Professor Abrahamson’s office was homely, with framed family photos and hundreds of books, haphazardly piled. Her face was expectant.
‘As I said on the phone, we’re in the middle of a major missing persons investigation,’ said Fitzroy, ‘and we’re hoping to speak to someone who may be connected to this museum.’
‘Name?’ she said, tapping on her keyboard.
‘That’s the problem. We don’t have one.’
Professor Abrahamson’s fingers stopped moving. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is a problem. Do you know anything about this person at all?’
‘He’s older—’
‘Well, lots of retired surgeons work here. You should see the look on people’s faces when they realize they’re buying a postcard from the world’s foremost authority on conjoined twins.’
‘—and very thin and tall. Silver hair. About six one.’
Professor Abrahamson wrinkled her nose. ‘Doesn’t sound familiar to me, but he might be one of our volunteers. I’ve been off for a while’ – she touched her scarf self-consciously – ‘and only came back to work last week, so I might not have come across him yet. Clive, one of our longest-serving guides, might know. Let’s go and find him.’
Clive was with a knot of tourists, explaining how John Hunter once cured a coach driver of a popliteal aneurysm by tying the artery in his thigh.
‘When the driver died just over a year later, from unrelated causes, Mr Hunter naturally acquired the leg to examine the results of his handiwork.’ The group tittered in appreciation.
Professor Abrahamson caught his eye. ‘A word?’
‘Why don’t you take a look at that fake nose and spectacles, custom-made for a syphilitic woman?’ he said, pointing to a cabinet across the way. ‘She sent them back to him after she remarried. Apparently, her new husband preferred her without them.’ The crowd aahed obediently, and did as he asked.
Clive moved towards them. ‘Everything all right, Hayley?’ He had toilet-brush hair and a Welsh lilt.
‘These are police officers,’ she said. ‘We’re trying to locate a member of staff, but he doesn’t ring any bells with me.’ She repeated Fitzroy’s description.
Clive furrowed his brow, lending him the appearance of an agonized politician. ‘Are you sure he works here? He doesn’t sound like anyone I know.’
Fitzroy swore under her breath.
‘To be honest,’ said Clive, ‘he sounds like the spitting image of one of our regulars.’
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘I don’t know his name, but he’s in here, what, three or four times a week. Keeps himself to himself, you know. Doesn’t much like talking to me, anyway.’ Fitzroy detected in him a faint disappointment at a lost opportunity to show off his knowledge.
Frustration kicked its heels against her. Davenport said he worked in a museum.
And yet.
There was something about this place that pulled at her, that sat up and demanded attention.
Clive was scratching his head. ‘I don’t like to judge, you know. Lots of our visitors have a reason to study our specimens up close. Trainee surgeons writing a thesis. School kids drawing a picture. But it is a little strange. He only ever looks at two exhibits, stares at them for hours on end, he does.’
A look passed between Chambers and Fitzroy.
‘And which exhibits would they be?’ said Chambers.
‘It’s always Charles Byrne, The Irish Giant. He’s seven foot seven, you know. One of our most famous displays. Yep, old Charlie Byrne and Mr Jeffs.’
‘Mr Jeffs?’ said Fitzroy.
Clive’s face came alive. ‘That’s right. Lived in England, died in the eighteenth century. His skeleton is fascinating. His vertebrae are fused in a curve, leaving him permanently hunched, and he has knots and plates of bone where there shouldn’t be any.’
Ting.
‘Poor fellow. There’s still no cure for it today, although advancements are being made, I understand.’
‘Cure for what?’ said Fitzroy, although she already knew what he was going to say.
‘Sorry,’ said Clive, laughing guiltily. ‘I assume everyone knows this collection as well as me. Mr Jeffs had a rare bone disease: Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. Otherwise known as Stone Man Syndrome.’
71
9.57 a.m.
Erdman’s eyes were tiny specks of grit, his mouth as dry as dust. He swung his legs off the sofa. The muscles in his back, his neck, ached like hell. His head was thick and fuzzy.
