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

by Fiona Cummins

  SATURDAY

  8

  2.57 a.m.

  Detective Sergeant Etta Fitzroy could tell a lot about someone from the state of their front door.

  She’d seen ones with peeling paint and broken doorbells, or with splintered wood where they’d been kicked in, or with four different locks to keep out unwanted visitors, but this was her favourite kind: freshly painted with a gleaming silver knocker and a hanging basket with foliage still dripping from the recent downpour.

  Not tonight, though. Tonight she did not want to stand on this doorstep of privilege and wealth, and grind this family’s hope into dust.

  As she turned into Pagoda Drive, her suitcase dragging behind her, Fitzroy took a tissue from her pocket and wiped the shine from her face. Parents expected a calm, professional presence. They deserved it.

  The rain had stopped but the pavements were blackly slick, the smoke-scented air cold against her skin. The Foyles’ three-storey Georgian home was the grandest in the street. Fitzroy guessed it must be worth three million, at least. Lights blazed in its windows, even though it was almost 3 a.m.

  Walking up the garden path, Fitzroy drew in a damp, nervous breath. She never knew whether to expect angry, accusing voices or soft questions soaked in tears. Whatever the family’s reaction, she understood it and forgave it, knowing it was rooted in despair.

  Her hand hesitated above the knocker, but before she could bring it down against the varnished wood, a silver-haired woman of indeterminate age opened the door, buttoning up the jacket of her tailored suit. Her eyes were tired. For a moment or two, she stared at the detective. Fitzroy was used to it. With one eye a deep brown, the other a startling blue, it was something she had learned to ignore. The woman remembered herself.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You must be soaked through.’

  Fitzroy held out her right hand. ‘You must be Mrs Foyle.’

  The woman laughed, an unexpected sound, displaying two rows of perfect white teeth.

  ‘Goodness, no. Well, yes, actually, I am Mrs Foyle, but not the one you’ve come to see. I’m Elisabeth, the mother-in-law.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’

  Elisabeth Foyle’s mouth rearranged itself into a sombre line.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’

  She led Fitzroy through a vast hallway with a chequerboard floor and wide, mahogany staircase. Several opulently furnished rooms later they reached a closed door at the end of a corridor. Elisabeth knocked softly, but didn’t wait for an answer. She held open the door and stood back to allow Fitzroy to pass.

  The room was huge with floor-to-ceiling windows that peered out onto what Fitzroy assumed were well-maintained lawns. A brick fireplace dominated the far wall and on a pale green sofa in the corner sat a woman. Her glossy hair was caught up in a ponytail and it gave her an air of youthfulness, but Fitzroy noticed the deep grooves around her mouth and eyes, even from several feet away. The woman’s shoulders were rounded, as if she’d already conceded defeat. Two uniforms were talking quietly in the corner.

  This house would not sleep tonight.

  ‘Can I get anyone a drink?’ trilled Elisabeth, her mask slipping. It wasn’t the first time Fitzroy had met a woman like Mrs Foyle Snr. Excitement at discovering one’s family at the centre of a nationwide drama was more common than most people realized.

  ‘Tea, thank you,’ she said.

  Fitzroy glanced around the room, noticed a crutch leaning by the fireplace. Flames reflected in its alloy coating like dozens of tiny fireworks. Family photographs – those awkward, posed shots – lined the mantelpiece.

  ‘My husband thinks she’s coming home.’

  Amy Foyle’s voice had a clipped, bitter edge, as if the only way to contain her anguish was to parcel it up so tightly that no emotion could leak out. In Fitzroy’s experience, women as brittle as this were usually the first to break.

  Without waiting for an invitation, sat down on the sofa beside her.

  ‘And what do you think, Mrs Foyle?’

  ‘You’re the expert, Detective. Shouldn’t you be telling me?’ she said, her voice climbing in distress.

  Fitzroy decided that no, she should not. She should not tell this worn-down wisp of a woman how she had spent twenty minutes hanging on the phone while the coroner’s liaison officer checked to make sure Clara’s body hadn’t already been found; that a police search adviser was, at this very moment, arranging for the search to resume at first light; that as well as sightings of Clara, they would be scanning the landscape for scraps of her coat or her school bag. Her Peppa Pig underwear.

