House of Bones

by Graham Masterton

  “Streatham CID, Detective Sergeant Bynoe speaking.”

  “Oh, yes. It’s that missing man who was on the telly last night. Mr Rogers. I saw him going into 66 Mountjoy Avenue yesterday dinnertime and I didn’t see him come out again.”

  “Who are you?”

  “An anonymous caller.”

  “Well, why don’t you stop being anonymous and tell me who you are? There could be a reward in this.”

  “No, that’s all right. I’m just giving you a tip-off, that’s all.”

  “Was Mr Rogers alone when you saw him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? Either he was or he wasn’t.”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly see him go into the house with my actual eyes.”

  “Then how do you know he went into the house?”

  “I just do, that’s all.”

  “I’d like to know how.”

  “He dropped his wedding ring. Either that, or somebody pulled it off.”

  “Where did he drop it?”

  “In the house, of course. That’s how I know that he was definitely there.”

  “So you’ve been in the house subsequent to Mr Rogers going there?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Listen, Mr Anonymous Caller, I think that you and I need to have a little chat, don’t you? Why don’t you stay where you are and I’ll send a car round to collect you.”

  “You don’t know where I am.”

  “Of course I do. You’re in the callbox on the corner of Fernwood Avenue. I’ve got an officer on his way to see you already.”

  John dropped the phone as if it had suddenly burst into flame. He pushed his way out of the callbox and ran across the road. The old woman called out, “Kids of today! ’Ooligans, that’s what! ’Ooligans, the ’ole lot of them!”

  John was out of breath by the time he got back to the office. Courtney was waiting for him impatiently. “Where have you been? I have to meet a client in five minutes.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You will be, if I lose this sale. Make some copies of these floor-plans for me, would you, while I’m gone.”

  John was left in the office on his own. He copied Courtney’s documents and then he made himself a cup of coffee and walked back to his desk with four chocolate biscuits in his mouth at once. He started to drink his coffee with a loud slurping noise (it was hot, and anyway there was nobody else to hear him) but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the door to Mr Vane’s room. Mr Vane must have a file on 66 Mountjoy Avenue – and he must know all about the statue, too. Perhaps he was aware that the house was haunted, and that was why he never let anybody handle it except him. Perhaps all the houses on his special list were haunted.

  He went across to Mr Vane’s door and put his hand on the doorknob. No, better not. He might get caught, and Mr Vane wouldn’t be so forgiving a second time. It had been risky enough this morning. If Mr Cleat had emerged from the toilet just two seconds earlier, he would have bumped into Lucy sneaking out of Mr Vane’s room after putting the key back.

  He sat down and finished his coffee. He brushed crumbs from his desk. He looked across at Mr Vane’s door. He doodled a cartoon of Mr Cleat with an enormous nose. He looked back at Mr Vane’s door.

  The next thing he knew, he was sliding open one of Mr Vane’s filing cabinets, and rifling through the sour-smelling old documents inside it.

  He couldn’t find anything in the top drawer, just a lot of old brochures dating back to the 1920s. There was a brand new house for sale in Tooting for £236, but that was in 1924. He tried the second drawer, and that was filled with newspapers, some of them so old that they were dark brown.

  In the bottom drawer, however, together with a half-bottle of gin and a pot of glue, he found a large black folder. He lifted out the folder, laid it on one of the few clear spaces on Mr Vane’s desk, and opened it. Inside, there were particulars for over a dozen houses. Some of them were obviously years old, but two or three of them were brand new, with glossy photographs stuck to them.

  Here it was – 66 Mountjoy Avenue. A spacious character residence ideal for the larger family. Price on application. No mention of ivory-faced statues, however, or invisible presences that breathed over your face and chased you down the stairs. But there was a handwritten list of previous owners, and the dates they had lived there. The last time the house had been occupied was four months ago, by Mr and Mrs W. Bennett. Before them it was Mr and Mrs K. Dadarchanji; and before them, Mr and Mrs G.L. Geoffreys.

