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

by Fiona Cummins

  Clara might be dead. Grace, too. And Jakey? His illness would kill him, even if this collector of bones did not.

  Why should she risk her career a second time by acting without sanction?

  Why should she risk her life?

  But she already knew the answer.

  Because the judgement of others did not matter. She would judge herself. Because she wanted a life free from the burdens of conscience. Because it wasn’t about her at all. It was about gifting a young boy and girl the chance to survive. Families, the chance to rebuild.

  She listened to the whine of the wind, and she shivered.

  82

  1.01 a.m.

  Brian lets himself into his home and breathes in the smell of his other life: furniture polish, disinfectant and overcooked mince.

  He knows immediately that she is at rest; the house is waiting for him, he can sense it, and it relaxes now he is back, creaking and shifting a welcome. But he must not get too comfortable. It is almost time. No getting away from it, no shirking of responsibility.

  It is his duty.

  His hip aches, and he wobbles slightly as he pulls off his shoes and throws them against the wall. He limps down the hall to the kitchen, where he dumps his holdall on the imitation marble worktop.

  Arthritis, perhaps. Or the strain of the last few days. He isn’t sure. All he wants is a long, deep bath to ease his bones, to wash away the grime of this longest of days from his tired body, but he knows that isn’t possible. Not yet.

  Truth be told, he is worried.

  That nasty business with Marilyn and the rabbit skeleton has unsettled him. Reminded him of his fragility. Of his vulnerability.

  And he saw the police at the hospital on his way into work, walked right past Karen Bitchface Matthews in the car park, spilling her guts to that plod bitch Fitzroy.

  He does not know when they are coming. Only that they will.

  He should leave, he thinks. There is nothing to keep him here. He could box up his collection, and never look back.

  But first, he must move the boy.

  Or kill him.

  To plunge in the knife.

  To unveil the beauty beneath his skin.

  His brain is tired, but he needs to think. He floods his garden with light, goes outside to attend to his rabbits. He spends time cleaning the hutch, refilling their water bottles, laying down fresh straw.

  When he is finished, the house is still in darkness. He goes into the kitchen and warms a can of soup in the pan, and carries it into her room.

  The elastic of her faded eye mask is stretched so tightly across her forehead that a lip of flesh curls over its edges. Her skin is pale. Her eyes are open, but they no longer see. Marilyn will never see anything again.

  He sits on the chair and spoons soup into her mouth. It trickles back out again, and he mops at it with a napkin.

  ‘Now, now, my love. You need to keep your strength up.’

  She does not answer.

  He walks back down the long corridor of years they have spent together. How they loved to talk, to laugh. It was a lifetime ago.

  Winter, 1974. He sees her in that hospital bed, her eyes alight with hope when he stops by to chat, pain not yet leaving its mark on her face. Juniper Ward, it was called then.

  He sees her on their wedding day. A bride in a home-made lace gown, and a bouquet of red and white chrysanthemums.

  He sees her laughing up at him, the wheelchair not diminishing her beauty, but magnifying it.

  He sees her sadness at never becoming a mother.

  He sees her bending under the weight of the scoliosis, like a sapling in the wind.

  He sees her now.

  Her eyes are open, and they have not changed.

  ‘I love you,’ he says, and brushes his thumb across her cool, dry cheek. Together, they slip into the worn slippers of silence.

  He finishes the soup and washes his bowl. Even though it is late, he cannot relax. Thick curtains keep out the night pressing up against the window, but his ears strain continually for a knock at the door.

  Eventually, he climbs into her bed. Her body is cold, but even the warmth of his arms is not enough to chase death away. He shuts his eyes. He will rest for an hour before the toil of the night begins.

  Next door’s dog is barking and his bladder is sending urgent signals to his brain, but he is reluctant to leave his wife, although he knows he must. The forecast gale has arrived, and with it sleety rain which thrums hard against the roof. He hasn’t got round to fixing that leak, and soon it will drip into the spare room. He should get up and find a bucket.

