Bone Machine

by Martyn Waites

  Decca looked at Christopher, hoping for a response. Christopher didn’t seem to have moved since he last looked at him. Or even drawn breath.

  ‘Come on,’ Decca said, standing up. ‘Let’s go.’

  Christopher looked at Sharon. ‘Don’t go to work tonight. Or for the next week. Until we tell you. If anyone asks, you never heard of Joe Donovan.’

  Sharon didn’t argue, just nodded meekly.

  Christopher turned away from her as if she wasn’t there, went out of the door.

  They walked out of the pub. Behind them, Sharon almost ran over to her admiring audience with a speed that said she thought she would never see any of them again. Her cue was handed to her, along with a drink. She gulped it down.

  Outside, the car was where they had left it. They walked towards it, gravel crunching underfoot.

  ‘You hungry?’ asked Decca. ‘You wanna get somethin’ to eat?’

  Christopher shrugged.

  ‘You want me to drop you off somewhere?’

  ‘I have to stay with you,’ Christopher said.

  ‘What, that means you’re comin’ back to my flat? You’re goin’ to sleep with me?’

  Christopher’s eyes flared. He took a menacing step nearer Decca. His arms stayed at his sides. ‘Have you heard of Serbian necktie?’

  Decca frowned.

  ‘You slit throat. Side to side. Pull tongue out of hole. Leave to die.’

  Decca swallowed hard.

  ‘Do not speak to me like that again. Ever.’

  Decca felt himself shaking. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK, cool.’

  He tried to get his car keys out of his pocket but his hands were shaking too much. Christopher took them from him.

  ‘I drive.’

  Decca didn’t know if Christopher could drive, had insurance, had a driving licence, anything. But above all, Decca didn’t argue.

  Christopher got behind the wheel, Decca in the passenger seat. Christopher turned to him. Almost smiled. ‘Nice car.’

  Decca swallowed hard. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Now we eat,’ he said, turning on the ignition. ‘Then we work.’

  The car roared away.

  Darkness fell, covering the city like an old grey blanket, the city centre turned Monday-night quiet. Sparsely filled buses operated on near-empty streets. Pubs did slight business, restaurants likewise. No one went to the cinema. People would go out only to things they had booked for, things they would lose money on if they didn’t attend. It was as if the first working day of the week had proved too much. The blanket too heavy to lift.

  Quiet extended from the centre of the city out to the residential areas. Through urban to suburban, where Jill Tennant walked down Fenham Hall Drive on her way to the uni to see Wilco with her lecturer, the Prof.

  She smiled, felt slightly giddy at what she was doing. An illicit thrill ran through her; she tried to admonish herself for that. She was a grown woman. He was a grown man. Slightly older than herself, granted, but still two consenting adults. There was nothing wrong, nothing illegal in what she was doing. Who she was seeing.

  She hadn’t told Ben where she was going. None of his business.

  Past Fowberry Close.

  Ben. She sighed. Maybe she should give him one last try. Perhaps he wasn’t so bad after all. Bit of a rugby-playing git, and a sneery Tory, but that could be explained away as the influence of his parents. He hadn’t started to think and experience things for himself. He even read the Daily Express because his parents did. Maybe he still had potential. He needed sorting out, admittedly, needed a few truths explaining to him. And maybe she was the girl to do it. Maybe. Besides, Ben was well fit from all that tackling, and running had given him real stamina. And he was surprisingly good in bed. There hadn’t been a huge amount to compare him with, but there had been enough. Enough to know what she liked. And she liked what he did with her. Just a shame about the rest.

  Straight down towards Nuns Moor. The silhouetted trees edging the Moor bordering the larger Town Moor seemed to both absorb the darkness and suck away what light remained. The Moor looked like it held secrets in that darkness. Unpleasant ones. Took them and swallowed them and wouldn’t give them up. Like an inner-city black hole. She shivered. It would be quicker to cross over the Moor, but she wouldn’t take that route. Not with a murderer going uncaught. She would stay under the streetlights, on the residential streets. Where nothing could happen. Where it was safe.

  Down along Wingrove Road.

