House of Bones Read online

  “It’s Mr Rogers’ wedding ring. Three guesses where I found it.”

  Mr Cleat opened and closed his mouth two or three times. “You didn’t go into the house, did you?”

  John nodded. “I found it upstairs on the landing. Lucy was with me. She’s a witness.”

  “You didn’t mention it to the police when they came round here.”

  “No, because I didn’t think that they would take my word against yours. And because we wanted more time to find out about Mr Vane’s special list.”

  “There’s nothing to find out,” said Mr Cleat, dismissively. “It’s a list of properties, that’s all.”

  “They aren’t just ordinary properties, though, are they?”

  “Listen, John, all you need to do is to come to work promptly, do your work properly, mind your manners and mind your own business.”

  “You know I can’t do that, don’t you, now that I know what happened to Mr Rogers.”

  “Well, I don’t honestly think that you do know what happened to Mr Rogers – so if you’d like to give me that ring I can make sure that his widow gets it back and I think that we can forget the whole matter, don’t you?”

  “His widow?” asked John. “He’s only missing. Nobody’s said that he’s dead.”

  “Just a slip of the tongue,” said Mr Cleat. “I’ll have the ring back, anyway.”

  “Mr Cleat,” said John, and his heart was thumping so hard that he was sure that Mr Cleat could hear it. “You know what happened to Mr Rogers and I know what happened to Mr Rogers. The same thing that happened to all those people in Laverdale Square.”

  Mr Cleat smoothed his hair back, again and again. He glanced at Mr Vane’s door. “I can’t discuss it,” he said. “Give me the ring.”

  John shook his head. “They were all sucked in by the walls, weren’t they? That’s what happened to them.”

  Mr Cleat was so agitated that John wasn’t afraid of him any longer – especially when he leaned closer and spoke to John in a hoarse, quick whisper. “It wasn’t my fault, John. I tried to get to Mr Rogers in time, but I got held up in traffic. Who knows? He might have been all right. Sometimes the houses don’t take people for weeks or even months. But when I got there, he was gone. There was absolutely nothing that I could do.”

  “So you’ve known all along what Mr Vane’s houses do to people?”

  Mr Cleat puckered his mouth. “I did my best to save Mr Rogers. It was the traffic.”

  “You’ve known all along what they do to people and you don’t even care about it? You’ve never tried to stop him? There were more than fifty skeletons in that house in Laverdale Square. Women and children, too.”

  “John, I know. But for goodness’ sake – they were well before my time, most of them, from what I’ve read. Victorian, Edwardian, 1920s. You can’t blame me for things that happened long before I was born.”

  John said, “I didn’t think you knew, Mr Cleat. At least I hoped you didn’t know.”

  “Well, I didn’t know for quite some time. In fact, it took me three or four years to find out. After all, why should I suspect anything? Once you’ve sold a house to somebody, you very rarely see them again, do you? How do you know if they’ve disappeared?

  “Apart from that, there was nothing to arouse my suspicions, was there? Mr Vane’s properties didn’t change hands unusually quickly. Some of them didn’t come back on the market for five or ten years, and it never occurred to me that they were standing empty. How was I to know the owners had vanished within two or three months of moving in? Sometimes it was only a matter of days. Sometimes, probably, hours.”

  “But even when you found out what was going on, you still went on working for Mr Vane?”

  “What else was I supposed to do? You know for yourself how difficult it is to get anybody to believe you. I called the police once, in the early days, when a family of seven went missing. They searched the property but back then I didn’t have any idea where the people had gone, and so I didn’t suggest that they knock down the walls. It wasn’t until they demolished that house in Laverdale Square that I suddenly realized. It was a considerable shock, let me tell you.”

  “And you’re not going to resign, or say anything, even now?”

  Mr Cleat’s nostrils quivered. “It isn’t as easy as all that. Mr Vane has done me certain favours in the past. He wouldn’t accept my notice even if I handed it in.”