  It had been raining like this the night his mother vanished. He was ten. Sylvie. Silver Girl. He still remembers the feel of her warm hand; her yellow boots splashing in the puddles; her smile bright under her rain hat, like a sunflower in a storm. And the hole of her absence burned into the backdrop of his life.

  ‘She’s gone.’ His father’s voice had been brusque, unflinching. ‘S’up to me to make a man of you now.’

  That night, he’d assisted his father in the cutting room for the first time.

  Brian is concentrating very hard on ignoring another, more insistent, pull. It pokes at him, forcing him to take notice. He sighs and swings his legs out of bed, carefully, so as not to disturb her. The blood rushes from his head and a fizz of stars sashay around his brain. He closes his eyes and waits for the sensation to pass.

  The house is freezing. She doesn’t like the heating on overnight. It makes her knees swell and her legs kick restlessly at the covers. He shuts the door quietly behind him.

  The light on the top of the fridge casts a greenish tinge over the kitchen as he runs a glass of water from the tap and leans against the sink to drink it. He thinks about making a sandwich. Or putting on the fire in the sitting room and reading what is now yesterday’s paper. Delaying tactics. He does not want to leave her behind. But he can see there is no other choice. Time is pressing on. Sacrifices must be made.

  The clothes are hanging neatly in a plastic bag on a hanger in his study. Working quickly because he is cold, he strips off his pyjama bottoms and pulls on black trousers which hang loosely around his waist. A white shirt. Black pinstripe jacket. A pair of black shoes with a pointed toe. A chain around his neck. His holdall, and the smell of death in his nostrils.

  As he slips out of the room, he catches his pale reflection in the glass. The Bone Collector stares back at him.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he whispers. ‘Goodbye.’

  83

  2.41 a.m.

  Erdman almost missed him. If it hadn’t been for the dog barking, he would have still been asleep, under the old blanket that Lilith insisted they kept in the boot of their car.

  He was cold and uncomfortable, and the most sensible course of action would have been to drive to the nearest police station and tell them everything he knew.

  But Erdman had never had much time for sensible and some instinct had told him to wait. That if this was the man who had taken his son and Clara Foyle, that if there was a chance they were still alive, he would not be holding them in this poky bungalow with its postage-stamp garden, and neighbours crowding in on either side, and no sign at all of a garage or grey van.

  No, he would watch and wait, and choose his moment to confront him with care, even if it meant staying here all night.

  He did not want to scare him off before he had found his son.

  Erdman stretched, bumped his knee on the steering wheel and wished he was wearing a thicker jacket. The moon hung over his car, sharing her light. Frost was furring the ground. And he saw a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye.

  His heart began a blastbeat in his chest.

  The man was walking briskly down the opposite side of the street, a bag in his hand. Erdman slipped from his car and into the night.

  84

  2.44 a.m.

  The unmarked vans slid slowly into place. An operation involving armed officers took several hours to
authorize and prepare, and The Boss knew that this was their chance, their opportunity. In a nutshell, they couldn’t afford to fuck it up.

  Of course, he could have handed it over to the night shift. But, as on every one of the ten nights since the first child had disappeared, he’d found himself unable to relinquish his command. Sleeping, warm and safe, in his own bed just didn’t feel right until the missing victims had been found, and so he’d been surviving, like Fitzroy, on a few snatched hours here and there.

  Fitzroy.

  One of his very best officers, gave the job everything. And yet she seemed intent on screwing up her career. He’d gone out on a limb last year, speaking up for her. She had narrowly escaped an assault charge, and then that toe-rag had gone to the papers.

  He knew why she had done it. A registered paedophile living a couple of streets from Grace Rodríguez’s home, who had admitted to walking his dog in Oxleas Woods on the day she had vanished, and not a soul to vouch for him.

  She had put two and two together, and made five.

  She was lucky to keep her job, but he didn’t feel ready to put her out in the field again. Not until he was sure she could be trusted.

