Rattle: A serial killer thriller that will hook you from the start

by Fiona Cummins

  His voice was soft and courteous, conversational. ‘Detective Sergeant Etta Fitzroy, a pleasure to meet you at last.’

  She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

  His eyes watched her.

  ‘Did you know that as Grace lay dying, she cried out for her father, and barely mentioned her mother at all?’

  Fitzroy had known fear before, but this was a visceral dread that turned her stomach inside out and made her heart clench. This man, the texture of him. He wore Grace’s death like a badge of honour.

  ‘I’m going to go now,’ she said. ‘Let me pass, and I’ll walk away, and I won’t look back.’

  He cocked his head, appraising. ‘I don’t think that is going to be possible.’

  In that fragment of time, when knowledge becomes understanding, Fitzroy saw that her future was decided.

  The man twirled and spun the scalpel with such speed that it became impossible to distinguish the dull flatness of the blade from the monochrome November night. Like an archer, he drew back his weapon and brought it up in a graceful arc. It struck Fitzroy’s chest between the seventh true rib and the eighth false rib.

  Her mouth opened to scream, but all that emerged was a sort of strangled grunt. She staggered against a bin, and something wet and rotten leaked onto her skirt, and she fell forward, the pavement tearing her tights and skinning her knees.

  He loomed above her, his blade raised high, triumphal but determined. He slashed at her arms, tearing through the fabric of her coat, and fire blossomed inside her. Fitzroy opened her mouth to scream again, to scream until her throat was raw, to scream until he disappeared into the dove-coloured shadows.

  But then a simple thought presented itself to her, and it was so bold, so different from the course of action that she ought to take that she knew at once it was right.

  She immediately went limp, holding her breath. The scalpel hovered uncertainly above her, and then he lowered it, and in the pallid moonshine, he hoisted her body over his shoulder and carried her into his father’s house.

  When Fitzroy opened her eyes, her cheek was squashed flat against the wooden floor and a dank smell was filling her nostrils.

  She pressed her face against the cool hardness. It calmed her, lying there in the dark. Her side was badly bruised, but her stab vest had protected her from the bite of the blade. Faring less well was her arm, which was wet and sticky and hurt like hell. Her mobile and radio were gone. She stared at a spot of mildew on the wall and forced the pain away.

  The room was small and rectangular-shaped. The walls were made of brick, as exposed as the human skeletons which were arranged around her in a semicircle. She gaped at them. Their bodies, stripped down to the bone, were suspended from the ceiling by metal poles screwed into their skulls.

  But her ruse had worked. Her hands were untied and she was lying on her side in a room with a heavy door. Butterfly wings brushed her insides.

  It was freezing, and she rubbed the goosebumps on her upper arms. The gesture pulled at her wound and made her wince. Blood had puddled on the floor beside her, and it smelled like the coins she had collected in a whisky bottle as a child.

  Science has found no way to quantify fear and neither had Fitzroy. Some insisted the body’s blood ran cold; others, that the human heart sped up until it burst from the chest. Fitzroy thought neither of those was quite right. For her, fear was the prickle of anticipation; the cool wash of sweat in the hollow between her shoulder blades, the knowing that evil was at work.

  She wondered if she was looking at Grace Rodríguez’s bones.

  Fitzroy drew in a breath, tried to steady her nerves, to think clearly. She was in a room in a House of the Dead, and no one knew where she was.

  But a little voice inside told her that Clara was probably here. Jakey too.

  She just didn’t know if they were alive.

  Fitzroy forced herself onto her knees, crawled painfully towards the door. She had to try and find them, to find some means of escape.

  But her strength was fading, the adrenaline that had kept her going trickling away to nothing, and she could hear the rasp of her own breathing. She should get to a hospital. The wound on her wrist had clotted, but the effort of moving had reopened it, and she was losing blood again.

  She pushed against the door, but it was locked.

