A plaque engraved with the letter C.

  The shadows in the house deepen. He stands alone in the hallway, and drinks in the glory of the skeleton in its glass case, mesmerized by its distortions, the incursion of bone into thoracic cavity, the calcified trimmings decorating his spine.

  A young boy trapped in a prison of stone.

  For years he has been seeking this rarest of specimens, searching amongst the dead and the living. Always looking, always hoping.

  And now, after all this time, he has found another one.

  FRIDAY

  1

  3.21 p.m.

  If Erdman Frith had chosen pizza instead of roast beef, his son might have been spared.

  If Jakey Frith had been a little more ordinary, the bogeyman who stalked the shadows of his life would have been nothing more than a childhood memory, to be dusted off and laughed at on family occasions.

  If Clara Foyle’s parents had been a little less self-absorbed and a little more focused on their five-year-old daughter, her disappearance might never have happened at all.

  As for Detective Sergeant Etta Fitzroy, if she hadn’t been haunted by thoughts of what might have been, of what she might have been, both children would have tumbled from the blaze of newspaper headlines into the darkest reaches of infamy.

  But none of them suspected anything of this on that wet November afternoon, just hours before their lives collided and cracked open to reveal the truth of them all.

  Especially not Erdman Frith, who was dithering in the chiller section; aisle three for pepperoni and a pension; aisle five and he might as well be as dead as the lump of sirloin he was lifting into his trolley.

  No, Erdman Frith wasn’t thinking about death at all. He was more concerned with what Lilith would say when she saw . . . dum . . . dum . . . dummmmm . . . Red Meat.

  Erdman pictured her, lips pursed tighter than a gnat’s arse.

  ‘What about the saturated fat content, Erdman?’

  ‘Doesn’t red meat contribute to bowel cancer, Erdman?’

  The gnat’s arse would pucker.

  ‘Or mad cow disease, Erdman. They claim they’ve eradicated it, but who’s to say they’re telling the truth?’

  Did she honestly expect him to answer that?

  Once upon a time he’d have teased the worry lines from her face, firing silly jokes at her until they were both laughing, and she would lean into him, fingers tangling his hair, breathing him in, her fears forgotten.

  ‘Why do they call it PMS, Lilith?’

  ‘I don’t know, Erdman, why do they call it PMS?’

  ‘Because mad cow disease is already taken.’

  Bada bing.

  But these days he couldn’t even raise a smile.

  These days, her eyes followed Jakey’s every move, her fears not forgotten, but amplified a thousandfold by a cruel enemy that was reducing their son – and now their marriage – into paper butterflies, fragile and easily broken.

  They told their boy, Lilith and Erdman, that he had a little problem with his bones. That was something of an understatement. Jakey’s ‘little problem’ would end up killing him.

  The medical team who delivered him had suspected it immediately, thanks to the telltale malformation of his big toes. Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. Thirty-five letters. A letter, give or take, for each year Jakey was expected to live. The average life expectancy. Any more would be a bonus.

  By chance, a nurse in the maternity unit had spent the previous six months working in an Australian hospital where a teenager had reported with strange bony growths and loss of movement. They’d injected painkilling drugs into her muscles, she’d explained, surgically removed the extra ribbons of bone, and all they had done was make it a million times worse. By the time she was diagnosed, she was practically a statue, barely able to move at all, except to speak. She could still speak. The nurse had told them that as if it was some kind of blessing.

  Six years on, even the specialists were shocked at the speed of the progression of his illness. That Jakey’s flare-ups were unusually severe for one so young. That his body was following the characteristic path of the disease, but already it had reached his arms much earlier than they’d anticipated. That a fall or bump could trigger a life-threatening episode.

  To enjoy their time with their son.<
br />
  Erdman’s fingers grazed the cool, damp packaging in his trolley. He should put it back. Lilith would kill him and he didn’t want to upset her, not really. He longed for the joyous freedom of their love, before it was tangled up in hospital appointments and medication. But he was weary of always doing what she told him to.

  Anyhow, he hadn’t got BSE or CJD, or whatever the hell it was, and he was pushing forty. If that metaphorical cowpat was heading his way it would have dumped on his life by now, which, let’s be honest, was already shitty enough. Even if the worst did happen he wouldn’t notice the transition from middle-aged man to vegetable. A potato had more fun than he did.

  Fuck it. Jakey loved roast dinners and he needed building up.

