House of Bones Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Annie Hauxwell

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter Opening

  The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Strange Heavens and Dull Hells

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  The Milk of Paradise

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Hands Washed Pure of Blood

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  1961. In the drawing room of an imposing Hong Kong residence, a British lord brutally assaults a young Chinese boy. His grandson watches, helpless. But he will never forget.

  Wapping, London, present day. It’s a warm spring in the capital, and heroin addict Catherine Berlin feels the clammy breath of the past on her neck. Battling to stay clean, and bearing the scars of her most recent case, she is struggling to outpace her demons.

  An old contact has offered her a job investigating a violent attack by a seventeen-year-old public schoolboy, a Chinese orphan on a prestigious scholarship. The victim has gone missing, and the boy’s patron, a shadowy peer, claims the case is being manipulated by the Chinese government. Seduced by the boy’s vulnerability and the peer’s allegations, Berlin journeys to Hong Kong, where she uncovers a conspiracy that reaches from the Pearl River Delta to the Palace of Westminster …

  House of Bones is the forth novel in the inimitable Catherine Berlin series, and a breathtaking and blood-spattered thriller.

  About the Author

  Annie Hauxwell abandoned the law to work as an investigator, after stints as a psychiatric nurse, cleaner, sociologist and taxi driver. She divides her time between London, where she was born, and a country town in Australia. In addition to the Catherine Berlin series, she has written for the screen and stage.

  Also by Annie Hauxwell

  In Her Blood

  A Bitter Taste

  A Morbid Habit

  For Helen

  The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

  Karl Marx

  Hong Kong, 1961

  The door flew open. The two naked boys sprang apart and stumbled to their feet, slick with sweat but suddenly chilled by the stare of the 7th Earl Haileybury.

  The monsoonal rain beat at the rattan screen. The Wilton, the chiffonier, the oil painting of a three-masted clipper on a stormy sea, all bore a dull patina of mildew.

  Jack, fourteen, gathered himself and returned his grandfather’s gaze, defiant. He fumbled for his lover’s hand, but the boy at his side, head bowed, his soft caramel skin a mass of goose pimples, shrank away. He was also fourteen, but Philip, as they called him, was Chinese.

  A shadow fell across the rattan. Someone was watching.

  ‘This is all very well,’ sneered Haileybury. ‘But what are you going to do about an heir?’

  Jack was familiar with the strange, remote look in his grandfather’s bloodshot eyes.

  ‘You forget, Jack,’ said the earl, ‘these people serve at your pleasure. He’ll turn on you when he becomes a man.’

  ‘We’re going to be together forever,’ said Jack.

  ‘No,’ said the earl. ‘You’re not.’

  He raised his walking stick and brought it down on Philip’s head.

  Jack felt the warm spatter on his cheek, then fainted.

  The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows

  1

  Spring. The blanket of fog shrouding London was a perversion of the season. It drifted in dense clouds across the capital as Catherine Berlin followed a hearse through the grand arch of the City of London Cemetery and Crematorium. She wondered how long it would be before she passed under it feet first.

  The slow, steady crunch of tyres on gravel echoed in the still air. The hearse crept towards a mound of fresh soil and the wounded earth beside it.

  The grave was not quite empty.

  A million people were said to be interred on the two-hundred-acre site, the more recently deceased weighing down ancient bones excavated from medieval parish graveyards. Berlin imagined the original occupants groaning beneath the tier of coffins above.

  The phone in her pocket vibrated. Ignoring the frowns of the other mourners, she fished it out, checked the caller ID, and answered.

  ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ said Del.

  Delroy Jacobs was her closest friend. Although he didn’t have a lot of competition in that department.

  A Plaistow boy, what Del lacked in Oxbridge degrees and old school ties he made up for with charm, loyalty and street smarts, which he rarely used, now confined to a safe management role by the needs of his growing family: Molly, eighteen months, and twins on the way.

  Del worked for Burghley LLP, a boutique outfit established by former spooks and Whitehall types. They offered discreet investigative and intelligence services. Deep pocket essential. Burghley were well connected at the highest levels.

  If they were offering her a job, it was an assignment nobody else wanted. It was dirty.

  ‘What is it?’ said Berlin.

  ‘Misper,’ said Del.

  A missing person. Berlin glanced at the coffin suspended above the yawning pit. Resisting the urge to run, she pushed through the throng, averted her eyes from the sea of startled faces around her, and walked away.

  The heart of the city was beating weakly. At half past nine on a Monday morning, traffic was at a standstill and the skies were silent because the airports were closed. The slap of the river against granite, punctuated by mournful sirens, resounded in the unnatural peace.

