Playing with Bones

by Kate Ellis

  Emily leaned forward. ‘Not someone with medical training then?’

  Sally gave an enigmatic smile. ‘Not a butcher either … or an abattoir worker. But one thing I am sure about is that she died where she was found. There’s no indication that the body was moved.’

  ‘What about that doll beside her?’ said Joe. ‘Could there be some sort of ritual element to the killing?’

  Sally gave him an apologetic smile. ‘I can only give you the facts. Interpreting them is your job.’

  ‘Do you think the same knife was used to cut off the girl’s toe and mutilate the doll?’

  ‘I don’t do post-mortems on dolls,’ Sally replied quickly. Then she spoke again, more co-operative this time as though she regretted her abruptness. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But the hands and feet are porcelain, aren’t they, so it’d be easy to break the toe off.’ She looked at Joe. ‘Have you discovered anything about the doll? Is it an antique or …?’

  It was Emily who answered. ‘We think it is but we’re going to get an expert to confirm it. If we can find out where it came from …’

  ‘We’ll be halfway there,’ said Joe, suddenly aware that he’d finished Emily’s sentence for her … something he’d only associated with long-married couples. He looked at her and grinned and she gave him a tentative half smile in return.

  ‘Have you heard that there were four similar murders in the nineteen fifties?’ Joe asked.

  Sally’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘It’s not been mentioned on the news.’

  ‘We’re keeping it under wraps till we know more about the original crimes. But the press is sure to make the connection soon.’

  Sally rolled her eyes. ‘Matter of hours, I should think. They’ll be like pigs in muck. Was this fifties killer ever caught?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  As they took their leave of Sally, Joe, like Emily, was only too glad to get out of that place of death. They both needed some fresh air and a strong coffee.

  ‘I reckon she fancies you,’ Emily said bluntly as Joe unlocked the car doors.

  Joe looked at her, curious. ‘Who does?’

  ‘Little Miss Frankenstein. Sally. All the time she was cutting up that body, she was giving you the come on.’

  ‘I wasn’t looking.’ Joe wondered if she knew about the incident at the Christmas party. There wasn’t much that escaped the DCI’s notice, if rumour was to be believed.

  ‘Let’s get back to the station. I need a coffee to wake me up.’

  Joe glanced at Emily sitting in the passenger seat. She had her handbag on her knee and she stared ahead, frowning slightly, like a woman with a lot on her mind.

  Michele was hungry. Sylvia had taken her downstairs the previous night and watched while she dusted and polished the furniture in the living room. It was necessary, she said. The place had to be immaculate for the coming photo shoot.

  After she’d cleaned Michele had looked for the little canvas bag containing her mobile phone but Sylvia had told her it had been left in the car and she’d get it for her later. But she’d never kept that promise.

  Then Michele had had to cook. Four meals – for herself and Sylvia and for two unseen people whom Sylvia had said were photographic technicians staying in another part of the house. Michele did it without question, just as she’d cleaned and polished. Perhaps every model went through this. Perhaps it was some sort of apprenticeship. But sausage and beans seemed very mundane sustenance for people involved in the glamorous world of fashion – somehow she’d expected sushi or Thai. But she was too excited by the promise of involvement in the photo shoot to ask too many questions.

  Sylvia had ordered her to have an early night and she had slept like the dead in that plain little attic room. When she awoke in the morning her head was aching. And the door was stuck again.

  Michele sneaked a look at her watch. It was nine twenty-five. She’d slept in late and she hoped it wouldn’t go against her. But as the bedroom door opened to reveal Sylvia standing there, looking soignée as ever with a fixed smile on her face, she knew she’d got away with it.

  ‘I’m afraid the kitchen floor needs cleaning,’ Sylvia said apologetically. ‘And I take it you can cook a Sunday dinner. Chicken?’

  Michele looked at her in panic. ‘

  You see that photographer I mentioned is arriving soon and he’ll expect to be fed.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Michele desperately. ‘The door’s stuck again. I need the loo.’

