The Bone Keeper

by Luca Veste

  Her eyes closed and she could see her son. Smiling, as he had on occasion. Smiling at her.

  Waiting.

  She hoped he was waiting.

  Hoped there would finally be a reunion, away from the monster who had taken them both.

  Darkness fell over her, as she still thought of her son. Tinged in red and black.

  Waiting for her.

  Thirty-Two

  Louise rubbed sleep from her eyes and tried to forget about the photographs. The handwriting on the card left for her to find. The burnt pieces of wood, still sitting in her kitchen untouched. She wanted to throw them away, never look at them again, but something had stopped her.

  She knew it was the same thing that was stopping her from telling Shipley and everyone at the station what she had found.

  How it connected to the investigation, if it did at all. There was no way it could. Just another part of the game. A door opening to the past that she didn’t want to walk through and discover the truth of her life.

  She thought of these things while looking at the body on the ground. Another victim. Killed the same night as someone had broken into her home and delivered her the past.

  This was the new normal. Her new normal.

  Louise mirrored DS Shipley, snapping on the blue forensic gloves that were swiftly becoming a part of her usual working life. Not that she had any intention of touching a single thing. Her mark was perhaps already on this scene, in so many ways.

  Just breathe, keep calm, you can do this.

  She hated the voice in her head now. Always placating her, trying to keep her on track, when all she wanted to do was scream her feelings out. Hide in a corner, covered with a blanket, until this was all over.

  ‘Looks like it all happened in the one place,’ Shipley said, giving Louise a little nudge. ‘Stabbed her here, on the path, then by the looks of the marks on her neck, strangled her. Seems like overkill.’

  They were back on the close they had visited only a couple of days previously. Now, it felt different, as if a dark cloud had descended above them, casting everything in a dull light. The atmosphere was thickened by tension as the residents had gathered nearby, all questioning what had occurred near their once-safe abodes. Death on your doorstep had a way of making you question your own life.

  Louise could sympathise.

  Only, they weren’t supposed to come back.

  Hazel Durham lay awkwardly on the ground, blood thick and dark surrounding her. Her greying hair was splayed out underneath her head, matted in parts as her life pooled into it. Angry red and purple marks were visible on her neck. Her eyes were open and staring upwards, as if she had looked towards the sky in her final moments. The once-white shorts and T-shirt she had been wearing were now torn and ruined, as the wounds beneath the rips in the fabric seemed to battle to reach out and be noticed.

  ‘He wanted to be close to her,’ Louise replied, squatting down and getting closer to Hazel Durham. ‘Almost like he wanted to look in her eyes as she died.’

  ‘This is personal then.’

  ‘I expect so,’ Louise said, standing up to her full height and facing Shipley. They were inside the forensic tent which had been erected around Hazel Durham’s body, but not before enough people in the close had seen her prone body lying at the end of her path to mean quite a crowd had gathered. They had been shepherded away for the most part, but Louise could still feel their presence out there. Watching every movement in and out, hearing bits and pieces of information, making judgements. ‘He’s also used a knife on her, but it looks more rushed to me,’ she went on. ‘Still, I think it’s the same guy.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.’

  ‘Why her?’ Louise said, stepping back from Hazel’s body, carefully watching her step as she did so. Her entire body was covered, in order to keep the scene as forensically viable as possible, but she could see the paramedics’ footprints in the blood which had pooled around the body. She knew Shipley would have the same pangs of guilt she was experiencing. As if they were somehow to blame for Hazel being killed and that by speaking to her, they had put her in danger. ‘She didn’t even tell us that much. It’s not like he could have been annoyed with something she told us.’

  ‘Maybe there was more to tell,’ Shipley replied, nodding his head towards the house and waiting for Louise to follow him. ‘Someone wanted to keep her quiet. Which leads me back to Rhys Durham. We still haven’t found him and he’s the most viable option for all of this.’

  ‘The timing still doesn’t fit in my opinion,’ Louise said as they stepped into the house, which was now crawling with various uniformed officers and forensic techs. CSI would have the run of the place, but the main focus of activity was in the hallway and the path leading outside. They looked at each other and began ascending the stairs, knowing what they needed to see again. ‘He’d be too young.’

  ‘So, maybe he was a precocious serial killer.’

  ‘Those bodies we found in the woods go back fifteen years. The stories about TBK go back even further than that. Are we really saying we have a serial killer who started as a baby? Or even as a glint in his father’s eye?’

  Shipley reached the top of the stairs and paused on the landing, turning towards her as she stopped on the last stair. ‘Probably not, but those were only stories after all. Maybe they weren’t true until someone made them so?’

  She shrugged and waited for him to push open the door to Jon Durham’s bedroom, then followed him inside. It was much the same as it had been the last time they had been there; the only discernible difference was that it was obvious someone had been inside and moved things around a little. The bed was no longer immaculately made up; instead the covers were rumpled and shifted to the side somewhat. There were muddy marks on the white sheet at the bottom of the bed, exposed by the duvet itself hanging off the side. The CD player on the bedside table was on, a digital display blinking a final track number in green. The small figures on a shelf had been swept over, the meticulousness of them now ruined. The wall display was still intact, left behind for them to study once again. Shipley had made his way over to it instantly and was looking at the pictures and notes, his head cocked to one side, taking it all in.