  The officers in his van were talking in low, strained voices. The air zinged with tension. He checked his stopwatch. He was getting nervous, wasn’t sure if he had been right to suggest they wait as long as they had. But he preferred to hit a suspect when they were unguarded, at their most vulnerable. Even so, he’d decided to bring the raid forward by an hour. It was almost time.

  With a bit of luck, Brian Howley would be fast asleep, enjoying his night off. With four vans and a phalanx of officers, he wouldn’t stand a bloody chance.

  The Boss had no way of knowing that his target had slipped out of his back door just seven minutes earlier, and was, at that moment, only two streets away from his father’s house.

  He checked his watch again, and this time, he gave the signal.

  85

  2.46 a.m.

  A suit and tie is the perfect way to dress. With polished black shoes. A bow tie is too much, trainers and jeans too scruffy. But a black pinstripe suit, with a dark tie and crisp white shirt, gives off the correct air of authority, of control. It practically begs for respect.

  He has chosen with care. It is important to look his best. A curious contradiction, but the way he dresses makes him stand out and slip under the radar.

  Sleet needles his face, but he barely notices. He shivers not at the cold, but at the prospect of what awaits. He does not see the father a few steps behind him, walking in the shadows.

  The air smells of sulphur from the fireworks unleashed by those scumbag teenagers who hang around the park like dog turds. Bonfire Night has long passed but they seem to gain some kind of sadistic pleasure from letting them off anyway.

  He wonders what they will do if he shows them the scalpel secreted in his jacket.

  Tonight, he will finally begin the unveiling of the boy’s skeleton. Perhaps a little H2O2 to whiten the bones.

  And then. His collection will be a glorious sight to behold.

  He thinks of his wife, and sadness spears him.

  She was twenty-seven when they met. Those eyes, that gleam of a grin. The wards had been bigger then, the matron’s standards stricter, more exacting. Two months after the general election when old Wilson had won by a nose. When London was a city looking over its shoulder. When bombings and strikes and decaying morality were the workaday fabric of life.

  The ward had been sleeping. Until she had asked him his name. He had spun around, surprised out of silence.

  ‘Brian,’ he had said.

  ‘Hello, Brian.’

  Her smile was as crooked as her spine.

  It had started there, and it had never ended.

  But his collection is all he has left now.

  He hurries on, through the discarded wrappers and dog-ends, through the gaping night skies. It is so close he can almost taste it, the balm that will soothe the dreams as cracked as his lips.

  86

  2.47 a.m.

  If Fitzroy didn’t get some sleep soon, she would grind to a halt, like an inferior Duracell Bunny whose cymbals gradually slow down and stop clashing altogether. She’d been awake for too many hours to count, and her eyes were gritty and bloodshot. By rights, that adrenal buzz should have kicked in by now. Dead or alive, she was desperate to find them all: Clara, Jakey and Grace.

  PC Angela Carpenter had filed an alert as soon as she’d come back to her post, and noticed the hospital locker slightly ajar.

  Another rabbit skeleton had been found, amongst the boy’s pyjamas and books. The macabre and the mundane. Another quotation. ‘Can these bones live?’ The words made her shiver.

  It was the confirmation that Fitzroy needed, the line connecting all the dots. Brian Howley had motive and opportunity.

  And he was taunting them right under their noses.

  No bodies had been recovered yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time. A serial killer was harvesting children with bone deformities, she just couldn’t officially say so yet.

  Professional desire usually sharpened her brain, but not tonight. Her body felt heavy, plaited together with fatigue, desperation and hope.

  They would be raiding Howley’s home within the hour. And she, Fitzroy, would be waiting at the station to interview him, just as soon as she had satisfied the ting that was telling her to check on his father’s address. It was probably a dead end and The Boss would be none the wiser, but she couldn’t have stayed at the station twiddling her thumbs and doing nothing while she knew the operation was underway. That was the thing about dead ends: there was no way out once you started down them.