  He paused, and then he said, “There’s something else, too. A local news reporter tried to investigate Mr Vane’s special list, five or six years ago. They found his body down by Streatham Common station, on the railway embankment. The police said that he was so badly battered that it looked as if a load of timber had fallen on top of him.”

  The statue, thought John. If you start poking your nose into Mr Vane’s business, that’s what happens. He sends the statue to take care of you.

  Less than ten minutes later, Mr Vane came out of his office. He was wearing a black double-breasted suit and he looked even more skeletal than ever. He looked John up and down and said, “Well, well, well. I was told you had taken to your bed.”

  “I’m much better now, thanks.”

  Mr Vane went to the filing cabinet and pulled out one of the drawers. “I understand that you’ve been very busy,” he said. “I wouldn’t like to overwork you.”

  “I’ve just been doing some homework,” John replied.

  Mr Vane approached him and gave him a strange, almost affectionate smile. “You ought to have been more selective, perhaps, about whose homes you were working on.”

  He might have been smiling, but Mr Vane had a coldness about him which was like an open fridge. “I think it’s time I gave you a little personal training, John. After all, I’ve been in this business for a very long time. Why don’t you come along with me tomorrow when I take my clients to 66 Mountjoy Avenue?”

  “Erm … I think I’m busy tomorrow. Mr Cleat wants me to tidy up the files.”

  “The files can wait. You need some on-the-job experience. You need to see how a professional goes about selling a house.”

  “Well, Courtney’s shown me quite a lot.”

  “Courtney’s good, yes. But a little too pushy, in my opinion. You must stand back and allow your client to do all the work. Let him sell the house to himself. That way, he will always offer you a much higher price.”

  John didn’t know what to say. His heart was beating so loudly that he was sure that Mr Vane could hear it. Mr Cleat said, “It’s a very good offer. Mr Vane’s one of the best.”

  Mr Vane slowly rotated his head around – almost like Megan in The Exorcist – and gave Mr Cleat a long, chilly look. “It’s not an offer, David. It’s an instruction.” Then he rotated his head back and said to John, “I’ll be meeting my clients outside the property at four-thirty precisely tomorrow afternoon. Make sure you’re punctual, make sure your shoes are polished, and don’t say anything unless I tell you to.”

  “All right, Mr Vane. Thanks, Mr Vane.”

  Mr Vane turned around and gave him an even wider and yellower smile than before. “Don’t mention it, John. Don’t mention it.”

  It was then that John looked over Mr Vane’s shoulder and caught sight of somebody waving frantically to him from the front door. It was Courtney. He was holding up a bunch of keys, and John suddenly understood what must have happened. He had borrowed Mr Vane’s keys while he was out with his clients at 66 Mountjoy Avenue, and taken them along to the hardware store to be copied. But Mr Vane had returned before the keys were finished, and any second now he was going to go back to his desk and discover that they were gone.

  Mr Vane looked at his watch. His wrist was as thin and scaly as a turkey’s claw. “I’d better be going now,” he said. He reached into his pocket and produced the keys to 66 Mountjoy Avenue. He hesitated, and then he said, “I might as well take these with me. I won’t have to come into the office tomorrow to pick up those new particulars, will I? Young John here can bring them out
to me.”

  He smiled at John again. “Half-past four, remember? Absolutely on the dot.”

  14

  After he had gone, Courtney came into the office and sat down at his desk and said, “Fwooff! That was close!”

  Mr Cleat said, “What was close?”

  John held out his hand for the keys. Courtney frowned and shook his head and whispered, “What are you doing?” but John said, “Come on. Cleaty’s on our side now.”

  “What?” said Courtney, in disbelief.

  John continued to hold out his hand and Courtney reluctantly gave him two big bunches of assorted keys, the originals and the copies. John held them up so that Mr Cleat could see them, and said, “Now we can get into every single house on Mr Vane’s special list. We can check them all for evidence, and if we find what we’re looking for, then we can call the police.”