  What struck John was that none of the previous owners had lived in the house for longer than a year, and some of them had moved out within two or three months of moving in. Hardly surprising, he thought, if the owners had experienced the same kind of spooky manifestations as he and Lucy had.

  He made a note of all of the addresses in the folder. There was a scattering of local addresses – 113 Greyhound Road; 7 Laverdale Square; 14 Ullswater Road; The Larches, Blackwood Avenue. But surprisingly, most of the properties were located miles away. 93 Madeira Terrace, Brighton. Carstairs House, Pennine Road, Preston. There were even houses in Wales and Scotland.

  He heard a noise in the office outside. Quickly, he shuffled the particulars back into the folder and returned it to its drawer. He was darting towards the door when it suddenly opened. He managed to dodge behind it and press himself against the panelling. Mr Cleat came in, dropped a file on Mr Vane’s desk, and went out again. John waited until he heard Mr Cleat go into the kitchen before he crept out and closed Mr Vane’s door behind him.

  Mr Cleat reappeared. “Where have you been? I thought I told you never to leave the office unattended.”

  “I’ve been here all the time.”

  “You’ve been where all the time?”

  “Here.”

  Mr Cleat gave an irritable tut. “I want you to run an errand for me. I want you to take these papers along to Hawthorn & Black, the solicitors. They’re in Norbury, so you’ll have to take the bus.”

  John was quite glad to get out of the office. It was a warm, windy afternoon and the skies above the suburbs were filled with the sort of clouds that looked like dogs, or castles, or fat recumbent giants. Before he caught the bus he bought a chocolate Cornetto and took it on to the top deck, right at the front.

  It didn’t take him long to deliver Mr Cleat’s package. He walked back along the main road, looking in all of the shop windows. He stopped for a while to watch the tropical fish in Norbury Aquatics.

  As he was crossing a side turning, however, his attention was caught by a small crowd of people outside a demolition site. There were three police vans there, too, along with two lorries and a clutter of other cars, and a long white Metropolitan Police caravan marked Incident Unit.

  John looked at his watch. He had plenty of time. He walked into the square and joined the crowd, although he couldn’t see anything much. He asked one man what was going on but the man simply shrugged and said, “I dunno.”

  John walked up to the police tape and tried to peer over the plywood hoardings, but they were too high. He climbed on to the low brick wall in front of the house next door and then he could see the remains of the half-demolished house and over a dozen police officers in shirtsleeves milling around in front of it.

  “Hoi, what are you up to?” shouted one of them, walking towards him.

  “Nothing. Just taking a look.”

  “Well, there’s nothing to see, so ’op it.”

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  “Don’t you watch the news?”

  “Sometimes. What’s happened?”

  “They were knocking this house down and they found some skeletons in it. More than fifty, that’s how many they’ve brought out so far.”

  John stayed and watched for a little longer, in case they brought another skeleton out, but after a while he got bored. He bought an Evening Standard and took the bus back to the office.

  The Norbury “house of bo
nes” story was on page five. He vaguely remembered hearing something about it on the radio but he hadn’t really paid any attention. But when he read the second paragraph of the story he felt a prickling sensation all the way up his neck.

  “The skeletons of more than fifty people have now been recovered from the house in Norbury, south London, where demolition workers broke into a bricked-up room on Monday and discovered heaps of human bones.

  “Number 7 Laverdale Square had been the subject of a compulsory purchase order to make way for a new road-widening scheme. The last owners, Dr and Mrs Philip Lister, vacated the property over six months ago without leaving a forwarding address, and police are anxious to talk to them.

  “A next-door neighbour, Mrs Anne Finch, said that she and other residents of Laverdale Square believed the house had ‘a bad atmosphere’ and that sometimes she had heard ‘wailing and shouting’ coming from the house during the night – ‘terrible great shouts, like a man roaring through a megaphone’.

  “She had also heard thunderous footsteps, as if people were running up and down uncarpeted stairs.

