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

by Fiona Cummins

  58

  4.14 p.m.

  The bucket was full and it was starting to smell. Clara wrinkled her nose. The Night Man hadn’t been for a long time. She was hungry and, although he frightened her, he always brought something to eat.

  She slumped back on the tangled sheets. An unpleasant odour rose from them. Her tongue felt thick and dry in her mouth, and her back ached. She reached for her lumpy pillow.

  ‘It’s OK, Rosie,’ she crooned. ‘Mummy’s here.’

  She sang softly to herself, made-up words and fragments of tunes that she remembered from home and school, although those memories, now a week old, seemed fuzzy and distant.

  Usually, he came when the morning light spilled through the bars onto the floor, the bare walls, but it was darker now, the room veiled in shadow.

  She was dozing, drifting in and out. She had been doing the same that afternoon when a muffled thud had jerked her from the peripheries of sleep. She had sat up, clutching Rosie-Pillow to her chest, and listened. Should she shout out or stay quiet? Perhaps it was her mother, or the police, come to rescue her.

  She fixed her eyes on the door and willed it to open.

  Another thud. And with it a low cough, and the light tread of footsteps, not like the Night Man at all. She wanted to call out, to urge them back. She waited. A door shut somewhere.

  Other people were here.

  That delicious thought curled its way into her brain. Never before had she heard anyone apart from him within this strange place.

  She pressed her ear against the door until it turned pink, straining to pick up something, anything.

  But she could only hear silence.

  ‘What do you think, Rosie-Pillow?’

  ‘I don’t know, Clara. It doesn’t sound like the Night Man.’ Clara’s voice was high-pitched as she waggled Rosie-Pillow in the air.

  ‘Hmmm . . . maybe it’s someone who can help us. Maybe it’s Mummy.’

  That possibility prompted such a moment of unexpected giddiness in Clara that she hopped on the spot and twisted her ankle. She ignored it. She could handle any amount of pain if there was a chance she’d be sleeping in her own bed tonight with Mr Snuggles, and Raggedy the Cat.

  ‘I don’t think it’s Mummy,’ said Rosie-Pillow.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Clara, disappointment souring her childish lilt, and threw the pillow on the floor.

  The light bulb in the lamp in the corner kept flickering, casting half-shadows across the walls. It wasn’t dark enough for bed, but too dark to be daytime.

  With all her limited strength, Clara heaved a chair, the only piece of furniture in the room apart from the bed, to the door. As she tried to scale the precarious mountain, to look through the keyhole, it wobbled and she lost her balance, falling hard to the floor.

  Winded, she lay motionless. When the black dots stopped flashing, she felt a sudden urge to make herself as small and as hidden as possible, and squeezed into the narrow gap beneath the bed. Perhaps he wouldn’t see her there.

  Twenty minutes later, she dragged herself the short distance to retrieve Rosie-Pillow before crawling back to her hiding place.

  By the time the Night Man came to empty her bucket, she was asleep, and he was in too much of a hurry to move her. He righted the chair and left a glass of milk containing the sleeping tablets on top of it. From his pocket he pulled a soft knitted dog – made by his wife decades ago, but never played with – and laid it on the floor next to Clara.

  59

  6.12 p.m.

  The streets are surprisingly empty for Saturday evening. The rain is keeping people away. Lady Luck is on his side. He hopes she will stay true.

  The detective’s car is long gone, a wide and empty space left in its wake. He watched the men load it onto a truck, a bag of shopping in hand, a song in his heart.

  They will find nothing. He was careful. He is always careful.

  There is a light at her window, but the Bone Collector knows she is not home. She will be looking for him. But she will not find him.

  The detective intrigues him, crowds his mind. He swims in the warm waters of her despair. It adds a new dimension to his work, and he finds he yearns for her to know that the boy’s time is short, that within hours he will begin to prepare him for his final honour.

  Tick-tock, Detective. Tick-tock.

  He thinks of the girl, hidden in the shadows in the corner of the room, and tries to imagine what a child of his own might have looked like, but its face is featureless and empty.

