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

by Fiona Cummins

  A look of panic passed over his features and he guided her into a chair, prising loose her fingers as one might remove a child who didn’t want to be left. Someone in another time, another moment of unknown tragedy, had picked lumps of foam from the chair, like a giant scab. It was uncomfortable against the back of her legs, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  Erdman’s arms hung limply by his side. He gazed at Lilith as if he had never seen her before, shock erasing all expression. All feeling.

  Nurse Murphy helped her to stand. Her hands were gentle as she tucked Lilith’s arm in hers, and Lilith sagged against the motherly bulk of her body, as if the taut strings holding her up had been cut.

  Her limbs felt heavy with the weight of the nurse’s revelation.

  ‘The Chief Executive of the Trust has been contacted at home. He’s on his way to see you. So are the police. In the meantime, let’s get you both a cup of tea.’

  Lilith allowed herself to be guided to a lift but she had no idea which floor she was being taken to, or where. All she remembered was somebody pressing a scalding cup of tea into her hands – proper china, not the plastic kind which always seemed on the brink of collapse – and the nurse who had brought her here making a series of telephone calls.

  Erdman didn’t speak at all. Not a word. After a few minutes, his hand reached for hers. Its warmth offended her. Inside she was frozen. Numb.

  She wasn’t really aware of the passing of time, only in the very loosest sense, and no one was paying her much attention. Occasionally, she was aware of the nurse glancing in her direction, a worried expression on her face. At one stage, she was vaguely aware of a message over the tannoy.

  ‘Attention all hospital staff. This is a Code Amber warning. Repeat, this is a Code Amber warning.’

  But for the most part, she sat there quietly, literally staring at the wall.

  My little boy is missing.

  Missing.

  Someone has abducted my son.

  No, it’s just a silly misunderstanding.

  He’ll be back any minute.

  Someone has taken him for a walk.

  Someone has taken him.

  Jakey.

  Come back to Mummy.

  Jakey.

  My Jakey.

  She longed to stroke the rusty curl of his fringe, trace her finger down his cheek. She wanted to inhale him, to preserve every detail of his beautiful self in her memory.

  In three terrible days, she had lost her husband and now her son. Her husband had come back to her but in some deep part of herself she knew that Jakey might never return. A whisper, disloyal, enticing, curlicued its way into her mind. If only it could be the other way around. She pushed it away, flicked a guilty look at Erdman.

  He was staring at the floor, his tea untouched.

  Some faceless individual had taken a sledgehammer to their lives. How would they ever begin to piece themselves together again?

  No, they will find him.

  The police will find him.

  That’s what they do, they find missing children.

  But they haven’t found Clara Foyle yet.

  Why should Jakey be any different?

  She must have dozed off. The nurses had obviously decided to leave them alone for a bit, and now they looked busy, caught up in someone else’s drama. It didn’t matter. It was easy to sit here, and she was just so tired.

  As far as she could tell, Erdman had not moved. He had barely spoken. Instead he sat, statue-still, but she sensed a slipstream of anger and distress beneath his veneer of control.

  A few seconds later, she heard a familiar voice and footsteps running down the corridor. Detective Sergeant Etta Fitzroy’s coat was streaked with blood, her brown curls greasy and unkempt. Behind her, Lilith saw a handful of officers in uniform, already flooding the hospital, locking it down, searching for Jakey. For the person who had taken him.

  ‘Mrs Frith – is it true?’ She grabbed her shoulders. ‘Is. It. True?’

  Lilith lowered her eyes.

  Fitzroy let out a low moan of disbelief, and slammed her hand into the wall. She sank into a chair and bowed her head. It gave her a crumpled, shrunken look, like all hope had been sucked from her.

  ‘It was a warning,’ she said, under her breath. ‘It was a fucking warning.’

  Erdman, who had begun to pace the corridor, caught her muttered words. He stood before her, outrage corrugating his forehead. ‘You knew this was going to happen?’

  ‘No, no, of course not. But he left . . .’ – she hesitated, unsure how much to reveal – ‘. . . a message in my car.’