  A night out to see Wilco. With her lecturer, no less. She smiled. Wondered if any of Ben’s friends would be at the gig. She hoped so. Might do him good to know he had competition.

  She had never been out with an older man before. At least not as old as the Prof was. And Wilco. She’d heard of them vaguely, thinking they were the kind of band only the serious student boys and dad rockers liked. Alt country. But the Prof had given her an album to listen to and it had been quite good. Not, perhaps, what she would have rushed out and bought, but not bad at all. She liked going to gigs, and the Prof had assured her they were good live. Which was fine. The gig would take care of itself. But what happened afterwards? She sighed. What did she want to happen afterwards?

  I am trying to break your heart. A refrain from one of the songs on the album the Prof had burned for her. It stuck in her mind. She thought of Ben. Smiled. Hoped he had heard it.

  Footsteps behind her. Voices. She stopped.

  Turned. A couple of lads in hoodies walking down the pavement towards the end of the street, towards her. She looked straight ahead, swallowed hard. Unused to the sudden swell of fear within her. Not like her to be scared, but with a student’s murderer uncaught perhaps it was right to be cautious. She gave a quick glance around. No one else on the street. The two lads crossed the road, kept level. One kept looking at her.

  Really looking at her.

  She kept her eyes straight ahead. Pretended that if she didn’t look at them, they couldn’t see her.

  But the hoodied youth was still looking at her. She could feel it. She knew without looking, without even asking, what he was doing. His eyes exploring her body, imagining her without clothes. Openly leering. She began to feel self-conscious. She had worn jeans, a thin, strappy T-shirt, an even thinner jacket on top. She had chosen her clothes carefully, knowing it was going to be warm in the gig, even if the weather outside wasn’t. But the youth’s eyes made her feel as if she had too much flesh on show. Like a Western tourist in some medieval Muslim country.

  At the next street corner, just beyond the shadow cast by a streetlight, a man was pushing a woman in a wheelchair. Dressed in an old overcoat and hat, he was struggling. Having trouble getting the wheels of the chair off the pavement and over the road, as if the woman in the chair was old, heavy and sensitive to the slightest jolt.

  Jill felt a wave of relief wash through her. At least there was someone else there. The youths wouldn’t dare put their thoughts into practice while there were others about.

  She slowed her pace, hoping the youths wouldn’t do likewise. They didn’t. They kept on walking. Crossed the road, went on to the Moor. Jill stopped walking, watched the darkness swallow them up. She breathed a sigh of relief. Turned, kept walking.

  She drew level with the small man, still struggling with the wheelchair. It seemed to be caught on a high paving stone. He was trying to ease it over as smoothly as possible, talking, murmuring words of supplication all the while. He looked up at her, smiled a long-suffering smile.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

  Jill stopped, returned his smile. He was small, middle-aged. Nondescript, she would have said. Inoffensive. The overcoat made him look bigger. The hat gave him an air of the Prof. But those glasses were so out of date they were laughable.

  He gestured to the chair. ‘I’m sorry about this. I need a bit of help with Mother. She’s very—’ his voice dropped ‘—sensitive.’

  Jill nodded, as if the two of them were sharing a secret.

&nbs
p; ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘not at all.’

  He gestured for her to go around to the front of the chair, help to take the weight when it left the pavement. She did so. She looked at the wheelchair’s occupant, readying her smile for the elderly, sensitive woman she expected to find there.

  Jill stopped. Confused. She looked up, frowning, about to speak.

  And he was on her.

  The small, inoffensive, nondescript man was gone. In his place was a rabid, blood-crazed feral animal. It was those features Jill saw descend on her.

  She put her hands up as fear rooted her to the spot. Her fists caught his glasses; she saw those unfashionable frames fly off his face, saw his rage increase. Saw a flash of blue light, felt a great numbing pain.

  Then she saw nothing.

  Felt nothing.

  24

  Donovan stood alone on the empty beach, looking out at the sea.