  Fitzroy’s face was now so pale it was like she was frozen in the glare of the moon. She lay down on the floor, just for a little while.

  ‘I need to move,’ she murmured. ‘It’s not safe.’

  But there was nowhere to move to. Nowhere to go.

  Silly girl.

  Fitzroy was a rat in a trap.

  87

  3.03 a.m.

  Erdman heard a scream, he was sure of it. A woman’s scream. Like she was in pain or something. He hesitated, ducked behind a parked car and watched.

  ‘Fu-uck.’

  Under the orange glare of the street light, he could see the man carrying a woman into the house. A woman with the same coils of hair as DS Fitzroy.

  Erdman knew he had two choices. To knock on the door of one of these sleeping houses, to find a phone, call the police, and spend precious minutes waiting and explaining, letting someone else make the decisions and take control.

  Or he could do what he had never done before.

  What his heart was telling him to do.

  He was here, right now, and he could do something useful. He could help Fitzroy and find his son.

  Erdman ran around the side of the house, looking for a way in. Found a garage door, paint peeling. He twisted the handle, felt it loosen and lift. The noise was like the crash of drums, and it stilled him. He pulled it down slowly behind him.

  It was dark inside the garage and Erdman had to put his hands in front of him to feel his way. Connected with shiny metal. A van.

  He knew, even without light, that this was the van the police had been looking for.

  He crouched in the darkness, waiting. But the house stayed silent, watching for his next move.

  A minute passed. Then two. Erdman grazed his hands along the wall. Breeze blocks. A shelf. The smooth surface of an internal door.

  88

  3.07 a.m.

  Lilith was huddled beneath a duvet which held the fading imprint of Jakey’s smell.

  The tip of her nose was cold, and she could see the clouds of her breath. The boiler was playing up again, but she didn’t know how to fix it. Erdman usually took care of that, but she had been asleep for many, many hours and hadn’t seen him since breakfast. He had gone out, she knew that much. She had heard the door slam. And now his side of the sheet was smooth, untouched. He’d probably gone to bed with the whisky bottle again.

  She should do something about it, but she couldn’t find the energy to move. She couldn’t find the energy to do anything except lie there, and remember the life she’d once had. A life she had railed against, and would now sacrifice anything to live again for one more day.

  She fingered the photograph in her hand, the one she took to bed and to the bathroom, the one she carried in her dressing gown pocket. The one beginning to soften and fray at the edges.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t look after you.’ A tear leaked down her nose. Then another.

  ‘I miss you,’ she said, in a voice as broken as glass.

  Six years ago, they had brought him home from hospital. A tiny scrap whose life was now their responsibility.

  She remembered that first walk, that fear of everything; the cars thundering along the road, the shouts of workmen disturbing his sleep, the rain on his upturned nose.

  How Erdman had held up a hand to stop the traffic so his wife could push the pram to safety.

  A father’s smile of pride and joy.

  And then Jakey had woken up and screamed all the way up the hill, his cries getting louder and louder. Lilith had panicked. What if he was crying because he was in pain? Because this terrible disease was already laying claim to his body?

&
nbsp; She had scooped him up and run into their house, tears sliding down her own cheeks.

  And, because she didn’t know what else to do, she had unbuttoned her top and lifted him to her, and he had stopped crying.

  Erdman had stared at her then, as if she was some kind of deity.

  ‘He’s perfect,’ he said. ‘You both are.’

  And he had been right. In spite of everything, her son was perfect.

  But now he was gone.

  For Lilith, this newly discovered state of childlessness was not just the tumbling into a bottomless hole. It was much more mundane than that.

  It was in the scuffed school shoes in the hall cupboard, the missing place-setting at the table, the rooms empty from one echoing hour to the next.

  I can’t do this any more.

  The air was stale with Lilith’s grief; her sweaty, unwashed body; the greasy tangle of her hair.

