by N V Peacock
‘Oh, my. Well, it sounds like she provoked you. You still shouldn’t hit people, Cherrie. It’s not ladylike.’
‘There’s a lot of things you shouldn’t do to people, Mrs Duffill; doesn’t stop everyone else doing them though,’ I say.
Ignoring me, Mrs Duffill gets up. ‘I have a room in the villa for Robin. I’ve decorated it in his football team’s colours, all blue. He was so excited about it last time I was here.’
‘That sounds nice,’ I mutter.
‘He’ll be safe and sound in no time, sipping Shirley Temples on the beach. I’m sure of it.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ Leo says.
‘Well, I will leave you two to get on with things here. I’ll see you both real soon.’ With that horrific promise, the monster-in-law drifts out of the front door on a breeze of Chanel perfume and better breeding.
‘What did she want?’ I ask.
‘Mum’s sorted out the Spanish deeds; she’s moving next week. She wanted to say goodbye to you. It was nice of her.’
‘Oh, didn’t Tracy’s gran shame her into coming over?’
‘Yeah it was pretty epic. Can old ladies even say fuck?’
‘Tracy’s gran can. Hey, after all that, she didn’t really say goodbye to me though; just threatened another meeting.’
‘Don’t be like that, Cherrie. She actually had a lovely speech for you all planned out. I think your entrance spooked her.’ He rubs my arm.
‘I spook a lot of people these days,’ I mumble.
Leo looks down at his trainers. ‘Where are the laces?’
I fish out the plastic bag from my pocket, throw it at him, then heave myself off the couch and make my way to bed. My head hurts, and I need to leave enough time between accusations and action to confront Greer. He knows I’m coming for him now; perhaps he’ll make a mistake I can exploit.
I fall into bed, rolling myself up in the cold covers like a Cherrie-burrito. My phone is still on the bedside table. I should have checked it, but I can’t think straight. I need to sleep, just for an hour or two. I close my eyes to drift into a semi-conscious slumber. As I do, I hear noises downstairs. Leo is cooking.
Moments later, the bed depresses to my side. I feel someone lying behind me. I can’t bring myself to look. I can still hear Leo in the kitchen. He’s banging pans and arguing with the radio.
‘What do you want?’ I whisper.
Nothing.
An odd sensation shakes me. It may frighten Cherrie, yet Little Bones is curious. I turn around and find no one on the bed. I was dreaming.
I yell, ‘Leo!’
Thundering up the stairs, he shouts back, ‘What’s wrong?’ Then he bursts through the bedroom door.
‘Bad dream,’ I say.
Smiling, Leo crawls across the bed to hug me.
‘I can’t remember the last time you called out to me.’ He kisses the top of my head, then leans over me to grab my phone. ‘You’ve got two voicemail messages.’
I take my phone and listen to them.
As Leo scrambles off the bed, he says, ‘Dinner in ten minutes.’
The first message is from Patricia, asking me to come back to the station at my earliest convenience. She’s vague about why. The second message is from Mariah.
‘Cherrie, I’m sorry I missed your call. I’ve been swamped. I had a vision last night. It was about footballs. Does this mean anything to you? I also saw a robot, which was odd. His name was Nostrom.’
The phone slips from my grip and bounces off the bed. There is no way she could have known about Nostrom, and there were footballs in the kid’s room in Greer’s house. The son no one knew he had, or has ever seen. My gut told me that sicko was guilty.
I call Mariah back, but she doesn’t answer, not even her answerphone clicks on. She’s probably with another client, but she has helped me. It’s definitely Greer, and if he’s not some sick fan of my dad’s crimes, Robin could still be alive.
I change into a pair of dark jeggings and a navy jumper, which reaches my knees. I pull on my black leather ass-kicking boots and tie my hair up. I wrench my coat out of the wash basket. The butcher knife from Dawson’s Food is still in there; I feel the weight of it in the pocket. With renewed energy, I hurry down the stairs.
‘Just going for a walk,’ I shout to Leo, who rushes from the kitchen to tell me something about dinner.
As I open my front door, I look down at the gap where Robin’s shoes always used to be. It’ll be full again soon.