  He watched waves form in the distance; huge white horses that came noisily crashing towards him, threatening to take lives in their furious gallop to reach land. He knew they were capable of it, knew they had done so. He looked down at the sand, expecting them, daring them, to wash him away. But those fearsome life-takers just lapped placidly around his feet, their power fizzling away with a soft-fried-egg sizzle. Anger now spent, just harmless white noise. Then the sea reclaiming them, pulling them back, readying itself for another assault.

  Behind him, around him, the massive cliffs rose out of the vast, flat, sandy expanse of beach. Time-carved slopes and coves, they stretched towards the dipping clouds that floated over the upper reaches. A monochrome day: the colour-bled grey of sand giving way to the harsh grey of stone gloved by the soft grey of mist.

  Wind flapped his jacket against his body, blew his hair in his eyes. He squinted as sand and dead vegetation, beach debris, swirled all around him.

  He took it all in. He took nothing in. Just wanting to see it for himself. Look into the past, discover how the present had been created. Donovan just a small, slight figure standing there, dwarfed by cold nature.

  Llangennith Sands, Rhossili. Wales.

  Where the body had been washed ashore.

  *

  He had left Newcastle as soon as he had recovered his composure. He had made an attempt to tie up loose ends, but a shaken Sharkey had smoothly stepped in. He had informed the rest of the Albion team what was happening. They were all as empathic as could be.

  ‘What about Katya?’ Donovan had asked.

  ‘We’ll move her somewhere else. Keep her separate from her brother in case anything goes wrong. You don’t need to know where.’

  ‘The other thing, for Janine Stewart—’

  ‘Will be put on hold until you return.’

  ‘If she needs you for anything,’ said Peta, appearing by Donovan’s side, ‘one of us will deal with it.’

  Donovan nodded, moved by the understated, low-key concern that the rest of the team were showing. Tears threatened to well up inside him again; he pressed his palms into his eyes to stop them, face twisting with the effort. He felt an arm around his shoulder, allowed himself to be led into the front room to one of the leather sofas. He was dimly aware of the room emptying. He heard a voice speak to him. Couldn’t make out the words. He looked up. Peta was next to him, eyes choked with concern.

  ‘I said, d’you want me to drive you down there?’

  Donovan said nothing, just breathed. Eyes closed. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Eventually he nodded.

  ‘OK,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘OK. D’you want to go straight away?’

  He nodded.

  She would take him back to his place, let him get some things together, she would do the same. He tried to thank her.

  She gave a small smile in return. ‘What friends are for.’

  Jamal skulked in the doorway. He had been standing back from the others, waiting for them all to leave, wanting Donovan on his own. Donovan looked up, saw the boy standing there.

  ‘Hi, Jamal.’

  Jamal took that as his cue, came in, sat next to him. His hands were restless; he squirmed in his seat. He was trying to do or say something that would comfort him, show him he was cared for. It was a self-appointed task he felt hopelessly ill-equipped for. He opened his mouth, hoped the right words would emerge. ‘You’ll know for soon, then, yeah?’

  Donovan sighed. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think this is him.’

  Jamal frowned, genuinely puzzled. ‘So why you goin’?’

  ‘You’ve got to try. Explore every avenue. I owe it to him.’

  Jamal nodded. ‘Wish I had someone like you lookin’ out for me.’

  Donovan smiled. ‘You do.’

  Jamal nodded. Couldn’t speak for a while.

  ‘You know all that shit before,’ he said eventually.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Donovan.

  ‘Yeah, man. It’s OK.’

  The two sat there, neither speaking. Silently drawing comfort from each other.

  Two hours later Donovan and Peta were on the A1 heading south. Peta driving Donovan’s Mondeo, trying to get the kind of performance out of it she managed to extract from her Saab, Donovan slumped in the passenger seat, hand over his face as if trying to stave off a headache.

  He sighed. Looked out of the window. Barely noticed the anonymous countryside blurring past him. ‘I don’t know which I want more. It to be him or it not to be him.’

  Peta said nothing, the silence encouraging him to speak more.