  ‘A rabbit skeleton?’ Erdman was brusque.

  ‘Um . . .’ Fitzroy could not bring herself to tell him about the bloodied lump of flesh.

  Lilith covered her mouth with her hand.

  A couple of minutes later, she forced her lips to form the sounds. ‘You think – same man – Clara Foyle?’

  Fitzroy swallowed audibly.

  ‘So these rabbits, the ones on the news, they are . . .’ Erdman fumbled around for the word. ‘. . . Significant?’

  ‘It would seem that way.’

  ‘But what do they mean?’

  ‘I wish I knew. The newspapers are having a field day with this one, but don’t believe everything you read.’

  ‘Who can we believe, then?’ Erdman’s voice was dull.

  ‘Me. I will always tell you the truth, Mr Frith.’

  ‘Then tell it to us now.’

  Fitzroy looked uncomfortable. ‘We’re doing everything we can to find this man.’

  Lilith believed her. But she also recognized that the detective was trotting out a line, that she was holding something back from them.

  Her instinct was right. As Lilith watched Erdman mark out his fear in footsteps back and forth across the shining tiles, Fitzroy was recalling her earlier phone conversation with The Boss.

  ‘Talk me through everything,’ he’d said, as she’d hurried to the hospital, scarcely able to believe that another child was gone. ‘I want to hear it out loud.’ He had fired the words at her, urgency clipping his vowels.

  She had taken a deep breath and begun to speak.

  ‘When Grace Rodríguez’s remains were discovered in the woods over a year ago now, a skeleton of a small mammal was found a couple of feet away. But we dismissed it, didn’t realize its significance.

  ‘A couple of days ago we found a shoebox containing an identical rabbit skeleton on the Heath, close to where Erdman Frith was attacked and not far from where Clara Foyle – a little girl with cleft hands – was taken. Attached to its leg was a small plastic tube, the type used by carrier pigeons, and inside was a rolled cigarette paper with a quotation written on it.’

  ‘Remind me what it said.’

  She hadn’t needed to consult her notebook, had memorized it. ‘It said, “. . . the bones came together, bone to bone.”’

  ‘Taken from?’

  ‘The Old Testament, the Book of Ezekiel.’ She had waited for him to speak but The Boss was silent. ‘Ordinarily, we might not have given it too much weight. Could have been the work of a religious nutter, or a crank, or a random coincidence, but because of the Grace Rodríguez connection we couldn’t just ignore it. Then we found another skeleton, at the sweet shop, where Clara was last seen alive.’

  ‘With a quotation too.’

  ‘Yes. Same modus operandi. This one said, “Behold, I will cause breath to enter you.” Verse thirty-seven, chapter five. But we still haven’t got a clue what he’s trying to tell us, or why he left a skeleton on the Heath without a body. By God, we’ve looked. But there’s no signs of disturbance, nothing at all. We’ve been running a DNA trace, but we’ve got nothing so far.’

  ‘What about the quotation he left for you?’ said The Boss.

  ‘From the Bible too, I’m guessing.’

  Neither of them had needed to articulate what they had both already known; that extensive research into the background of serial killer
s had shown that many had endured a strict religious upbringing, that many, when captured, quoted Bible phrases to justify their crimes.

  ‘And now Jakey Frith – another child with a bone deformity – is missing from the hospital?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Fuck.’ One word, but it had been laced with exhaustion and fear.

  Fitzroy was running through the hospital’s double doors when The Boss spoke again. This time, he was brisk, adrenaline and authority saturating his orders.

  ‘Go and speak to the Frith family. The medical team. Find out what happened. Make sure you turn the place upside down. I want to see if he’s left us his little calling card.’

  With two children missing now, both with some kind of bone malformation, Fitzroy made a mental note to check which hospitals Clara had been treated in, and to call Mrs Rodríguez first thing. Grace had no bone deformities, she knew that already from the previous inquiry, but perhaps there was another connection.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And Fitzroy?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘If you do find something, keep it to yourself, won’t you? Just for a while. This investigation is becoming leakier than a bloody sieve, and the papers haven’t got hold of this yet.’

