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

by Fiona Cummins

  A lamp is lit, its arc of muted light pooling on the floor, the corners of the room resolute pockets of black. He stands, all shadow and bone, framed in the doorway, listens as the clock ticks the silence away.

  As his eyes grow accustomed to the half-darkness, he picks out some old tools on the floor, an ancient drill, a discarded chisel. A decaying wooden and glass cabinet.

  The heels of his black shiny shoes do not make a sound as he crosses the room to a long table bearing a small casket with wooden sides and prises open the lid.

  He is preparing himself for the arrival of the boy.

  Inside, he pictures a collection of human bones, as pale and clean as moonlight.

  He talks himself through the process.

  First, he will begin in the cutting room. He will peel back the boy’s skin, remove the organs, among them the brain and the tongue, and leave the remains to dry in the flat, still air of his father’s house. Then the beetles will finish the job, consuming the already decomposing flesh. They do not enjoy fresh meat.

  Every few hours, he will check the body, making sure his colony does not eat through the connective tissues, that the skeleton still hangs together.

  Then he will carry him up here, to this casket. Ready for the First Hanging, the first time he will bear witness to the glories of his labour.

  He closes his eyes, imagines touching the bones he is yet to possess. The most malformed skeleton he is ever likely to see. Securing this for the collection will immortalize him in family history. He thinks of the glass case downstairs. Of his father’s whispers in that cool room with its altar and crosses all those Christmases ago. ‘Hurry,’ Marshall had said, as they swaddled the small boy’s body in a sheet and carried him away through the quiet, empty corridors. ‘Before somebody sees us.’

  But this will eclipse even that early prize.

  ‘The femur,’ he will murmur, thin fingers trembling across the length of the thigh bone, and downwards. ‘The tibia, an elegant example.’

  His hands will move upwards, past the torso and neck until his fingers find the dip of the cheek, exploring the hollow, following the curve of the bone. ‘An interesting rendition of the zygomatic arch.’

  He wonders what it will feel like to trail his hand across the slats of his ribcage, to stroke the kinks and perversions in osseous matter.

  Unsheathed, the skeleton will be the most perfect specimen he has ever seen.

  A stray beetle scuttles across the empty casket, and he pulls a matchbox from his pocket, flicks the creature inside and slides it shut.

  A cool rush of air brushes his face and he turns sharply, eyes probing the far reaches of his museum, but it is nothing, just the draught of a winter dusk.

  He sniffs the air, licks his chapped lips. A distant cry splits the silence, and the Bone Collector curses under his breath. For now, the girl will have to wait. He is busy here.

  He thinks again of the boy, lying in his hospital bed.

  It is a sign. A gift.

  But he will not rush.

  When he has claimed him, he will gather this jumble of bones and drag himself up the stepladder. He will fix the skull to a hook embedded in the ceiling, and carefully let go. The skeleton will sway and still, and the specimen labelled J will be complete.

  Then he will press his face up against it, and inhale its bone scent.

  When he steps back to admire his handiwork, he will know that this specimen will not be abandoned to ruin and decay in the attic of this house, like others before him. Others with their smooth, unending, ordinary bones.

  This rarity he will bring downstairs, to his special gallery.

  These bones will be worthy of his care.

  His protection.

  FRIDAY

  47

  9 a.m.

  ‘And for those of you just tuning in, good morning and welcome. It’s nine a.m. on Friday, November twenty-third, and time for the news.

  ‘There have been dramatic developments in the disappearances of missing schoolgirls Clara Foyle and Grace Rodríguez. Exactly a week after Clara vanished, police have confirmed they are looking for the same suspect after identical rabbit skeletons were discovered at the scenes of both abductions. Catherine Murray has more . . .’

  He lifts a spoonful of porridge to his wife’s mouth, and she swallows.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ She shudders, even though the heating is cranked up.

  The detective is talking now, Detective Sergeant Etta Fitzroy. He slides another spoonful between her lips.