  The blood on the cobblestones of Wapping High
Street was dry. Berlin, under the reproving gaze of Detective Constable Terence Bryant, made a show of inspecting it. He was a compact man in his late forties with skin so white that his five o’clock shadow appeared to have been drawn on. It gave him a cartoonish look. But there was nothing funny about his demeanour.

  ‘What’s this all about then?’ he said. ‘We have the miscreant in custody.’

  Miscreant.

  ‘There’s a witness. Lives in one of those posh conversions. She saw it from her window and called it in with a good description of the assailant. We nicked him at Wapping station. And we’ll get the council’s CCTV, of course.’

  ‘Open and shut,’ said Berlin.

  ‘Schoolboy,’ said Bryant. ‘Palmerston Hall, if you don’t mind.’

  Palmerston Hall. Ancient and prestigious, famous for educating prime ministers, captains of industry and generations of British aristocracy.

  Bryant brought a packet of Fisherman’s Friend out of his pocket and slipped one in his mouth, pointedly not offering her one.

  ‘So, Miss Berlin,’ he said. ‘Who’s paying you a fat fee to interfere with a police matter?’

  He sucked noisily on his sweet.

  ‘A client,’ said Berlin. ‘And just Berlin will do, Bryant.’

  Bryant snorted. ‘Why is he or she so interested?’ he said.

  ‘No idea,’ said Berlin. ‘I haven’t been briefed yet. I came straight from a funeral.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Bryant. He looked her up and down, apparently taking this as an explanation for her long black coat and black boots. ‘No one close, I hope.’

  ‘Why would the victim leave the scene?’ said Berlin. ‘He must have been hurt.’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Bryant. ‘They sent an ambulance, but he’d gone. Probably up to no good himself,’ he added.

  So the victim was also a miscreant in Bryant’s eyes.

  ‘It’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘A public schoolboy assaulting someone first thing in the morning in this neck of the woods.’

  Wapping, once a dark warren of warehouses and cheap housing for dock workers, was now thoroughly gentrified.

  Bryant made a small, unhappy noise. He had agreed to meet her at the scene after a terse exchange on the phone, but it was obvious he wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of a civilian investigator stomping around on his patch.

  ‘I’ve been ordered to cooperate with you,’ he’d said, before hanging up. Which meant her client had clout.

  The case, such as it was, was only a few hours old, and as far as Bryant was concerned, it was already closed.

  ‘I won’t get in your way,’ said Berlin.

  ‘You certainly won’t,’ said Bryant. His Adam’s apple bobbed above a tight half-Windsor.

  But then again, I might, thought Berlin.

  She gazed up and down Wapping High Street. They were near Pier Head, an oasis of charming gardens bordered by rows of elegant Georgian town houses. The street bisected the gardens, which had once been a lock, the Wapping entrance.

  It had led from the river to twenty acres of the London Docks, built to receive tobacco, rice, wine and brandy. The huge cellars beneath the warehouses had been compared to the burial chambers of the Pyramids.

  Similar demonstrations of wealth and power now appeared in the form of expensive warehouse conversions looming over the narrow thoroughfare, some linked four floors above the street by cast-iron catwalks. Once hogsheads of wine and tobacco rolled across them. Now they bore pots of geraniums.

  Buildings on the river commanded astronomical prices and had security to match; CCTV sprouted weed-like from beneath eaves and at the top of lamp posts.

  Bryant looked pointedly at his watch.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  Berlin smiled.

  ‘I’d like to talk to the miscreant,’ she said.

  The front desk of Limehouse police station was protected by a floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass partition; only two people at a time were admitted to the presence of the officers behind it.

  Bryant left Berlin in the waiting room, where the public queued for admission to the inner sanctum, while he went around to the cells. This was his idea of cooperation. The station stank of sweat, disinfectant, cold burgers and fried onions. She folded her arms and affected patience. It would do no good to antagonise Bryant any further.

  Eventually he appeared behind the partition and beckoned her. The door buzzed open and Berlin was admitted, to a chorus of tutting and swearing from those who’d been there first. She followed Bryant down a series of corridors and through keypad-controlled doors, until finally he showed her into a small room.

  ‘Sit there,’ he said, pointing at a wooden chair positioned in front of a monitor, which displayed an image of a youth and a woman at a table in a small interview room. The technology was new and the vision sharp. The young man’s head was bowed, his face obscured by a hank of black hair.

  Berlin sat down and adjusted the angle of the monitor.