  Had Erdman known that he was sealing his son’s fate in that most glamorous of locations, Tesco on Lewisham Road, the whole family would have become vegetarian. But he didn’t, and so he headed home, smug in the knowledge that as he had done the shopping, it was his prerogative to decide what they had for tea.

  2

  3.23 p.m.

  ‘Ip dip doo. The cat’s got the flu, the monkey’s got the chicken pox so out go you.’

  Poppy Smith was pointing straight at her, giggling through the gap in the top row of her teeth, but Clara Foyle wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Not playing,’ said Clara, and turned her back on the small knot of children and their game of tag.

  She marched off in the direction of the gates at the far end of the infant playground, her hands buried deep into her pockets. It was almost empty, just a few stragglers waiting for the older boys to finish an impromptu game of football. Poppy called after her, making lobster claws with her fingers, and everybody laughed, but Clara pretended not to hear. Poppy’s mother was supposed to be looking after Clara, but she was gossiping with another mother, her back to the little girl, and didn’t notice her wandering off while Poppy was too busy whispering with the others to see.

  That was his first stroke of luck.

  Mrs Foyle called them scavengers, those playground mothers who gathered in impregnable clusters at the school gates every afternoon. To Clara, they looked like birds with their bobbing heads and pink lipstick and pretty clothes. She didn’t know that some birds liked to pick clean the bones of other people’s lives.

  Five minutes earlier she’d tugged on Poppy’s mother’s coat and whispered that she needed to go to the toilet. Mrs Smith hadn’t answered, but carried on talking, flapping her arms about like wings. Clara had squeezed her legs together and hopped about a bit, but now her tights were wet and chafed against her thighs when she walked.

  ‘No, Mummy, I don’t like Poppy any more,’ she had whined to her mother that morning when Mrs Foyle had explained who would be picking her up.

  ‘I’m sorry, my darling, but it can’t be helped. You’ll have a lovely time. Anyway, it’s Gina’s afternoon off, and I’ve got an appointment.’

  Clara had sulked and cried, but it had done no good. Her mother would not be swayed. To Mrs Foyle, perfectly coiffured hair was more essential than breathing.

  The wind flexed its muscles, skittering leaves across the playground. Clara was cold, and her head ached, and she wanted her mum. She patted her rucksack to make sure her purse was still there. The children were not supposed to take money into school, but Clara had slipped it into her bag after breakfast, when Gina wasn’t looking. She liked the sound the coins made when they clanked together.

  The chilly air pinched again. It made her think of her father, and the way he squeezed her cheeks between his fingers, leaving them reddened and sore.

  Clara shivered and fumbled with the zip of her coat. Mrs Lewis, her reception teacher, caught her eye through the staffroom window and waved. She lifted a shy hand in return, and shouldered her rucksack, which was almost as big as she was.

  The side gates stood open. Mr Crofton, the caretaker, would lock them on his late-afternoon rounds, but for now the heavy metal bars were fixed in place against the green railings, the path to freedom unchallenged.

  Between jackhammer thumps of her heartbeat, Clara slipped through the school gates and stood on the pavement outside. A shiver that had nothing to do with the wind tickled her insides. Quickly, she glanced back. Across the concrete expanse of the playground, Poppy was playing with Sasha, and Poppy’s mother was still talking and flapping. Three more steps, and Clara would be around the corner and out of sight.

  The little girl grinned nervously to herself.

  Across the road, a man in a black pinstripe jacket unfolded his body from the car that had been parked there every afternoon for two weeks. He also began to walk. His strides were longer than hers and he soon overtook Clara, but she was too intent on her own escape to notice him.

  A few streets on, a woman coming out of a newsagent thought it was strange to see the girl walking home by herself through the Friday afternoon dusk. She registered Clara’s regulation hat, looked for an adult and vaguely noted the man in the black pinstripe jacket. His eyes held hers, and in that frozen moment, she was reminded of her family’s elderly dog. He had died that summer after being eaten from the inside by maggots, an awful, prolonged death by fly strike. When she had found Buddy, still alive but in shock, his eyes had been empty. As empty as this man’s. A powerful sense of revulsion overcame her, and the plastic bottle of milk she was carrying, slick with condensation from the shop’s fridge, began to slide from her fingers. The man looked away, and the woman remembered to tighten her grip before it hit the pavement and burst.

  She forgot his face almost instantly.

