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

by Fiona Cummins

  ‘Look at this,’ said Fitzroy, holding up what looked like a flattened piece of khaki cloth.

  ‘That’s Grandpa Frith’s Field Service cap.’ Erdman fingered the thick fabric. ‘Missing in action at El Alamein.’ His throat tightened at the mention of his grandfather, the unspoken spectre of the other missing loved ones.

  ‘So you had a brother . . .’ she said softly.

  ‘I did,’ he said, his gaze drifting to the photograph that Fitzroy had handed him.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Erdman frowned, struggling to dredge his memories. ‘I don’t know. Ma didn’t like talking about him.’ He faltered, looked again at the picture in his hand. ‘I was so young, I can barely remember. He was unwell, I think. One day, he was at home, playing with me, and the next, he was gone. My mother was never the same after that.’

  In the shadows of the loft, Erdman looked so bereft that Fitzroy’s heart constricted with the memory of her own loss.

  ‘What’s in that chest, I wonder?’ she said.

  Erdman bent down and yanked on the padlock, but it wouldn’t give. ‘I’ll look for a little key,’ he said, and scrabbled around on the dusty floor.

  Balanced on a bureau pushed against the sloping roof was a shoebox of letters, but the ink was so faded in places that it was impossible to read who had sent them, or what they contained.

  Fitzroy pulled one from the batch. A spidery scrawl covered the page. She could just about make out the name Erdman. The ink had run, the handwriting almost indecipherable. It might have been signed Love Derek, but she wasn’t sure, and she guessed it must have been sent to his mother when Erdman was little. It was dated March 1976. That date was written in pencil and a different hand.

  But what about this other little boy, the one who looked so like Erdman and Jakey?

  ‘Found it.’ Erdman was brandishing a key, a weak smile on his face. ‘It was inside those weird shoes.’

  Fitzroy followed his finger, which was pointing to a cardboard box with collapsing sides, just hidden behind the padlocked chest. Contained within it was an old pair of children’s shoes. Plain with no adornments, no buckles or laces, they were made from a dark brown leather, which had cracked and split over the years. The contours of the owners’ feet were still visible in the shape of the shoe. There was a sheet of yellowing paper on top, and Fitzroy bent over to retrieve it.

  These shoes were placed here as part of a Topping Out ceremony when this house was re-roofed in April 1976. Do not remove them under any circumstances.

  Fitzroy frowned. What on earth was a Topping Out ceremony? She would Google it later. She folded the letter and slid it into her pocket.

  Erdman’s key fitted the rusting lock, but years of neglect had made it stiff. After several minutes of wiggling it around, it turned and the padlock clicked open.

  In the corner, nestled amongst the silken folds of a christening gown, was a tiny pair of shoes and a see-through box with a pale red curl in it. A tatty bear lay next to them. Next to the teddy was a collection of newspaper articles, bound together with a faded ribbon.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Erdman.

  ‘Not sure yet,’ murmured the detective, untying the ribbon and pulling free a newspaper. It was the Daily Mirror, dated 25 October 1976.

  She began to read it aloud.

  The heartbroken family of Carlton Frith yesterday held a private memorial service for the missing three-year-old.

  His mother Shirley, 29, carried a bouquet of forget-me-nots in memory of the little boy, whose body mysteriously vanished from the Chapel of Rest at the Royal Southern Hospital ten months ago.

  His twin brother Erdman was understood to have remained at the family home in Hither Green, south-east London, during the moving 90-minute ceremony. Guests were asked to wear white.

  Detective Inspector Felix Tapp, who is leading the investigation, said: ‘We will not stop until we find Carlton’s body.’

  Carlton’s father Derek was not at the service. In a tragic twist, he died from a heart attack in April.

  The detective passed the cutting to Erdman. Reflexively, he took it, but his eyes were unseeing, his face set in hard lines of shock.

  ‘Do you remember anything of this?’ Erdman shook his head, a violent, angry gesture. While he scanned the smudged newsprint, Fitzroy’s brain whirled and ticked.

