Bone Machine (28 page)

‘She’s not there.’ The Historian sighed. ‘No matter how hard I look, she’s not there.’

Jill felt herself ebbing away. No longer a part of the world.

‘The one spirit I thought … I knew … I knew I’d see …’

His words had long ago stopped meaning anything to her. They were just part of what she existed with, like the cold air on
her naked skin, the pain, the regular abuses he carried out on her.

‘When she, when she passed over, I thought she’d still be with me. All the time. My father I didn’t care, but her …’ He sighed.
‘And I couldn’t find her. Not anywhere. I tried silence, hoping she’d come to me, I tried looking for her, actively seeking
her out. You know, mediums and such. Nothing.’ His voice took on a deeper degree of sadness. ‘Nothing. And I do miss her so.
Not a day goes by …’

Jill tried to move, found it too painful. The end, she felt, couldn’t be far away. His last attack on her had been the most
frenzied. He had used knives. Taken out his rage and lust on her with knives. And she couldn’t even scream.

‘You know,’ he continued, his voice conversational, low. ‘Sometimes – and I shouldn’t say this, should I? – but sometimes
I wonder. I really do wonder. Are these really ghosts around us? Spirits of the long since departed? Or is it …’ He stopped.
‘Is it … me?’ He continued speaking, voice clearly choked with emotion. ‘Because if I can see
them
then I should be able to see
her
. But if it’s not that, well … I’m not
saying I’m mad … but that would mean there’s no such thing, wouldn’t it? No ghosts. No spirits. No … soul. Do you understand?
Because this is important. This is what it’s all about. It would mean there’s nothing else. Us. Now. Is all there is.’

Jill felt a different kind of blackness dancing around her eyes. Starbursts of dark light played in front of her. She tried
to breathe deep, felt her body take in only pain, not air.

‘And I have to know. I have to know. If the body has a spirit, a soul. If it leaves at the time of death. Because if it’s
not, if there’s no such thing … then, what’s the point? Why do anything?’ He stood up, began pacing the room.

Jill just wanted it to end. Everything to end. One way or another.

‘I mean, that would make us nothing more than, than bone machines. Just slabs of meat that think. Just another component in
this, all this. The city. The world. Just one huge machine built on bone, kept going by bone. And flesh. Just …
cogs
. D’you understand?’

His words a buzzcut blur, his voice a chainsaw hum slicing through her dimming brain.

‘We’re born, we live, we die, we go under the earth. And sometimes we’re remembered, but most often those graves become forgotten
or lost or hidden. And the living don’t care, they just keep going, walking over the dead, not knowing who or what is underneath
them. All those lives, all those deaths … Just … food for the bone machine. To keep it going.
Why?
It doesn’t make sense, does it? No, we must be something more. We have to be. And I have to know.’

Jill felt him climb on top of her. Even unrestrained she would have been too weak to fight him off.

‘I need to know. And you’re going to tell me. You’re going to show me the truth.’

She felt the knife, pain on pain. Again. And again. She
knew the pain wouldn’t last. Couldn’t last. Knew that the torture would end soon. Knew also that whatever took its place couldn’t
be worse than this.

‘Show me … show me …’

Holding her hard. Another stab.

‘Show … me …’

The Historian sat in the corner of his room, hunched up. Foetal, like a newborn: naked and red with blood not his own. Not
born again in light and understanding, just continuing on in darkness and ignorance.

The voices were swishing and swirling around his head like so many sonic kites. He ignored them, focused only on the body
on the worktable, now just an empty, bloody husk. A slab of useless meat.

It had been so close. So close. That rising, her body bucking … him pressing down against her, that final judder … and then
… nothing.

He would run the camera back, check the tape later. But he knew what he would find. Nothing.

And it made him feel impotent, like when he couldn’t come in front of the whores no matter how much he strained and panted,
and they would laugh at him behind their hands. They would pretend they weren’t, but he could see it in their eyes. They couldn’t
hide their eyes. And he remembered the anger he felt those times. How he had lashed out. Gone too far, one time. But that
had been OK, then. That had worked out, opened up a whole new avenue. Gave him something to spend his money on and a thrill
of achievement. But that anger he’d felt then, that was how she made him feel now.

So close. And this one, he had felt, would be the one. But she wasn’t cleverer, more intelligent or better than any of the
others. She was just a whore, like all the rest. A
useless, disappointing whore. A carcass to be used, then discarded.

He looked around the room. The lights. The figures. No longer necessary totems for an important ritual, now just so much useless
set dressing for a play missing an ending. A joke without a punchline.

A joke.

And that embarrassed him, angered him further.

And it was all her fault.