Quickly, I jog towards Greer’s house, each step taking me closer to Robin. Before I cross the road at the top of my street, I twist around to check for cars. As I do, I see a dark BMW gliding towards me. Moving slower than the speed limit, it slithers to a stop by the kerb. I see my face reflected in the tinted window. For a moment, I don’t recognise myself. I look dangerous. It should scare me, but doesn’t.
The window slowly rolls down. It’s Lawrence. He gets out of the car and puts his hands up as if in surrender. ‘I’m sorry for standing you up last night. I was at the police station. They questioned me for hours. They only let me go when they confirmed my alibi.’
‘What was your alibi again?’
‘I was in Wales at a conference when you took Robin to the fair. The organisers televised the whole thing. The police checked the footage. I’ve been officially cleared as a suspect.’
‘Good for you. Now, if you don’t mind, I have something to do.’ I walk on. Lawrence follows me in silence, like a sad shadow. It should feel uneasy having a stalker follow you through the streets, but when you have a hole scorching your heart, burning deeper by the minute, strange can feel normal, even comfortable.
When we reach Greer’s house, I look back at Lawrence and nod to him. He shuffles forward a few steps to stand beside me.
‘This is his house? Odd, I didn’t expect a bungalow,’ he whispers. ‘I’ll search the front. You search the back?’
‘I searched it last night without you. Robin isn’t in there.’
‘Then why are we here?’
‘He has a boy’s bedroom in there. Greer told the neighbours he has a son,’ I say.
‘He’s setting it up for when the media dies down. He will have stashed Robin at a friend’s house while the police searched his place.’
Hearing my little boy spoken of like an illegal object boils my blood. I wring my hands together and will myself to calm down.
‘What are you going to do?’
I don’t answer his question. I watch as Oscar Greer comes into view at one of his windows, gesturing as if he’s talking to someone.
‘Somebody is in there with him,’ I whisper.
I move around the back of the house. Greer hasn’t replaced the broken patio doors yet. Lawrence sees the plywood board covering the hole. He tries to move it, but it won’t budge.
‘Screw it; let’s just knock on the door. Greer doesn’t know me, he’ll open it,’ he says.
We run back across the lawn to the front step. I hide behind Lawrence. My fingers curled around the knife handle poking out of my coat.
Lawrence knocks three times. There’s a scuffling sound. The door opens wide.
Chapter 37
Brandishing the knife, I leap out and see … Kylie. Her pregnant belly protruding from a corduroy pinafore dress.
‘Cherrie? What the hell?’ Her hands fly up in the air.
I lower the knife. ‘Get out of there! The man in that house is a paedophile.’
Rolling her eyes, she yells, ‘Oscar!’ I watch Oscar Greer slink up beside her. ‘You said some crazy mother broke into your house. Was it Cherrie?’
‘Yeah,’ Greer whines. ‘Hang on; you know each other?’ He looks from me to Kylie.
‘Cherrie has been helping me with groceries. All those care packages from Dawson’s came from her.’ She sighs and then looks at me. ‘Oscar doesn’t have Robin; he’s no kiddie fiddler. They convicted him for being with me.’
‘What?’
‘Oscar is my boyf
riend. We met when I was sixteen and he was nineteen. I told him I was eighteen. When Mum found out about us, she called the police. We ran away together.’
‘Next thing I know,’ Oscar says, ‘they accuse me of kidnapping and assaulting a minor; my name is all over the internet.’ He purses his lips. ‘I tried to tell you when you came here the first time.’
When the penny drops, it makes an almost audible splash in my mind. I hide the knife back in my coat pocket. ‘The bedroom is for him.’ I point at Kylie’s belly.
‘Yes, when Kylie turns eighteen, she can move in with me.’
‘I was with him the night Robin went missing. I promise it’s not Oscar. He would never hurt a child.’ Kylie rubs her belly.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I say, stumbling backwards to sit on their driveway.
‘I get it, I do, but you’re kind of scary, and you wouldn’t listen.’ Oscar moves forward to pick me up under one arm. Lawrence grabs the other. My two prime suspects are helping me to my feet.
