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

by Fiona Cummins

  Belinda Chong, the family liaison officer assigned to them last night, had warned her about this. How emotional pain can translate into physical pain.

  She ignored the hurt, used it to push herself upright.

  Surely he would have left behind a rabbit skeleton. Some kind of sign. If it was Him.

  Hope flared inside her, bright and hungry, but she snuffed it out. Hope made one vulnerable.

  Not for the first time, she wished her foster mother was around, that she had parents of her own to lean on. But Valerie Thrupp’s hands were full with three young sisters whose mother had abandoned them for a two-week holiday to Tenerife. She closed her eyes. Her real mother was dead, that much she knew. And she didn’t even know her name.

  Downstairs, she could hear the slow, uncertain tread of her husband pacing the hallway.

  Erdman had always let her lean on him. But now he had barely the strength to hold himself up.

  Many times over the last year she had contemplated a life without him, had imagined packing a suitcase for her and Jakey. She had even contacted a solicitor, just to find out the process.

  But now she realized that Jakey’s birth had left her winded by shock, by grief. Six years on, she was still struggling to catch her breath. And that wasn’t Erdman’s fault. It had never been Erdman’s fault.

  And now Jakey was gone, there was a wound inside her which would never close.

  In those horrific days after he was born, when she had functioned in a weird daze, lost halfway between loving her baby and grieving the loss of the life she had planned for him, her caesarean scar had become infected. It had taken weeks and weeks to heal. But the disappearance of her son would take years, a whole lifetime even.

  Jakey, darling Jakey.

  She shivered when she remembered their last night at home together, before he’d become so poorly and a new kind of hell had begun.

  She’d found him kneeling at the window seat, looking out into the blue-black expanse of the front garden, watching the thin, miserable rain drift down.

  Beneath the security lights, the grass shone glossily, each blade a freshly painted work of art. The crazy paving gleamed.

  His face was pushed up against the glass and every now and then he would lean back slightly and doodle steamy stick men. His breathing was rapid and uncomfortable.

  A couple of teenagers ran by, their footsteps slapping the pavement, shrieking with laughter as the rain soaked their skin. She’d watched them until they were gone.

  ‘Time for night-nights, sweetheart,’ she’d said, and she’d carried him, unprotesting, up the stairs.

  Then she’d bathed him, helped him with his teeth and tucked the sheets around him, ready for a story.

  ‘Mummy?’ he’d asked, yawning. ‘What about the little girl? She needs help. Will you help her?’

  ‘What little girl, darling?’

  ‘She’s frightened, she . . .’ Tiredness was thickening his voice, and she’d rubbed the pad of her thumb along the line of his eyebrow.

  Lilith’s heart had quickened. ‘Jakey,’ she said, ‘what little girl?’

  ‘The one on my telly. That one.’

  ‘Do you mean Clara Foyle?’

  ‘Yes.’ The little boy had given a surprised laugh. ‘That’s her name, Mummy. How did you know?’

  56

  10.54 a.m.

  Fitzroy stared at the receiver. She’d handled it badly, let her impatience show.

  Behind her, The Boss was pacing up and down. His eyes were sunken holes, but there was fire in his voice. ‘Come on, people,’ he shouted. ‘We need to catch this fucker. I want an arrest by tomorrow.’

  Don’t we all, Boss. But you can’t arrest thin air.

  The Friths were understandably distraught. She couldn’t blame them. Fitzroy pulled out a printed copy of the same article that Erdman had found on his computer, reread it. She wondered if Detective Inspector Felix Tapp, the police officer mentioned in the story, was still alive. She began a search for his address.

  There was still no word from Conchita Rodríguez. Fitzroy had tried her twice already that morning but her landline had gone unanswered, and she knew that Grace’s mother refused to use a mobile after a series of prank calls following her daughter’s death.

  On her desk, the phone rang.

  She snatched it up. ‘Mrs Rodríguez?’

  ‘Fitzroy?’

  It was the desk sergeant from downstairs, PC Jared Fox.

  ‘Foxy, it’s you. Everything all right?’