His toes connected with the empty bottle of Laphroaig.
‘Shit,’ he muttered.
He vaguely remembered pouring himself a glass last night, while Lilith slept on and on, and the walls closed in around him. As the heat in his throat spread to his chest, he drank another, and another, trying to loosen the splinter in his heart. He must have crashed out about 3 a.m.
The door opened and Lilith shuffled in, hair unbrushed, her face grey and old. She bent down, picked up the bottle. ‘That’s not going to help, you know.’
Nor are the pills you’re popping every five minutes.
He wanted to shout at her, to shake some fight into her. But he didn’t. Because he understood that they were the crutch keeping her upright. Kick that away, and she’d come tumbling down, and he couldn’t bear to lose her, too.
He made coffee, black and strong.
‘Is Belinda coming today?’ He liked the family liaison officer. She didn’t care if Lilith was rude or tearful or wanted to sleep.
‘No,’ said Lilith, filling her glass from the tap. ‘I’m sick of strangers in my home. I want to be on my own.’
‘What about me?’ he said, half-joking.
‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘I’m going back to bed.’
‘Lilith—’
She turned back towards him, sorrow staking its claim in her unwashed body, the grooves around her mouth. Framed in the doorway, she looked like a painting. Or a premonition.
‘I will find him.’
‘So you keeping saying . . .’ She left the rest unspoken. That his grand plans, his ambitious schemes, always came to nothing.
The trudge of her feet on the stairs matched the unhappy beat of his heart.
He was tired of letting everyone down. For once, just once, he wanted to do something right.
But he didn’t know where to begin. Or how to find him.
And then he remembered the man who had been following him.
If he wandered the streets, made himself available, perhaps the stranger would find him instead.
72
11.26 a.m.
She was running as fast as a rabbit being chased down by a pack of dogs. Her breath came in short gasps and she clutched at her side, pain tearing her features in two. She threw a glance over her shoulder and darted through the trees, one hand on the damp wood as she bent over, sucking in lungfuls of air.
She needed to find her. She scanned the dark woods, calculating her chances of success.
On the right side of her body, in the concave dip of her ribcage, a burn had taken hold but she forced herself on, her old trainers slapping the forest floor.
He was here. And so was Grace. She heard a scream, and put on a spurt. Every breath became a struggle until it seemed as if her heart was beating so quickly that the tiny gaps between each pulsation would run into one continuous sound.
She ran into a clearing.
A glint of a blade in the moonlight, and another, and another, and they bit into Grace’s skin like the steel teeth of a trap, and then a scream that perforated the darkness, and a low, rattling laugh, and the sounds of insects clicking and feeding.
Fitzroy jerked awake. Even in sleep, beyond the periphery of consciousness, the dead shook her from her dreams. Around her, the overland train juddered and shook. She lifted her head from Chambers’ shoulder, discreetly wiped the drool from her chin.
‘You look like you needed that.’ He nudged her gently. ‘Ours is the next stop.’
>
An image of Grace, her body brutalized, ruined, floated in front of her.
Even in sleep, the dead spoke to her still.
On the platform, Fitzroy hesitated, and then pulled her phone from her pocket, praying she would answer this time.
Conchita Rodríguez had been waiting for news for twelve months.
Most mornings she knelt before a framed photograph of Grace, and her late mother’s painting of Jesucristo, in the shrine that once was her living room, and prayed that this would be the day. But this was the first time she’d been in here this week. That little girl’s disappearance had unsettled her, and she had gratefully accepted an invitation from her brother and his wife to stay with them for a few days at their home near Bath. At the sound of the telephone, Conchita Rodríguez rose from the carpet, her knees stiff and painful.
‘Sí?’
‘Mrs Rodríguez, it’s DS Fitzroy. Um, Etta.’
The pace of her heart picked up.
‘I’m so sorry to phone you out of the blue, but as part of an ongoing investigation, I need to ask you for some more information about Grace. I know this will bring back some terrible memories, but I’ve been through the case notes a dozen times, and I can’t find what I’m looking for.’
