Skin and Bones

by Tom Bale

  'I've been looking at some of the local issues, and it's clear that Matheson's plan stirred up a lot of controversy. I thought it would make for an interesting background story. Your dad was leading the fight.'

  'For all the good it did him.'

  'But the proposal was rejected. Surely that's a victory?'

  'They won the first skirmish, that's all. A man like George Matheson doesn't give up easily.' As he said it he was aware of an uneasy feeling that this wasn't the time to unburden himself of such thoughts.

  Abby said, 'I can't see him trying anything now.'

  'Who knows? Maybe it will help him.'

  She was staring at him, desperately trying to conceal her excitement. Craig saw it, knew he should change the subject. But he couldn't resist.

  'Maybe this just clears the path for him,' he said viciously. 'After all, who's left to fight him now?'

  Eighteen

  The killer powered up his laptop and opened Internet Explorer for the second time that evening. It was almost midnight. On TV a panel of worthies was debating the possible repercussions of what had already been dubbed 'The Chilton Massacre'.

  He'd first logged on an hour or so before. He signed into Hotmail, using the email address and password he'd been sent four months ago, from someone he knew only as Decipio.

  There was a new entry waiting for him in the Drafts folder. His finger poised over the mousepad for a few seconds. He took a deep breath and clicked it open.

  Was I supposed to be impressed by that? If anything, you've made the situation worse. You failed in your main objective. She's still alive.

  He had stared at the message for a long time, feeling sick and furious and most of all despairing. He felt like a marathon runner who turns what he thinks is the last corner and instead sees a vast unforgiving road stretching to the horizon.

  Then he deleted the message and composed a reply.

  I don't know why he ignored my orders. He knew exactly what he was supposed to do, but he went berserk. I stopped him as soon as I could, at great risk to me.

  Are you sure about the survivor? I dealt with her myself.

  He saved the draft, then logged off. Decipio had instructed him to keep the language vague, but this was really an unnecessary precaution. By sharing the log-on and using only the draft function, they ensured the messages were never transmitted, and thus couldn't be eavesdropped. It was the same method by which some of the 7 July London bombers had communicated.

  Then he'd gone back to the TV, and listened to a rentaquote MP assert that further restrictions on firearms might be necessary. A senior churchman wanted greater moral leadership in society, and a psychologist argued there was inadequate screening or support for the kind of unstable men who are driven to commit such atrocities. The government representative, a junior Home Office minister, seemed on the brink of tears.

  The killer muted the TV and opened Hotmail again. Read the new message that had taken the place of his own in the Drafts folder.

  Quite sure. You failed.

  Try again. This time get it right.

  No loose ends.

  He snarled at the screen, feeling a resentment familiar to footsoldiers everywhere. All very easy to dish out orders from a comfortable office somewhere; not quite so simple to accomplish on the ground. And where was the recognition of what he had achieved?

  He felt disgusted. On the verge of refusing. But he knew he wouldn't. There was too much at stake. He had no choice but to carry on.

  Like the message said, he would have to try again. And this time, make sure he killed her.

  No loose ends.

  Nineteen

  In the dreams she always died.

  In the dreams she was chased, hunted, caught and killed. Each time she died she found herself back in the darkness, her pursuer hot on her trail, and the whole terrible story played out again. The dreams went on in another world, where fears could not be rationalised, reflected on, dismissed.

  A world with no escape.

  Then, quite abruptly, she found herself in a room flooded with light. At first she didn't know who she was, but that lasted only an instant. With identity came one startling recollection: her parents were dead.

  The grief was suffocating. She wanted to believe it was part of the nightmare, but when she searched her memory the details came too clearly and rapidly to be anything other than genuine.

  It was mid-December, a squally evening. Both she and her brother, Neil, had spent the day trying to reach them by phone, and finally Julia agreed to drive over after work.

  Pulling up outside the terrace in her red Mini Cooper, she had noticed the house was completely dark. For a minute she remained in the car, gathering her nerve. Rain pounded on the roof, making her feel cocooned and yet vulnerable at the same time.

  She knew something was wrong as soon as she unlocked the front door. A wave of cloying heat was sucked into the storm, leaving an imprint of the stillness which had preceded it, like the after-image of a flashbulb. There was something else, too. An ominous quality to the silence that ran like a cold finger along her spine. She felt an overwhelming urge to turn and flee.

  She stepped inside and turned on the light. Once she'd filtered out the muted howl of the wind, she began to identify sounds from inside: the sombre ticking of a carriage clock, the staccato buzz of the fridge, the roaring boiler.

  Already the heat was building again. It felt sinister and out of place. Her father was notorious for his thrift. When she and Neil were kids he'd always been turning off lights in their wake. He wouldn't go out and leave the heating on at this level.

  Which suggested that they hadn't gone out. They were here. In the dark.

  'Mum! Dad!' she cried. 'Are you there?'

  No answer. She could see all the downstairs rooms were unlit, but there was still a chance they were in one of the bedrooms.

  It was a forlorn hope, she knew as she climbed the stairs. With each step her legs seemed to grow heavier and more reluctant. Reaching the landing, she experienced a little pitch of nausea and had to grab the handrail.