Leaping to his feet, he grabbed his knife, lunged at the empty shell before him. He slashed at it once, twice, further and
again; screaming incoherent abuses, exorcising his pain and anger.

Eventually, spent of energy and rage, he tired, dropped the knife and slumped to the floor once more. He sighed, sat completely
still, barely breathing. For how long he didn’t know.

The voices were still there, attempting to talk to him in soothing, reassuring tones. Telling him she was there, that he had
missed her, that he wasn’t to worry. He didn’t listen. Didn’t trust them. He had to make up his own mind, find out for himself.

This was no longer satisfying him. His experiments were no longer satisfying enough. He needed more. He felt impotent rage
fluttering within, feeding on his stillness, growing again. Knew what he needed. Another test subject. And quickly. And he
didn’t care how he got her or who she was.

He looked again at the carcass.

But first he had to get rid of that. And in doing so, teach them a lesson.

A history lesson.

He smiled widely. It was like opening a door to winter.

He didn’t have to consult his books this time. He knew just the place.

‘Here bastard, drink this.’

Donovan shoved a mug of hot coffee at Turnbull’s prone form. Turnbull moaned and burrowed in further. He was curled up, his
face pressed into the back of the sofa, still wearing his clothes, his backside sticking out from under a duvet that Donovan,
in a moment of weakness, had thrown over him the previous night.

Donovan dragged over a small table and placed the mug on it, half-hoping Turnbull would knock it over and scald himself with
it. He sat down on the armchair and looked across at him.

‘Oi, sleeping policeman, wake up,’ he said, louder than was necessary.

Still no response. He picked up the remote for the hi-fi, pointed and clicked. The Drive By Truckers burst into action, their
angry-hearted, Jack Daniels-fuelled, southern-fired stomp boogie kicked up to eleven. Turnbull shouted incoherently and jumped
up as if on fire. Donovan, smiling, watched, his amusement tempered by the fact that the mug of coffee was still upright.

‘What the fuck …?’

‘Good morning,’ said Donovan above the din. ‘Sleep well?’

Turnbull’s eyes roved the room. It took him several seconds to place where he was and who was talking; once he had, his body
hit the back of the sofa and slumped down as if he’d been shot.

‘Bastard,’ he said with his eyes closed.

‘No way to talk to your generous host. Most people who find an intruder pissed and passed out on their sofa would call for
a policeman.’

‘Fuck off.’ Turnbull’s words seemed to come from a mouthful of pillow.

Donovan laughed and, victory won, turned the music off. The abrupt silence seemed just as deafening. Turnbull sighed.

‘Oh, God …’ He breathed through his mouth, head held at one side, eyes screwed tight.

Donovan knew the feeling well enough. As if the laws of physics had ceased to operate and you’d been made aware of the nauseating,
dizzying speed of the universe. ‘If you’re looking for sympathy you’ve come to the wrong place,’ he said. ‘In fact, you’re
lucky you found the right place. They take the Tony Martin approach to burglars around these parts.’

Turnbull’s head flopped forward, his breathing increasing.

‘If you’re going to be sick, the bathroom’s upstairs. Anywhere else and I’ll be fucking annoyed.’

Turnbull nodded and rose from the sofa like a Hammer horror zombie from the grave. He stumbled and staggered upstairs and
soon Donovan heard the unmistakable sounds of vomiting. He smiled to himself, taking pleasure in the other man’s obvious discomfort.

Shame the coffee was still standing, though, he thought.

Nattrass looked around, wondering what colour to describe the building before her. It had once been 1980s beige with red trim
but years of natural and man-made wear and tear had leached that to something more muted. Some kind of dirty yellow, perhaps:
pub ceiling? Old computer monitor? She didn’t know. And didn’t want to spend any more time speculating. That wasn’t what she
was here for.

The offices of the Blood Transfusion Service stood just off Barrack Road between the BBC Television Centre and a BMW dealership
on the fringes of Leazes Park. The washed-out slab-fronted building was enlivened by appropriately blood-red lettering announcing
what it was. A car park sat in front. And, on a lamppost in the car park, hung a body. Naked. Female. Mutilated. Dead.

Even without tests they all knew it was.

Jill Tennant.

DI Nattrass pulled her coat around her. She had showered at the station and changed into the spare set of clothes she kept
there. She knew her unit were required to dress more smartly; suits and ties, as if the murder squad were a judicial accounting
team for balancing the body count, but she had no option. She wore jeans and boots, a waist-length fauxfur-trimmed parka and
a scarf. Her hair was pulled back and tucked down the neck of her hood. No one would say anything about her violation of the
dress code. Just let them try.

