by Luca Veste
Shipley gave Louise a quick glance, a look she interpreted as being a request to continue in the same vein and not expect him to jump in this early. That had been the agreed plan: she would deal with everything light, he would deal with the trouble. She continued to ask further questions, but learned little more. It was soon his turn.
‘Has anything else happened to make you think there was a reason he may not have been in touch?’ Shipley said, providing his own attempt at a soothing tone. It wasn’t as perfect as Louise’s, but then, he’d always been better in different scenarios.
Not that she hadn’t proven herself in that department more than once.
‘No contact from friends,’ Shipley continued, making notes as he spoke. ‘other family members or anything like that?’
Barbara shook her head, which seemed to take more effort than it should have. ‘No, nothing at all. I don’t really know anything about his friends. No one else in the family had heard from him either. Not that he kept in close contact with any of them anyway.’
‘What was he like on the last day you saw him? Anything out of the ordinary?’
‘Nothing at all from what I can remember,’ Barbara said, a hitch in her breath as she spoke. She swallowed, still hanging on and not breaking down. ‘He was the same as he’d always been. Especially in those last few years. He came home a few days before that, was fed and watered, slept a lot. I don’t think he’d slept much in the weeks before he’d come back.’
‘Did he do that a lot? Go away for a while then just turn up?’
‘Yes, that was the way he was. Wouldn’t see him for weeks, months even. Then he’d show up out of the blue like nothing had happened. I never questioned him about it. Maybe I should have done.’
Louise could sense that their time was limited now. The reality was beginning to set in for Barbara. The sudden knowledge that what she had dreaded was true. She decided to jump in now, before it was too late. ‘When you said troubles, earlier, what did you mean about that?’
‘I didn’t pay much attention. I just wanted him to be safe.’
‘But you knew he had been in contact with the police on a number of occasions,’ Shipley said, cutting in after Louise’s set-up. He turned over a page of the file on the table for the first time since Barbara had entered. ‘Multiple times, for a whole range of offences.’
‘He was a good boy. Never in trouble growing up. He just got mixed up in the wrong crowd.’
Shipley went over the dates of Nathan Coldfield’s arrests, listing some here and there. Louise could hear his tone of voice change, as he struggled to hold back from saying what he wanted to.
The obvious. Almost twenty years of breaking the law was a long time to be mixed up in the wrong crowd.
‘Did you know about the things he was accused of doing over the years?’
Barbara fixed him with a stare now. ‘I’m not sure what this has to do with what’s happened to my son, detective.’
‘We have to cover everything, Barbara, I’m sorry.’
She gave a long sigh and a shake of the head towards Shipley. ‘He would sometimes call me, but he would never let me go to court or anything like that. He used to say that he was always just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That once you’re thought to be a certain type of person, then you’ll always be a target. An easy one.’
It was becoming increasingly shaky ground, but Louise listened as Shipley pushed on regardless. ‘Some of the offences were minor, but there are some more serious ones on this list. Is it possible that he got himself mixed up in something he couldn’t control?’
‘I think the fact I’ve just had to identify his body would say that was right,’ Barbara replied, a steel that hadn’t been there before now present in her voice. Louise realised Barbara was just the same as most of the parents she had encountered. He wasn’t a bad lad or a criminal. Those things happened to him, rather than him making the choice to do them himself.
Normal then, Louise thought. Typical.
‘Someone has killed my boy,’ Barbara continued, her voice quieter now. ‘I don’t know if that’s because he got himself into trouble now and again, or because someone else saw him as an easy target, just like your friends in uniform did. I just want you to find out which it is.’
‘Was there anyone in particular Nathan was close to before his disappearance?’ Louise said, changing tack before she was forced to promise something she couldn’t.
Something crossed Barbara’s face, a darkness, an anger almost. ‘This one guy. Nathan said his name was Rhys or something. Nathan wouldn’t stop talking about him. Started a few months before the last time he visited. I didn’t like the way he spoke about him. I tried to tell Nathan that, but he wouldn’t listen. He said it was someone he met on the street one day. He said this guy was helping him. Was going to set him right.’
‘Did you ever meet him?’
There was a pause, a moment of hesitation before Barbara spoke. ‘Once. Not properly. He was outside, at the end of the path. He’d walked with Nathan, on one of his visits home. He didn’t come inside or anything though. Nathan knew better than to invite people back to my house.’
‘You never spoke to him?’
Barbara shook her head. ‘I didn’t need to. I knew what he was like just by looking at him.’
‘And what was that?’
‘He was dead behind the eyes. Like looking into two dark tunnels. There was nothing there.’
Louise bit down on her lower lip with her teeth, bringing the skin together so it began to sting with pain.
Eyes like tunnels. Dark, without soul. Without life.
She had known eyes like that before.
It never ended well.
Ten
When Val heard the announcement, time seemed to stop.
A body found in her city would do that at any time. Especially one they didn’t name.