  Mr Cleat came up and John gave him all the original keys. He looked even more haggard than ever. “I hope you realize you’re signing your own dismissal notice? If Mr Vane has to give up this business, then we’re all out on our ears.”

  “You’re worried about your job?” said John. “Liam lost more than his job.”

  “What are you talking about? Liam’s off sick, that’s all.”

  John said, “No, he isn’t,” and he told Mr Cleat everything that had happened at 93 Madeira Terrace. Mr Cleat slowly sat down, his eyes filling with tears.

  “The other people … the people who bought Mr Vane’s houses … the ones who disappeared … I never knew their names … I never knew who they were. But this … Liam—”

  “Did it make any difference, not knowing their names?” Courtney demanded.

  “Well, it shouldn’t have done, should it?” said Mr Cleat, wiping his eyes and noisily blowing his nose. “But I was frightened, I suppose.”

  “Everybody gets frightened, man,” said Courtney. “It’s when you stand up to your fear, that’s what makes all the difference.”

  Mr Cleat sniffed and turned away, but John said, “You’d better listen. Lucy and I think we know what’s been happening.”

  “You mean there’s a logical explanation for all of this?”

  “Well, there’s an explanation, but it isn’t exactly logical. We’ve still got lots of work to do, lots of research to do.”

  “I hope you know what you’re up against.”

  “I don’t,” said John. “But I think I’m just about to find out.”

  That evening he phoned his father from Uncle Robin’s house and told him that he was spending another night away.

  “Is there something wrong, son? You’re not in trouble?”

  “I’m fine, Dad. I’m just making new friends.”

  “You’ll be back tomorrow, though? Your mum’s missing you.”

  “Tell her I miss her, too.”

  Lucy came in from the kitchen, where she had been making shepherd’s pie. “Everything all right?”

  John nodded. “Fine. I feel fine. I don’t know what’s happened to me today. I stood up to Cleaty and he just fell apart like a box of wet Kleenex.”

  “Cleaty’s all right. He’s just like most people. More scared than they ought to be.”

  “And you’re not? If that statue finds us…”

  At that moment, they heard the key in the latch.

  Uncle Robin came in with two large books and a bundle of papers under his arm. “Success, I think,” he said, and gave them the thumbs-up.

  After supper, they sat around the kitchen table. Uncle Robin opened his books and spread out his papers. “I went to see this chap in Croydon today – he was the one who made that documentary on Druids. I didn’t tell him what was going on, but he said that there have been literally scores of unexplained disappearances in England and Wales over the past hundred years. Whole families have vanished without any trace at all – and their houses have always been on recognized ley lines.

  “It’s a known phenomenon – but up until now, everybody put it down to natural causes.”

  Lucy said, “Hasn’t anybody ever put two and two together?”

  “Oh, yes. There have been dozens of books and articles about ley lines, connecting them with unexplained disappearances, but none of them have ever been taken seriously. Bit like UFO abductions, really.”

  “But this man believes in it?”

  “Believes in it? He’s passionate about it. He said that when the original Druids dispersed and died out, their spirits lived on, along the ley lines; and so their influence on the British countryside remained enormous. They still control all the magical highways that connect one sacred site with another. They still have an influence on weather, and crop-fertility, and fate.

  “In the early days, people in England and Wales buried their dead along ley lines as an offering to the Druid spirits that lived on under the ground. In fact, the whole practice of burial arose because we were offering our dead to the Druid priesthood, in the hope that they wouldn’t try to take the living.”

  “This bloke,” said John, “did he give you any idea how we could stop these spirits? I mean, can’t we exorcize them or something?”

  Lucy said, “If the ley lines are like highways, isn’t there a way we could make them change course, you know, like a diversion, or block them off?”

  Uncle Robin shook his head, “That’s like trying to stop the tides or postpone the night. The ley lines are a huge natural force, like streams of pure primeval energy. But there might be one hope.

  “At Mont St Michel, the monks got rid of the Druid spirits buried in the rock beneath them, even though they did it by accident. They drove a series of iron spikes into the granite to support their new foundations, and one night there was a huge thunderstorm. Lightning struck the iron spikes – which sent a huge electrical charge deep into the mountain.