  He had rung off then, and she had gone looking for the Friths.

  Fitzroy glanced warily at them both, and repeated her mantra. The one she used when children were abducted and when children were found dead. ‘We’re doing everything we can to find this man.’

  Lilith closed her eyes, as if that simple act would shutter the detective’s voice as effectively as the despair embossed on her face.

  Erdman kicked the legs of his chair, stalked off down the corridor, colliding with a doctor who opened his mouth to chastise him, but, on seeing his face, thought better of it. Lilith let him go.

  The two women sat side by side on the hard-backed chairs while all about them lives were won and lost. Silence hung between them, contracting and dilating, muffling the sounds of the hospital. Both mothers, both arms as empty as the other’s.

  Lilith stared at the wall, grief dislocating her features, taking her apart, turning her into someone else.

  A sudden, horrific thought occurred to her.

  ‘Did you find a ske—’ – she stumbled over the word, could not bring herself to say it – ‘. . . anything near Jakey’s bed?’

  ‘My officers are searching that area now.’

  ‘But it’s him, isn’t it? You think it’s him.’

  Fitzroy looked down at the floor.

  ‘Find him for us. Please.’

  The spotlights at the rear of the hospital flooded its sprawling, well-tended grounds, making it seem more luxury hotel than a place for treating the sick. Only the green-gowned patients, loitering by the double doors and sucking on their death sticks, hinted at the happenings inside.

  No one paid much attention to the man pushing a wheelchair towards a grey van, and beneath the pile of blankets, the slumped form of a child.

  52

  11.13 p.m.

  ‘Etta, it’s me. Please, just answer your phone. Or give me a call back.’ A pause. ‘Max wants a cuddle with his auntie. And I’d really like to see you, too. Can you believe he’s got the same colour eyes as you? And my nose, apparently.’ A laugh. ‘Poor child.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Etta, I spoke to David. Please pick up. I miss you.’

  SATURDAY

  53

  3.14 a.m.

  ‘Where shall I drop you?’

  Lilith Frith was either asleep on the back seat, or she hadn’t heard. Fitzroy winced at the grinding sound as she struggled with the unfamiliar gearstick. Her own car was still with forensics.

  ‘Mr Frith?’

  ‘Call me Erdman.’ His voice was a cracked whisper.

  Fitzroy swore under her breath as a speeding car cut her up, a beer can bouncing off their windscreen. Weekend nights in the city were as busy as rush hour.

  ‘Is there someone I can call for you? Or perhaps I can drive you to a friend’s?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll take you home then, shall I?’

  ‘NO.’ Erdman’s voice was sharp and unnaturally loud in the quiet of the car. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I don’t want to go home.’

  Fitzroy understood. She felt the same way.

  ‘Well, I can’t let you wander the streets.’

  ‘I know where I’d like to go,’ he said, and reeled off an address in Hither Green.

  As soon as they drove past the gaudy lights of Lee High Road and into Northside Road, Erdman was ambushed by memories of his mother.

  Sandwiches made from the leftover meat of the Sunday roast joint, buttered right up to the crusts. Biscuits gone soft in the tin. A painted wooden cuckoo clock on the wall.

  A face like his own.

  A house of secrets, of unanswered questions.

  The spare key was still under the boot-scraper.

  Inside, the house had that neglected feel that empty houses do. Dust had settled over the furniture and the air smelled stale, with a seam of mice droppings. Erdman had refused to sell it, to even rent it out. Lilith had been furious about that. Now he was thankful he had stuck to his guns. Even in six months, property prices had risen. Now he no longer had a job, perhaps he could do it up and sell it. Use the cash to buy some time with Jakey in that house he dreamed of by the sea. And then he remembered that Jakey was missing.

  Fitzroy stood awkwardly in the door.

  There were a few cards on the mat, from old acquaintances who had no idea where else to send them. He could see the sloping letters through the flimsy envelopes. With Sympathy.