  So Erdman had been a twin, and his brother had suffered from the same bone disorder as Jakey. His body had disappeared too.

  It was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

  ‘Look, is that another box up there? I think I can see something.’ She pointed to the gap between the eaves of the roof.

  Fitzroy wandered over to the dark opening and felt around inside. Her fingers brushed against something rough and she snatched them free.

  ‘Ugh!’ She wiped her hand on her black trousers and fished in her pocket for her torch, which she shone into the gap.

  Its beam picked out thick, cobwebby dust and what looked like dozens of caraway seeds, the unmistakable hallmark of mice. Lying amongst them was something grey and shrunken. The bones of its back legs were exposed while patches of leathered skin still covered its breast. Fitzroy saw a thin wisp of tail. Extended claws. Half its face was gone, but a row of pointed white teeth were drawn back in a snarl. A dead cat.

  Revolted, she dropped the torch and it clattered on the floorboards and rolled away, plunging the loft into semi-darkness again.

  ‘What was it? What did you see?’

  Fitzroy picked up the torch and pointed it into the gap.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Erdman. ‘What is that?’

  A desperate need to get away consumed her. To swap the cloying atmosphere of Shirley Frith’s attic for some fresh air. To check on Mrs Frith.

  The breakfast crockery was still on the draining board, waiting to be put away. The sight of the Royal Worcester plate with its dusty garland of pink roses made Fitzroy want to weep. Something unspeakable had happened to this family, but how did that fit together with Carlton’s disappearance, with Jakey’s? With Grace and Clara?

  It was time to find some answers.

  The practice of topping out is a centuries-old custom, often used by the construction industry. Traditionally, trees were put on top of new roofs when they were laid. There are also instances of people leaving children’s shoes in concealed places to ward off evil spirits. The innocence of the young, and the fact that shoes are the only piece of human clothing to hold its shape, was said to be powerful enough to repel malignant forces.

  It was not unusual for superstitious families to hide dead cats behind chimney stacks, over door lintels or under roof rafters to act as protection.

  Erdman stared at the image of a mummified cat on his iPad, a half-eaten slice of toast abandoned on a plate next to him He wasn’t hungry any more. Not that he had much of an appetite these days.

  He called up Google and, using one finger, tapped out two words: Carlton Frith. 8,900,000 results (0.22 seconds).

  He clicked on the first story. It was dated 11 April 1999. A headline in blue writing underlined. Local newspaper, front page:

  After twenty-four years, I still hope my boy will be found.

  This story had been published a few months before he met Lilith. When he had spent a miserable three months in India, trying to decide what the hell to do with his life. His mother must have waited for him to leave the country. Anger burned the back of his throat, and he swallowed it down. His family, built on secrets. He read on.

  It was a balmy June afternoon when Carlton Frith was playing on the beach at Southend-on-Sea with his twin brother Erdman.

  As his mother Shirley watched her son, then two, potter about on the sand, she noticed a lump on his chest.

  That was the beginning of a nightmare for this ordinary family from south-east London.

  Medics were convinced that Carlton had developed an aggressive form of cancer and biopsied the growth.

  But this proved to be a disastr
ous course of action. Carlton was suffering from the rare condition Stone Man Syndrome, which causes extra bone to grow in the body’s connective tissues, either at sites of trauma or due to spontaneous flare-ups.

  Victims of this debilitating disease often grow a second skeleton which effectively traps them in a prison of bone.

  In Carlton’s case, this invasive procedure triggered an unusually rapid progression of the disease. The growth of extra bone in his chest cavity restricted his lung function.

  Six months after his visit to the beach, Carlton Frith was dead.

  This tragedy would have been enough to last this family a lifetime. But the Friths’ story of heartbreak does not end here.

  On Christmas Day 1975, while most people were eating turkey and listening to the Queen reflect on a year of record inflation, Carlton’s young body was stolen from the hospital’s Chapel of Rest.

  It was the holidays. The hospital was short-staffed, and in the days before CCTV, nobody saw a thing.