She waited expectantly all day for the knock at the door, feeling that it was going to happen any second. It was just a matter of time. That was all. They were finding him now, identifying him, knowing he was her boy. Her son.
More details sneaked out. The woods where the body had been found. The other side of the water from where her son had disappeared. Different woods, but it wouldn’t have mattered much to her anyway. Anyone in the city was a possibility. Even further afield than just Liverpool. She had travelled to Manchester and Preston before then to identify dead bodies which had turned out not to be her son.
Her boy.
It was almost the twentieth anniversary of his disappearance. Everyone thought that day would be worse than any other. They were wrong. It was only a few weeks until what should have been his thirty-fourth birthday.
Those days were worse.
Christmas, birthdays, New Year’s. The event days were when she felt the loss most keenly. That’s how grief worked. You missed the times you should have spent together. As a family.
Now, they were fractured. Incomplete.
No knock at the door. No answers suddenly appearing.
No peace. No resolution.
Val forced herself to watch more and more as the drama unfolded. The local newspaper had a page dedicated to live updates on the story. She waited for each new item to appear, holding her breath as the website paused and then revealed the nothingness it usually delivered. The various postings on Facebook and Twitter were the same – although it didn’t stop her looking for any further information that wasn’t being reported. It seemed to be the case that they were now linking the two incidents together – the woman who was found wandering the streets in Melling, and now the body discovered in woodland nearby.
Most people seemed to think it would be whoever attacked the woman. Killed himself rather than face justice.
If we had the death penalty, maybe we could have done the job for him.
Saved us some money. Pure evil.
People commenting without any idea of what had actually occurred.
Val thanked
a deity, not for the first time, that social media hadn’t been as popular when her son had gone missing. She didn’t think she would have been able to cope with reading all those people’s opinions. She had read enough about missing-child cases since, the vitriol levelled at the parents left behind, to know she never would have survived that examination.
It would only have been a mirror to her own feelings. Her own sense of guilt. The ill-informed scribblings of the masses would have been too much for her. Of that she was sure. Her son going missing ruined her marriage, her family – having everyone talk about her from a veil of anonymity would have ruined her soul.
She knew some believed that he had done a runner and she actually knew where he was. That the entire disappearance had been a ruse. A secret plot to divert attention from a bigger crime. There was no truth to that, of course. Not that anyone would listen. When her husband had brought that question into her house, it had been the final nail in a coffin on which construction had begun months earlier. It was already being gently lowered into a grave by that point; he just brought the end a little sooner than she had thought it would be.
She reached for the phone again, wanting to call her daughter. Not that she could have if she wanted to. The last time they’d spoken – all that time ago – had felt final.
She was stuck in a distortion. A moment in time, trapped for decades. Her son’s bedroom still existed in its past form upstairs. She went in every week or so, dusting off old toys and electronics which he would never use again. Even if he did return. Technology now out of date.
Untouched for all that time, other than by her own hand.
She had kept it pristine, awaiting his return.
Sometimes, she would forget what had happened. Early in the morning, half-awake, catching herself pushing open the door expecting her teenage boy to still be under the covers. Waiting for her to wake him up for school. She was transported back to a simpler time, when all she had to worry about was his tendency to be silent, getting into minor trouble.
It would take a few seconds for reality to hit her. That she was twenty years older and her son had vanished without a trace.
Now, she was content to disappear into the world on her laptop screen.
And watching the local news websites update every few minutes, on a story which – it became more and more apparent – was nothing to do with her missing son.
Until the first video arrived.
The blurred form of a woman, staggering down the middle of a road she didn’t recognise. The image wobbled and turned as the person holding the camera tried to get closer. It was almost as if they didn’t want to. That if they’d got too close then they would somehow become a part of whatever was happening.
The sound was more important.
Val could hear the woman singing, screeching. Seemingly using the last of her strength for it before she collapsed to the floor. The song was one she knew. An old rhyme, one most people in the city knew.
The Bone Keeper’s coming. The Bone Keeper’s real.
Val’s hand went to her mouth, covering the noise which threatened to escape.
The questions she had.
The fear that wanted to break free.
Eleven
Louise was standing at the evidence table, scanning the various scraps of paper removed from Nathan Coldfield’s bedroom. Every receipt, every screwed-up ball of rubbish, was now suddenly of great interest.
She wondered what people would think of her tendency to keep receipts for everything if they ever had to do this for her. If some poor DC would be told to work out the value of a five-year-old receipt for a hairdryer which had broken three years earlier. Instead, it was Louise going through the detritus. Trying to find meaning, or something of value, among the mess.
The picture she had found underneath the bed was in the centre, seemingly now of utmost importance.
‘Just anything,’ Shipley said, lifting a bus ticket in the air and staring at both sides. ‘We have a name, but it means bugger all at the moment.’
‘We could just track down every Rhys in the city. Ask them all what they were doing two nights ago.’
Shipley didn’t laugh, but he smiled at least. ‘can you imagine the overtime claims for something like that ever being agreed to?’
