Let The Bones Be Charred

by Andy Maslen

  ‘Some case-breaking insight?’

  ‘Do you know what? I think it might be, yes.’

  ‘Bloody hell, boss,’ Cam said, then took a quick sip from her glass. ‘What was it?’

  Stella gestured at the tableful of women, twirling spaghetti around forks, chewing pieces of steak, talking, smiling, pouring wine, laughing.

  ‘Look at them and tell me what you see.’

  Cam took her time. She worked her way round the table clockwise, pausing on each face. Facing Stella again, and with Alisha leaning closer, she answered.

  ‘I see a bunch of women having a great time, relaxing, drinking, just being themselves.’

  ‘Nobody looks stressed,’ Alisha added. ‘It’s like, in the station you’re always-on. Even at home, you’re maybe dealing with kids or a broken-down boiler but, here, this is like our private place where we can just, you know, drop down a gear or two for a bit.’

  Stella slapped her palm down on the wine-splotched tablecloth.

  ‘Yes! Exactly! That’s what the shrink I consulted said about the nutjobs they’ve got in Broadmoor. He said, “Believe it or not, they feel safe in here. They can afford to drop their guard.’’’

  Cam took another sip from her glass of wine.

  ‘What’s the insight, then?’

  ‘I think that’s how Lucifer’s getting past his victim’s defences. He’s getting them to drop their guard.’

  ‘How?’ Alisha asked.

  ‘He’s got a stooge. He’s using a woman to make the appointments and then when they, the victims, I mean, when they open their front door and she’s standing there, they relax. He probably comes in later or follows her in, I haven’t thought it through. But what do you think? Is that plausible, or is it the chianti doing my thinking for me?’

  Neither of the other two women spoke at first. Stella monitored their faces, desperate not to see lips pulled sceptically to one side. Cam broke the silence.

  ‘I suppose it’s possible. If I open the door at home and there’s a woman standing there with a collecting tin or whatever, my first reaction is to fish around for a coin. But if it’s a bloke, I’m more ready to give him the bum’s rush. They’re just always so ready to kick off if they don’t get what they want, you know?’

  ‘Can you really see it, though?’ Alisha asked Cam. ‘A woman helping a bloke to mutilate other women before strangling them?’

  Cam nodded.

  ‘I can, actually. I’ve got this girlfriend, right? Her ex-husband is a psychopath. I mean it! A real nutjob. You want to talk about control? He controlled every aspect of her life. She used to have a couple of cats, OK? So, after they got married, Johnno said he was allergic and she’d have to get rid of them. She actually agreed, which was bad enough, but when she said she’d take them to a shelter he said, no. She had to get them put down.’

  ‘Please say she didn’t,’ Alisha said.

  Cam shook her head.

  ‘She tried. She took them down the vet’s but the vet said they were fine and she wouldn’t put down a healthy animal.’

  Stella listened with a growing sense of foreboding. She reckoned she knew how the story would end.

  ‘Thank God for that!’ Alisha said. ‘I hope that put him back in his box.’

  Cam took a bigger swig of wine this time, then held her glass out to Stella for a refill. Stella poured then signalled a waitress for another bottle.

  ‘No,’ Cam said. ‘It didn’t. He was seriously rich and they lived in this converted watermill in Surrey. He said she had to do it herself. Drown them in the mill pond.’

  Alisha covered her mouth with her hand. Stella could see that she, too, had tipped to the ending. Stella spoke.

  ‘And she did it.’

  ‘Yes, she did do it! I met her for a drink a week later. She was actually shaking with fear as she told me about him. I told her she had to get out.’

  ‘And did she?’ Alisha asked.

  ‘Eventually. When he punched her in the face after she wouldn’t wear a pair of earrings he bought her for some posh party or other. But it was messy. Restraining orders, injunctions, the works.’