  The man turned into a shop next to the one the woman had just left. It was empty, save for the shopkeeper, who was talking on the phone in Punjabi, the hard line of his jawbone holding the receiver against his shoulder while he scribbled figures on a scrap of paper. He was calculating how much it would cost to install CCTV, and didn’t look up at his customer.

  The jars drew Clara in behind him. She loved sweets, and here were rows and rows of brightly coloured gobstoppers and toffees in shiny wrappers and cola bottles and chocolate raisins and rainbow crystals of every flavour.

  One-two-three-four-five different colours, counted Clara in her head. Five. The same number as me.

  Her stomach growled. Lunch had been almost four hours ago, and she had wrapped her turkey pie in a napkin and dropped it in the bin while Mrs Goddard was shouting at Saffron Harvey for spilling peas all over the dining hall floor.

  The man wearing a black coat stood in front of her. Because Clara was so small she could not see his face, rather a five-pence-sized patch of what looked like rust intersecting the fine white stripes of his pocket. Even though she was young, she knew about rust because her father had been complaining about the gardener letting the tools go rusty, and had shown her the rake. It wasn’t rust, though. It was dried blood. And she didn’t know anything about blood. Not yet.

  ‘A quarter of Raspberry Ruffles, please,’ he said.

  When Clara left the shop a few moments later, clutching a paper bag of strawberry bon bons, the man was waiting outside, leaning against some railings.

  ‘Whaddya get?’ He was cheery, friendly, rifling through his own paper bag before selecting a sweet and removing its wrapper. He popped the chocolate into his mouth and grinned at the girl.

  ‘Mmmm . . . delicious . . . Do you want one?’

  He shook the bag at her, and she took a step backwards. Her rucksack bumped against the telegraph pole, making her stumble.

  ‘S’OK, I won’t bite.’

  The bag quivered again, and she leaned forward, suddenly entranced by the gleaming twists of pink. She reached out a hand to help herself, and the man’s bony fingers closed around her wrist.

  ‘Mummy asked me to walk you home. ’Cos you don’t like the dark. OK?’

  With a shy nod, she allowed herself to be guided down the street, and towards an estate with a row of crumbling garages. A late-afternoon mist was beginning to drift down, blurring the parked cars a
nd the pavement ahead. Dusk was due at 4.09 p.m., and it was touching twenty to.

  She sidled closer to the man, nervous of him, but more nervous still of the darkening day, the rapid leaching of colour from the sky. He turned to look at her, his eyes black clots.

  The street was narrow with squat blocks of flats on either side. The buildings had no front gardens, just a concrete strip dotted with overflowing wheelie bins. One or two of the upstairs flats were in darkness, but most of the downstairs ones had light blazing from their windows, and her eyes were drawn to the giant TV screens in more than one sitting room. Her tummy rumbled again, and she slid her left hand into her pocket, and plucked out a bon bon. The pink dust left a trace on her fingertip. She sucked hard on its sweetness, which, for a moment, carried away the bitter, anxious taste in her mouth.

  Clara lived in Pagoda Drive in Blackheath, an enclave of exclusive properties a world away from this estate with its graffitied slide standing on a patch of scrubland. She had her own bedroom, painted in pink, and a matching clothes rail stuffed with Disney Princess dresses. Sleeping Beauty was her favourite.

  She tried to tell the man that she had changed her mind, that she would try to find her own way home, but he didn’t hear her. He was striding along, still gripping her wrist in his hand. When she tried to wriggle it free, his nails dug into the pale strip of flesh protruding from the cuff of her coat.

  At the end of the empty street was a disused factory with several broken windows and a Do Not Enter sign. Parked in front was a dented grey Ford van with no windows.

  The man turned to the girl, and this time there were no friendly crinkles around his eyes. Still holding her wrist, he waved his keys and the van made a bleeping sound. He jerked his head towards it.

  ‘Get in.’ His voice was gruff.

  Clara didn’t want to get in his van, so she shook her head and tried to pull away, but her small frame was no match for him. As she opened her mouth to scream, he wedged his hand between her teeth. She bit down hard. He did not cry out, but the anger was there in the threat of his eyes, the bruising of his fingers into delicate skin.

  She was struggling and tried to kick her legs, like she’d been taught in swimming, but it was no good. The man put his other arm around her waist and hoisted her in. He climbed in behind her and slammed the doors.