‘The memories are with me every day, Mrs Detective Etta Fitzroy. Your call will not make that any worse.’
‘Thank you,’ said Fitzroy.
Mrs Rodríguez tucked the receiver in the crook of her neck and struck a match, placing its blazing tip to the candle wick next to Grace’s picture. She placed her lips against her daughter’s. The glass was a cold reminder.
‘This question may sound a little peculiar, but Grace was a healthy girl, wasn’t she? She didn’t have any illnesses?’
‘No, she was strong girl. She loved swimming, netball.’
‘Yes, I remember. She was part of the school team.’
‘Ah, sí.’ Mrs Rodríguez’s voice was wistful. ‘She couldn’t wait to play in school competition the week she disappeared, but her neck was sore and she didn’t go. So disappointed, she was.’
On the end of the phone, Fitzroy was silent. In the background, the tannoy boomed an announcement about a cancelled train.
‘What was the matter with her neck, Mrs Rodríguez? Can you remember?’
Of course she could remember. What kind of mother did this Mrs Detective think she was?
‘She had been for X-ray a few days before she disappeared. Doctor said she could have them removed if they were giving her too much trouble.’
‘Have what removed, Mrs Rodríguez? Please, this is important.’
‘Grace had bilateral cervical ribs, Mrs Detective Fitzroy. An extra rib on each side of her chest.’
73
12.11 p.m.
Lilith ignored the squawk of the bell. She was counting the sleeping pills back into the bottle again.
The flap of the letterbox lifted. ‘Open up. Mr Frith, are you there? Mrs Frith? I need to talk to you.’
That bloody detective.
Fitzroy rang the bell again, and rattled the letterbox. ‘Answer the door, please. It’s urgent.’
Lilith shuffled to the front door. Dark brown strands of hair hung greasily around her face, leaching all trace of colour from her skin. If Fitzroy noticed she was squeezed into a Spider-Man T-shirt, age five to six, she didn’t mention it.
The police officer stepped into the hall, Chambers behind her. ‘Can we come in?’
A bit bloody late to ask that now, isn’t it?
‘Have you found Jakey?’
‘Not yet.’
Lilith felt anger catch inside her like a match.
‘Then get out there, do your bloody job, and leave me alone.’
‘I am doing my job, Mrs Frith,’ said Fitzroy. ‘This is part of it.’
Lilith hitched up her pyjama bottoms, and shuffled back into the dining room. She’d been dead inside for days, feeling nothing more than a flat kind of numbness, but when she looked into the detective’s face, she was floored by the pity she saw.
She saw Fitzroy clock the tablets on the table, then hold up her palm to Chambers, silently warning him to back off. She didn’t care that they had seen them. She didn’t care about much at all.
‘Is Mr Frith here?’
‘He’s out.’
Fitzroy was fiddling with the camera on her phone.
‘Perhaps I can send this to his mobile instead.’
‘He hasn’t got one any more,’ said Lilith. ‘It was stolen, remember? Funnily enough, he hasn’t got round to getting a new one yet.’ Her sarcasm was heavy. ‘He’s had other things on in his mind.’
Fitzroy ignored her. She held her screen towards Lilith.
‘Take a look at this man, and tell me if you recognize him.’
Lilith glanced at the grainy snapshot of an old man, shook her head, passed it back. Fitzroy refused to accept it.
‘Look again, Mrs Frith. Closely. We have reason to believe he may have been involved in the abduction of your son.’ She paused, to allow the power of her statement to sink in. ‘This might help us to find him.’
Lilith sank into a chair. She studied the image, more intently this time. Little creases indented her brow.
‘Where was this taken?’
‘We obtained it from CCTV footage at the Hunterian museum.’ A beat. ‘Do you know him?’
Lilith didn’t answer for a long time. A tear rolled down her cheek, and plipped onto the screen of Fitzroy’s phone.
‘I thought I did, just for a second. But now I’m not sure.’