That morning’s briefing never took place. Instead, a call had come through from a security guard at the Blood Transfusion
Centre saying something had been left hanging on a lamppost. He had seen it on his CCTV screen from inside the building and
thought it the work of students from the halls of residence nearby having a laugh. It was only after a sustained period of
observation that he had decided to leave his cosy office and brave the cold night air to look at it and plan to take it down.
On approaching he had thought it was very realistically done. On getting close enough to touch and smell it, he had thrown
up, run back inside and called the police.

SOCO had cordoned the area off and, along with forensics, were trying to pick up what clues the security man hadn’t trampled
away. They weren’t expecting to find many.

And yet …

There was something different about this one. The body just strung up and left. Not so carefully arranged. More hurried. Less
planned. And if that was the case, if he was getting more slapdash, then he was more likely to make mistakes.

She gestured to DS Deborah Howe, the SOCO senior manager. She crossed over to Nattrass, a couple of vermilion and mahogany
spikes sticking out from behind her white hood, and waited impatiently for her to speak.

‘Yes?’ Making it quite clear she was in the middle of something important.

‘You found anything?’

‘Not much, not so far.’ She looked around, anxious to get back.

‘From here it looks more rushed. Like he just dumped the body and ran.’

Howe nodded. ‘We’re checking for footprints on the bank side and in that mud up there. Don’t worry, whatever we find, we’ll
let you know.’

‘Check for wheel marks,’ Nattrass said in response to an urgent hunch.

Howe was trying to establish an insulted look. ‘We always do.’

‘No, smaller ones. Like, like a pram. Or a wheelchair. On the path, the bank side, wherever.’

Howe nodded, walked back over to the rest of her team, resumed her work.

Nattrass looked around again. Questions were forming. Why here? Why now? He was sending a message, she was sure of it. Something
to do with blood? Death, in some way? She didn’t know. She wished Turnbull were with her. He’d be good to bounce questions
off. Admittedly he was an annoying bastard at times but a good copper and a loyal member of the team.

Or had been.

She looked again at the body. Wondered, not for the first time, just what would drive someone to do that to another living
person. What horrors had been inflicted on an individual to make them see other human beings as just slabs of meat to be carved
up. She shook her head. Those were dangerously liberal thoughts for a DI, and there was no Turnbull to temper them with his
tabloid logic. She thought she had better keep them to herself in case they got out of hand.

Her train was broken by the hurried arrival of DC Stone. He was almost running in his haste to reach her.

‘Ma’am,’ he said, almost out of breath.

She turned, irritated. She hated being called ‘ma’am’. Made her sound like Jean Brodie. ‘Yes?’

‘We’ve got him, ma’am. We’ve got him.’ He couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice.

He hurried back to the main building.

She didn’t need any invitation to follow him.

‘So to what do I owe this pleasure?’

Over an hour had passed. Philip and Fern were soothing the nation on the TV. Donovan was sitting in the armchair. Turnbull
had followed his vomiting session with a shower. He had emerged, found the combats, T-shirt and fleece Donovan had left on
the landing for him and, despite the fact that he was smaller than Donovan, had put them on. His own clothes were stinking
and filthy. The gesture wasn’t completely altruistic: Donovan had deliberately dug out his old Kurt Cobain T-shirt just to
see Turnbull wearing it. Turnbull seemed too semi-detached to realize he was having the piss taken out of him. He sat on the
edge of the sofa regarding a replacement mug of coffee with suspicion.

Donovan turned the TV off. He didn’t feel that his life would be particularly enriched by hearing gossip from the
set of
Coronation Street
. Turnbull wouldn’t have come to his house if it wasn’t serious. If it wasn’t the last resort. The policeman had the look
of someone who needed to confess. Donovan, with no attempt at niceties, ploughed on.

‘I presume this isn’t a social call,’ Donovan said.

Turnbull’s eyes were downcast. He looked at the floor and when he spoke his words were mumbled.

‘I’m in trouble,’ he said quietly. ‘Big trouble.’ His voice sounded scratched and crackly; he took a sip of coffee, realized
he wasn’t about to bring it up again, took another. Said nothing more.

‘What kind of trouble?’

Another mouthful of coffee, then he replaced the mug. ‘I nearly stepped over the line.’

He said nothing more. Donovan waited.

‘Michael Nell … I was gonna …’ He sighed. ‘Gonna have him.’

‘Did you?’

Another sigh. Turnbull shook his head. ‘I wanted to. I followed him. But I lost him. Looked everywhere for him, everywhere
… But … I was pissed. Too pissed to see. I collapsed. Somewhere. A bus shelter, I think.’ He gave a short, humourless laugh.
‘Lucky I wasn’t picked up, put in a cell for the night by one of my lot.’ Another sigh. ‘My lot …’

‘You sure you didn’t do something to Nell? Did it in a raging, drunken, blackout?’

