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

by Fiona Cummins

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, Mr and Mrs Frith, because I know that’s all you’ve ever asked from us.’ She took another, cautious, sip of tea. ‘I’m concerned for the safety of your son.’

  ‘In what way?’ Erdman’s face was pale.

  Fitzroy had the grace to look embarrassed. She pressed her knuckles to the tender length of her jawbone.

  ‘Tell us,’ he insisted. ‘We’d like to know.’

  ‘In case he tries to finish what he started. When I arrested him, he was babbling some crap about protecting his bones, his collection. It’s just rubbish, nonsense, the kind of self-justifying bullshit we sometimes get from suspects. Obviously, he needs a psychiatric evaluation.’

  ‘Is he going to get it?’

  Fitzroy’s face had shut down then, and she set her cup on Jakey’s overbed table with exaggerated care.

  ‘That’s partly why I’ve come to see you both.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Belinda told you what happened last night?’

  Erdman gave a tight nod.

  ‘Well, the situation hasn’t changed. As you know, Brian Howley never arrived at the police station. DC Chambers, the officer bringing him in, was badly injured in the accident, but there was no sign of Howley. Somehow, he managed to free himself and simply walk away. By the time the paramedics arrived, he’d disappeared. We’re looking for him, but he’s still out there. Somewhere.

  ‘We’re watching his house. Both houses. We will find him, but until we do, I’d like to discuss the possibility of bringing Jakey into protective custody.’

  Howley was out there.

  The bastard who had taken Erdman’s brother, who had abducted her son, was still out there.

  But go into protective custody? Remove Jakey from his home, his school, everything he knew? Her instinct was to refuse. Jakey had endured enough disruption. He needed stability, familiarity.

  ‘Have you found Clara Foyle?’ she asked, a deliberate diversionary tactic.

  Fitzroy looked away then, wouldn’t meet her eyes. She pretended to stir her tea, even though Lilith knew she didn’t take sugar.

  ‘Believe me, Mrs Frith, I won’t stop looking until I do.’ Lilith did believe her. The conviction in her eyes was impossible to feign.

  The detective’s face had taken on a grey-greenish pallor. ‘Excuse me, may I use Jakey’s bathroom?’

  Lilith tried not to listen to the sounds of retching and wondered if she should go in and check on her. Erdman raised his eyebrows. A few moments later the chain flushed and Fitzroy emerged.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said, wiping her mouth gently with a tissue. ‘Must have been something I ate.’

  That was two months ago, and they hadn’t had much to do with the police since then. The Frith family hadn’t gone into protective custody. Erdman and Lilith had decided to live their lives the way they wanted to. To allow Jakey to live his. A panic button had been installed. A marked car had sat outside for a few nights, and there’d been the odd phone call, to make sure they were OK. Erdman had wanted them to move, talked endlessly about the possibility of a house by the sea, a fresh start. Of renting out their own house, selling Shirley’s. But Lilith was content to wait. Nothing seemed to matter except spending time with Erdman and Jakey.

  Until the parcel arrived.

  It was a typical morning, or rather, typical of the mornings that belong to those trying to rebuild their lives.

  Jakey and his parents had eaten breakfast and talked about Carlton, and the little boy had insisted again how Clara was still alive, how she had helped him to survive in the Dark Place. The counsellor said it was his coping mechanism.

  Erdman’s eyes had darkened, and Lilith had cuddled Jakey on her lap, and after a while, he had wriggled free and gone to play with his cars. Lilith had stroked Erdman’s hair, and he had smiled down at her, and then he had left to collect the surprise.

  A short while later, the postman knocked on the door, and before she could gather herself to articulate a sentence, he deposited a parcel in her hands with a cheery, ‘There you go’, and thrust a stylus pen at her for a signature.

  ‘I haven’t ordered anything,’ she protested.