  There were no lights on upstairs.

  'Mum?' she called again, and paused, stalled by dread. 'Dad?'

  She faced her parents' bedroom and slowly eased the door open. Her hand trembled as she reached for the light switch. Despite the gloom she could just make out the twin shapes beneath the lilac M&S duvet. It brought back a long-forgotten memory of childhood, one Sunday morning, giggling with her brother on the landing while strange gasps and moans emanated from the bedroom. Then, as now, she'd felt she was intruding on something she didn't understand.

  But she couldn't turn back. She had to know.

  She switched on the light, offering a desperate prayer: Let them be asleep.

  And just for a moment, until she saw their faces, it seemed that they were.

  Her parents were dead, and she had found the bodies. But where was she now? Had she suffered a breakdown as a result of the trauma? Was she confined to a mental hospital?

  Desperate to stay away from the dark world of her dreams, she clung to the memory of that night in December. She would force herself to relive the experience, and perhaps by doing that she could find a path back to the present day.

  They had looked as if they'd just come in from one of Dad's route marches over the Downs. Lying snugly beneath the duvet with the rosy glow of obscene good health, she had almost expected her father to rear up in bed and berate her. 'Turn the bloody light off, Julia. Your mother and I fancied an early night.'

  But he wasn't going to do that. Not tonight or any other. They were dead. And in an instant several things had made sense: their complexions, the stifling heat, Julia's vague headache and nausea. The sort of thing you hear on the news: a dreadful but essentially mundane tragedy that always happens to someone else.

  Until it happens to you.

  She lunged for the window and threw it open. Dashed downstairs and into the kitchen, knocking a picture from the wall in
her haste. The boiler hung in the corner like a malevolent caged dragon, breathing death into the house. She shut it down, grabbed her parents' cordless phone and ran into the garden. Now the wind and rain were a kind of salvation.

  She dialled 999 and explained in a shaky voice what she suspected. The operator ran her through a sequence of questions so smoothly that she had no choice but to reply calmly, without panic. It was a form of hypnosis, she realised much later. He told her the emergency services were on their way, and asked if she felt all right. Was there a friend or neighbour who could wait with her?

  She mumbled something about going next door and ended the call. Almost immediately the whole thing seemed unreal. What if she had imagined it, or been mistaken? She'd look such a fool. Surely she ought to go back in and check?

  She got as far as the door before an immobilising terror stopped her in her tracks. Of course she hadn't imagined anything. They were dead.

  She thought about Neil. He was four or five hours away. But she could feel her throat closing even as she imagined trying to tell him.

  Then the phone rang, making her jump. She pressed the Talk button, expecting to hear the 999 operator.

  'Can I speak to Jules?' a voice shouted.

  'It's me, Steve.'

  'I couldn't get you on your mobile.'

  'There's no signal here,' she said, noticing for the first time how abnormal her voice sounded. But if it was apparent to Steve, he gave no sign. Earlier he had derided her concerns and refused to accompany her, preferring to play squash instead. It's obvious they don't like me, he had said. I don't wanna go and see them.

  Well now you won't have to, she thought. You'll never have to.

  'It took me bloody ages to find your mum's number,' he said. 'When are you gonna be home? I was thinking I could drop by after the pub. Bring a takeaway, bottle of vino?'

  'No, Steve. I can't.'

  'Don't give me that. We might as well be an old married couple for the sex life we've had lately. Fucking non-existent . . .' His grumbled complaints tailed off, and she spoke into the sullen silence.

  'My mum and dad are dead,' she told him. 'I'm in their garden, waiting for the police, so I'm not really in the mood tonight. In fact, I'd like you to piss off. Can you do that for me, Steve? Can you piss off?'

  * * *

  Her awareness now extended to an array of equipment around her bed. There were tubes tethered to her body; machines that hummed and bleeped in response to her gradual healing. It made her sickly aware of her own heartbeat, her breathing. It hurt when she breathed, she realised. Lots of vague, generalised pain that managed to be intense and yet muffled at the same time.

  She was in hospital, then. But not a psychiatric ward. She was recovering from some sort of physical injury. An accident? That seemed plausible. In the aftermath of losing her parents, she wouldn't have been thinking clearly. Perhaps her concentration had lapsed while driving.

  Then an abhorrent thought: perhaps she had tried to commit suicide?

  Fire officers with breathing apparatus had entered the house first and declared it safe. Julia was ushered into the kitchen by a police officer, who set about making tea. Shortly afterwards another officer returned from upstairs, nodded grimly at her colleague and addressed Julia: 'They're both dead. I'm very sorry.'

  After that, time passed in a blur. Julia had little clear recollection of how long she sat in the kitchen, while various people trooped up and down the stairs. Some introduced themselves, some did not. Most lingered in the doorway for a few seconds, looking at her with a vague professional curiosity, as though they might have welcomed a dramatic reaction. Something to make the evening memorable for them.

  Eventually she summoned the courage to phone her brother. She expected him to ask lots of questions, but instead he absorbed the news in a dull, shocked silence. She was still waiting for a coherent response when his wife Donna took the phone. It was as if they'd already known, she told Julia. As if they'd known all day.