  More than two decades on, the fate of her son still haunts his mother.

  ‘I often wonder where Carlton’s body is, and, even after all this time, I would love to be able to give him the burial he deserves,’ said Shirley, now 51.

  ‘Even though he was dead when he was taken, I feel cheated of the chance to say goodbye to him. I would like to see the sick person who stole our son’s body – and with it, our chance to grieve – brought to justice.’

  Carlton’s twin Erdman has never spoken publicly about his brother’s disappearance, but Shirley, an insurance broker, revealed he has never got over it.

  ‘Erdman was only a baby, really. The twins had just turned three when Carlton died. He couldn’t understand where his brother had gone for a long time, and it was difficult for all of us.’

  There are around 35 recorded cases of Stone Man Syndrome – also known as Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva – in the UK. It can be an inherited condition, but it seems the family escaped a double tragedy.

  While Shirley would not discuss her surviving son, she did confirm he is free from the disease.

  Carlton had Stone Man Syndrome? In all those lonely years of childhood, of teenage angst, of adulthood, Ma had never so much as hinted at the possibility of that. Not in those early, euphoric years of his marriage, when he had announced that Lilith was pregnant, and Ma had just tightened her lips. Nor on that awful night, six years ago, when the doctors had told them the truth about Jakey’s illness, and he had watched Lilith cradle their new baby and thought he might die himself.

  True, he had never talked about his twin, not as he had grown older while his brother never aged. But that was only because she refused to discuss it. Maybe she couldn’t talk about it. And then, he found, neither could he. His memories of Carlton had been replaced by a sort of blank numbness. But why? a voice whispered. Why the hell hadn’t she warned him about the genetic time bomb of Carlton’s illness? Especially after all that Jakey had endured.

  He couldn’t shake the sense of betrayal.

  With both his parents dead there was no one left to ask.

  Together with Fitzroy, he had rifled through the rest of the newspapers in the attic, most of them dated the same month. One article contained a photograph he had never seen before. Erdman and Carlton as babies, chubby arms and matching sun hats, squinting into the camera, full of toothless smiles. Another black-and-white image showed a much younger-looking Shirley dressed in a suit, entering the Royal Southern, surrounded by journalists and photographers.

  His mother had kept secrets from him.

  The knowledge stung.

  Erdman’s vision was now so blurred he was forced to stop reading. How could he have forgotten all this? Had he blocked it from his memory? Perhaps he had never known. He was only three, after all, and there had been no photographs of Carlton at Shirley’s house, no mementoes of his short life at all.

  And what about his mother? Had her actions been designed to hurt him? Or protect him?

  Oh, Ma. Had he ever bothered to consider why his mother had built, brick by unyielding brick, a wall around herself? When he thought of their easy disdain, their determined withdrawal from her life, Erdman’s cheeks flamed with guilt and shame.

  Shadows edged the study, sullen and silent. Rain smacked against the window, like handfuls of loose gravel. Erdman stared at the screen until the letters jumped in front of his eyes.

  Was Jakey’s abduction somehow connected with the stranger who had been following him? No, he was being ridiculous, paranoid. All the same, perhaps he would mention it to Fitzroy.

  Lilith was upstairs, sedated into somnolence. She had woken, groggy and disorientated, in Fitzroy’s car as the detective was driving them back from his mother’s home, back from the discovery of his brother’s illness. His wife had cried out for Jakey and wouldn’t stop crying until the emergency doctor had arrived.

  He thought how easy it would be to never wake up.

  But while there was the tiniest spark of hope that Jakey might still be alive, he would do his damnedest to find him.

  The phone began its strident call to action, and he rose to answer it.

  54

  10.16 a.m.

  When Jakey Frith opened his eyes, he was in a room he didn’t recognize.

  He drew in a breath, and felt a tightening belt across his chest. Cold air wrapped itself around him. He snatched another breath, felt pain and panic rattle in his ribcage.

  ‘Mummy?’