  ‘There’s a guy asking for you in reception. But don’t get too excited. Says you know him. Dashiell Hall, from the Natural History Museum.’

  Dr Hall was lounging against an advertisement for Crimestoppers. His dark hair had been slicked back with styling spray. He was wearing contact lenses instead of glasses. He smiled with half of his mouth.

  ‘Thought I’d drop by and see you, rather than send an email. So impersonal, don’t you think?’

  Fitzroy touched a hand briefly to her hair, mirrored his smile. ‘There’s a coffee shop across the road.’

  Bakes & Beans was one of those small independents that sold wodges of home-cooked cakes and neat bags of Colombian coffee. The smell made Fitzroy very happy.

  A waitress brought Dr Hall’s black coffee and her own flat white. Fitzroy waited for her to put the drinks on the table and leave before she spoke.

  ‘So, what can you tell me?’

  Dr Hall pulled a folder from his briefcase. ‘Quite a lot, actually. This specimen is fascinating. It’s an adult male rabbit, almost certainly domestic.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  He pointed to the photographs of Fitzroy’s skeleton, and another he had brought with him for comparison. His eyes glittered. ‘Take a look at this. Your rabbit has a more rounded head, a shorter skull. That’s the way artificial selection works. It’s like comparing a wolf and a bulldog. Domestically bred rabbits are selected to produce much more meat, so naturally, they’ll have different proportions. We weighed it, just to confirm, and your domestic rabbit’s bones were much bigger and heavier than this wild rabbit.’

  He wrapped his hands around his drink. He had very long fingers.

  ‘So, can you narrow it down to breed?’

  ‘It’s difficult. It’s not foolproof. But because of its wide chest, its short neck, I’d guess at Blanc de Hotot.’

  He flicked through the photographs in his folder, and pulled out another. It showed a white rabbit with black rings around its eyes. ‘Bred for its beautiful white fur and meat. Originated in Normandy, France.’

  Fitzroy leaned back against her chair, let the noise of the coffee shop wash over her. Did this mean he was a rabbit breeder? How many of those lived in the south-east? They’d have their work cut out, trying to track them all down.

  ‘But that’s not all.’ Dr Hall’s face was ablaze with the joy of discovery. ‘Any forensic expert will tell you that everything leaves a trace. And that’s certainly the case with your skeleton.’

  Fitzroy’s skin began to prickle.

  ‘I was surprised by the state of your specimen, I must admit. Its skeleton was intact, the connective tissues still in place, but the bones were stripped of all meat.’ Fitzroy was listening intently, and he met her eyes. ‘That’s unusual, to say the least.’ He swallowed a mouthful of coffee. ‘So, I dug a little deeper.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘When I looked at it under the microscope, I discovered that several of the bones had tiny nicks, which suggests that the fur, the organs and some of the meat was removed with a knife.’

  Fitzroy was sitting up straight now, oblivious to the curious glances of the couple on the next table.

  ‘But what happened to the rest of the meat? No one, however skilled with a knife, could remove every last trace of it. Unless . . .’ He gave Fitzroy a shy smile.

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless he had a little help from Dermestes maculatus.’

  Dr Hall prod
uced another set of photographs. An animal skull swarming with thousands of tiny black insects.

  ‘He’s been using carrion beetles. They clean the flesh from dead animals. I found traces of their DNA in saliva on the bones.’

  Fitzroy’s mind was racing. Where did these beetles come from? How easy would it be for him to obtain them? Dr Hall was ahead of her, already explaining.

  ‘Some scientists use chemicals to strip the flesh off skeletons, but that can eat into the bones and change their structure. At the Natural History Museum, we use something very similar to clean our specimens. Dermestes haemorrhoidalis. But in the past, we’ve used maculatus. Many people still use that species now.

  ‘We maintain our own colony, but some breeders will sell you batches of hundreds or thousands of adult beetles to start your own.’ He put down his empty cup, and tore a lump from his chocolate muffin.

  ‘Find the breeder, Etta, and you’ve found this sick-minded bastard.’

  57

  1.03 p.m.