‘That’s what I thought at first. I went over and over it. Checked me hands, me clothes, nothing.’ He looked up, briefly caught
Donovan’s eye. ‘There would have been marks, believe me. Lots of them.’

‘So what happened next?’

Turnbull took another mouthful of coffee. ‘I was going to go back to work, turn up at the station and face the music, even
if I got kicked off the investigation. But by the time I’d
found my car and put the radio on, they were saying that Michael Nell had disappeared. Well, I knew I couldn’t go back then.
Couldn’t go back anywhere.’

‘Why didn’t you go home?’ As Donovan asked the question he realized how little he knew of Turnbull outside of work. He presumed
he had a wife, probably a family, but the subject had never been raised.

Turnbull gave another humourless snort. ‘Home? What home? There’s nothin’ left there. The wife hates me, she’s turned the
kids against me … What the fuck would I go there for?’

Donovan nodded, realizing now why Turnbull had never spoken about it.

‘I thought of going to Peta’s.’ He gave a quick, shifty glance at Donovan to see how he took that one. Donovan said nothing.
‘But I didn’t. Thought I’d get the same reception there.’

‘What about Di? Didn’t you contact her?’

‘I tried. Phoned her mobile. Got no answer. I knew she’d phone me back but I … didn’t know what to say. What I could do. So
I turned the phone off. Bottled it. I had nowhere else to go. Nowhere.’

‘So you turned up here and let yourself in.’

‘I had nowhere else to go …’

‘And drank all my whisky.’

‘I’ll replace it …’

‘Yeah, with cheap shit, probably.’

Turnbull gave another sigh. ‘I’m fucked. Completely fucked …’

Donovan regarded the sad lump of humanity before him, left slumped and broken on the sofa like an old sack of decaying potatoes.
He had always felt that underneath the right-wing, chauvinistic, alpha male bluster, Turnbull was a more fragile construct
than he was letting on. But Donovan
still hadn’t been prepared for the depth of self-pity the man was currently wallowing in. Drowning in, even.

‘So what you going to do now?’ Donovan asked.

‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. I can’t … I don’t …’ He slumped further down in the sofa, almost unrecognizable now. And
then the tears started.

Donovan couldn’t leave him like this. Someone would have to do something, and if there were no other volunteers it would have
to be him.

Oh, joy, he thought.

He mentally flicked through several approaches on how to talk to him, decided on one that was likely to work best.

‘And you can stop that feeling sorry for yourself shit right now,’ said Donovan.

Turnbull looked up. His eyes looked wet and startled, like headlamps in a muddy pool.

‘Pull yourself together. You’re no use to me like that.’

Turnbull frowned. ‘Use to you? Fuck you talkin’ about?’

‘You’ve got to move on.’

The tears were halting, drying on Turnbull’s cheeks. ‘Move on? Fuck you talkin’ about?’

‘I’ve got a job on. Need some help. Don’t know if I can pay you, though, might be on a volunteer basis.’

Turnbull seemed to be mulling over the offer. Then his head dropped, his face cradled by his hand. ‘I should be out there
doin’ somethin’. I should be back at work … not this …’

‘Yeah, you should. But you’re not. And you can’t. And you can’t stay here and wallow in your own self-pity. So d’you want
to help me or not?’

Turnbull looked at the coffee mug, at the near-empty whisky bottle Donovan had deliberately left on the floor as a reminder
of the previous night. He swallowed hard, breathed out through his nose.

‘OK, then,’ he said. ‘What we doin’? What kind of job?’

‘Missing person.’

‘Who?’

‘Michael Nell.’

It took a few seconds for the name to sink in, but when it did Turnbull let loose a broad grin.

‘Lead the fuckin’ way,’ he said.

DI Nattrass bent over the desk, watching the screen intently.

It was grainy, blurry: the early-morning/late-night rain rendering the image a static-filled bad TV reception, any figures
moving like ghosts.

‘There.’

DC Stone pointed. The machine operator pressed the pause button. The image on the screen froze. A blurred figure, a dark blob
of grey against a slightly lighter background stood before them.

‘Now advance, slowly.’ DC Stone again.

The operator complied. The figure moved ahead in jerky slow motion. Like watching a flicker book with the pages missing.

‘There!’ Nattrass almost shouted. ‘Look!’

She could barely contain the excitement rising inside her. They watched: as eyes became accustomed to what was on the screen,
the figure became more distinct. It was a man, dressed in a hat and a long overcoat.