  Louise took more interest in the CD player, lifting up the CD case perched on top of it with a gloved hand. It had already been marked up, fingerprints pictured and taken from it. She doubted that he would have left any behind. Whoever this was.

  You know what it is.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘What?’ Shipley replied, looking over his shoulder at her briefly. ‘Did you say something?’

  ‘No, nothing. It started in here,’ Louise said, speaking to Shipley’s back as he turned to study the wall again. ‘Hazel was probably asleep and he waited for her to wake up.’

  ‘Uniforms spoke to the neighbours first thing. One of them said they heard loud music around 4.30 a.m., they thought. Which fits into the timeline. What are you thinking?’

  ‘He plays the music, lures Hazel in here, then begins his attack.’

  ‘There’s nothing in here that suggests there was a struggle though,’ Shipley said, finally turning to face the rest of the room. ‘I know, I know, the toys on the shelf have been knocked over, but that’s not much. If you’re fighting for your life, you make more mess than that. Same as the landing, the stairs and the hallway. Everything happens outside.’

  ‘He let her get that far,’ Louise said quietly, imagining herself in that position. Running for your life, while someone watched you, knowing your actions were futile. Perhaps taking pleasure in allowing you to think escape was possible. ‘I keep coming back to the same question,’ she continued, changing tack as the feeling grew too strong for her. ‘Why her? What could she possibly have known that she wouldn’t have already told us?’

  ‘Information from this room led us to the woods in Speke. Maybe that was enough.’

  Louise hummed in response, but didn’t quite buy it. It
felt like a loose thread that she couldn’t help but pull. ‘I’m not convinced.’

  ‘We need this entire wall studied inch by inch,’ Shipley said, turning back to face it once more. ‘Maybe she interrupted him before he could destroy it himself, led him outside, and then he had to leave quickly or be caught. Why else would he come back?’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Louise replied, stepping alongside him and allowing herself to look at the wall once again. She recognised what was pictured there. The different areas of the city – of the entire county of Merseyside, if you wanted to be precise. There were pictures printed from the internet, mixed in with ones she imagined Jon had taken himself. Soon, they would begin combing the entire woodland around them, but for now they were still chasing their tails.

  Trying to find someone who wasn’t real.

  ‘Then there’s the question of Rhys Durham,’ Shipley continued, tracing a gloved finger over one of the tendrils emanating from the devil mask. ‘He’s the prime suspect for all of these deaths. We need to find him. That’ll be key to keeping us in the loop in this case. And beyond.’

  That was the most important thing to Shipley, she realised. Staying involved. He saw this as nothing more than a large-scale investigation that he had stumbled into and was now desperate to stay with. Louise almost pitied him in that moment, but quickly thought about how she would have reacted in the same situation, without the baggage she was carrying.

  She would have been holding the door open for him, then skipping through it herself.

  ‘I don’t think you have anything to worry about,’ Louise said, replicating the soothing voice which was playing in her head more and more now. ‘They wouldn’t have sent us to this scene if they weren’t keeping us on board. They know you’re a good detective, you’ve already shown that much.’

  Shipley shaped to reply, but then closed his mouth and only kept eye contact with her. There was a frisson of electricity in that moment, even with everything else going on around them.

  Neither of them had mentioned what had happened in the car the previous night.

  If only he knew. You can trust him. Just tell him. He’ll understand.

  She shook off the thought, knowing what his reaction would really be. Still, it would be a relief if she could tell him what she had found in her kitchen. Someone to share the burden she was carrying.

  A uniform appeared at the door, clearing his throat to gain their attention. They turned in unison, Louise feeling a blush rise to her cheeks. She glanced at Shipley, who was also rosy-cheeked.

  ‘Just thought I’d let you know,’ the uniformed officer said, shifting uneasily on his feet. He was almost impossibly young, Louise thought, and winced a little at herself. He couldn’t actually have been more than eight or nine years younger than her, but she felt as if she had decades on him. She wondered if he’d dealt with anything like this before, then decided that he probably had by now. It didn’t take long being in uniform before you were confronted by death. ‘Your DI has turned up. Looking for you both downstairs.’

  Louise thanked the young lad, waiting for him to leave before she turned back to Shipley. ‘We’d better get down there. Don’t want to annoy our new boss.’

  Shipley grinned in her direction, but didn’t make eye contact this time.

  She tailed him out of the room, waiting for him to take a couple of steps down the stairs before she followed.

  Each step felt like a betrayal.

  Thirty-Three

  He washed his hands over and over, feeling sharp, stinging pain when he ran them under the tap. The knife he had used lay on the windowsill, blood drying on its blade. Light permeated the glass pane, stopping and being absorbed by the red and brown tinge.

  He held his hand to his mouth, yawning again. His body felt empty, as if all the energy he’d once felt had been sucked out of him.

  That was something he’d never expected. Exhaustion. Murder had wiped him out.