  That they were still trying to eliminate Miles Foyle from their inquiries.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s so late,’ she said instead. ‘There’s lots of calls coming in, and I was waiting for an update before I came to see you.’

  Mrs Foyle sat up very straight. ‘You have news?’

  Fitzroy cursed herself for her clumsy phrasing, and blamed the lateness of the hour. She clasped the woman’s hand in her own. Her French manicure was chipped around the edges. That imperfection in Mrs Foyle’s polished veneer tugged more powerfully at Fitzroy than any tears.

  ‘Not at the moment. I’m sorry.’

  Mrs Foyle bit her lip, and stared at the television screen. Clara was running away from her older sister Eleanor, who was chasing her with a hose. Although the volume was turned down, Fitzroy could just make out her shrieks of terrified pleasure.

  ‘My husband filmed that in the summer.’ Her voice was flat. ‘He’s upstairs, trying to settle Eleanor now. She’s just had the most horrific nightmare.’

  ‘Mrs Foyle, have you had a chance to think of anything else that might be helpful to this investigation? Anything at all? Any seemingly irrelevant detail about your daughter? Did she mention she was upset by anything? Had she ever spoken about being approached by a stranger?’

  ‘I’ve already told your colleagues everything.’

  ‘Of course.’ Fitzroy was gentle. ‘But sometimes we can suddenly remember something, and even though it doesn’t seem that important, it might be the piece of information that helps us to find Clara.’

  A single tear spilled down Mrs Foyle’s cheek. Fitzroy watched it fall from her chin.

  ‘I know this is difficult. I know you’ve answered hundreds of questions about your daughter. I know you’re frightened and worn down, and that it feels intrusive to have police in your house, checking your computers, touching Clara’s things. But I’ve been asked to come here tonight because I have some experience in cases like this, and I might be able to help you.’

  Fitzroy angled her body so that their knees were almost touching.

  ‘Is Clara a healthy, happy child, Mrs Foyle?’

  Mrs Foyle was stopped from answering by the arrival of Elisabeth, who kept up a monologue as she poured milk and handed around biscuits.

  ‘I wish she wouldn’t do that,’ she said, as soon as her mother-in-law had gone.

  ‘Do what?’ Fitzroy kept her voice even.

  ‘Act like nothing has happened. She keeps talking about the party we’ll have when Clara comes home, when everyone knows that she’s probably—’

  She broke off, unable to articulate what most of the armchair commentators had already concluded. And then, as Fitzroy had known she would, Mrs Foyle fell apart.

  She didn’t howl or scream or rail against the unfairness of it. She simply sat in her chair and cried, until her nose was blocked and her cheeks were blotchy, and she was unable to speak in coherent sentences.

  Fitzroy felt an answering pulse of sympathy. In Mrs Foyle’s fractured sobs, she could hear the echoes of all the families of the missing and the dead.

  Grace Rodríguez’s mother, Conchita, had been standing at the sink.

  Fitzroy had watched her, busy amongst the suds, cleaning the endless teacups and plates she hadn’t eaten or drunk from.

  Gifting her a final few seconds of hope.

  Sensing a presence, Conch
ita had turned and seen the detective framed in the kitchen door. The saucer she was wiping had slipped from her fingers, and Fitzroy could still hear the sound it made as it struck the flagged flooring and cracked in half.

  Conchita Rodríguez had not needed Fitzroy to speak. One glimpse of her face had told her everything.

  Her knees had buckled, collapsing her onto cold, hard stone. Fitzroy had sunk to the floor and wept with her.

  A year on, while David slept, Fitzroy blinked into the darkness, raking over the evidence, looking for something she might have missed. She would bring a daughter home to her mother, just like she had promised.

  But for now, Amy Foyle needed her.

  Fitzroy put an arm around the younger woman’s shoulder. Through expensive silk, she felt the jut of her collarbone, the convulsions of shock and disbelief.