  ‘Look, I know that’s awful and, believe me, I really feel sorry for your friend, but there’s a big gap between drowning cats and carving up women, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yeah, but she ain’t doing the carving up, is she? She’s just emailing them or whatever and going, “Oh, hi, my name’s MJ Fox and I want to give you a shitload of money for your charity.” Then her husband, or whoever he is, does the dirty work. Maybe she just toddles off back home and does the school run, who knows?’

  73

  TUESDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER 11.45 P.M.

  Roisin was sitting in front of her TV, with a beer at her elbow. Ignoring the flickering screen, she re-read the linguist’s report, which she’d received after lunch.

  At first glance, the letters appears to have been written by someone highly educated.

  The following list of words from the text all score below 15% on the Latham-Schneider Frequency Scale. That means they are rarely or never used by 85% of the UK population.

  Vocabulary

  hypocritical

  adherence

  maladjusted

  chimaera

  enucleated

  redemption

  depravity

  There are also a number of stylistic flourishes characteristic of writers who have achieved a certain confidence with the English language:

  Archaic usage

  by my hand

  the very depths

  your obedient servant

  Alliteration

  cult of cruelty

  minds and morals

  punctured…pretensions

  Then there is the rather obvious use of religiose language:

  adherence to a cult

  moral high ground

  depravity and corruption

  bear witness

  the fires of Hell

  the Fourth Horseman

  the Devil lives on in me

  Finally, we have the capitalised words and phrases:

  MALADJUSTED TORTURERS

  CHIMAERA

  MONSTERS

  ROB

  SEXUAL

  BREASTS

  EYES

  MORAL HIGH GROUND

  DEPRAVITY AND CORRUPTION

  THE FIRES OF HELL

  LIVES

  THE FOURTH HORSEMAN

  For the most part, this list reads like an Old Testament game of Scrabble. Except for BREASTS and SEXUAL, which seem out of place. I am not qualified to advise definitively on the significance (if any) of this juxtaposition, but it seems to me that they relate, rather obviously, to pleasure, rather than pain.

  I said at the beginning of this short report that the text appears to have been written by a highly educated person. The keyword is ‘appears’. In my opinion, the opposite is true.

  The long words are precisely the sort that can be gleaned from a few minutes’ work with a thesaurus.

  The almost poetic use of alliteration and other literary techniques would be familiar to a great many uneducated people, for example, those with a good knowledge of the Bible. Rote learning of Biblical passages would equip any literate individual with an awareness of the tools its translators employed.

  But the main diagnostic tool I draw on in forming this conclusion is the use of punctuation. The writer has attempted a high-flown style, but his over-use of punctuation marks, especially commas, which are frequently misused, is the giveaway. It is a classic signal that linguists use to determine education levels.

  Based on this, and other less easy-to-explain markers, I would be reasonably confident in asserting that the writer did not progress beyond GCSEs at school, or, if they did, they took relatively unacademic subjects at A-level, such as Photography, Business Studies or Art.

  Dr Amanda Bassett, University of the West of England

  Sighing, Roisin finished her beer and tossed the report to one s
ide.

  ‘Great!’ she said to her empty front room. ‘So we’re looking for a bloke who thinks tits are sexy, scraped a few GCSEs and an art A-level, and who knows his Bible. Sounds like half the men I went out with in Ireland.’

  Stella sat on her balcony, chin cupped in her hands, trying to think herself to the point where she could go to Callie with the hypothesis that Lucifer wasn’t working alone. And, worse than that, he had a female accomplice.

  At 1.45 a.m., she realised that what she needed wasn’t more thinking, but less, and went to bed. She dreamed of kittens drowning in a sack, crying out in unison. ‘Mummy, Mummy, please. It’s so hot in here. Please save me.’

  She woke at 6.15 a.m., bathed in sweat, her face wet with tears. Sniffing, she pulled on a sports bra, knickers, vest and shorts, donned her favourite Asics running shoes and was running towards the green oasis that was Regent’s Park ten minutes later.