  He giggled to himself, the noise of it echoing around the tiny bathroom. The idea of being something so hated.

  At least he was something.

  There’s so many kinds of murder. The violent, spur-of-the-moment type. Unplanned and instant. Then there’s the kind that is properly planned and thought out. All building up to the moment when you plunge the knife into someone’s neck, or use your hands to choke the life out of a person. You can picture it in your head, every second of it, almost feeling as if it were real already. It is a poor substitute for actually doing it though, he thought. Nothing can ever match really ending someone’s life.

  He knows what that feels like now.

  He had become something. A thing to be feared, scared about.

  The bodies entered his mind as he picked up the soap and began rubbing it into his hands again. He had left the bodies in the shared bed. He knew they would be found eventually, but there had been a second when he had hovered over the telephone, trying to decide whether he should call the police himself to make that discovery come quicker. He had decided against it, reasoning that it wouldn’t be long before someone missed them.

  They were there, now, as stark as reality in his head. Lying on the bed, as he watched the lifelessness of them. He had been stunned into silence by the stillness of them, how they had become blank shells in front of his eyes.

  The way the air around them had changed and become empty.

  There had been a few seconds, in the darkness as he stared at them, when he imagined he could see their souls leaving their bodies. Drifting upwards, past the ceiling above them and into the sky beyond. Joining the stars in the sky, taking their own place among them.

  He had no way of knowing if that would have been their eventual resting place. For all he knew about the pair, they could have done terrible things in their lives. Maybe they were destined for a vastly different place than the one above.

  He had wanted to go through their things, delve into their personal lives and discover what they were hiding.

  The water running from the tap turned cold again as he ran his hands under it, watching the stream run clear. At first, it had run dark, then had turned lighter with each wash. Now, there was nothing left. No trace.

  After he had watched the couple for a while, he had opened a bedside drawer, looking through its contents. He’d switched on the lamp which that sat on top so he could see better. Nothing inside it had surprised him, or answered any of his questions. An unopened box of condoms, some medication, an old postcard and some odd bits of ribbon. He’d tried the other two drawers but found much the same. Nothing that told him anything about the couple.

  Why did he want to know?

  He should have run away immediately, he knew that. Staying there had only driven him towards bad thoughts and feelings.

  He had left soon afterwards, ignoring everything else in the house.

  The clothes he wore seemed cloying and restrictive once he was away from the scene. As if they had been made for someone else. He had broken into a run once he’d been clear of the street, to expend any last energy. He wanted it all gone, all the thoughts and feelings he had, the memories. He needed to keep moving, keep going. Not allow any of the events to catch up with him. To think about them too much, to dwell on them.

  That wouldn’t help him.

  He had too much to do.

  Now, in the bright, burning light of day, he couldn’t get the image out of his mind. His hands around her neck, her eyes bulging out as she struggled to breathe. The knife lodged in the man’s neck, the blood spilling out onto his gloved hands. He could almost feel it now, no matter that he had rubbed them raw under the running water.

  He needed sleep.

  He needed to hear the words again. The faded, misremembered ones he struggled to recall. Those that would appear when he closed his eyes and listened hard enough. Soothing tones, peaceful.

  Flashes of red and black invaded his vision instead. The sounds and smells. This wasn’t what he had expected. His balled his we
t hands into fists and drove them against his eyes, wanting the darkness to return, but instead he could hear their voices. Their pleas for mercy. All of them, at once.

  He believed he could see their faces, each of them in turn. All strangers to him. All of those bodies, now being dug up and found. Decayed, destroyed.

  They blurred and merged into one face.

  He couldn’t get past the thoughts, the feelings, as he began to shake uncontrollably.

  Thirty-Four

  The clouds overhead had parted, allowing a dull sun to appear above them, as they made their way out of the house and to the waiting detective inspector. Louise had time to shed her forensic suit and gloves before they were pulled aside by their new boss, meaning she felt a little closer to normal. The DI was someone she’d met before, but never in this capacity.

  Breathe. You can do this.

  GO AWAY.

  ‘Thoughts?’ DI Locke said, barely giving them the chance to get to where he was standing. Louise imagined he didn’t visit many scenes, which must mean this one had resonated back at the station. There were palpable signs of tension on the older man’s face, which she guessed hadn’t been there before this week.

  ‘Looks like he gained entry through the back, then enticed her into her son’s bedroom,’ Shipley replied, almost standing to attention and speaking in a clipped tone. ‘First confrontation was in there and then he chased her out to where she was killed on the path outside.’

  ‘Where’s the son?’

  If Shipley was annoyed about the lack of insight into their work until that point, he didn’t show it. ‘Died a year ago. Suicide. It was his notes and photographs on TBK that led us to the woods down the road.’

  ‘TBK?’

  Louise had to turn away in order to hide her frustration. Shipley was more stoic than her, however, and continued without a pause.

  ‘The Bone Keeper, sir. That’s whoever this person is has been masquerading as, best we can tell. He put the woman – Caroline – in hospital earlier this week, leading us to here and then the woods.’