  ‘He’s been there, all this time, these years, hardly ever away from the front of my thoughts …’ He sighed. ‘I’ve tried to forget him, to get on with things, but he keeps coming back. Like a ghost. An echo. And I feel guilty for letting him slip away …’ Another sigh. ‘And I don’t know. I just never know for sure …’ His fingers fluttered, as if forming a net to catch some invisible entity, coming apart as if it was too intangible to hold. ‘It’s not him. I know it’s not him. But you’ve got to … you’ve got to …’

  They drove on in further silence.

  ‘Look,’ said Peta eventually. ‘About the way I spoke to you on Saturday. About Katya. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘No, really. I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. Work’s work and that’s that. And sometimes attachments get formed through work.’ She kept her eyes on the road. ‘And that’s OK. As long as they don’t interfere.’

  Donovan sighed. ‘I don’t think I can talk about this now.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘OK.’

  Another silence. Peta kept her eyes on the road.

  ‘There’s not … not much left of him, I’m afraid.’

  Donovan and Peta had stood up from the moulded plastic chairs they had been sitting on in the entrance to Morriston Hospital, Swansea. Donovan knew what DC Davies was about to say.

  He looked at the paper he had held all the way down, read from it even though he had memorized it, crumpling and uncrumpling it in his hands as he did so. The body found was that of a small boy. About eight years old. Washed up on the shore. Llangennith Sands, Rhossili. On the Gower. Jeans, T-shirt, one trainer on his left foot. Enquiries had been made. No reports of a missing child either from holidaymakers or locals. Post-mortem put time of death at anything from a week to a fortnight previous. In the water all that time.

  Donovan put down the paper, hands shaking. Eyes closed. He was breathing hard, struggling not to give in. Peta gently took the sheet of paper from him.

  DC Davies was a small man who looked as if he had just cleared the police force’s minimum height entry requirement. He was balding, which he had disguised by that twenty-first-century version of a comb-over: a shaved head. A small, neatly clipped goatee blossomed on his lower face. He was dressed in khaki combats, boots, a plaid shirt and a padded denim jacket with a faux sheepskin collar. He walked through the entrance of the hospital. Donovan and Peta stood up.

  ‘Sorry we had to contact
you at home,’ said Peta.

  Davies sketched a smile. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Parents’ night at school. Glad of the excuse to get away, really.’

  Peta, making small talk, asked him how many children he had.

  ‘Three. Two girls and a boy.’ Sensing Donovan’s discomfort, Davies said nothing more on the subject. He and Peta shared uncomfortable glances. He looked at Donovan.

  ‘No one locally came forward with any information, so we put out a national appeal,’ said Davies. ‘The usual missing persons organizations get involved at that stage.’

  ‘Has anyone else contacted you about this?’ asked Peta.

  ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘You’re the first. And we appreciate you coming.’ He looked at Donovan, unsure how to proceed. ‘Do you want to … take a swab first? Or view the body?’

  Donovan felt his chest constrict even further. ‘View the body,’ he said, his voice small. ‘Might not need the DNA.’

  Davies nodded. ‘Down here, I think, then,’ he said, gesturing.

  He set off down a corridor. The other two followed him. Peta put her arm around Donovan’s for support. He clung to her like a drowning man to a life raft.

  Down anonymous, supposedly sterile corridors. Glimpses of illness, death and reprieve from the corners of Donovan’s eyes. Further down. More corridors. Donovan felt like they were moving inexorably towards the heart of something. He began to shiver. A cold heart.

  ‘Always chilly down here,’ said Davies. ‘Even in summer. Has to be, though.’

  They reached the mortuary.

  Through two heavy plastic doors and into a room with steel chambers lining the walls. Strip lighting rendered everything and everyone pallid, leached life even from the living. Somewhat incongruously, Foo Fighters were playing on a sound system.

  ‘Just like on TV,’ said Peta. She swallowed hard, her face drawn.

  ‘’Fraid so,’ said Davies. ‘Apart from the music, of course.’

  Donovan said nothing. Just clung harder to Peta. She felt him shaking, hoped he wouldn’t collapse.

  A white-coated, latex-gloved technician came over. Davies showed his warrant card, explained who they were and which body they wanted to view. The technician, brown hair tied back into a ponytail, turned the music off.