  Why had no one warned her how difficult it was to sum up, in one photograph, the son she loved? Should she portray him as a laughing, carefree boy on his daddy’s shoulder, or sick and fragile, in a hospital bed? The public would search harder for a poorly child, Lilith decided.

  Erdman placed a sandwich on the table, and plucked a picture from the pile, running a finger across his son’s glossy, frozen smile. Lilith reached for his hand, not hungry, but appreciating the intent behind his gesture.

  ‘How you doing?’ he said.

  She shrugged. There was nothing to say.

  ‘They’ll find him,’ he said. ‘We have to believe that.’ But he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  PC Jemma Maslan, a specialist E-fit operator, had just spent the last two hours with Erdman, constructing an image of a potential suspect. She had shown him hundreds of noses and chins and eyes and hairstyles. Erdman had cursed the holes in his memory, the man’s features as elusive as smoke.

  ‘I’m afraid that can happen,’ she said. ‘You think you can remember a face, but when it comes to pinning it down, it’s always much more difficult. It’s confusing, you start to doubt yourself.’

  While they had worked, a couple of police officers had searched Jakey’s bedroom. Lilith had resisted the temptation to ask them to leave.

  But now the house was empty, apart from Belinda, their newly assigned family liaison officer, who was washing up mugs and teaspoons.

  ‘They’ll be back,’ she said to Lilith. ‘Just as soon as they’ve got something to tell us.’ Lilith resented the way she said ‘us’, as if Belinda knew and cared about the fate of Jakey, and wasn’t being paid to stand in their house up to her elbows in the kitchen sink.

  She’d been dreading this moment. The Press Conference. The words loomed large in her mind. The morning had whirled by. She’d made endless cups of coffee and escaped on the pretext of buying milk when the atmosphere of the house became too suffocating. One of the mothers – Alyson Carruthers – from Jakey’s school had driven past, and offered her a lift home. She’d helped Lilith up the path, holding her by the crook of her elbow as if she were an old lady. Lilith had wanted to scream at her to go away, but even in the face of tragedy, self-preservation restrained her.

  Then she’d cried at photographs of Jakey, stared at the walls, and now – she checked her watch – DS Fitzroy would be here to collect them in a few moments.

  Lilith hated being the centre of attention, especially when she was at her most vulnerable, but Fitzroy had persuaded Erdman it was essential, that they needed to do it to raise public awareness, that it might help them find Clara Foyle, Grace Rodríguez, too.

  Please let Jakey be alive.

  She wasn’t daft. She was fully aware that the police used press conferences to put suspects under pressure, to see if they tripped up or cried crocodile tears. Fitzroy had assured them that wasn’t the case and, numbly, she’d agreed.

  The doorbell rang. Fitzroy stood on the step, bruised smudges beneath her eyes. ‘Sorry I’m late, Mrs Frith. This morning has been rather, um, busy.’

  And that was how Lilith and Erdman found themselves, that Saturday lunchtime, at the Novotel Hotel, a glass-and-brick edifice which squatted on Greenwich High Road. It was more than fifteen hours since Jakey had vanished, eight days since the disappearance of Clara, and a year and four days since Grace had left for ballet, and never come home.

  A small table had been set up at the back with three chairs, a jug of water and a microphone. The photograph that Lilith had chosen was projected onto a screen behind them.

  The steady hum of conversation lapsed into respectful silence as Lilith and Erdman took their seats. Lilith’s stomach churned queasily at the sight of all those expectant faces. She saw a round-faced woman with dark hair and black-rimmed glasses, her chewed pen poised over her pad. A young man with a microphone and sound recorder was crouched by the table, there were cameras trained on her from the back, and a selection of dictaphones laid out in front of her. Erdman was chewing his lip, darting anxious glances around the room filled with so many journalists that they’d had to move the press conference from the police station to here.

  I can’t do this, she thought, and her legs turned to rubber. She wanted to cry. She didn’t want to be in this characterless hotel, putting herself out there for the public to gawp at. But Fitzroy was grasping her elbow and guiding her to her chair. The detective gave her an encouraging nod, and before she knew it, Fitzroy was introducing them and Lilith began to read, haltingly, from a prepared statement. About halfway through, she looked up and saw two journalists whispering, and she lost her focus and stumbled over Jakey’s name, so she crumpled the sheet of paper in her hand, and let it fall, like her tears. Erdman’s fingers laced hers, squeezing gently. He swallowed once. A moment’s pause, broken by the strobing of camera flashes. And then he spoke, in unconscious imitation of Miles Foyle, straight into the camera lens.