  He frowned, checked the notes on his docket. ‘Mrs Lilith Frith, 227 Granville Terrace?’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s me, but I’m not expect—’

  ‘Must be a present, then,’ he interrupted. ‘Enjoy.’

  She shut the door slowly, turning the box over in her hands. There was no return address, nothing at all.

  Helping herself to a vegetable knife from the block on the worktop, Lilith made herself comfortable at the kitchen table and slit open the package.

  A large white envelope fell out.

  She lifted the flap, carefully removed its contents. She stared at it. A minute. Two minutes. It couldn’t be. It must be a mistake.

  She shoved it back inside the envelope.

  Her fingers found their way to her mouth, and she bit down, splitting the nail. A deadening sense of shock settled over her. She slid her hand back into the envelope again and pulled out the monochrome X-ray of a twisted ribcage.

  At first, she had thought it was part of Jakey’s medical notes, forwarded by the police or doctors at the Royal Southern. But then she had realized. It was time and date-stamped 24 November 2012.

  Jakey had not been at the hospital that day.

  He had been with Brian Howley.

  Hands trembling, she pulled out another piece of paper. The loops and whorls of his writing marked out the flat, white expanse.

  ‘And you shall live.’

  Fear propelled her to the bookcase, and she pulled down her Bible, a battered relic from school. There it was. Another quotation from Ezekiel.

  Was it a threat? Or an act of valediction?

  She shivered, suddenly aware that the central heating hadn’t come on, and a thin January snow was falling. Under the kitchen spotlights, the black-and-white transparency glinted coldly.

  She shut the curtains and locked all the doors and windows, and once or twice, she muttered a prayer.

  She had never believed in ghosts.

  But the bogeyman was real.

  By the time Erdman arrived home an hour later, Lilith had hidden the X-ray at the back of her underwear drawer. There was no need to stir up old feelings. She would give it to Fitzroy, and the detective could decide what had to be done, and she would tell Erdman that she had changed her mind, that she did want that fresh start by the sea after all.

  ‘Did you get it?’ she said.

  He was grinning as he opened up his jacket and showed her what was hidden inside. She smiled back at him, saw her own love for her family mirrored in his eyes.

  ‘Jakey,’ she called up the stairs. ‘Can you come down here for a moment, please?’

  ‘I’ve already finished my reading book.’

  ‘We’ve got something to show you.’

  As their son made his way downstairs, Lilith and Erdman shared a conspiratorial glance. A swell of gratitude crested inside her at this second chance to remake her marriage, to try to be a different kind of mother to her son.

  Jakey limped into the sitting room. His face was pinched and wary, the legacy of a time that it would take him years to forget.

  ‘What did you want me for, Mummy?’

  Erdman moved towards their son, who had endured so much, who reminded them every day that hiding from life was no life at all.

  He unzipped his coat and lifted the squirming puppy into Jakey’s arms.

  98

  Miles Foyle loaded the last of his suitcases into the back of the car.

  Amy watched him do it. Now the moment had come she could not bear to watch him leave, but she did not know how to say that. Neither of them knew how to speak to each other these days.

  ‘Drive safely,’ she said.

  ‘I will,’ he said.

  ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Mi
les patted his pockets. Felt for his passport, his wallet. His face was thinner now, unshaven. Fresh lines scarred his forehead and the delicate skin around his eyes. A colleague would be running his private GP practice while he took an extended leave of absence.

  ‘Eleanor will miss you.’

  ‘She can come and stay for a bit when I’m settled. But I need to get away from London. I can’t be here any more.’ He bowed his head, fiddled with the strap of his watch. ‘I see her on every corner, Amy. I hear her in every child’s voice.’ He lifted his eyes to meet hers, and she saw the anguish within. It reflected her own. His voice cracked. ‘I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there when she needed her daddy most, and this place reminds me of that every single day.’

  Amy understood. God, she understood. But Eleanor was settled in school. She had friends, clubs. It would be cruel to uproot her now when so much of her young life had already been ripped to shreds, a swatch of cloth on barbed wire.