  He thinks of the boy, lying on the mattress. He is sick, but it does not matter if he dies. It will save him the task.

  He wonders how long he can keep them hidden in this city of eight million souls, and if he should move them to a place of silence and safety.

  Death is not the end. His collection allows them to live forever. But he will not be rushed: he wants time – hour after languid hour – to savour the unsheathing of these rarest of bones.

  The windscreen wipers are too slow to clear the endless weeping rain. Almost there.

  He will heat some soup for his wife’s supper, perhaps swirl in some cream. Her arms are so wasted now. If she doesn’t eat soon, she, too, will become a skeleton, encased in the thinnest covering of skin.

  He hurries up the street. She was not well when he left her. Not at all. He is worried. He hopes she has managed to drink. He wants to get home, to see her. Her sheets need changing, she needs a wash, a new nightie.

  When he turns the corner, his stomach folds in on itself.

  Every window is ablaze with electric light.

  60

  7.01 p.m.

  Jakey eased himself off the mattress. His pyjama bottoms were damp and cold, and every breath a scissor blade to his side.

  Shadows probed the corners of the room. Almost twenty-four hours since he had been taken. He dragged himself across the floor, to the wall with its shiny metal vent. He pressed his mouth to the gash between the slats.

  ‘Hello,’ he croaked. ‘Hello.’

  Nothing.

  Exhaustion was pushing down on him with heavy hands, painting a sheen of sweat on his brow. He shuffled backwards on his bottom, until his back was resting against the wall.

  He must have dreamed it.

  He shut his eyes. Two warm tears trickled into his mouth, and he swallowed them, wincing at the violation of his swollen throat.

  Mummy, I want you.

  Come rescue me, Daddy.

  But there was no hope of escape. Ol’ Bloody Bones would see to that. Jakey dozed for a couple of minutes. His breathing was laboured and fast. At the hospital, the intravenous antibiotics had only just begun the work they would not now be permitted to finish. If Ol’ Bloody Bones didn’t kill him, the pneumonia would.

  He was going to die here.

  His young mind wandered. He thought he could hear his father singing to him, thought he was falling down a rabbit hole.

  ‘Hello,’ said the wall. ‘What’s your name?’

  61

  7.03 p.m.

  If an owner takes on the characteristics of his dog, it stands to reason that the same might be said of his house.

  Number 46 sort of bulged in the middle, more flatulence than subsidence, and the bamboo grass in the front garden was not unlike the wisps of his nicotine-stained hair.

  Retired or not, if Detective Inspector Felix Tapp had heard a whippersnapper like Fitzroy describe him like that, he’d have given her a clip round the ear.

  She rang the bell. A blurred outline appeared in the glass of the door.

  It was a while since Felix Tapp had received an evening visit from someone who wasn’t one of his carers, and when he shuffled into the hallway, his swollen feet jammed into a tatty pair of slippers, the house had that mouldering smell of unwashed clothes and sweaty bodies.

  Felix was wearing a checked shirt with a stain down the front, and he led Fitzroy into a cramped sitting room and over to a sofa with cushions that didn’t match. Crammed
on every available surface were photographs of family and friends. An old Australia tea towel was draped over a stool that held a basket of flowers in lurid purples and pinks that didn’t fade like the furnishings.

  His body was squashy with age, his skin as lined as a piece of aluminium foil that had been scrunched into a ball and then smoothed out. His eyes were vague but his mind was as sharp as his tongue.

  He made tea, which they drank with milk that floated in spots to the surface.

  ‘Sir, do you remember I mentioned on the phone that I needed your help with a case?’

  ‘I’m going blind, not deaf.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry, sir.’

  He peered at her.

  ‘You Boyd Fitzroy’s daughter?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Bastard to work for. Good officer, though. Now, young Carlton Frith, wasn’t it? Christmas, 1975?’

  ‘Yes, the young boy whose body was stolen from the hospital’s Chapel of Rest.’

  He was nodding now, a thoughtful look spreading across his features. ‘Damn well nearly killed me that case, trying to find that young lad. Killed my marriage, too.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that, sir. Curse of the job.’