  Sylvia smiled. ‘Of course, dear. Such a nuisance. I’ll try and get it seen to.’

  Michele clambered off the bed, still wearing the T-shirt she’d taken from her rucksack. ‘My other bag … did you find it?’

  ‘Sorry. Not had a moment to look. Later,’ Sylvia said quickly. ‘You’d better get dressed. There’s a lot to do. I’ll get you a change of clothes. Wash the ones you’ve been wearing and hang them to dry in the kitchen. Not outside. Never outside. And there’s more washing to do as well. You can do it when you’ve cooked the dinner.’

  Michele nodded. She had to show willing. She’d never have thought that models’ clothes needed washing – but she was learning.

  Sylvia returned a few minutes later with a carrier bag containing clean clothes.

  Clothes that were fashionable but too big. Clothes that seemed to be designed for another girl altogether.

  Sunny Porter had shared the story of the Singmass Close Doll Strangler with the entire office, reading aloud from the book he’d received for his birthday, thinking it would save precious time. Emily had requested the 1950s case files from the archives in the basement and seven more calls had come in from elderly people who thought they were being good citizens by pointing out that four women had once died in Singmass Close.

  The more Joe learned about the old case and the murder of Natalie Parkes, the more he realised that the similarities were no coincidence. Either the original killer had decided to resume his old hobby in his dotage or someone had read about the old case and decided to emulate a murderer who had disappeared into the night over fifty years before and had never been caught.

  Sunny’s book, however, made absolutely no mention of severed toes, which either meant that the original killer hadn’t mutilated his victims – and the dolls found with them – or that the police hadn’t revealed it to the press at the time. Joe knew that the original files would tell him for certain, but in the meantime, he sat at his desk and closed his eyes, going over what they had so far and getting things straight in his mind.

  His musings were interrupted by a young DC who stumbled into the incident room, laden down with a pile of dusty box files. As soon as Joe realised that he was making for his desk, he hurriedly cleared a space on the cluttered surface.

  When the DC relieved himself of his burden, a cloud of dust flew up, making everyone in the vicinity cough and splutter. ‘Thanks Mark,’ said Joe, with a hint of sarcasm as a fine layer of dust began to settle on his desk and computer screen.

  Joe called Jamilla over. He’d need someone to go through this lot with him … someone he could rely on to sort the useful from the irrelevant.

  Once he’d explained what he wanted, Jamilla opened the first file and began work. And it wasn’t long before she’d discovered that the bodies of the Singmass Close victims back in the 1950s had indeed been mutilated, as had the dolls found beside them. But this fact had never been revealed to the public at the time.

  Now all they had to do was discover whether the information had been released at a later date … and whether it was contained in any of the true crime books that proliferated on the shelves of most of Eborby’s bookshops … or even on the Internet somewhere.

  It was nine-thirty in the evening before Joe had a chance to leave the office and head for home. His head was aching and if he was to be any use the next day, he needed an early night. Since Maddy had left for London there was nothing in prospect but early nights with a couple of bottles of Black Sheep or Sam Smiths for company, and he
was almost glad to have the inquiry to take his mind off the potentially seismic shift in his domestic fortunes.

  The thought of Maddy’s interview nagged at the back of his mind as he made his way home. There had been several women since Kaitlin’s death but Maddy was the only one he’d felt close to. She had become part of his life over the past months and he couldn’t help wondering whether this reluctance to make their relationship more permanent wasn’t a mistake. He suspected that the job application had been some sort of test. If it was, he was afraid he’d failed miserably. He hadn’t been able to take her hand and tell her that he needed her because the wounds of the past were still too raw and painful. Even when he thought they had healed, that he could start again, the memories always seemed to be there, nestling in the recesses of his mind like sleeping monsters.

  Everywhere seemed quiet as he walked on through Vicars Green. Eborby was the sort of place visitors came to England to see – picture-postcard quaint with narrow medieval streets and crooked overhanging buildings – and there were times when you could hardly move there for Japanese and Americans wielding expensive cameras. But today the autumnal chill had put off the tourists.