  At 8.45 a.m., she was sitting across the desk from Callie, laying it out for her boss. When Stella finished talking, Callie looked up at the ceiling. She returned her gaze to Stella.

  ‘It’s not without precedent,’ she said, finally. ‘But I’m not sure it takes us much further forward in catching the bastard.’

  ‘But you could hold a press briefing. Explain that we’re looking at the possibility that a woman is acting in concert with Lucifer. Nobody should agree to any meeting organised by a woman they’ve never met before, however wonderful the prize being dangled in front of them is. That might slow him down or stop him altogether. Then at least we’ve bought ourselves some time to find him.’

  Callie pressed her lips together. Stella watched her, waiting to see which way she’d jump.

  ‘Let’s hold off for now, eh? If you get him before he does it again, we’ll be able to cut straight to the good news.’

  ‘And if we don’t?’

  Callie sighed.

  ‘Then I’ll make the announcement and we’ll have to deal with whatever the media throws back at us.’

  Stella nodded her agreement and left to prepare for the morning briefing.

  74

  WEDNESDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER 10.00 A.M.

  SHAFTESBURY

  Amy Burnside enjoyed her work as the new Head of Philosophy and Ethics at Monksfield School, even if some of her colleagues had been muttering about her changing the title of the subject from the old Religious Education.

  Ambitious? She supposed she was. But then, had Jesus merely sat in his father’s carpentry workshop making milking stools, she didn’t imagine he would have transformed the world as successfully as he had, in fact, done.

  Her phone rang.

  ‘Is this Amy Burnside?’

  ‘Yes, who’s calling please?’

  ‘Hi, Amy. My name’s MJ Fox. I’m afraid my name won’t mean anything to you but I’m an Old Monksfieldian and I work for The Times now. I’m writing a piece about the changing face of Religious Education in Britain. How a new generation of more dynamic teachers are taking it in exciting and unexpected directions. Naturally I wanted to feature my alma mater if I could and, just between the two of us, I’ve heard you’re doing some amazing work. Please say you’ll let me interview you. I know it’s the start of a new term but I hope you’ll be able to squeeze me in among your many other responsibilities.’

  How could she say no? And, more to the point, why would she want to? Her rebrand from the generations-old and, frankly, fusty ‘RE’ to ‘Philosophy and Ethics’ heralded a seismic shift in the subject.

  More and more of her contemporaries were seeing the sense of broadening out the subject’s appeal to a more issues-based curriculum. The children seemed to like it, too.

  ‘Of course, MJ. I’d be delighted to be featured in your article. When were you thinking of doing the interview? I suppose it’s all done by phone or Skype nowadays?’ Secretly hoping that it was nothing of the sort.

  ‘Oh, well, we could do it remotely if you’d prefer, but I was hoping to come to see you in person. I know it’s a bit old school but I think one gets a much richer perspective on the person one’s interviewing.’

  Her heart leaped. Of course! And didn’t she always tell her students that there was no better way to judge a person’s sincerity in argument than to look them in the eye, whether they were professing their faith or their atheism, their belief in the death penalty or their espousal of patriotism?

  ‘That would be perfect,’ she said. ‘I live in a small village just outside Shaftesbury.’

  ‘I know, I checked out your LinkedIn profile. Look, Amy, please tell me if this is too soon, but I noticed on the school website that everyone has games on Wednesday afternoons. I don’t suppose you could possibly squeeze me in for an hour or two later today, could you?’

  Her heart stuttered in her chest. Today! Surely, this was a sign. Taking a steadying breath, she answered.

  ‘Of course. What sort of time?’

  They’d agreed a time and she’d suggested doing the interview at her house.

  After she’d ended the call, she frowned for a moment as she added the appointment to the calendar on her phone. How did The Times get my number? she asked herself. Then she rolled her eyes. They’re journalists, dummy! It’s what they do. Probably found it on my blog.