  ‘Yes, we are looking for the same suspect in connection with these abductions, but I’m not prepared to comment on anything else at this time. This is an extremely difficult time for their families. Please bear in mind that any kind of speculation is unhelpful.’

  He detects a frisson of panic below the surface, and he smiles. It whets his appetite. He almost feels sorry for her. By the end of tonight, when he has taken the boy, her panic will be full-blown.

  Perhaps he will send her a little something. Something personal. A gift to fan the flames. To up the ante. To taunt her for her failure to ‘detect’.

  He nods to himself. Yes, he will enjoy the sport of it, to watch her scurrying around like one of his beetles.

  He puts the bowl on the chair and switches on the 24-hour news channel. The same story is running, the same detective, but now he can see the strain, visible in her taut jawline, the bags beneath her eyes.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ his wife says again. ‘Who in their right mind would do that to a rabbit?’

  ‘There are some terrible people in the world, my love,’ he says, and pats her papery hand.

  While the Bone Collector was attending to his wife, Clara Foyle was drawing stick pictures of her mother on the floor with a crumbling lump of concrete she had worried from the wall.

  Her cleft hands made it tricky but not impossible, and she was satisfied with her clumsy efforts.

  She couldn’t be sure that her mother was missing her. She wanted to be sure, but her mother was always so busy that Clara wondered if she might be pleased to have a bit of peace and quiet for a change.

  What if they had decided that a family of three worked better than a family of four? But then she remembered what Gina always whispered to her when she was dismissed by her mother or ignored by her father. No matter how busy your parents are, they do love you. Clara clung to those words, and they kept her afloat.

  Clara pulled out a stale biscuit she had stowed in her pocket. He had brought biscuits with her milk last time. Real biscuits. She savoured the shortbread’s buttery sweetness.

  A couple of crumbs fell onto the floor and she dabbed at one with the tip of her finger. The spider’s web was still there, and she placed the crumb on its sticky strands.

  In the cartoons she sometimes watched with Eleanor, the goodies always beat the baddies.

  Clara sat back and waited for someone to rescue her.

  Amy Foyle was also waiting. It was all she ever did now. Waiting for the police, and when they arrived, waiting for news. Waiting for sleep. Waiting for Miles to come home.

  She was in a state of suspended animation, unable to resume her life until Clara was found.

  She hadn’t dared to tell a soul, was horrified at herself for feeling like this, but lately she had found herself furious with Clara. What on earth had possessed her to leave the playground? She wanted to shake her daughter, to scream at her for dragging them into this unfamiliar landscape of fear and anguish.

  It wasn’t just Clara she was angry with. At school, she had seen Miranda Smith – Poppy’s mother – laughing with another parent, and she had marched over to her, dragging a reluctant Eleanor behind her. She had wanted to scratch her eyes out.

  But when Poppy’s mother had seen her coming, her face had frozen, her eyes flicking desperately from side to side, searching for an escape. As she drew closer, Amy noticed her jeans were hanging loosely, and a patch of foundation on her neck hadn’t been rubbed in. A
set of keys was looped around her trembling fingers, the metallic clinks like a distress signal.

  Amy had walked straight past her.

  And she had realized then that Clara’s disappearance had damaged other families beyond their own, that the thief who had stolen her daughter had left a mark on this community, as creeping and corrosive as acid.

  48

  12.30 p.m.

  Fitzroy pulled up outside her flat, and rested her head on the steering wheel. She had no desire to go in, but David had called her early that morning, pleaded with her to come home for lunch.

  ‘You have to eat,’ he said.

  ‘I have to find Clara Foyle,’ she said.

  ‘Just a quick sandwich, Etta, and then you can go. I haven’t seen you for days. Please.’ David didn’t say please very often.

  ‘OK,’ she said, and hung up.