  ‘Please, please help us find Jakey, and bring our son home.’

  Fitzroy stood up and addressed the assembled media. ‘That’s it, folks. We’re not taking questions today, but thank you all for coming.’

  As the journalists and news crews packed up equipment, tapped out emails or called their newsdesks, Fitzroy murmured to them both, ‘Well done. You did a good job. That should make the teatime bulletin, and we’ll see what that brings.’

  Our son. I hope it brings our son.

  Fitzroy was walking Erdman and Lilith back to the car when they heard footsteps on the pavement behind them. It was the dark-haired woman from the press conference, the Daily Mirror’s crime reporter, and she was calling Fitzroy’s name.

  ‘Have you got time for a quick word?’

  ‘No,’ said Fitzroy shortly, not turning around.

  The reporter raised one eyebrow and waved her dictaphone at Fitzroy’s back. Even with a blustery wind, Lilith couldn’t help noticing that the young woman smelled of stale cigarettes.

  ‘That’s a shame. I wanted to give you a heads-up.’

  Fitzroy took a deep breath. ‘Excuse me for a moment, Mr and Mrs Frith . . .’ She stepped away from the couple, and drew the journalist to one side. Even though they were now standing apart from her and Erdman, and had lowered their voices, Lilith could still hear most of the conversation.

  ‘We know about the rabbit kidney,’ the journalist was saying. ‘We’re going to splash on it tomorrow.’

  Fitzroy’s hands curled into fists which slowly unfurled as she turned half-circle to face the woman. Lilith was worried that the detective might punch her, but Fitzroy’s voice was calm. Too calm.

  ‘Please don’t. We’re not ready to make that public yet. For operational reasons.’

  ‘C’mon, Fitzroy, it’s a great story. A potential serial killer leaving rabbit skeletons in place of his victims. A kidney left in your car as a warning. The desk already know about it. They love it, so does the editor. They’re putting it all over the front page, so if you want me to
pull it, you’re going to have to give me something bloody brilliant to replace it.’

  ‘Don’t be crass, Sarah. These are someone’s loved ones, not a way to boost the circulation of your newspaper. And don’t blackmail me. You know as well as I do that all it takes is one call to your boss.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it. He’s still pissed off that you tipped off the Sun about the Girl in the Woods fingertips story last year.’

  A muscle jumped in Fitzroy’s cheek. She slid her hands into her pockets. ‘We didn’t tip anyone off. I believe it was Mrs Rodríguez’s sister-in-law who shared that particular nugget with the press.’

  Sarah laughed without humour. ‘Same difference. They got a massive story we didn’t get. We need one they haven’t got. I know what you’re thinking. You want to be able to separate genuine callers from the cranks, but you’ll never be able to sit on this. It’s going to leak, you know it is.’

  Lilith felt oddly detached from the exchange, as if she was listening to a play on the radio and couldn’t see the faces of the actors. Erdman was staring at the journalist, disgust staining his features. Fitzroy’s curls bobbed slowly from side to side in disbelief.

  ‘I really don’t think it’s appropriate to be having this conversation with Mr and Mrs Frith standing so close, do you? But I will say this. If you’re hell-bent on doing this story, we’ll have to manage it, I’m afraid. That means releasing this information to the rest of the media . . .’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare. It’s our exclusive.’ Sarah was outraged, her face flushing down to her roots.

  ‘Just wait a couple of days until we’re ready to release it, and then it’s all yours.’

  ‘What if someone else gets it first?’

  ‘They won’t. Give me a ring in a couple of days.’

  The journalist stalked off, and Fitzroy gave the Friths a wry smile. ‘She won’t use it,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know?’ said Erdman.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Fitzroy. ‘She’ll hold out for the bigger story, I know she will. Journalists always do.’