  She could see the headline now.

  The New Apostles: Reinventing RE For The 21st Century

  Smiling, she indulged herself with a daydream. A variation on the normal one, made all the more plausible by this delightful turn of events.

  They’d be sitting at her kitchen table, journalist and subject, drinking her freshly brewed Fairtrade coffee and eating her homemade biscuits. Fresh lilies cut from the garden in a newly washed-out vase on the table scenting the air with their heady perfume.

  She offered a small prayer of thanks that the council hadn’t imposed a hosepipe ban and she’d been able to keep her prize blooms watered.

  And then what? After the interview was published in The Times?

  Other interviews, maybe in the specialist press. The Times Educational Supplement would be an obvious next step. And then one of the coveted two-minute ‘Thought for the Day’ spots on Radio 4’s Today programme.

  Bishops, radical theologians, religious writers: they all went on and gave the nation the benefit of their considered opinions on moral, ethical and religious issues. She’d soon be joining them and from there, who knew? She’d carry on at Monksfield, of course, well for a year or so. But the lecture invitations, the books she’d write…

  A knock at the door interrupted her daydream, and her heart fluttered with anticipation.

  75

  TRANSCRIPT FROM METROPOLITAN POLICE DIGITAL, VOICE-ACTIVATED RECORDER, EXHIBIT NUMBER FF/97683/SC6 4/4

  Are those cable ties too tight?

  [Muffled sound – attempt at speech?]

  Shame. Still, they’ll melt once we get you going. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Amy Burnside. Well, the garden was a mess. I mean, not intentionally, and not from lack of attention. It was just the brutal summer weather. The lawn was burnt to an even beige. The grass actually crunched when I walked on it.

  As I stood on the doorstep, waiting for Amy to answer the door, I imagined her jumping at the sound of my knuckles rapping on the wood. The journalist is here! She’d smooth down the front of her skirt and walk slowly to the door, wishing her fluttering stomach would calm down. Taking a deep breath, and smiling like her life coach had told her, she’d take a firm hold on the inner handle and open the door to her future.

  ‘Amy?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  I smiled and we shook hands.

  ‘Come in!’ she said, ‘you must be boiling out there.’

  I laughed. I said, ‘Thanks. It is a bit on the warm side.’

  She laughed too, perhaps relieved that I had a sense of humour. ‘I thought perhaps we could talk in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some coffee made. And some biscuits as well. Home-made. I mean, I didn’t make them just fo
r you, I like to bake. Oh, god, that sounded rude. Why wouldn’t I make biscuits specially?’

  She was gabbling. Clearly nervous. I aimed for a reassuring smile. ‘The kitchen would be perfect. And home-made biscuits sound lovely. I generally buy mine from Waitrose.’

  She managed to lead me to the kitchen without committing another faux pas and poured us each a mug of the coffee from a cafetière she must have prepared five minutes before the time I’d said I’d arrive.

  I placed my messenger bag on the floor under my chair, blew across the surface of my coffee then took a cautious sip. She waited, not breathing. I smiled. I could see her relax.

  ‘That’s really good coffee. May I?’ I pointed to the plate of cookies.

  ‘Oh, please, go ahead. They’re cranberry, hazelnut and plain chocolate. The chocolate’s melted a little. It’s this heat. I’m so sorry. I hope you’re not on a diet.’

  ‘Why, do I look like I need to lose weight?’ It was fun to mess her around like this.

  ‘Oh no! You look great! I mean, fine. I’m sorry, I’m not used to being interviewed. I’m a bit nervous.’

  I smiled and reached out to touch the back of her hand. Just briefly, a graze, nothing more. But I sensed her pulse quicken nonetheless. I spoke some more reassuring words.

  ‘It’s OK. But please, don’t be nervous. We’re just going to talk about your work and I’ll record the whole thing so you won’t see me scribbling notes the whole time.’