Spoken Bones Read online

  SPOKEN BONES

  A DI FENELLA SALLOW CRIME THRILLER

  N.C. LEWIS

  © N.C. Lewis 2021

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies or events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except with brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  56.

  57.

  58.

  59.

  60.

  61.

  62.

  63.

  64.

  65.

  66.

  67.

  68.

  69.

  70.

  71.

  Author's Note

  ALSO BY N.C. LEWIS

  Chapter 1

  November 6

  It was 7:00 a.m. and still dark in Port Saint Giles. Audrey Robin hurried along the beach. She clutched a black sack, her mind focused on the plan.

  In front of her, the dunes sloped down to the blackened sand of the bonfire. Guy Fawkes Night had brought out the locals. It came too late in the year for tourists, and besides, the faded seaside town wasn't on any Cumbria sightseeing map. A bonfire smouldered after the night-time party. The chill sea air tasted of salt and ash.

  A skein of barnacle geese honked. Audrey wiped her glasses and watched as they made their way south through the cloud-spotted dawn. Their flight announced the turn of the seasons. November brought cold and dark. She lowered her hood, inviting in the chill, and tightened her knitted red scarf.

  Three years had passed since she left Bristol wearing only her summer dress.

  It felt like a lifetime.

  And in North West England, it was damn cold.

  The weather forecast predicted more rain, wind, and chill. But only a light mist hung over the sand. Still, Audrey was glad of her coat, boots, and scarf, all given to her by Maureen Brian.

  "A friendship gift," Maureen had said, "to keep you warm through the winter dark."

  As Audrey rounded the base of a dune, the breeze eased. She stopped to take in the view. Flat sands stretched off in all directions, but she turned her gaze to the pier. At the end, shrouded in mist, stood the abandoned lighthouse.

  "It's been there for two hundred years," Maureen had said. "A relic we need to preserve."

  Audrey wasn't sure. She didn't like old buildings. They gave her the creeps. But she was sure about Maureen Brian. Meeting the wee retired artist with unnaturally red hair had been a stroke of luck. And when good luck struck, Audrey grasped it with both hands and milked it for all it was worth.

  She let Maureen cluck over her like a Bantam hen its chick. Audrey enjoyed the fuss. Now she owned a two-bedroom cottage, bought at a huge discount thanks to Maureen. The deposit came from the divorce. In truth, she could scarcely afford the mortgage. And, oh God, the repairs! The run-down cottage sucked money into an endless pit.

  That's where Maureen came in.

  Maureen Brian knew everyone. Painters, plumbers, handymen. All eager to work for rock-bottom prices. With Maureen's help, it worked out. But Audrey knew one thing about luck: it always ran out.

  She pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders and fiddled with the scarf. Daylight crept across the beach. Three gulls landed, poked around, and screamed at each other. A fourth gull circled and screeched above her head.

  Audrey worried. About the mortgage. About her job. But she worried most of all about how long her luck would last. She worried about the voices in her head. They would grumble soon. Tell her what to do. She didn't want that. They stayed silent when she cleaned up a mess.

  Any mess.

  Audrey scanned the beach for empty beer cans or crisp packets. Not much to pick up. A paper bag or burnt-out firework. The crowd had listened and taken home their trash.

  A win for nature.

  That made her uneasy.

  The voices would know about the beach. Know her sack was empty. And that would bring them back.

  She paused to take in the warmth of the rising sun and watch the green-tinted waves of the Solway Firth. The water shimmered and lapped against the shore. A soft slush-slush. The constant beat jangled her nerves until a scurrying began in the back of her head.

  With a sense of dread, Audrey turned to look at the town. Was she being watched?

  Leafless trees lined the cobbled lanes. Whitewashed houses clustered as if for warmth. A barren landscape in the grey morning light. Slush-slush. She clenched her jaw. It didn't stop the scurrying noises. They grew until she thought she could make out vowels.

  No. She wouldn’t listen. She wouldn’t do what they commanded ever again.

  A biting wind raced across the beach. Audrey raised her hood, dipped her head, and spun away from the blast.

  Pressure.

  That's what Audrey felt. The constant drip, drip of money from her meagre purse. Repairs, heating bills, even the cost of food.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  Now she thought of Maureen Brian, retired with a pension and all the time in the world. An artist too, with photos that hung in real art galleries. No cash worries for Maureen. No cash worries for Audrey either, if she stuck to the plan.

  It had worked before. Hadn't she run away from Bristol with her husband's cash? Enough for a deposit on the cottage. Planning had worked in the past. It would again. If she were careful.

  Audrey clambered up a dune, puffing so hard, twin jets of condensed air swirled from her nostrils. Even at this early hour, there were a few people about. A woman in a bright-pink jacket power-walked next to a man with a dog. At the water's edge, a mother played with a toddler. A person in a mud-brown trench coat hurried away from the blackened debris of the bonfire. From this distance, they were like stick figures in a Lowry oil painting.