  He made his way down Gallowgate towards Canons Bar and stopped at the entrance to Singmass Close. Then he wandered through the archway, past the stone chapel and the old Ragged School with its skips and scaffolding, onto the paved square. Natalie Parkes’s body had been dumped at the far end, where Singmass Close led out to Andrewgate.

  The police tape was still there, swamped now by a growing heap of cellophane-wrapped flowers, arranged by someone into an impromptu shrine to Natalie Parkes. Some of the flowers had been left by her school friends but Joe knew that most of the tributes were from people who’d never known her in life – people who’d felt moved for some reason to mark her death. A teenage girl bound for university with all her life before her. It was sad however you looked at it.

  As he stared at the spot, he suddenly felt that he was being watched. But when he swung round he noticed a sheet of blue plastic hanging from the scaffolding around the old Ragged School flapping gently in a non-existent breeze and he smiled to himself. He was getting jumpy. It was then he spotted the pale porcelain doll again, sitting in the upstairs front window of number six. The thing seemed to be watching him with great interest and he felt a small thrill of fear. But he told himself not to be so stupid. It was a doll, nothing more. A child’s plaything. But there seemed to be something vaguely malevolent about that expressionless porcelain face.

  He remembered Jamilla saying that number six was the only house that hadn’t been visited; that either there’d been nobody in, or the occupants weren’t answering the door. He saw a light glowing behind the frosted glass of the front door, a spot of brightness in the evening gloom, and he felt in his coat pocket for his warrant card. If the residents of number six had been avoiding the police, they weren’t going to escape this time.

  He rang the bell and shivered. It had suddenly turned colder. Inside the house he could hear approaching footsteps, shoes tapping on a wooden floor. Then the door opened a few inches and a woman peeped out cautiously. But with a murder in the neighbourhood, caution was hardly surprising.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Plantagenet, Eborby CID. I know it’s late but I wonder if I might have a quick word.’

  The door opened a little wider to reveal a slim woman in her early thirties with short brown hair. Her large hazel eyes were outlined in kohl and she was dressed from head to toe in black: tight black jeans and black sweatshirt like a scene shifter in some modern theatre. And she had a stark, striking beauty that made Joe catch his breath. He knew her and yet he also knew that he’d never seen her in his life before. Kaitlin. She was the image of Kaitlin and he felt his stomach lurch.

  ‘I can’t help you. I didn’t see anything.’ Her voice was accentless and slightly husky and he could sense anxiety behind her words.

  ‘You were out when my colleagues called.’ These words were the first that came into his head and he was just glad that they sounded fairly sensible.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘

  Does anyone else live here?’

  She hesitated. ‘Only my daughter, Daisy. She’s five.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she saw anything … if she couldn’t sleep … Has she mentioned …?’

  ‘Daisy wasn’t here that night. She was staying at a friend’s. I was here on my own.’

  ‘I noticed a doll in the window. Does that belong to Daisy?’

  The woman nodded. ‘

  If you remember anything, will you call me?’ Joe felt in his pocket for his card and when he handed it to her he could feel his hands trembling slightly. ‘Anything at all, however trivial.’

  Her eyes met his and she gave him a wary half-smile. Almost Kaitlin’s smile but not quite.

  ‘I’ll send one of my colleagues to take a statement. Just routine.’

  ‘Won’t you call yourself ?’ It might have been wishful thinking but he thought he detected a hint of disappointment in the woman’s voice.

  ‘If I get the chance.’ He wavered for a moment. ‘You, er … didn’t tell me your name.’

  ‘Polly … Polly Myers.’

  ‘Thank you, Ms Myers,’ he said formally, turning to go. He needed to be out of there.

  He retraced his steps through Singmass Close with an uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched. Perhaps Polly was still at the door, he thought. But when he turned to look he saw that she wasn’t there.

  As he hurried on through the archway back onto Gallowgate he could hear that the Royal Oak’s karaoke evening was in full swing and an out-of-tune baritone was pleading with someone to please release him.