  It was a cruel reminder of the daily horrors she witnessed in her police work. Could she bear to bring another child into this bleak landscape of the modern world, to expose herself again to the risk of loss?

  Yes, thought Fitzroy. Oh, yes.

  Mrs Foyle took a gulp from her glass and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Fitzroy smelled the alcohol fumes on her breath.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said.

  ‘No need to apologize.’

  Amy plucked at her skirt with trembling fingers. ‘Detective, you asked me if Clara is happy. I’m not so sure she is.’

  Fitzroy sat back, opened up her chest, inviting confidences, fixing all her attention on the young mother next to her. This was important, but she would not speak. She wanted Mrs Foyle to fill the space between them with all the reasons why Clara was unhappy.

  Fresh tears spilled onto Amy’s cheeks. She didn’t bother to wipe them away.

  ‘It’s my fault, you see. I wanted to have my hair coloured, so I asked a friend to pick her up, but Clara didn’t want to go, and I made her.’ She covered her face with her hands and started to weep again. ‘I made her.’

  ‘Why didn’t Clara want to go?’

  ‘Poppy Smith, the girls in her class, they—’

  Fitzroy waited.

  ‘They behave with the natural cruelty of children.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  Amy picked at the ragged edges of her nail polish, the skin around her cuticles. ‘Clara has cleft hands, Detective Fitzroy. Her fingers are missing on both of her hands.’

  Ting.

  In cases like this, Fitzroy liked to listen out for the music in her mind, and when she heard it, she grasped for it. Some called it gut instinct, a copper’s nose, but for Fitzroy, it all happened up in her head, the quiet song of cerebral process. Clara’s disability explained why she had left the school grounds on her own, how her vulnerability may have made her an easier target than most.

  Her brief upsurge of hope crashed.

  It wasn’t enough.

  ‘So she hasn’t had surgery on them?’

  Mrs Foyle dropped her head. ‘Clara is quite unusual, Detective. Most children have surgery to correct it when they’re eighteen months or so, and sometimes much younger, but I didn’t want her to. I hated the idea of her going through any kind of pain; I thought she’d learn to live with it. My husband didn’t agree, especially when the doctors advised us that surgery would become more difficult as she gets older. We argued about it horribly. They were reluctant to operate without my consent, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of them cutting into her hands.’ She gave a heavy sigh. ‘Her case is fairly extreme. The three middle fingers of both hands are missing.’

  Mrs Foyle leaned her head back against the sofa and shut her eyes. For a long while they sat like that, the room silent apart from the occasional crack of a shifting log. At first, it seemed as though she had fallen asleep, but then Mrs Foyle began to cry again, quietly, brokenly. Struggling to shape the words through her distress, she groped for Fitzroy’s arm. The need in her face was terrible.

  ‘Is my baby still alive?’

  Several hours had passed since Clara had disappeared, and Fitzroy had already lied to Amy Foyle once, when she had arrived at the house and been asked if there was news.

  There was news, but not of the kind she was prepared to share. The investigating team had been swamped with supposed sightings of the little girl. Always a risk with a Child Rescue Alert, they were buckling under the weight of information, struggling to sift the critical from the crap.

  Fitzroy was not prepared to lie again.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said, refusing to make a promise as empty as the small, red wellington boots she had noticed by the front door. ‘But I can tell you that many of the children who go missing are reunited with their families.’

  ‘What about the ones stolen by strangers?’ Amy began to sob again, an edge of hysteria crawling in.

  ‘I know it’s hard, Mrs Foyle, but I can promise you we’re doing everything we can.’

  ‘You must find her. You must!’ Her voice was panicky.

  Fitzroy tried to ignore the snapshot of Grace Rodríguez, which floated, uninvited, to the surface.

  She chose her next words with care. ‘Do you have any idea who this man might be?’

  But Mrs Foyle didn’t. With no living male relatives except Miles, the police had already moved on to the fathers and husbands of Clara’s friends and her own, the male teachers at the school, even the workman who had mended the guttering last month.

  Every registered sex offender in the area was being traced too, although Fitzroy didn’t tell Amy Foyle that.