  Audrey watched and played her secret game—know thy neighbour. She tried to put names to their blurry faces. First, the man and the woman with the dog. Next, the toddler and its mother. The piercing shriek of a gull broke her focus. It didn't matter. She'd know their names once she walked closer. Another plus of small seaside-town life. None of the isolation of married life in Bristol's Harbourside.

  Marriage… Audrey wondered whether she'd missed the boat. At thirty-
seven, there were no children to mother. Everyone in town knew Patrick filed for divorce, and she didn't have the strength to fight it. Although she had grown up in Bristol and married in the same town, she had never got rid of the feeling of being an outsider. The tatters of her marriage gave one more reason to stay away from her home town.

  Audrey took a paper tissue from her pocket and wiped her eyes. No, she wouldn't cry. She clambered down the slope to a broken fragment of driftwood. Maybe it would count with the voices? She scooped it up with the keenness of a miner panning for gold. As she glanced towards the blackened bonfire, the scurrying began again. It hovered in her ears like a brooding sea mist.

  A gull screamed.

  Audrey took a deep breath, set the timer on her mobile phone for three minutes, and performed her daily ritual. With eyes closed, she swayed to the rhythmic slap of the waves and said her secret mantra. The voices dimmed. She felt the warmth of the winter sun on her cheeks. Turning her face into the breeze, she sniffed the scent of seaweed and brine and smoke from the bonfire. She loved life in Port Saint Giles. This little seaside town was home, the first place she really loved since running away at fifteen. Her drunken mother's council flat was a place to sleep and eat, that was all. Her body swayed, her mouth opening and closing—each word a promise to do what it took to keep things this way.

  Her eyes opened. A shaft of sunlight broke through the shield of clouds, casting dimpled patterns across the sand. Audrey repeated her mantra, then gave a prayer of thanks for Maureen Brian.

  Now it was time.

  With her mind clear and focused, Audrey hurried with quick steps in a direct path to the bonfire. Her focus was intense. The breeze against her face damped out sound. The welcome waves of the man with the dog and the woman in the pink jacket almost went unmet.

  "Nice day for it," said the woman.

  "Care to join us?" added the man with the dog. "A bracing stroll to the lighthouse and back."

  Audrey put names to the faces. The woman was her friend, Elizabeth Collins. And the man was the American pastor, Noel O'Sullivan, with Barkie, his Irish Setter.

  Audrey knelt in the sand to pet Barkie, then pointed at the bonfire. "Going the other way. Maybe tomorrow." The dog looked at her with sad eyes, as though to warn her things were going to go wrong. As it opened its mouth to pant, a voice spoke in her mind, but she couldn't make out the words. She shivered, but not from the cold, and told herself to stick to the plan. Everything would be fine if she stuck to the plan. She said, "Meet you tomorrow, then, seven at the pier by the cannons?"

  They both nodded and shuffled by. That was another thing Audrey liked about Port Saint Giles. Everyone lived their life to a firm routine. Tomorrow, before daylight, Elizabeth Collins and Noel O'Sullivan would be at the pier. As would she.

  Today, though, there remained more to do.

  Audrey circled the edge of the bonfire with slow, precise steps. She stooped to pick up a bottle, two plastic cups, and a squished packet of cigarettes. Then she saw the smiling face and red and white strips on a fried-chicken box. Under her annoyed gaze it seemed to grow, dwarfing her earlier hoard.

  Vile!

  Didn't they realise what litter did to the natural world?

  Wrinkling her nose in distaste, Audrey leaned forward and scooped it into her sack. Only then did she see the body. Smallish and curled with a blue headscarf wrapped tight around the head. She couldn’t see the face. It pressed against the ash-laden ground as if tasting the sand. But she recognised the strands of unnaturally red hair.

  Suddenly she screamed with such force, the vibrations tore at the back of her throat. But not enough to tear the image of Miss Maureen Brian's blackened corpse from her mind.

  Chapter 2

  Fenella Sallow relaxed in the well-worn couch. She refused to think about the job. Today was her day off. Family time. Precious. The kitchen fire crackled and radiated a pleasant glow. Its warmth mixed with the smell of fried breakfast. The rambling farmhouse on Cleaton Bluff offered sweeping views of Solway Firth.

  Her husband had bought the house when farm cottages were passé. It came with two acres. One of dozens of derelict stone cottages scattered across Cumbria like forgotten pagan relics. They'd lived there for nineteen of their twenty-six years of married life.

  Fenella loved the hardwood floors and oddly shaped door frames. Not so much the windows that wouldn't shut right. They'd kept the ancient landline with a grey British Telecom rotary-dial telephone. And the faux pinewood cassette-tape answering machine. Throwbacks to a simpler age.

  They'd added inside toilets. Rewired the electric, and built a drafting studio with floor to ceiling windows for Eduardo. An upgrade to the fitful central heating was next on the list, when his latest comic strip sold. All five children were grown and gone. Well, almost. Katherine, their youngest, always left Winston, now nine, for Guy Fawkes Night. A tradition Fenella cherished.

  "I've forgotten something, I know I have."