  ‘Gladly,’ Joe murmured as he made for home.

  They’d released her name. Natalie.

  The Doll Strangler read the report again, rocking to and fro, mumbling the name Natalie … remembering ever sensation. He recalled every sound in that silent close fifty years ago – their gasps and the gurgling and choking as they died – and he felt a tingling in his loins as their death agonies ran like a video through his head – the bulging eyes then the dreadful stillness broken by the giggles of those children like wind rustling through leaves.

  He knew the dolls were still sitting up there in the loft, staring with their cold glass eyes. He hadn’t seen them for so long but he knew they were waiting for him up there.

  He needed to feel the life flowing once more into his cold, stiff limbs so he poured himself a tot of whisky with shaking hands.

  ‘To Natalie,’ he whispered. ‘And to the next one.’ Then he raised the glass to the empty air before swallowing the warm, golden water of life.

  CHAPTER 5

  It was nine o’clock on Monday morning and Sunny Porter was ploughing his way through a pile of musty files. DI Plantagenet had said it was important to trace anyone involved in the case back in the 1950s who might still be around. In Sunny’s opinion they’d be better off grilling some of those kids from The Devil’s Playground again. They had all pleaded ignorance but one of them must have got hold of a copy of Foul Murders and Dark Deeds in Eborby and decided to commit a copycat killing. Sunny would have staked a week’s pay on it. But a quiet voice interrupted his thoughts.

  ‘There’s a girl just been reported missing, Sarge. Name of Michele Carden. Lives in Easton … village on the way to Thirsk. She was last seen boarding the train to Eborby at her local station.’

  Sunny Porter looked up at DC Jenny Ripon, who didn’t look more than eighteen – the age of Natalie Parkes – and was, in Sunny’s opinion, still wet behind the ears. ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘With this murder of a young girl, I just thought we should be keeping a look out for anyone of a similar age who’s been reported missing, that’s all,’ she said, defensively. Killers like that didn’t usually stop at one victim. ‘And that other girl … Leanne Williams. She’s still not been found.’

  Sunny Porter scratched his crotch
and Jenny looked away, embarrassed. ‘Aye, you’re right, love,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to remember that lasses go walkabout every day. Row at home … my parents don’t understand me. This Michelle’ll probably be back within twenty-four hours. Nowt to worry about, if you ask me.’

  ‘The mother’s contacted all her friends and nobody’s seen her. One of them said she’d talked about going off to London to find a modelling job.’

  ‘There you are then,’ Sunny replied, slightly relieved. They had enough on their plate with the Singmass Close murder without worrying about some silly lass seeking fame and fortune.

  ‘But she only had about fifty quid with her.’

  Sunny sighed, surveying the pile of paper on his desk. ‘So she might have been daft enough to hitch. It’s not our problem. Let the Met sort it out.’

  ‘I can at least see if she was caught on CCTV at the station. We might be able to find out if she picked up the London train.’

  ‘You do that, love, if it makes you happy. The rest of us are busy sorting out this murder. And we’ve got to do it before he decides to have another go. There were four back in the nineteen fifties. He could be out to break the record.’

  ‘The mother’s downstairs in reception. Shall I …?’ ‘Aye love, give her the usual spiel. They usually turn up within twenty-four hours, etcetera etcetera.’

  ‘It’s been forty-eight hours already.’ ‘She can’t be too worried if she’s only just reporting it, then. Off you go and have a word with her if you must.’

  Sunny saw Jenny Ripon shoot him a contemptuous glance. She was young, he thought. She’d learn.

  When Jenny reached reception she saw a woman sitting on the upholstered bench near the front desk, playing with a mobile phone, flipping it open and staring at the screen as though she was expecting a call or text. She looked impatient rather than anxious, as though the girl’s disappearance was a nuisance rather than a life-shattering event. She was a middle-aged glossy blonde in a businesslike black suit – rather like DCI Thwaite’s but better cut.