  ‘Is Gina coming out?’ Her voice was light, casual. She was tired of arguments, of the weight of sadness that never seemed to lessen.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to Gina for weeks,’ he said carefully.

  ‘Oh.’

  Amy tried to smile, but then tears were spilling down her cheeks, and they clung to each other as if that physical act would somehow bridge the crevice that had widened into a canyon in the days and weeks after Clara’s disappearance.

  ‘Will you be back for the memorial?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Detective Fitzroy has promised to come.’

  ‘That’s good of her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  If he didn’t get going soon, Miles would miss his flight.

  ‘Will you be OK?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I can stay. If you want me to, I’ll stay.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Miles placed his arms gently around his wife, and felt her thin body shake. She wasn’t wearing any make-up that morning and her nails were plain, unvarnished. He liked her better that way.

  ‘I’ll be back, I promise.’

  Her lips twisted into a smile and she swiped at her nose with the tissue in her pocket. She carried them everywhere these days. Grief ambushed her in the most unlikely of places.

  He opened the driver’s door, started the engine. Amy hadn’t seen this car before. He’d hired it, she guessed. He’d leave it behind at the airport. Just like he was leaving her behind. Disappointment settled on her like stone.

  He wound down the window.

  ‘You can come too, if you like. With Eleanor. Sit on the beach. Eat nice food. Swim a bit.’ He held out his hand. ‘Forget for a while.’

  She reached out to touch his fingertips. ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  99

  Fitzroy stretched out her toes, luxuriating in the warmth and space of the bed. For once, she was on a rest day with no particular place to be, no pressing need to do anything except potter about at home. She ran her hand over the curve of her stomach.

  She couldn’t get used to sleeping alone.

  In the still of the Sunday-morning city, she could just make out the faint beginnings of birdsong, and the shape of the Howley case file on her nightstand.

  A thin wail rose from the cot in the spare room.

  Fitzroy smiled into the darkness, and padded across the flat, bent over the cot and picked up her nephew.

  ‘Morning, Max,’ she whispered. ‘It’s a bit early to be waking up.’ He nestled his head into the crook of her shoulder, and she inhaled his sweet, sleepy smell.

  Nina and Patrick were celebrating their wedding anniversary this weekend and she had offered to babysit.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Her younger sister had looked wary, their relationship still feeling its way back to life. When Fitzroy had said that she was, Nina had flung her arms around her and, laughingly, she’d returned her hug.

  David was not there. He had moved out a few weeks ago. A temporary arrangement, they’d agreed. So they could both sort out how they felt. But she still didn’t know the answer to that.

  Fitzroy carried her nephew back into her bedroom, to the tall window that stared out at the lights that lit the horizon.

  He was out there. And she would find him. She would find Clara too. She would never stop looking.

  In the police interviews after his abduction, she had coaxed from Jakey his whispered conversations with Clara, the two sets of footsteps he had heard crossing the room next door.

  So close. They had been so close.

  The team had thrown everything into the search, thousands of hours, hundreds and hundreds of officers, but Howley and Clara were gone, not forgotten, not yet, but already fading like a painful memory.

  Until Mrs Frith’s call last week.

  News of the X-ray had unsettled Fitzroy. Was it a line in the sand? Or a warning?

  Whatever his motive, it stirred in her a recollection of that day they had found Jakey cowering in the back of the van, and she had realized that life, with all its fragilities and inconsistencies, was a gift.

  After Chambers had driven off with Howley, Fitzroy had begged The Boss to let her back into that house. About to refuse, to tell her that it would be irresponsible and unprofessional and dangerous, he had seen the need tearing her features apart, and had changed his mind.

  But it was nothing more than a smouldering ruin, a collapsing roof, too hot and too treacherous for anyone to enter.

  So The Boss had driven her to hospital instead.

  ‘You did well tonight,’ he said, a meagre compensation.