  “I don’t know whether the lightning destroyed the spirits or whether it simply drove them away. But from that time on, the monastery was never troubled by any more disappearances or strange noises or anything.

  “The Romans must have known about the effect of lightning on ley lines, too. Look here – this is a contemporary account by Suetonius Paulinus, who massacred the last Druids in Anglesey in AD 61. Even after death the Druids threatened our settlements, pulling men and women into the very earth as sacrifices. We learned from living Druids, under pain of torture, that their spirits could be expunged from the underground paths through which they travelled by the power of lightning.

  “What the Romans did was to thrust their spears into the ground wherever a ley line ran, and wait for the spears to be struck by lightning.”

  “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” said John. “I bet you that we could find a way to direct a lightning strike into one of Mr Vane’s houses.”

  “We probably could. But it’s a bit of a long shot.”

  “So what? It’s still worth a try.”

  “I’ve also found out about the statue,” said Uncle Robin. “The Druid spirits can rise up out of the earth, into the roots of an oak tree, and occupy the trunk and the branches. That allows them to see the sun, which they need to rejuvenate their strength and their magical powers. But of course an oak tree can’t move.

  “In AD 1457, however, after some kind of divine revelation, the Order of Druids employed sixteen craftsmen to make them a jointed statue. Apparently it was a perfect replica of Aedd Mawr, the man who founded the Druids in 1000 BC. It was made out of oak, with an ivory face. This sounds an awful lot like your statue, don’t you agree?”

  “They made only one?” asked Lucy. “We saw them all over the place.”

  “So far as the history books tell it, there was only one. But this one statue allowed the Druid spirits to rise up out of the ground and to walk wherever they wanted. You see, they could enter the oak statue in just the same way that they could enter an oak tree. But unlike the oak tree, the statue isn’t rooted into the earth. It can move. It can run after you. Not only that, it can travel along ley lines like a s
tone from Stonehenge.

  “That’s how it was able to turn up outside your house, John, and then almost immediately afterwards appear at Lucy’s flat. It took the fastest route through south London – the ley line. That’s why it didn’t even need a key to get in. It came through the ground, see. Right through the earth.”

  He paused. “You’re privileged, in a way. You’ve had Aedd Mawr after you, the greatest of all the Druids. The most vengeful. The one most likely to tear you limb from limb.”

  “Oh, yes, some privilege,” said John. “But how can we stop something like that?”

  Uncle Robin said, “I asked my two experts, but neither of them knew. And I have to confess that I don’t know, either. Maybe you can chop it up with a hatchet. Maybe you can stop it with a spell. But there aren’t any records of anybody ever confronting it, and if they did, they didn’t live to tell the tale. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “That’s all right,” said John. “I think you’ve done really well.”

  Lucy said, “I wish I had. I went to Streatham library and I managed to find out a few things about Mr Vane. Not very much. Everybody seems to know him, you know, but nobody seems to know very much about him. He’s always invited to give away the prizes at flower shows, that’s what it says in the local papers. He’s a member of the Streatham Rotarians, but he never seems to go to any of the meetings.

  “I checked the electoral register. His full name is Raven Vigo Vane and he lives at 6 St Helier Street, Streatham. He’s the only voter in the house, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s the only person who lives there.

  “I also talked to my friend Gloria who works for the local paper. She’s going to go in early tomorrow and see if she can find out anything else,” said Lucy. “They’ve got files that go back over a hundred years.”

  “That’s very good,” said Uncle Robin. “But I hope it doesn’t take too long. Remember that John is supposed to be meeting Mr Vane at half-past four tomorrow, and I think it would help him a lot if he had a fair idea of what he’s really up against.”

  “I don’t think that you should go, John,” Lucy told him. “It’s obvious that Mr Vane knows what we’ve been up to. He’s going to try to make you disappear – just like Liam disappeared, and all of those other people.”