  His throat was raw and swollen, like something too big for it had been shoved in or pulled out, or both. There was a chair in the corner, a bucket. A metal vent screwed into the wall. It was dark, apart from blade-thin strips of daylight bleeding through slats across the windows.

  Ol’ Bloody Bones is here.

  Jakey felt a wet trickle between his legs.

  The boy sat up. It hurt his chest. Every breath he took hurt his chest. He was feverish. Hot and cold. He wondered, for a second, if he might be dreaming.

  His body began to tremble, and although his sheet was soaked, he pulled it over him anyway, tried to ignore its clamminess against his skin.

  He shut his eyes.

  He listened.

  The house was quiet, the darkness whispering at him from the shadows. Although he was only six, Jakey knew that death lived here. That death would be coming for him.

  And then, from the vent in the corner, he heard a little girl singing.

  55

  10.45 a.m.

  Fitzroy was on the phone.

  ‘Mr Frith—’

  ‘Is there – news?’

  The detective’s voice was hesitant.

  ‘A grey van was seen driving away from the hospital last night, the same type of van spotted on the afternoon of Clara’s abduction.’

  Erdman gripped the receiver. He and Lilith had been counting on the absence of a rabbit skeleton, on Fitzroy misinterpreting the warning left in her car. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘We don’t know if it’s the same guy, but it’s a strong possibility. We’re pulling footage from nearby CCTV cameras, but it’s going to take a while. I’ll let you know if anything changes.’ She paused, asked the same questions that she had of Amy Foyle.

  ‘Has there been anything troubling Jakey? Anything odd or unusual that he may have mentioned?

  A guilty silence. ‘That’s probably a question for Lilith, but, no, nothing I can think of. He was worried about dying, someone had said something to him at school, but that was all.’

  ‘And you’re sure you don’t remember seeing a grey van on the night you were attacked?’

  Erdman cast his mind back to that night, which now seemed a lifetime ago.

  ‘No, I—’

  The stranger’s face loomed in his memory.

  ‘What is it, Mr Frith?’

  ‘It’s just that I think someone might be following me.’

  A pause.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  He explained about the man he had see
n in the days leading up to his attack, Jakey’s abduction.

  ‘Do you think perhaps you should have mentioned this sooner?’ Her voice was ice.

  ‘I didn’t think it was important.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘Tall, grey hair.’

  Fitzroy’s brain flicked to Miles Foyle. He was tall, grey.

  ‘Have you see Clara Foyle’s father in the paper, on the news?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She was blunt. ‘Is it him?’

  ‘No.’ He sounded shocked. ‘No, definitely not.’

  ‘We’ll need an E-fit.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And we’d like to hold that press conference we talked about last night. Most likely this afternoon, with you and Mrs Frith.’

  The rise and fall of a siren, broadcasting another tragedy somewhere in the city, cut through the buzz in Erdman’s head.

  Jakey’s been abducted by someone who cuts the fingertips off young girls.

  When Fitzroy spoke again, there was a faint edge to her tone. ‘Mr Frith? Are you happy to do that?’

  If he hurts my little boy, I’ll kill him.

  ‘Mr Frith? Did you hear me? As well as helping Jakey, it could lead us to Clara, to Grace.’

  He needs his medication, proper hospital care.

  ‘Mr Frith?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The press conference?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We’ll do whatever you need.’

  ‘Good.’ Her tone was clipped. ‘I’ll pick you both up after lunch.’

  Upstairs, Lilith was emerging from a drug-induced sleep. She stared at the ceiling, at a tiny white light that danced in the corner of the room.

  Jakey?

  She was struggling to sit up, reaching out a hand, when she realized it was just the reflection of her watch as she moved her wrist.

  What had he done to her baby? She stuffed her knuckles in her mouth, bit down so hard she broke the skin. Stop it. Stop thinking of him in the past tense.

  A shaft of pain in her chest threatened to fell her, and she forced herself to take in a breath. And another. Jakey’s absence became an acid burn in her throat. Her joints ached, her fingers, her knees.