  Alone, she’d returned a couple of days later, when the ash was still warm, to watch specially trained fire officers sift through the wreckage of so many lives.

  Grace was dead. She watched them bring out her remains from an upstairs room in Marshall Howley’s house. The skeleton’s cervical ribs had been consistent with the teenager’s hospital records.

  But the intensity of the heat had destroyed most of the museum downstairs. There was no sign of Clara.

  Not even when they searched and searched until night swallowed day, and Fitzroy dropped to her knees and joined them, scrabbling through the soot and debris, tears tracking down her filthy cheeks.

  All that was left of his collection was a handful of bone splinters and a pile of dust, and Fitzroy’s own memories of loss.

  With trembling hands and a fractured heart, she had gone back to the silence of the flat, and picked up the phone to her sister.

  Now, with the arrival of Jakey’s X-ray, he was taunting her again.

  But she was coming for him.

  Max’s head grew heavy on her shoulder, his breath deep and even. His eyelids fluttered and he made a whimpering sound in his sleep. She wondered where Clara was, whether she was warm, whether he was hurting her.

  Whether she was dead.

  Her heart swooped and soared with the joy and fear of it all.

  100

  A weak February sun warmed Erdman’s bones. It was a long time since he’d felt able to tackle the garden, but here he was, cutting back roses, and pruning the hawthorn. Tidying up in readiness for the tenants, who were due to move in next week.

  The song thrush had returned, there were piles of crushed shells on the patio, and its pretty voice cheered him.

  The police still hadn’t found Carlton’s body. They had warned him it was unlikely they ever would. Traces of his DNA, yes. But the fire had been devastating, caused by a combination of faulty wiring and too much varnished wood, and by the time the fire crews had arrived, it was too late to salvage much of anything at all.

  Over the weeks that had followed, he’d discovered his own way of handling grief. He had allowed himself to forgive his mother.

  She had loved her family and she had tried to protect him by keeping secrets. That knowledge had washed clean the stain of inadequacy he had worn for most of his life.

  As for Lilith, last night she had reached for him in a way she hadn�
�t done so for as long as he could remember. The memory of her warm mouth made him weak.

  Erdman dug his fork into the half-frozen earth, slipped off his old gardening coat and hung it over the handle. He was thirsty. In the kitchen, he leaned against the worktop, now covered with boxes half-filled with crockery, and downed cold Coke from a can.

  ‘Champ?’ he called. ‘Where are you?’

  But Jakey didn’t answer.

  Not surprisingly, he had been quieter, more withdrawn since the events of November, but Erdman and Lilith had promised themselves that they would not let Him steal anything more from their son. From their family.

  Christmas had been difficult. A simple meal and a few gifts for Jakey. The joy they had felt at the return of their son was tempered by the knowledge that Clara Foyle was still missing, and the fear that his ordeal had marked him in ways they could not see. But they had found a way through it by shutting out the world’s media and focusing their energies on their boy.

  Every night, after school, they played games together. At the weekends, they went to the cinema and chased a ball around the park, and Lilith had bought him a special helmet and protective pads so he could ride his bike. This time next week, they would be living by the sea in a lovely old house Erdman and Lilith had chosen together.

  And if Jakey cried out in his dreams, and slept in their bed every night, so be it.

  Slowly, he was coming back to himself.

  Erdman found Jakey by the sitting room window, his puppy at his feet.

  ‘Do you want a sandwich, champ? Or you can come and help me in the garden, if you like. I’ve got some weeding with your name on it.’

  His son looked up at him with haunted eyes.

  ‘Are you OK, champ? What is it?’

  For a long time, the boy didn’t answer, but Erdman saw that his mouth was trembling, that he was folding in on himself, trying to make himself smaller, hidden. The counsellor had warned them that this would happen, that the trauma of his ordeal would discolour the ordinary, that the shadows would always be there, threatening to block out the sun.