Tania Carver: Cage of Bones

So when the vacancy for an in-house criminal psychologist with the police force based in Colchester came up, she had jumped at the chance. She knew she could do this job. She had expected resistance or antagonism from Phil, put off telling him. She needn’t have worried. He was totally supportive, even gave her a reference. And when she was offered the job, he was the one who sorted out daily childcare for Josephina with his adoptive parents, Don and Eileen Brennan. They had been thrilled to have the baby with them.

So it was a winner all round. Marina and Phil kept both their careers and their relationship going, Don and Eileen felt involved and needed and Josephina got more than her share of attention. And evenings together felt, to Marina and to Phil too, she knew, even more special with just the three of them.

‘I’m a working mother with a career and a family,’ Marina had said to him, smiling. ‘I’m having it all, the Daily Mail ’s worst nightmare. Worth doing just for that.’

Phil had laughed, agreed. Marina smiled at the memory.

Things were going well. Too well. This had never happened to her before. Something had to come along and spoil it. Something always did.

‘You OK?’ Anni’s voice.

Marina turned, blinked, pulled out of her reverie. Back to the corridor. ‘Yeah, fine. Just thinking.’

Anni turned to the doctor. ‘I brought Marina in because she’s a psychologist.’

‘And I think we’ll need you,’ said Dr Ubha.

‘I’m not a child psychologist, though,’ said Marina. ‘I’m with the police.’

Dr Ubha glanced at the closed door. ‘With what’s happened to that poor boy, I think we’ll need you anyway.’

‘I agree,’ said Anni. ‘You should be on the team for this one. Even if you can’t help with the boy himself, you can help find who put him there. You know what makes this kind of person tick.’

Marina nodded. Josephina’s smiling face came into her mind. She blinked it away. Swallowed hard. Concentrated. ‘What can I do?’

‘I need to start checking on missing children,’ said Anni. ‘Go at it that way. And check that, that… ’ she could barely bring herself to say the word, ‘that thing on his foot. See if there’s been anything similar anywhere else. If you can stay here and-’

A noise emanated from the boy’s room. A scream. The three women stared at each other.

‘He’s waking up,’ said Anni. ‘Come on.’

They ran back inside the room.

The white tent had already been erected at the side of the house. Keeping their findings safe and onlookers away. Phil began stripping off his blue suit. Mickey did likewise.

‘Like a personal sauna, these things,’ Mickey said. ‘Must lose half a stone every crime scene I come to.’

Phil gave a distracted smile in acknowledgement, checked his breathing. Fine. He looked up. The ambulances and Police Incident Units were parked at the top of the path, the area taped off, so the gawpers had gathered on the bridge. Peering over, necks craning. Trying for a glimpse of something dangerous or thrilling or exciting. A vicarious kick out of being close to violence but far enough away to be untouched by it. As though his work was some kind of sporting spectacle.

‘Like they’re watching TV,’ said Mickey, reading his mind.

‘Our audience,’ said Phil. ‘As though this is all a kind of showbiz.’ Then he thought of the cellar. Laid out like a stage set. The analogy didn’t feel appropriate any more.

‘Boss?’

Phil turned. The Birdies had arrived. DC Adrian Wren and DS Jane Gosling. Inevitably paired together because of their surnames. And their physical appearance didn’t help: Adrian stick thin, Jane much larger. They looked like a music-hall double act. But they were two of Phil’s best officers.

Phil called them over. ‘Adrian, Jane, good to see you both.’

They nodded their greetings.

‘Right,’ he said, addressing the group. ‘The CSIs are going to take over this area. Having been down there, I think we’ve got our work cut out for us.’

‘In what way?’ DS Jane Gosling frowned.

He explained what he had seen in the cellar. ‘We don’t know what kind of bones the cage is made from. Hopefully we will soon.’

‘Could they be human?’ asked DC Adrian Wren.

‘Don’t rule anything out,’ said Phil. ‘Not until we know for definite. But some of them have been there for years. And the way it was laid out, there’s a sense of ritual interrupted. Whoever’s responsible, it looks like he knew what he was doing. Chances are he’ll have done it before. So we need to know who owns the house, what sort of history it’s got, what hands it’s passed through, everything.’

‘Might be able to help there,’ said Mickey. He flipped through his notebook. ‘One of the two guys who called it in. Gave me the name of the demolition firm. George Byers. Based in New Town. They’ll know who owns the place. Might have had some dealings with them.’

‘Good place to start.’ Phil looked behind him at the big Georgian building. Faces were at windows, necks craning to see what was happening. ‘Before you do, find out what that place is. Who works there, what they do, if they saw anything or anyone going to and from this house. Someone must have seen something.’

Mickey, making notes, nodded again. So did Adrian.

Phil was still aware of being watched. He looked the other way. A concrete path, chipped, cracked and sprouting weeds, sided by a chain-link fence struggling to withstand an assault from the bushes, trees and weeds threatening to spill out over it. The path led past another dilapidated house. ‘What’s down there?’

‘Council allotments,’ said Mickey, following his gaze.

Phil looked again at the house on the opposite side of the path. Saw that it was in fact a small row of terraced houses, two-storey, in a terminal state of disrepair. The roofs were down to skeletal frames, the meat of tiles and fat of insulation starved off them. The windows and doors boarded up, the wood warped, aged down to grey. Gutters and drains rust-stained. The outside walls graffitied and tagged, filthy. And all around the terrace, weeds and vegetation making a bid for reclamation.

‘Jane, stay here. Co-ordinate with Forensics. Sorry, CSIs. Wouldn’t want to upset them.’

Thin smiles. Forensics had recently been rebranded as CSIs in line with the TV series. Made them feel more glamorous. On the outside at least.

‘Anni’s at the hospital with the kid. He’s still sleeping. No response. She’ll be looking into missing children, children’s homes, runaways.’

Another look round. The gawpers were still on the bridge. Nearby, but a world away. And Phil reckoned that deep down, they knew that. When they had seen enough they could walk away, taking the frisson of adventure back with them to their normal world. Plus a sense of thankfulness that what was happening down there wasn’t happening to them. But Phil couldn’t walk away.

And neither could the boy in the cellar.

‘I’ll check that house over there.’ He looked round his team. ‘We ready?’

They were.

‘Right. ‘Let’s go.’

Then Phil’s phone rang.

Rose Martin swallowed hard. Then again. Felt that rush, that tingle of adrenalin, that she hadn’t experienced in months. This was where she belonged. Back. Working.

Since the call, everything had felt good. Right. She had pulled up to the Road Closed sign on Colchester Road just outside the village of Wakes Colne, holding her warrant card up to the windscreen, being allowed access where all other vehicles were being turned away. She felt that indescribable power that being above civilians gave her. She had missed it.