  When Fitzroy slid her key into the door, she was hit by the overpowering aroma of chilli and garlic. In the kitchen, the table was laid with flowers, and a basket of sliced baguette. A pan of pasta bubbled on the stove, steaming up the windows.

  ‘Bloody hell, what is this? A pop-up Italian restaurant?’

  David whirled around. ‘You made me jump.’ He half-moved towards her, arms outstretched. When she didn’t move, he satisfied himself with an awkward pat on her shoulder.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘David, I can’t stay long. I need to be at work.’

  ‘Lunch will be two minutes. Sit down.’

  She watched him work, draining the spaghetti, dishing up the sauce. ‘Parmesan?’ He held up the block of cheese with a smile. She didn’t smile back.

  He sat down at the table, poured her a glass of water.

  ‘So, what’s new? Have you met your nephew yet?’

  She frowned at him. Small talk wasn’t his usual inclination.

  ‘Our nephew,’ she countered.

  ‘You should call Nina, you know. She’s desperate to see you.’ His voice softened. ‘She’s worried about you.’

  ‘I’m in the middle of a major investigation, David. I don’t have time for fussing over new babies.’ Or pandering to the whims of my younger sister.

  He shovelled in a mouthful of spaghetti. For a moment or two, they ate in silence.

  ‘Etta, I’m truly sorry about yesterday. Leaving you there on your own was a shitty thing to do.’

  She sipped her drink. ‘To be perfectly honest, it told me everything I needed to know.’

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ he said, putting down his fork. ‘I just got overwhelmed by it all.’ That was putting it politely. For all his concern, David was the sort of man who believed that once his wife had got this baby business out of her system, they could get on with enjoying their lives again.

  He did not know that Etta had refused to give up her stillborn son, that a funeral director with more compassion than most had encouraged her to take him home for a day or two, that she had, weeping, shown him the garden and his crib, and had slept in a cool room with him next to her bed. That her family had found it disturbing. That another man, living another life, had no idea he’d become a father at the same moment as losing his son.

  ‘Shame you didn’t think to tell me that before I got to the clinic.’ She bit into the bread. Its hard crust cut into her lip, and she put it back on her plate.

  ‘You do know that wasn’t the only reason?’ His tone was gentle.

  Her eyes flashed at him. ‘Don’t start that again.’

  ‘We have to talk about it,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Etta, if you can’t talk to me, perhaps your work can put you in touch with someone who’s trained to deal with this sort of thing. A grief counsellor, perhaps.’ He reached under the table and pulled out the box of memories she kept in the wardrobe. Her private things. His private things.

  Fitzroy dropped her spoon, and it clattered against the plate. ‘I have to go now.’

  She pushed back her chair, bumping the table in her haste to escape, and then he was beside her, pulling her into his arms.

  ‘Let go,’ she shouted, pushing at him. ‘Let me go.’

  But David was stronger than she was, and his hand circled her wrist, pinching the delicate skin. She raised her other hand, struck him hard across his cheek.

  His face was portrait of shock.

  ‘Satisfied?’ A drop of her spittle landed on the lens of his glasses. She yanked up her sleeve to examine her reddening skin, shoved it under his nose. ‘You couldn’t leave it, could you?’

  ‘Etta, I—’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said.

  His hands hung by his sides, his body lumpen with the sorrow of seeing his marriage unspool.

  She shut the door carefully on her way out.

  She made herself walk down the stairs, keeping her mouth open, taking small, even breaths. During a trip to Pakistan, in the days when she’d spent her annual leave working for a children’s charity, she’d come across a newspaper article that reported most victims in a bombing die from bleeding in the lungs. In an emergency, victims naturally hold their breath, but the lungs become like a pressurized balloon and rupture. That fact had stayed with her, the way random snippets sometimes do, and so she inhaled and exhaled shallowly. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t waiting for a real blast wave to pass, that this was just an emotional explosion. The breathing helped to focus her mind.

  In her distress, Fitzroy did not notice the broken window until she was inside her car, until she smelled the raw earth and iron of her grandfather’s butcher’s shop.