‘Why don’t you come in? I owe you a cuppa,’ Kylie says. Narrowing her eyes at Lawrence, she adds, ‘Hey, isn’t that the asshole who stalked you at the shop?’
‘What?’ Lawrence says.
‘Sorry, Lawrence. You were kind of stalking me.’
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have scared you. I’ve not been thinking straight since my Tommy went missing all those years ago.’
‘Again, I’m so sorry,’ I say, then look at Kylie. ‘No to the cuppa. I have to get home for dinner. I’m sorry about the patio doors.’
‘It’s okay. Leo does great work; you can send him round to fix them.’ Kylie smiles, but her lips fall into a grimace. ‘Is there no one else who could have taken Robin?’
Lawrence has an alibi. Oscar is innocent. The fair worker didn’t have him; we’ve searched Black Friars twice now. Am I seriously back to the copycat theory? ‘No, no one.’
My shoulders sag. A swell of tears threatens to cloud my vision, so I suck it up. ‘I’m going home. I’m sorry.’ I walk down the road, leaving Lawrence and Oscar standing together.
On the streets, flyers of Robin still flap on lampposts. They are worn by the weather now – his precious face faded.
I wander home on autopilot. I open the door and, not even bothering to take the knife from the pocket, shrug off my coat.
‘You okay?’ Leo asks as he fetches two foil-covered plates from the oven.
‘No, I’ve no clue where Robin is.’
‘If we knew where he was, he wouldn’t be lost.’ It comes out like a joke, but there’s no hint of humour in his words. ‘Dinner’s ready.’
Leo sits down and starts to eat. I look down at my plate. He’s made pasta with chargrilled vegetables and grated cheese. With a limp hand, I pick up the fork and push the food about on my plate.
‘Bad news about the podcast. Jai Patel can openly voice his opinions, so can say anything he likes. He was also careful with his language too. It was always someone like you who did something nasty. That kind of thing,’ Leo says.
I grunt back and keep eating.
‘Mum hired a real shark of a solicitor, though. Hopefully, they’ll get him on something else.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Dinner tastes like dirt. I imagine it staining my insides black as it slides down my throat. Mum was a great cook. She would prepare special feasts for the boys who came to our house; those meals tasted like dirt too.
An image flickers across my memory. The vat; the hydrogen peroxide Dad used to whiten the bones. The image widens out to the whole studio; benches, easels, shelves holding tubes upon tubes of paint. Me, so small I couldn’t reach the top shelf, even on tiptoes. It was Dad who lifted me up so I could find just the right colour, the shade I knew would make the bones sing.
When I close my eyes, I see a boy, little older than I was. Face ruddy and eyes wide. Mr Bones kept his victims in a cupboard in his art studio, the same place he used to hang up our aprons. As inspiration took him, he would kill them. I wasn’t supposed to be in his art studio on my own, but one day I went down for some paint. The studio always felt different without Dad. The navy walls making it feel as if you were drowning beneath a dark, violent sea.
I was about to run back out without my paint, when I heard knocking coming from the cupboard. I hesitated before opening it. Dad never did hide anything from me, but my young mind wasn’t focused on his evil deeds. I was just a little girl who wanted to spend time with her daddy. I was his little girl and he let me into his world, and told me his secrets. My hands were shaking by the time I reached up for the handle. When I opened the cupboard, I saw the crying boy, his limbs bound and a gag digging into his mouth. I untied him. He ran.
That’s how they caught Dad. The twelfth boy escaped and brought the police to our door. It was my fault. I’d heard the knocking many times before, but it was the first time I’d been brave enough to open the cupboard door.
Dad must have known what happened, and that it was my fault the police arrested him, yet he never said anything.
Now, my only hope for Robin is that his abductor is the father of a little girl; one brave enough to open his door.
Chapter 38
Too many days slip by and all I can do is stare at my mobile. As my only lead, I call Mariah several times but she doesn’t answer. I never mentioned Nostrom to her, did I? If I didn’t, how could she know about him? Dad doesn’t call either, and the police are oddly quiet. Each day I try to find more suspects, each day I fail miserably. Sleep is even more elusive than before and I vomit everything I eat, leaving me gaunt and almost skeletal.