  The next moment Bryant walked into the frame and sat down. A uniformed officer brought a spare chair. The sound of it being dragged across the room put her teeth on edge. Good speakers, too.

  Bryant switched on the recording device.

  ‘For the sake of the tape, those present are myself, Detective Constable Terence Bryant . . .’

  ‘Constable Tolliver,’ said the uniformed officer.

  ‘Sylvie Laurent of Godson, Bell and Rushmore,’ said the woman. ‘Mr Chen’s solicitor.’

  Berlin was surprised by the accent. She was French, in her forties perhaps, with a strong, battle-hardened face. Her mane of hair was loosely pinned in a classic chignon. The suit was expensive, but well worn. She wasn’t a legal aid lawyer.

  Laurent touched the arm of the youth beside her.

  ‘Philip Chen,’ he said. He didn’t raise his head.

  ‘I remind you, Mr Chen, you do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Philip.

  ‘Detective Bryant,’ said Laurent. ‘Mr Chen will not be making a statement at this time.’

  ‘Is that right, Mr Chen?’ said Bryant.

  Philip finally looked up. His fine features, luminous skin and cascade of straight black hair held the gaze.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Berlin noticed a slight tightening around the lawyer’s mouth. Irritation. Apology wasn’t in the legal playbook. She reached into her pocket and brought out a gold cigarette lighter. Her fingers played with it in an absent-minded fashion as she watched her client.

  ‘So what happened?’ said Bryant.

  Philip looked at Laurent. She shook her head.

  ‘No comment,’ said Philip.

  Bryant frowned.

  Philip might look Chinese, but he spoke with the well-modulated upper-class accent that went with his education. Berlin bent closer to the monitor. There was sweat on his brow.

  ‘You’re not going to offer any explanation for this vicious attack, Mr Chen?’ said Bryant.

  ‘That’s a very inflammatory description, Detective Bryant,’ said Laurent.

  ‘We’ll decide that when we see the CCTV footage,’ said Bryant. ‘That’s the way the witness described it.’

  ‘My client will make no further comment,’ said Laurent.

  ‘Then I’ll be detaining Mr Chen on suspicion of assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, pending further enquiries. He’ll appear before the youth court in the morning.’

  ‘He can’t stay here,’ said Laurent.

  ‘It’s a serious offence, madam,’ said Bryant. ‘His victim could be bleeding to death under a bush somewhere, or floating down the river. I can keep your client for twenty-four hours without charge. He can stay here or at the local authority secure unit. It’s up to you.’

  Madame Laurent was unlikely to be capable of
making an informed choice.

  ‘Take the cells,’ murmured Berlin. They might be cold and smelly, but the boy would be safer there than in a juvenile facility, where his accent would guarantee a swift and merciless fate.

  Laurent put her hand on Chen’s shoulder. He started, as if he suddenly realised they were talking about him.

  ‘What about school?’ he said.

  Bryant stood. ‘Come along, lad,’ he said.

  For a moment Berlin saw fear in Chen’s eyes.

  Bryant saw it too. He was gruff, but not cruel.

  ‘I’ll take you down myself,’ he said. ‘The custody sergeant will keep an eye on you.’

  He meant well.

  2

  The warehouse, huddled between two modern apartment developments, was an unreconstructed remnant. Rising damp stained the foundations, strings of green slime hung from crannies left by crumbling mortar, and paint flaked from the iron window frames and down pipes.

  Ziggurats of pigeon droppings decorated the sills. The guttering hung at an angle, and beneath it a constant drip stained the brickwork. The whole place sneered at the niceties of conversion. Berlin approved.

  Iron railings enclosed a narrow strip of flagstones set lower than the pavement. Berlin pushed open the rusty gates, which hung askew, stepped down, crossed to the portico and picked up the entry phone. In stark contrast to the general dilapidation, a biometric pad glowed blue, waiting for a fingerprint.

  She was aware of the soft whir of a camera as it focused and scanned. The warehouse might be a ruin, but the security was state-of-the-art.

  Where she was standing was only a hundred yards from the bloody cobblestones. The heavy oak door swung open silently on its refurbished hinges. Berlin hung up the entry phone – she was obviously expected – and stepped inside.

  The door closed behind her, and for a moment she was held in a gloomy limbo. Then the lights came on.

  A man was standing on a ribbed steel platform, equipped on three sides with safety bars, the kind of hoist they had in public venues to provide wheelchair access.

  ‘Lord Haileybury,’ said Berlin.

  ‘Just Haileybury, please,’ he said.

  This was Burghley’s client, and, as the subcontractor, now hers. She approached him and extended her hand.