‘Who do you think he is, Mrs Frith?’ Fitzroy reached for Lilith’s hand and squeezed it. Lilith didn’t squeeze back, but she didn’t pull away either. The detective leaned into her, trying to shore up the intimacy of the moment. ‘Who is he?’
Lilith did not take her eyes from the photograph. Uncertainty danced delicate steps across her face. He was familiar. But where had she seen him? Where? The pressure to identify him was bearing down on her, crushing her with its magnitude.
‘I don’t need to tell you that we’re in the middle of a major missing persons investigation. Potentially a murder investigation. I’m trying to help you and your family, as well as another family in extreme distress.’ Her voice was insistent. ‘If we find this man, we may be able to find them all.’
Lilith thought she might break under the weight of Fitzroy’s expectation.
She groped around in the darkness of her memory. She did recognize him. But where from? Where had she seen that narrow face, that long thin body?
She was aware of Fitzroy’s anxious glance, shining on her like a spotlight. Of Chambers fiddling with his watch strap.
The silence stretched between them. Eventually, Fitzroy stood. She had to get back to the office. To get this image printed and circulated.
And then, in her mind’s eye, Lilith saw him.
She went very still.
Then she drew in a shuddering breath and squared her shoulders, as if steeling herself to unburden some great truth.
‘I have. I’ve definitely seen him before.’
Fitzroy resisted the impulse to cry out, and forced her voice to stay even.
‘Where? Time’s against us, Mrs Frith.’
Grief, and guilt, and fear were written in the lines of Lilith’s face.
‘I’m not certain, you understand, but I think I’ve worked it out.’
‘Where, Mrs Frith?’
Her expression crumbled, like a pile of bricks stacked high and knocked down.
‘At the hospital. He works at the Royal Southern.’
74
1.01 p.m.
Even as she watched her trembling fingers punching in The Boss’s number, Fitzroy cursed herself for not having seen it before. She tried to collect her thoughts into a tidy pile, but they were muddied and curling up at the edges, and refused to be smoothed down.
It was horribly, blindingly obvious.
He was a collector of bone c
uriosities.
His ‘specimens’ were all patients of the Royal Southern Hospital.
Bile filled her mouth, bitter and burning. The taste of fear. The taste of failure. It would drown her if she let it, because Fitzroy knew what he was, but not who, and sometimes that was worse than knowing nothing at all.
The Boss redirected thirty of his officers to the hospital to interview staff and patients. He arrived with several A4 close-ups of Fitzroy’s suspect from the Hunterian’s CCTV. He was brisk and focused and determined.
‘Let’s nail this fucker,’ he said. ‘But I want to be discreet about it. We don’t want to scare him off.’
Fitzroy was dispatched to a poky office on the first floor with Chambers and the hospital’s human resources manager.
Department heads came and went. None recognized the man in the photograph. Fitzroy felt the first stirrings of panic. Her fingers drummed the table in front of her.
‘Bit awkward for you, all this, isn’t it?’ said Chambers, leaning back in his chair for a better look at the HR manager. ‘Didn’t a couple of bodies disappear from your hospital last year? In fact, haven’t you got a bit of a history of vanishing bodies? And now the police are here again, investigating one of your employees.’
He waved an airy hand. ‘There was a bit of a mix-up, but it’s all sorted now. We settled with the families out of court.’
‘Sign a confidentiality agreement, did they?’ said Fitzroy.
He smiled thinly, gave her a look that said I’ve come in on my bloody week off, so don’t push it.
‘Send the next one in,’ she said.
Clouds were gathering now, the afternoon preparing to give itself over to night. He stuck his head out of the door, beckoned someone in. ‘This is Karen Matthews. She’s our cleaning operations manager.’
A middle-aged woman with burgundy highlights sat down opposite Fitzroy. She smelled of perfume and disinfectant. Chambers perked up, leaning forward on his elbows. Fitzroy nodded at her and slid the photograph across the table.
Rattle: A serial killer thriller that will hook you from the start Page 25