  As the moon sagged in the sky, she dragged herself to the bathroom, pulling Jakey’s duvet around her shoulders like a cape. The shadows were contours of grey and black.

  He’s not coming home. He’s never coming home.

  Despair, as heavy and black as tar, was sticking to her, pulling her downwards.

  She filled her glass with water from the sink. The sink where Jakey had brushed his teeth and washed his shining face. The smell of chlorine was in her nostrils.

  If he was coming home, the police would have found him by now.

  But he’s not.

  He’s dead.

  I cannot hear them say it.

  The police.

  I cannot hear them say those words.

  I will not.

  Those words.

  Dead.

  No.

  I will not.

  Jakey’s waiting for me.

  The dark.

  He’s scared of the dark.

  He wants me.

  He wants his mummy.

  That bleak certainty settled over Lilith like floating fragments of ash. She shuffled back to the bedroom, her fingers closing around the bottle of sleeping pills on her nightstand.

  She thought of Erdman, and the sorrow that would split him apart.

  She thought of Jakey, by some miracle, rescued from captivity, only to discover his mother was dead.

  She thought how shock and grief and the sheer horror of it all would hold them both hostage, not just for a few days, but a lifetime.

  She thought of seeing Jakey’s smile again.

  And hope, that sneaking, unwelcome intruder, inveigled its way in.

  89

  3.16 a.m.

  Someone was shaking her, and it took Fitzroy a couple of moments to realize that those violent tremors of movement belonged to her own body. She was shivering and she was in trouble, but at least she was alive.

  She rolled onto her side, and something wet seeped down the sleeve of her blouse. She lay still, and then forced herself to sit up. Black dots flashed in the air around her head. She counted to seventy before she opened her eyes.

  The room was in darkness, the shutters fastened against the moon. A house of sleeping secrets. But Fitzroy knew better. Beneath its quiet facade, the dead were waiting for her. The dead and, please God, the living.

  She had to find them and get out.

  She rolled onto her stomach and up onto her knees. Placing her palms against the wall, she cranked herself upwards. And then she heard it. A footfall on the stairs. The distinctive click of a lock mechanism disengaging.

  A whisper.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Fitzroy?’

  The door swung in and there was Erdman Frith, slipping an arm around her waist, helping her to stand.

  She didn’t bother with questions.

  Outside the room was a narrow landing, and to the right, a staircase. She stopped to listen for Howley, her heart jumping in her chest, but the house was silent, on pause. Painfully, she eased herself down the steps. They found themselves in a downstairs hallway, with three doors leading off it. They were all shut. Blood leaked from her wound onto the floor.

  ‘I have to find Jakey,’ said Erdman.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But we need to get help first.’

  She tried to get some sense of their bearings, looked around for a telephone, her stolen radio. But all she could see was glass and bones. She stumbled forward, saw a heavy door ahead. Fitzroy could tell a lot about someone from the state of their front door. This one was windowless and the paint was chipped. But it didn’t matter. It led to the world outside.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said, low and urgent.

  When Erdman raised his hand to silence her, she thought it was a challenge, but desperation was streaking across his face. From somewhere, the unmistakable tread of footsteps climbing the stairs.

  ‘Hide,’ she hissed.

  Erdman pushed her towards a thick curtain pinned to panelling on the wall before disappearing into the shadows. She crouched down, pressed her cheek against the fabric, risked a look into darkness.

  She saw a man, all shadow and bone, rise out of a cellar, cross the hallway, mount the same staircase that she and Erdman had just climbed down.

  Silvery light seeped through gaps in the blinds, illuminating the glass cases with their unhappy cargo.

  Fitzroy let her eyelids drift down so she did not have to witness the stripped-down bones of those who had suffered not once, but twice. But not before she glimpsed something in the shadows, just above her.

  In the centre of the hall, on a raised plinth, stood a cabinet, positioned so that its panes of glass reflected the rise of the moon.