  She turned her head slowly, her eyes already on the box on the passenger seat. One side of the cardboard was sodden with blood. Using the tip of her fingernail, she flicked off the lid.

  Blood had pooled in the corner, thick and dark. Lying in the middle was something small, the shape of a bean.

  Oh fuck.

  That looks like a kidney.

  A child’s kidney?

  No.

  Too small.

  Then what?

  Oh no.

  No.

  NO.

  Ting.

  It’s from Him.

  I know it.

  It’s a kidney.

  From a rabbit.

  A rabbit.

  She touched it with the tip of her finger. It was still warm.

  Fitzroy fumbled with the door, jumped out, spun around in a circle. The street outside her home was empty, save for a dustcart rumbling away.

  She reached for her phone. Tapped out a text to Chambers.

  Is Miles Foyle still in custody?

  His reply came within seconds.

  Yes.

  Shit.

  Their best lead was telling the truth.

  Nothing else was inside the box. Carefully, she lifted it up. Blood smudged her coat, a droplet landed on her cheek. Taped to the underside was a plastic wallet, a piece of paper. Written in a hand she recognized. The same hand as the notes she had found with the rabbit skeletons.

  ‘Are the kidneys demolished? I will leave it to you as to what is to be done with his bones.’

  49

  4.44 p.m.

  My husband abducted my daughter.

  Amy Foyle tried the sentence out in her head. It felt clunky, awkward on her tongue. She said it again. This time it sounded a little smoother, a little more plausible.

  Shock was a bit like that, she’d discovered. It jolted you out of reality and into the unknown. But, as the hours and days pass, the unknown becomes reality, and reality, the everyday.

  Miles had now been in police custody for almost seventy-two hours. When that woman detective, Etta Fitzroy, had come to arrest him, he had turned to his wife, his face perfectly calm.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t take Clara.’

  She had flown at him then, clawed at his face.

  She didn’t believe him.

  I am married to a child killer.

  Amy had alway
s believed in the sanctity of her marriage vows. Through thick and through thin. But when the moment came, when those vows had been tested, the doubts, it turned out, had come sprinting in.

  At the kitchen table, Gina shook the dice and threw it.

  ‘Six,’ laughed Eleanor. ‘Not again.’

  Amy ignored them both as she poured herself a little pick-me-up. A moment later, she felt Gina’s hand on her arm.

  ‘Do you really need that?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, adding ice. ‘I do.’

  The tears were rising again, but she pressed down on them. She had cried so much they had become meaningless. Inside, she was as dry as a nub of bone.

  She called up Clara’s face, her shiny smile, the babyish curve of her tummy.

  Mummy, Mummy, will you play with me?

  All those times that she’d shooed her youngest daughter away, telling her that she was too busy. All those times when she’d been reading a magazine, or buying clothes on her laptop, or just plain couldn’t be bothered.

  Her daughter’s voice was already fading. She groped for it. Nothing. The weight of panic began to crush her.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Eleanor. ‘Will you play with me?’

  She heard her own voice from a distant place.

  ‘Not now, darling. Play with Gina instead.’

  And then, he was there, standing in the kitchen, eyes weary, shoulders hunched. He placed his keys on the worktop with deliberate care.

  His eyes found Amy.

  ‘They’ve let me go.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘They’ve realized it couldn’t be me. The detective, Fitzroy, she received some sort of package relating to the case while I was in custody.’

  ‘So they haven’t charged you?’

  How do they know that he’s not in this with someone else? That it wasn’t a deliberate ploy to divert attention? Her brain paused a moment, then whirred crazily back into action. Perhaps they’ve done it on purpose, to follow him.

  ‘No.’

  Amy stood by the counter, Miles by the table.

  ‘Come on, let’s give Mum and Dad some space,’ murmured Gina, ushering Eleanor away. The room was quiet, but the silence rang loudly.