‘There’ll be something, in among all this here,’ Louise said, beginning the process of separating out each scrap of paper on the table. The accumulation of modern life, screwed-up pieces of forgotten trips, things bought and consumed without thought.
‘You really think so?’ Shipley replied, unable to keep the pessimism from his tone. ‘I doubt it.’
Louise shook her head towards him, then returned to examining the contents of Nathan Coldfield’s entire bedroom, laid out before her. ‘It’s here. Something will be here.’
‘It’s obvious what he’s done. He’s been back every few weeks, emptied the pockets on the one pair of jeans he wears, got his mum to wash them, then buggered off again. It’ll all be pointless.’
‘Maybe, but you never know,’ Louise replied, knowing Shipley was just voicing his annoyance with the situation. ‘Did we find out anything at all about Caroline? Family etcetera?’
‘No, nothing yet. She has a flat, but there wasn’t anything of note there when uniforms went over. And I mean, not a thing. The place was spotless. Almost like a show home, was how one of them put it. No personal touch to it whatsoever.’
‘So, no closer to finding out if there’s anything more to her story then?’
‘I guess not.’
Louise thought about the woman lying in a hospital bed a few miles from them. About what she had gone through, what she would be feeling. She could feel the anger rising within her as she thought about the kind of man that would do this. Felt her breathing become heavier as she did so.
She clenched her jaw and concentrated on slowing her breaths. Tried to focus on what was in front of her.
There had to be something there.
Eventually, they found it.
Louise stood outside a seemingly normal semi-detached house, on a quiet street towards the south of the city. Garston, only a few miles from the last town before Liverpool turned into another city. Speke only a mile or two away, the last leg on a journey towards Runcorn and Widnes. A cul-de-sac, the name of the road showing marks of graffiti that had been removed.
Rows of houses on each side, almost bearing down on her as she took them in, all similar in build and shape. Each containing a different class of person than the more notorious council estates on their doorsteps. Working people lived there, only a few scant parked cars in the middle of the day, with newer number plates than would be found in those other places. Care had been taken with each house’s front; new paving stones in small driveways, tiny porches erected so there was an extra entrance rather than just a wooden front door. Bushes, well tended, in the few which had patches of grass in front.
They had found what they had been looking for within an hour. A full name for the mysterious ‘Rhys’ character. His surname was Durham and a long-gone mobile phone number accompanied the name scribbled down.
The ‘RD’ on the back of the picture had been the key. Once they’d paired that with the name Rhys, and the phone number, things began to move. It hadn’t taken them much longer to link the phone number to an actual Rhys Durham, despite it being a throwaway pay-as-you-go SIMcard. Louise sometimes feared the power they had now. The ability to find out information with so little in hand.
‘This is really the only relative he has?’
‘She’s the only one in this area, put it that way,’ Shipley replied, pulling the car to a stop at the side of the road. ‘And she’s listed as his next of kin, going from the last time he came into contact with any authorities.’
They had tried his previous known address, but the current occupant hadn’t been able to provide them with help in any way. A quick chat with the landlord over the phone gave them little more, only that he hadn’t lived t
here for some years.
Louise was beginning to think Rhys Durham didn’t want to be found.
Shipley left the car, waiting for Louise to close her door before keying the automatic lock. A train rumbled past somewhere, causing both Louise and Shipley to look up at once, then at each other.
‘Well, that would get annoying quickly,’ Louise said, waiting as Shipley made his way around the car and next to her. ‘Which station’s round here?’
‘West Allerton up that way,’ Shipley said, pointing back towards where they’d come from. ‘Liverpool South parkway the other way. Wasn’t there when I lived near here. Nearest station was Hunts cross. Still is, actually. That’s if you want to walk from the train station into Speke. Used to be a pain in the backside, getting the train from town home. It would take three-quarters of an hour to walk home from the train station. When we were kids, it felt like three hours.’
‘Bus was better then?’
‘Yeah, when it was running properly. Used to be hit and miss, back in the eighties and nineties. That’s why we barely ever left the place. Not that we needed to.’
‘You lived round here for a while then?’
‘Only about twenty years,’ Shipley replied, giving Louise a smile that reached inside her somehow. ‘I’ve told you this before. We were on the outskirts, for the most part. Used to pretend we weren’t part of the proper estate in the centre. Nearer the airport entrance, so it was almost a self-contained place. Not part of the main town. Lot of new builds round there. My mum used to look down on those from the proper estate in Speke, but we were no different really.’
‘Sounds a bit like my mum,’ Louise replied, trying to replicate the smile he had given her. She didn’t think she pulled it off as well. ‘She always wanted better for us.’
‘What was your mum like?’
Louise pretended she didn’t hear him and changed the subject. ‘What’s the plan here then? How much do we say about why we’re on her doorstep?’
‘Let’s play it by ear,’ Shipley replied, standing just behind and letting her take the lead. ‘We’re obviously not going to say too much. Mainly because we don’t know an awful lot.’