  “‘I was glad when I heard the place was going to be knocked down,’ she said. ‘Now they’ve discovered all these skeletons. It’s horrible.’“

  John lowered the paper, feeling breathless. Number 7, Laverdale Square. That was one of the houses on Mr Vane’s list! And it had “a bad atmosphere” just like 66 Mountjoy Avenue. He had felt it for himself. And he had heard strange noises, too. How much of a coincidence could it be that two of Mr Vane’s special properties had such a threatening feeling about them?

  There was no question about it. He should go and look at some more houses on the special list, and see if they were just as threatening.

  8

  As he was about to step off the bus, he saw two police cars parked right outside Blight, Simpson & Vane. Immediately he thought, Oh, no! They’ve found out that I made that anonymous phone call. He didn’t know whether to go back into the office and brazen it out, or stay on the bus and go home.

  “Make your mind up,” said the bus conductor. “We’re supposed to be back at the depot by the end of August.”

  He took a deep breath, jumped off the bus, and went into the office. Inside, he found two plainclothes detectives talking to Mr Vane and Mr Cleat. Mr Cleat gave him a sharp where-have-you-been? look, but didn’t say anything. Mr Vane was saying, “We have the property on our books, yes, but the owners are no longer with us.”

  “Dead?” asked Inspector Carter.

  “Oh, good Lord, no. Torremolinos. Mr Anderson’s arthritis, don’t you know. He needed the sun.”

  “Can you think of any reason why anybody should have suggested that Mr Rogers was still there?”

  “Not at all. I suppose it may have been a practical joke.”

  “If it was, I don’t think it’s particularly funny, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. Unless it was a competitor, trying to stir up trouble for me.”

  “Oh, yes? And why should they want to do that?”

  Mr Vane gave one of his yellow grins. “Estate agency isn’t as dull as it appears, Inspector. There’s plenty of cut and thrust. Agencies stealing each other’s clients from under their noses – agencies undercutting each other’s percentages.”

  “Sounds like pretty hair-raising stuff,” said Carter.

  “Oh, it can be, it can be. And people do bear grudges.”

  Carter flipped open his notebook. “So Mr Rogers came in here, borrowed the key to 66 Mountjoy Avenue, and went off to look at it? But when you came back to the office, Mr Cleat, and discovered what had happened, you went after him, to stop him?”

  “That’s right. 66 Mountjoy Avenue isn’t yet fit for inspection. I would have been doing the owners a disservice if I had let Mr Rogers see it in that condition.”

  “So he didn’t actually enter the property?”

  “Absolutely not, no.”

  John could feel Mr Rogers’ ring in his pocket, and he was tempted to bring it out and show that Mr Cleat was telling a lie, but Lucy must have read his mind. She gave him a quick shake of her head and mouthed the word “no”.

  Inspector Carter said, “Who dealt with Mr Rogers when he came to pick up the key?”

  “Young John here. It was his first day. He shouldn’t really have given him the key – but Mr Rogers was very insistent.”

  “Get into trouble, did you, John?” asked Carter.

  “Mr Vane was very understanding,” put in Mr Cleat, before John could answer.

  Carter said, “What sort of a state was he in, Mr Rogers? Was he agitated, at all? Or anxious?”

  “He was normal, that’s all,” John told him. “He was in a hurry, you know. But he didn’t look worried or anything.”

  “So he didn’t look as if he was going to top himself? Drown himself, or throw himself in front of a train?”

  John shook his head.

  “All right, then,” said Carter, putting his notebook back in his pocket. “Thanks for your cooperation, Mr Vane. I think you’re probably right. Whoever made that phone call was just trying to stir up a bit of trouble for you.”

  Mr Vane gave him another grin. “Believe me, Inspector, if I ever find out who it was, I’ll wring his neck for him.”

  At four o’clock, Mr Vane and Mr Cleat left the office together. As soon as they had gone, John took out the ring.

  “What’s that?” asked Liam. “You’re not going to propose to me, are you?”

  “It’s Mr Rogers’ wedding ring. We found it at 66 Mountjoy Avenue. So Mr Cleat was telling a lie.”