Tired of pain and twisted thoughts, I sit in Robin’s room. The mother of a lost child. I wonder what I’ll do if we never find him, or if we do and he’s not Robin anymore, just dead flesh and bone. Without my son, I’ll die too. Strange, all this time I was worried I might be too much like my dad, that my DNA is cursed. Turns out, I’m more like my mum. Without the love of my life, I’ll cease to exist.
‘What are you doing?’
I look up to see Leo. I can’t bring myself to speak. The words are there, but they won’t move from my mind to my mouth.
‘Cherrie, come on. Let’s go downstairs and watch some TV, eh?’
Scooping up my mobile, I get up and follow him downstairs.
‘How about some chips? I could go to the Drunken Schooner,’ Leo says.
The thought of eating anything makes me hurt more. I don’t deserve food. I’m a shitty mother, and an even shittier detective. I was never going to find Robin on my own.
‘Cherrie? Chips?’ Leo repeats as if I’m a child.
Shaking my head, I sit down on the couch; curling my legs beneath me. Huffing, Leo takes the seat next to me and switches on the TV.
‘You’re not helping. I lost him too. We’re not living in the Cherrie Show.’
I look down at my mobile. Still nothing.
After a few hours on the couch, my eyes ache. I doze, yet continue to take in what is happening on the screen. Leo is watching some DIY programme. I can’t get my head around how he can watch something so mundane when our son could be anywhere, having anything done to him.
All this time, I’ve been clinging to suspect after suspect, trying to find Robin. That’s how I’ve coped, but Leo has brushed it all aside. He’s laying all his hopes on the police. The police who seem convinced this is my fault. That I’ve killed my son plus Thomas Doncaster to boot. They’ve bought what Jai Patel was selling, just like everyone else.
‘Cherrie!’
My eyelids spring open. I bolt upright. ‘What?’
Leo points at the TV; on it is a photo of a strangely familiar boy a few years older than Robin, dressed in a blue football shirt. ‘Another boy is missing. Harry Doncaster, Thomas’s brother.’
I wail. The sound snaps out of my mouth like elastic, then, too taut, it erodes and breaks away. I hear my screams bounce around my home as if they belong to someone else.
&nbs
p; Leo puts his arms around me. I push him away. I know exactly what this means; whoever has taken Robin is now finished with him. They have a new toy. My son is dead, and I didn’t feel the tug on my soul, the pull of flesh from bones as someone stole my only child from this world. I won’t believe it. I can’t. If he’s dead, I might as well give up on everything.
I refuse to move off the couch. Leo goes to bed; tired of trying to encourage me upstairs. He still has hope. I watch the news item about Harry repeatedly, rewinding the live feed to pause on his photo. The grinning face I remember gobbling stolen crisps smiles back at me, as if he has a secret he’s dying to share. Staring at Harry, I wonder about his connection to me. I gave him a lift; the police, for some reason, are aware of this. It’s as if someone is trying to frame me. Not that it matters. Without my son, my life is over.
My phone rings. It’ll be the police telling me they have found Robin’s broken body. I won’t be able to identify him; Leo will have to do it in my stead. I can’t see what horrors the monster did to him. I’m not like Lawrence. Knowledge of my baby’s murder will do nothing for me. Revenge, now that might be something to live for … The phone is still ringing. I reach out and answer it without looking at the caller ID.
‘Hello? Ma Cherie are you there?’
I cough out, ‘Hello, Dad.’ Hearing his voice, without the image of him in prison, sends me right back to the eight-year-old girl who needs her daddy.
‘Ma Cherie, have you found Robin?’
‘No, and there’s been another boy taken now, Harry Doncaster, Thomas’s brother.’
‘The killer is done with Robin.’ Unlike Leo, Mr Bones knows what another abduction truly means, and he won’t pretend a happy ending is on the cards for me.
‘I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet him; my baby should have known he had a granddad.’ I cover my mouth to stop from crying.
‘Oh Cherrie, please. There’s hope. I’ve been thinking a lot about Robin’s abduction. When the police interviewed me, they showed me photos of boys I knew. Boys whose faces I watched shrivel in the garden and become clean and beautiful in the vat. You remember the vat, right?’