  ‘So it was just a normal school day for your daughter?’

  ‘Apart from being collected by Mrs Smith, yes.’

  Fitzroy knuckled her eyes. Although she was tired, there was no point in going home. David, who’d shrugged, unsurprised, when the call came through, had chosen to stay on at the hotel, to celebrate his birthday alone, and she wouldn’t sleep now.

  A silence opened up between them. Etta wondered if David was in bed, or still at the bar, chatting to the night staff. The first time he’d taken her there, she’d been touched by the flowers he’d arranged for the room, his lack of expectation of something in return. She’d liked that about him. Things were different now she had expectations of her own.

  Much later, when the shifting shadows had taken on their morning shape and there was nothing left to say, Amy called out for her mother-in-law, and Elisabeth materialized with Fitzroy’s coat. As the door shut behind them, Amy took another large swallow of her drink.

  ‘I’m sorry about that, Mrs, er, Detective . . .’ whispered Elisabeth. ‘She’s rather overwrought at the moment.’

  ‘Understandable.’

  ‘She’s got MS, you know. Doesn’t mix well with pills and alcohol.’

  Fitzroy pressed her lips together and forced them into a tight smile. ‘Thank you for the tea.’

  She picked up her suitcase, and opened the door on a new day.

  Outside, the air was golden, that rare quality of light that heralds an early winter dawn. Its luminosity reminded her of a child’s skin, the curve of a cheekbone in the muted haze of a bedside lamp, the dragging in–out breath of untroubled sleep.

  But Fitzroy could not think of light without dark. Seared into her consciousness was the ambush of that youthful bloom by the pallor of death, and she wondered if its creeping fingers were already stroking Clara’s face.

  9

  7.38 a.m.

  He unlocks the front door, listens for the familiar creak of her voice.

  ‘Is that you, love?’

  She is awake then, and his heart soars.

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ he calls.

  The room is stale with sleep and the yeasty smell of her body. He breathes in her scent, leans over to brush damp hair from her face. Pain twists her features. After all these years, he does not need to ask. Already he recognizes that she will not move from her bed today, and he rummages in the drawer for her painkillers, presses a glass of water to her lips.

  ‘You mu
st be tired,’ she says.

  He smiles at her, shakes his head. What she means is that she’s tired, even though she has not moved from this bed for years. He lifts the bedpan. There is a faint smattering of talc on the rim. It eases the dragging of metal across delicate skin.

  ‘Tea,’ he says. ‘And toast.’

  When he comes back with the tray, she has managed to prop herself up against the pillows. They obscure the S-shaped curve of her spine, but the weakness in her back thrusts her face forward, forces her shoulders to hunch.

  He has cut the toast into four squares and hands her one. The curtains are shut, the room gloomy, but she does not like the world looking in until she is washed and changed.

  When she has finished eating, he takes the tray into the kitchen, runs warm water into a basin. Sleep is pushing against him and his eyes feel heavy, but still he does not rest. Instead he turns on the radio, drinks down the morning’s news like a man who has been in the desert.

  He carries the basin back along the hall, careful not to spill its contents on the dark brown swirls of the carpet. Her eyes are closed again, but she opens them at the sound of the enamel knocking against the seat of the wooden chair. Outside, the first tendrils of a purpling dawn are streaking the sky.

  He smiles at her again, a tender smile, and brings the sponge to her face, wiping the rheum from her eyes, the dried saliva on her chin that has spilled from her mouth during sleep. Her skin is lined now, but he does not see it. Even though her body is bowed, her eyes have not changed at all.

  Her nightdress is too big, but still it snags as he eases it over the misshapen mound of her back. He washes beneath her arms, between her legs, checks her skin for pressure sores. When he is satisfied, he places a clean nightdress over her head, and opens the curtains. The bus stop is right in front of the bedroom window, and he watches the seats fill up with passengers.

  ‘Television, radio or book?’ he says.

  She does not ask about his plans for the day. He does not mind. He understands the radius of her world has shrunk to this house, this room.

  Only when her eyes are fixed on the television does he speak again.