  Liam came over and examined the ring closely. “Are you sure that’s his? Why didn’t you tell the police about it?”

  “What, and get the sack?” said Lucy.

  “Lucy’s right,” said Courtney. “And apart from that, Cleaty and the police are like this—” he crossed his fingers. “He’s a mason and a Rotarian and member of the Neighbourhood Watch committee. If he says that Mr Rogers didn’t go into the house, and you say he did, who do you think the police are going to believe?”

  “You need more evidence,” said Liam.

  “Well, I think there’s something really weird going on with Mr Vane’s special list,” said John. “You know that house where they’ve found all those skeletons? That was one of Mr Vane’s houses, too.”

  “That house in Norbury? I hadn’t realized that.”

  “Number 7, Laverdale Square,” said Courtney. “The council bought it because they wanted to widen the road. Don’t you remember? Mr Vane was in a terrible temper about it for weeks.”

  “You’re not trying to say that he killed all of those people?” said Lucy. “I know he’s a bit scary, but he doesn’t look like a mass murderer.”

  “I think he looks exactly like a mass murderer,” said Liam.

  John said, “I went into his office and I copied out the whole of the special list. I think we ought to go and look at some of the other houses.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Courtney. “If Mr Vane had anything to hide, he would have kept the list and the keys locked up in the safe.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t think that anybody would ever suspect him,” said Lucy. “I mean, those skeletons were all hidden in the walls, weren’t they? If the council hadn’t knocked the house down, who would have ever found out?”

  “It’s much more likely he didn’t know anything about it,” Courtney replied. “And it’s much more likely that Mr Rogers went into the house, dropped his ring, and then disappeared somewhere else.”

  “If he did that, why did Cleaty lie to the police?”

  “I don’t know,” said Courtney, “and I can’t say that I particularly care. This is all a lot of wild speculation, that’s all.”

  “I’m still going to go and look at Mr Vane’s other houses,” John declared. “There’s one in Brighton – 93 Madeira Terrace. I’ll go down on Saturday.”

  “Well, there’s a coincidence,” said Liam. “I’m going to Brighton
for the racing on Saturday afternoon. We could go down together.”

  “That would be great,” said John.

  “Don’t let Liam persuade you to put any money on the horses,” Courtney warned him. “You’ll end up bankrupt before you’ve even earned anything.”

  They sped down to Brighton early on Saturday morning in Liam’s Golf GTi. The sun was shining and it was warm enough to drive with the roof down. John had borrowed a pair of sunglasses from his sister Ruth which pinched his nose. He felt scruffy. He wished he had a black polo shirt and a pair of chinos like Liam, instead of his grey, washed-out jeans and his saggy maroon top. But his spirits lifted as they drove up over the South Downs, through Devil’s Dyke, and he could see the farms and fields of mid-Sussex spread out behind him, and the English Channel glittering in front.

  They drove along the seafront, past the Palace Pier, and along Marine Parade. John felt almost as if he were on holiday. “Should have brought our buckets and spades,” said Liam, cheerfully.

  Madeira Terrace was a dark, steep street on the borders of Hove, and out of sight of the sea. It was lined on both sides with narrow, four-storey terraced houses, built of hard red brick. Each house had a small walled garden in front, but very few of them were well tended. Most of them were cluttered with broken bicycles and bent dustbins and crumpled newspapers. Liam parked in front of a Dormobile with flat tyres and tugged on the handbrake hard. “This is it. Number 93. Looks as if it’s empty.”

  The windows were dark and filmed over with dust. The blue paint on the front door was peeling. There was a small crowd of empty milk bottles on the step, and the letterbox was crammed with circulars.

  John and Liam climbed out of the car and went up to the front door. John pressed the doorbell and heard it buzz faintly like a bluebottle in a jar. They waited, and tried the bell again, but nobody answered.

  “Right,” said Liam. “It looks as if we’ll have to try a different approach.”

  “What do you mean? We can’t break in.”

  “Of course we can break in. The property’s empty and we’re the sole agents. There’s nothing illegal in making an inspection.”