  Cards like that will be arriving on my doormat soon.

  Tears were laminating his eyes, a sick disbelief skewering his insides.

  ‘Are you sure you want to be here?’ said Fitzroy.

  Strands of grey that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago streaked Erdman’s temples. He dragged the sleeve of his jacket across his eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’m sure.’

  He stumbled upstairs and into his old bedroom, still preserved by his mother. In hope? Or for posterity? He wasn’t sure. His Star Wars duvet cover was crooked and, tenderly, he straightened it. He stared up at the ceiling, painted with the planets of the solar system.

  Where are you, Jakey-boy, my champ? Who has stolen you from me?

  But he was just as unlikely to find the answers in the shaky lines of those faded orbs as in the spangled sky outside, which was cold and clear and crisping the leaves.

  Erdman could pick out the figures of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in the wallpaper, the thick cords of dust hanging from the lampshade. A boy’s faint laughter filled his ears, identical to his own. In the room of his childhood, he could hear the echoes of the past.

  He lay down on the bed and offered up his life for his son’s.

  Downstairs, Fitzroy was in a kaleidoscope of confusion. She should get back to the office. The Boss had already rung twice. But she didn’t want to wake Lilith, who was, blessedly, still asleep in the back of the car.

  The house was freezing, the dark night closing in. She was cold and she pulled her coat tightly around her.

  Despite the absence of a skeleton, the ting in Fitzroy’s brain was telling her it was the same man.

  She wondered what depravity he would be visiting upon those two children, lost somewhere in the night, and she used the burn of that anger to cauterize the fear that was threatening to cloud her thinking, to strip her of all clarity and detachment.

  She scrolled through the evidence. Three missing children: Grace Rodríguez, Clara Foyle and now Jakey Frith, two with skeletal deformities. Three rabbit skeletons; one she had failed to recognize the significance of, one found on the Heath, seemingly unconnected, and a third, left at the scene of Clara’s abduction. Nothing – so far – at Jakey’s Frith bedside.

  Two messages concealed in the tubes, one warning left in her car
.

  It didn’t make sense.

  She knew there must be a link, a connection, somewhere, but she was groping around for it, and it wouldn’t come.

  Find a motive, find a killer. But there was no motive, none that she could see.

  Apart from the geographical connection.

  His victims were not from the same ethnic group.

  His victims were not the same gender.

  His victims were not all the same age.

  She fumbled in the darkness, trying to piece it together, trying to listen for the symphony in her brain, but it would not play. In another minute or two, she would tell Erdman that she had to leave.

  She wandered around Shirley Frith’s living room, sensed the traces of a life unhappily lived. No family photographs on the walls, no smiling grandchildren in their school uniform, no memories at all.

  Fitzroy slumped back in an armchair and felt something hard dig into her back. She pushed the cushion aside, and drew out a silver-framed picture.

  It had that washed-out, warmed-up look of photographs taken in the 1970s.

  Her heart stuttered out a beat.

  Two boys; the same rust-coloured hair, the same infectious grin, and one of them with the same face as Erdman and the same skewed bones as Jakey.

  ‘Have you found anything else up there? Any other . . .’ – she hesitated – ‘. . . photographs?’

  Fitzroy’s voice drifted up the ladder and into the loft where Erdman was plucking twenty years of cobwebs from his hair. Although it was six months since his mother’s death, he hadn’t got round to clearing it out, yet another task on his can’t-be-arsed list. Perhaps he would find the answers he was seeking in here.

  ‘Not yet. But there’s boxes and boxes up here. It’s going to take ages to get through them all.’

  He stuck his head through the hatch. Tendrils of grey dust floated down. ‘Come up.’

  Shirley’s loft was crammed full of cardboard boxes, ancient pieces of furniture, including a baby’s white wooden cot and matching rocking chair, a collection of battered suitcases and a leather chest with a padlock across the front. Erdman and Fitzroy stood side by side, surveying the chaos.