  Inside was the hunched but unmistakable form of a child. Its skeleton was warped, wrapped in sheets and ribbons of extraneous bone. A child imprisoned in life and death. A child turned to stone.

  Ting.

  The letter C was engraved on a metal plaque. And next to this case was an empty one, waiting to be filled.

  Erdman’s twin Carlton Frith. And a space just big enough for Jakey.

  90

  3.19 a.m.

  Brian limps back up the cellar stairs of his father’s house. His hip is making a fuss again but he is too busy thinking about what he will do to Jakey Frith to pay it much heed.

  Are the cops waiting outside? He can hear a car with its engine idling, but it’s from the estate up the road, he is almost sure of it. When he’d knifed that pig bitch, he’d taken her phone, her Airwave radio.

  Slowly, he climbs the main staircase, to the top of the house.

  The door to Room One is open.

  He steps in, puts a foot in a sticky, viscous puddle. Blood. Lots of it. So where is she? Brian casts around for some clue to Fitzroy’s whereabouts.

  A bloody handprint on the door confirms his worst imaginings.

  Cautiously, Brian steps back into the corridor, peers over the balcony. The hallway of his museum is in darkness, apart from the wash of moonlight on the bones of the boy. But he can tell it is empty by the way the air echoes.

  So where the fuck is she?

  He lingers in the corridor, half-expects the police to hammer on the front door. But there is no sound at all, just the voice of his father, urging him on. And the usual quiet buzzing from the socket on the wall.

  If that pig bitch has escaped, she will have to be found.

  He starts back down the stairs.

  And then he hears it. A gentle tap-tap-tapping. His fingers find his mouth, and he gnaws at the torn skin, his eyes searching for the source of the sound.

  The sound of bone knocking against bone.

  He lifts his eyes upwards, at the pride of his collection. The boy’s skeleton is swaying, his forearm swinging against the twisted curve of his torso in a grotesque rendition of someone walking.

  Just the wind in this draughty old house.

  Except the skeleton is in a locked glass case.

  Unless someone had just knocked into it.

  Someone like that pig bitch Fitzroy.

  Brian pauses, suddenly unce
rtain. He wants to hunt her down, to kill her. But he is no longer safe here. He should get moving.

  Then when he is sure he isn’t being watched, he will pack up the family’s museum and his colonies, and he will run. Find a new Ossuary to hide his collection, a new hunting ground.

  But first, the boy. He must move him now, and then he will harvest the bones.

  The first time Brian had seen this house he had fallen in love with it. He had been six. The previous owner had led them up a curving staircase, and into an airy room with a projector. ‘My cinema room,’ Mr Thomas told them proudly. All soundproofed. He had unhooked a hidden cupboard door, and slid out a bank of twelve seats.

  His mother, Sylvie, insisted it went, every last 1930s original, each with its own pivoted back and plush purple velvet. A crying shame, but she wanted to convert it into a nursery and playroom. So his father had ripped out the seats, spent his evenings stripping wallpaper, sanding floors and painting everything white. Built a false wall to house all Junior’s toys. She used to go up there sometimes, gazing out over rooftops shiny with rain. But the baby never came. After that, she never went up there at all.

  Brian moves stiffly back up the stairs, towards the boy, towards Room Three.

  He is careful to avoid the creaks. He doesn’t want to startle him. Last time, he had cried when he heard him coming. He touches the child’s bent arm. Tears are already leaking from the boy’s lacrimal caruncle. Almost like he knows what he, the Bone Collector, is planning.

  He fixes the shiny reflection of his eyes in the darkness.

  ‘All right?’

  The boy jerks his head mutely, a tiny, insubstantial thing, shrinking into himself until he is almost invisible. His skin is pale through lack of sunlight. He examines his own arms. They are the same. White and skinny.

  ‘It’s time to go.’

  His face lights up. ‘Are you taking me to my home?’

  He smiles, then nods. ‘Yes, Jakey. I’m taking you home.’