  ‘Gah. Modern-day policing. Not the same, is it? Not with the Internet, the massive leaps in forensic techniques. My generation had to pound the bloody pavement until our feet bled.’

  Fitzroy gave a respectful dip of her head. Felix shifted his body until he was comfortable. When he moved, Fitzroy detected the faint whiff of potatoes.

  ‘No bloody CCTV, nothing like that. We interviewed hundreds of people, but no one saw a bloody thing. Christmas, wasn’t it? Skeleton staff, people turned in on their own lives.’

  He slurped his tea and the brown liquid collected at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘His family, in bits, they were. His poor mother. She just wanted to bury her little lad, have a place she could go to sit and talk to him. To lay flowers. It was a bloody tragedy. Their whole family was a bloody tragedy.’

  Fitzroy looked up sharply. ‘Why was that, sir?’

  ‘Well, she’d already lost one son, hadn’t she?’

  ‘What, you mean she’d lost another child, before Carlton?’

  ‘Didn’t say that, did I? Call yourself a bloody detective. No, what I mean is, she’d already lost one child and now she was going to lose another.’ Felix’s face clouded over and he stared at the unlit gas fire, a removed look in his eyes. ‘I often wonder what happened to him. I tried to keep in touch with the family, but she didn’t want to, you know, not after her husband died and it became clear we were never going to find the little lad.’

  He was silent while Fitzroy tried to organize the ringing in her brain.

  ‘Sorry, sir, you’ve lost me. Why was she going to lose another child?’

  ‘Carlton, he had that bone disease.’ His parchment hands fluttered in his lap. ‘Damn, what was it called?’

  Fitzroy spoke slowly. ‘Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva.’

  He looked at her, surprised. ‘Yes, that’s right. Bloody terrible burden. Well, his twin, Erdman, he had the same thing.’

  Fitzroy thinned her lips, shook her head. ‘No, no, I don’t think that’s possible. Erdman Frith, he’s never shown any signs of the disease.’

  ‘Well, I’m blowed. I was sure he’d be dead by now.’ The retired Detective Inspector frowned. ‘But I know I’m right. I remember it distinctly because I was interviewing his mother at the time.’ He paused for a shaky sip of tea. ‘That poor woman. Not only was she dealing with the death of her three-year-old son, she’d just been told his body had been stolen. She was in a terrible state. And then Erdman was sick all over the head honcho’s office, and they had to call someone to clean it, and, amidst all the chaos, Carlton’s bloody doctor arrived and chose that moment to tell her that he suspected Erdman – as his identical twin – would develop it. And perhaps future generations too.’ He scratched his head. ‘But he didn’t, you say?’

  The clock ticked rudely in the silence. Erdman did not have Stone Man Syndrome. She knew that as surely as night follows day. But his son Jakey did, and then there was Clara, with her poor ruined hands.

  Through the banging and the whirring and the clanking, Fitzroy heard the familiar ting of her synapses.

  Was it really possible that the man who had abducted Jakey and Clara was the same man who had stolen Carlton’s body almost four decades earlier? Had he been keeping tabs on the Friths all that time, all the while expecting Erdman to develop the disease and moving onto his son when he hadn’t? Or had he come across him more recently?

  But if the connection between Carlton and Jakey and Clara was the bone deformities, how did the Girl in the Woods case fit in?

  She hurried outside to try Mrs Rodríguez again.

  62

  8.14 p.m.

  ‘I’m Jakey.’

  The boy did not have the energy to move very far, so he rolled himself onto his tummy, and pressed his mouth against the vent for the second time that day.

  ‘How old are you?’ said the wall.

  ‘Six.’ He screwed up his face. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Clara. I’m five-and-a-quarter.’ A pause. ‘Are you a goodie or a baddie?’

  ‘A goodie.’ His voice was a scrape of wood against brick. ‘Like Spider-Man.’

  ‘I like Spider-Man,’ she said, her own voice high and clear. ‘I wish you could spin a web. Then we could escape.’ A wobble. ‘I don’t like it here.’