  As she navigated the short distance along the road, Fitzroy stared at the shopfronts which blurred and wavered in the rain. She couldn’t wipe the image of Jakey Frith from her mind. The nub of his shoulder blades, protruding like unformed angel wings. He was only a baby.

  Death was cruel like that, brutalizing life’s ordinariness. One day it was all packed lunches and swimming lessons and playdates, and then, just like that, it was over. A scooter. A reversing car. A killer. And bang. No more hot, sticky hands to hold. No more kisses to lavish. No more clatter and clutter. No more noise except the roar of silence, day after day, week after week, long after the well-wishers had returned to their own families and a new kind of half-life had begun.

  She thought of her own wound, how it had scabbed over, but the scar was vivid still.

  The pain of loss could consume you, if you let it. For some unfortunate souls, once it held you under it never let you back up for air. All these years later, she could breathe again. But it had been a close call.

  She should have protected Jakey, and guilt lay across her like a crown of thorns.

  The streets were quiet. A weak moon was trying its best to cut through the damson skies, but it soon gave up, and let the clouds subsume it.

  Still she kept walking, past the late-night kebab shops and the doorways inhabited by the dispossessed.

  Her feet hurt, and she was very, very cold, but she preferred to avoid the bureaucracy of signing out a pool car, the questions and sympathetic glances. She sat on a bench outside Saint Mary the Virgin, the church near the High Street, and watched the cars flash by.

  Her thoughts touched on Nina, and her new nephew, Max. On David, and the dead weight of their marriage. On the lonely, lost souls of Clara and Jakey. On another night like this.

  The ground was uneven, strewn with twigs and clods of mud, and she stumbled along, deeper into the murk.

  Fitzroy had not wanted her to come, it was much too dark, but Conchita Rodríguez had insisted. She owed it to her daughter, she said.

  They pressed on, into the dark tangle of trees. The autumn leaves had fallen, leaving them naked and exposed, but the moonlight was too weak to penetrate the branches.

  Fitzroy’s torch bobbed as she walked. Mrs Rodríguez did not speak.

  At last,
they reached the white tent, the police tape strung around the trees like grim festival bunting.

  The wind was rising, and had blown away the clouds obscuring the moon. In a shaft of silver beneath the lonely branches of a wild service tree, Mrs Rodríguez had gazed upon the place her daughter had faced darkness, and collapsed, in supplication, on the damp, decaying earth.

  Fitzroy rose to her feet again.

  The heels of her shoes squeaked against frost-tinged pavements. She visualized herself as a heat-seeking camera, searing through the red bricks of the Victorian terraces which choked this part of the capital.

  She patrolled the streets until her feet were a mess of blisters, and then, all of a sudden, there it was.

  The house was unprepossessing, ordinary, anonymous. She loitered by an alleyway opposite. In between the whip of the wind and the distant rumble of traffic from the A21, she focused her mind.

  She was just deciding how best to proceed, whether to break a window or scale the fence and look for a back door, when she noticed a slight figure scurrying up the garden path.

  She shrank back against the wall, and it seemed he hadn’t seen her, but then the hand holding a set of keys dropped to his side, and he turned away from the house, scanning the night-time street. He took a step towards her and paused, and Fitzroy, whose legs had turned to water, exhaled, not in relief, but as a way of expelling the fear which had built up inside her like a geyser ready to blow.

  His eyes were black, and unflinching, and when they met hers, she glimpsed in them a knowledge of unspeakable horrors, and she tried to turn away, to run from this dark man who walked in step with death, but his gaze mocked her, and she found herself unable to break away.

  He moved across the street towards her, and the skies above her sulked, and the wind stopped, and it seemed as if the night would swallow her up.

  Fitzroy let out a cry, and stumbled into the alley, looking for a cut-through, a way out, but it was bricked up and lined with overflowing rubbish bins, and so she pressed herself against the damp roughness. And then he was there, his sour breath in her face, a scalpel in the spokes of his hand.