  Nan stood by the stove with a raised spoon, scanning the pots. Fenella's mother had moved in three years earlier when her fourth husband died of a heart attack. The grandkids called her Nan because she couldn't abide the words Great-Grandma.

  "Ham, eggs, bacon, beans, black and white pudding. Fried tomatoes and mushrooms in garlic butter. Now, what have I forgotten?"

  "And pancakes, don't forget the pancakes, Nan," added Winston. "We always have pancakes with lemon and honey the day after Bonfire Night, don't we, Grandma?"

  Fenella nodded. She'd let her hair go white years before but couldn't get used to being a granny. But it sounded so sweet when it came from her grandson, and fifty wasn't that old in the grand scheme of things. Her mother remarried for the fourth time at seventy. The husband croaked during an intimate moment on New Year's Eve. And Fenella wasn't convinced there wouldn't be a fifth. Rocking chairs and knitting were not in her mother's future. Fenella hoped they weren't in her future either and said, "Better put on an extra batch of black pudding for me, Mum."

  "In the pan, luv." Nan looked over the pots and pans and flipped the bacon. "Now, what have I missed?"

  "Nothing Nan," Winston said, looking at the stove. "And lots of pancakes for me; I'm going to eat them all."

  The kitchen door opened. A rush of frigid air blew in from the hall. Eduardo leaned on the door frame, smiling at Fenella as their eyes met.

  "Good morning, Mrs Sallow; you look yummy."

  "Why thank you, kind sir," Fenella replied. "But it's Detective Inspector Sallow to you." She loved her husband. Too tender to be a police officer though. She loved that too.

  "What about me!" barked Nan. "I'm the one slaving over the pot. Don't I get a kind word from the man of the house?"

  "I see you every morning," Eduardo said. He hovered in the open doorway. "One perk of working from home."

  Nan scowled. "Women of a certain age need to hear a compliment now and then. Even if it is only from a fat sod who draws cartoons for a living."

  "Aargh!" Eduardo scrunched his face. "Well, at least my detective inspector wife has the day off. And today, oh glory, I get to see her in the morning light rather than under the glow of the full moon."

  "What are you trying to say?" Fenella asked.

  "Something about werewolves or vampires, I guess," Nan added. "Eduardo, isn't that so?"

  Eduardo's lips curved into a banana. "No comment. But you, my dear wife, have been working rather a lot in the graveyard shift lately. And with those damn blood sausages you adore. Makes one wonder."

  Fenella raised her mobile phone and wagged it at her husband. "Day off. Mobile off. If you weren't so handsome, I'd tell you to bugger off."

  Eduardo rocked from side to side in the doorway. He raised his arms like a mashup between Frankenstein and Count Dracula.

  "Shut the door, you soft prat," Nan yelled. "You're letting in a draft."

  Eduardo closed the door and eased into the couch. He put an arm around Fenella and kissed her before turning to Winston. "Nan's a slo
w coach today. Come on Great-Grandma, my stomach's growling."

  "Cheeky bugger," grumbled Nan.

  After they had seconds of black pudding, Nan drained the last of the pancake batter onto the griddle.

  "Can't eat no more," Winston said.

  "Don't worry, I'll help." Eduardo patted his stomach. "Can't say no to Nan's pancakes, can I?"

  "Oh dear, I knew I forgot something," Nan said. "The telephone in the hall rang earlier. They left a message on the answering machine."

  "Wonder who'd call our landline?" Eduardo eyed the batter as it bubbled in the pan. "Must be one of your lover men, Nan."

  "Don't be daft." Nan grinned and began to clear the plates from the table. "Sounded like Veronica Jeffery, so I didn't pick up."

  Fenella gritted her teeth. Not important, a little voice whispered, and it is your day off. But the landline rarely rang, and Superintendent Jeffery never called the cottage.

  Nan placed the plates in the sink. "Winston, you can dry? Come on, snap to it."

  "Aargh, but my tummy's going to burst. I can't move."

  Nan thumped her hand on the draining board. Winston jumped from his chair and scurried to help. No one messed with Nan. The children and grandchildren learnt that lesson fast.

  "Did she leave a message?" Fenella asked.

  "Aye, but I didn't hear what she said." Nan began to fill the sink and squirted soap. "You know how fast she speaks, and even if she slowed down, I can't grasp that police lingo."

  Fenella stole a glance at Eduardo. After decades of married life, he'd accepted her calling to the Cumbria Police as she accepted his art. And they'd both accepted the wild swings in hours and income that came with both.

  "Take the call," said Eduardo. He flipped the last pancake onto his plate. "We've eaten and we can go for a stroll along the beach at sunset."

  "It'll be cold," complained Winston. "And there won't be any fireworks or bonfire or nothing."

  "We'll take your torch. You might spot a barn owl," chimed in Nan.

  "Can we, Gran?" Winston asked.

  "Sure," replied Fenella, reaching for the on button on her mobile phone. It pinged, almost dancing out of her hand. For a moment she scanned the list of calls, a cautious trick she'd picked up between sergeant and inspector.