  Unable to sleep on such news, they arranged for Donna's parents to come over and look after the children. Then they packed a suitcase and left Knutsford in the early hours, arriving at Julia's flat just after dawn.

  The sight of Neil as he stumbled from the car – pale, red-eyed, faltering – brought home to her the enormity of their loss. It was just the two of them now, brother and sister. Orphans.

  Now there were voices. Sometimes distant and vaguely soothing, like running water. Sometimes loud and brash. Her senses felt cruelly heightened, overwhelming her, threatening to send her back to that other world. The world where he waited, again and again, to complete his task.

  But who was he? Why did he want to kill her?

  She continued tiptoeing cautiously through her memory of the days that followed. The post mortems confirmed that Bernard and Lisa Trent died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The local authority arranged for the central heating system to be examined by an engineer, who concluded that the boiler had been poorly maintained. In addition, a crucial vent had been blocked, possibly to prevent a draught. Julia felt sure her parents would have had it serviced, but a search of the house revealed no paperwork to corroborate that. She'd even contacted some local plumbers, but none recalled working on it.

  The family liaison officer explained that an inquest would be held. It would be for the coroner to determine the ultimate cause, but the likelihood was either accidental death or an open verdict. The sheer senselessness of it was one of the hardest things for Julia to bear. The thought that two lives had been lost for the price of a routine service.

  A week or more had passed in a dull haze of grief. She was too numb to be affected by the funeral, and suffered a delayed reaction that hit at the worst possible time: just as she sat down to Christmas dinner with her brother and his family in Knutsford. Like the rest of the adults, she'd been determined to make an effort at normality for the sake of the children, but she found herself weeping so helplessly that in the end even her four-year-old nephew decided it was impolite to stare. Neil virtually had to carry her from the room.

  The solicitor had made it clear there was no hurry to do anything with the cottage. Julia and her brother were sole beneficiaries, and there was no mortgage. But they both agreed there was no question of keeping the house. It had never been a family home, and now it would only ever be associated with tragedy.

  Simple geography dictated that Julia would take care of clearing out the furniture and sorting through a lifetime's accumulation of belongings. Once she'd started back at school and had the first couple of weeks under her belt, she finally steeled herself to get on with it.

  I can't keep putting it off. That's what she had told someone. In a shop. An old-fashioned village store.

  She remembered a cold, sunny morning. A deep frost on the grass and the tiled roofs. It was a Saturday, very early. No one around.

  It was Chilton, she realised. Whatever it was, it had happened in Chilton.

  'Is there any improvement?'

  She recognised the voice as her brother's. Neil was here, at her bedside. She could even smell his aftershave. Hugo Boss. It was what she usually bought him for Christmas.

  In reply, a man with a soft Indian accent said, 'She's definitely on the mend. We're reducing the sedatives, so she should be back with us quite soon.'

  From her brother, a heartfelt rush of breath: pure relief. She felt touched, but also scared.

  'She was very fortunate,' the other man said. 'The bullet could have done a lot more damage.'

  She was hiding in the tree, but he knew she was there. A man in black motorcycle leathers.

  Oh God. No.

  'It's the psychological effect that worries me,' her brother said.

  'I quite understand, but let's concern ourselves with that at the appropriate time. For now, we should be thankful she survived at all. So many did not.'

  'I know.' A hand took hold of hers, and she knew it was Neil. 'She's a real fighter, aren't you, love?'

&
nbsp; This was addressed to Julia, and she longed to answer, longed to reassure him she was all right, but nothing would work, not her mouth or throat, her arms or legs, everything comfortable but locked in place, as though she were immersed in some kind of thick resin. As a child playing hide-and-seek she had crawled into her parents' wardrobe and piled all the winter coats on top of her until she could barely move. It was the same warm safe weight lying on her now: she was powerless against it.

  Just as she had been powerless to stop the bullets strafing the tree.

  She felt the draw of the other world and tried desperately to resist, but of course it was hopeless. The machines dutifully recorded her panic, but no one came to her aid.

  This time, she knew who was waiting.

  Twenty

  Sullivan chose a little pub up the hill from the station. Brighton wasn't his manor, but he knew it was a lively place, and Thursday night practically counted as the weekend. He wanted somewhere quiet and discreet, somewhere they were unlikely to be noticed.

  The pub was in a terrace of Victorian homes, no bigger than a front room, with too many tables squashed into the space each side of the bar. At eight o'clock it wasn't busy: a bunch of students clearly intending to move on somewhere more exciting, and a few late commuters in shirts and ties, sipping pints and reading the Argus. Sullivan had once been the same, knackered after a day's work but reluctant to go home and face the missus. Now she was long gone, and it made no difference to him whether he went out or stayed in. Either way he drank alone and pleased himself.

  Not tonight, though. He was halfway through his Guinness when the door opened and Craig Walker came in. He had the same anger, the same glowering intensity as the last time they'd met. That had to be four or five years ago at least, but he seemed to have barely aged at all. Pity I can't say the same for myself, Sullivan thought ruefully.

  Craig didn't bother disguising his reaction. 'You look even worse than you did on TV.'