  ‘Me either,’ he said, as if talking through the wall to a little girl was the most natural thing in the world.

  The children sat in silence for a moment, their mouths just a few inches apart, their bodies separated by a brick wall. As Jakey closed his eyes, fighting the burn in his chest, Clara, so starved of company, couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth.

  ‘Did the Night Man bring you? He brought me. In a van. I didn’t like it. He hurt me. Did he hurt you? He’s got a machine. Have you seen his machine? You have to stay still. It doesn’t hurt, but you have to stay still. He gets cross if I move. I’m hungry. Have you got anything for me to eat?’

  ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Have you got a poorly tummy? My tummy hurts. It really, really, really hurts, but I can’t do a poo. My mum says doing a poo can help if you’ve got a tummy ache, but I can’t do one, so I don’t know. Have you seen my mummy?’

  ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘On my television.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Clara. ‘When is she coming to get me?’

  Jakey tried to sort it out in his head. He wasn’t really sure why Clara Foyle’s mother was on the television, but he kind of had an idea. He tried to form the words through the pain, which was spreading to his back, his bones. ‘She doesn’t know where you are.’

  Through the vent, he heard an intake of breath and the girl began to cry.

  ‘S’OK.’ His eyes would barely open, his tongue thick and loose in his mouth. ‘S’OK.’

  Gradually, Clara’s sobs became sniffs. A stream of snot was running from her nose, and she wiped at it with the back of her hand, smearing a stringy residue across her cheek.

  ‘Is your mummy coming to get you?’ she said.

  ‘No. I don’t know.’ Speaking was becoming an enormous effort, his words beginning to slur. ‘I don’t think she knows I’m here either.’

  Both children absorbed the painful significance of this.

  ‘When I get home, I’m going to have chocolate for breakfast. And jelly,’ said Clara.

  ‘I like jelly.’

  ‘And I’m going to let Eleanor borrow my heart necklace. And my Sleeping Beauty dress.’ She paused. ‘Are you hungry?’

  Jakey’s head was full of black bees buzzing.

  Puzzled by his silence, Clara pulled her last half slice of bread from her pocket. Her secret stash. ‘You can share, if you like.’ She pushed a piece of the stale crust into the vent.
Two or three crumbs waterfalled onto Jakey’s side, but he did not notice. His eyes were closed.

  Clara nibbled at the rest of the bread.

  ‘When bad things happen, the police come,’ she whispered.

  ‘Police . . . looking . . .’ he managed to say, eyes still shut.

  ‘This is a scary place.’ She started to cry again, quietly now. Jakey rested his fingertips against the vent. Clara caught the shadow of the movement through the narrow slats, pressed her own fingers to his.

  They sat like that for ten minutes, or more. Neither spoke but each child was comforted by the presence of the other. Eventually, Jakey’s fingers slipped from the metal, but Clara didn’t notice. If she tried hard enough, she could pretend this was just a game of hide and seek.

  And then Clara’s head jerked upwards.

  In the distance, she heard the faint squeak of wheels. Panicked, she scooted beneath her bed. A second later, she crawled back across the floor on her hands and knees, put her mouth to the grille.

  ‘He’s coming,’ she said, her voice an urgent whisper. ‘The Night Man is coming.’

  But Jakey didn’t hear her warning, lost, as he was, in a sleep that trod the fine tightrope between death and life.

  SUNDAY

  63

  11 a.m.

  Lilith forced herself to get up about eleven, didn’t bother eating breakfast, and spent half an hour staring into the garden at nothing much at all.

  This unbearable state of not knowing was killing her.

  After a while, she shuffled into the kitchen and retrieved the plastic bottle of sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed her and placed it on the table.

  If Grace Rodríguez’s fingertips were hacked off and left in a wood, what will he do to my son?

  Lilith pushed her chair backwards, ran to the downstairs toilet, bringing up the contents of her stomach. It was empty, apart from the glass of water she had just drunk. The retching pulled at the muscles of her hollowed-out abdomen. She was a mother without a child.