Gone (41 page)

She found the plastic tray that had contained batteries for her torch. She took it to the ledge and had turned for the bottle of lighter fuel when a long wave of nausea and weakness came over her.

Immediately she set the bottle on the ledge and sat down, breathing hard to steady herself. She opened her mouth and sucked in air, but her body was at the end of its resilience. The fumes of the lighter fuel, the stench of rot and fear overwhelmed her. She just had time to tip herself down on to the ledge when a dense and bitter pull rose up through her chest and neck and dragged her feet first downwards until everything, every thought, every impulse, was reduced to nothing more than a tiny red point of electrical activity at the pulpy centre of her brain.

At four thirty Charlie Stephenson blinked, opened his mouth and began to howl. In the room at the front of the house Skye stirred. She rubbed her eyes and reached sleepily for Nigel, but found cold empty sheets instead of his warm mass. She groaned and rolled on to her back, tilting her head up to see the numbers projected on to her ceiling – 4:32. She let her hands drop across her face. Four thirty. Charlie’s favourite time.

‘Oh, God, Charlie.’ She pulled on her dressing-gown, sleepily shoved her feet into slippers. ‘Oh God.’

She shuffled into the nursery, the walking dead moving towards the soft glow of his Winnie the Pooh nightlight. The nursery was dark. And cold – too cold. The sash window was open. Drowsily, she padded to it and closed it. She couldn’t recall leaving it open – but her brain was mush these days. She paused to look into the moonlit alley that ran along the side of the house. At the dustbins lined up. They’d had a break-in a couple of months ago. Someone had got in through the french windows in the living room. Nothing had been taken, but in a way that had freaked her out more than if everything had gone. Afterwards Nigel had put locks on the windows downstairs. She really ought to remember to close them.

In the cot Charlie screwed up his face. The sobs made his little chest jerk up and down.

‘Oh you little tyke.’ She smiled. ‘Waking Mummy up.’ She reached in and wrapped his blanket around him, swaddled it
around his arms, lifted him up and carried him into her room, murmuring to him all the way, about how he was going to be the death of her, how she’d remind him of this when he was eighteen and dating. It was windy outside. The trees in the front were making strange moving shapes on the ceiling as they bent and swayed. The draught coming through the windows ruffled the curtains. They popped and lifted.

Charlie’s nappy was dry so she rested him on a pillow and climbed sleepily on to the bed next to him. She began to unhook the maternity bra. She stopped. Sat upright, eyes wide, suddenly completely awake, her heart thudding. In the alley outside Charlie’s window something had clattered.

She held a finger to her lip. ‘Stay there, Charlie.’ She tipped silently out of bed on her bare feet and went back into the nursery. The window was rattling. She went to it, pressed her forehead to the glass and peered down into the alley. One of the dustbin lids lay on the ground. Taken off by the wind.

She closed the curtains, went back into the bedroom and climbed on to the bed. That was the problem when Nigel was away. Her imagination ran riot.

‘Silly Mummy.’ She pulled Charlie into her arms, jammed down her bra to expose her nipple and got him latched on. Lay back and dreamily closed her eyes. ‘Silly old Mummy and her silly old imagination.’

As dawn came Caffery slept, fully dressed, half curled up on four chair cushions he’d dropped on to the office floor at three a.m. He dreamed, incongruously, of dragons and lions. The lions looked like real ones. Their teeth were a hard-grained yellow, coated with blood and saliva. He could smell their hot breath and see the matting in their manes. The dragons on the other hand were two-dimensional, children’s tin dragons, as if they were wearing armour. They clanged and clattered across the battlefield, carrying their streaming banners. They reared and rolled their long metallic necks. They were huge. They crushed the lions like ants.

From time to time he half woke. Surfaced a little to a place where the caustic remnants of worry sat. Niggles he hadn’t untangled before he’d slept. Prody’s sour face in the car as he drove away last night and how that had rankled. Flea going off for three days’ climbing and how that hadn’t sounded right. Worse, the whole sad, fat fact of Ted Moon still out there. Martha and Emily still missing six days into the case.

He came awake properly, lay with his eyes closed, feeling the cold, the stiffness in his body. He could smell Myrtle’s comfortable old-dog scent rising from where she lay a few feet away under the radiator. He could hear traffic outside, people talking in the corridors and mobile phones ringing. So it was morning.

‘Boss?’

He opened his eyes. The office floor was dusty. Paperclips and screwed-up balls of paper congregated under the desk. And, in the
open doorway, a pair of good, feminine ankles ending in wellpolished high heels. A man’s shoes and trousers next to them. He raised his eyes. Turner and Lollapalooza. Both holding sheaves of paper. ‘Jesus. What time is it?’

‘Seven thirty.’

‘Shit.’ He rubbed his eyes, propped himself up on an elbow and blinked. On her makeshift bed under the window Myrtle yawned, sat up and gave herself a little shake. The office was blitzed, packed with the evidence of Caffery’s up-all-nighter. The whiteboard covered with the photos and notes he’d been studying – everything from Sharon Macy’s autopsy shots to the pictures of the kitchen at the Costellos’ safe-house, the window broken, the washed-up cocoa mugs on the draining-board. His desk, too, was crammed with stuff – pile after pile of paper, different-coloured plastic envelopes containing photographs of crime scenes, reams of hastily scribbled notes and countless half-finished cups of coffee. The melting pot that nothing had come out of. No clue. No way of knowing where Moon was going next.

He rubbed his sore neck and squinted up at Lollapalooza. ‘Got any answers for me?’

She made a sour face. ‘Got more questions. Will that do?’

‘Come in.’ He sighed, beckoning to them. ‘Come in.’

They came into the office. Lollapalooza folded her arms and leaned back against the desk, her feet pushed primly together. Turner turned a chair round and sat astride it, rodeo style, elbows resting on the back, looking down at his boss.

‘Right. First things first.’ Clearly Turner hadn’t slept much either. His tie was a bit crooked and his hair hadn’t seen a shower recently. But still no earring. ‘Overnight the Met’s dead-body dogs’ve been searching Moon’s little rabbit warren under the lock-up.’

‘And found? Oh.’ Caffery waved his hand dismissively. ‘Don’t answer that. I can see from your face. Nothing. Next?’

‘Moon’s tribunal psychiatric evaluation arrived. Sitting in my mailbox this morning.’

‘He talked? When he got into the slammer?’

‘Couldn’t stop him, seems like. Anyone who stood still for more than a second would get it. A confession every day of his ten years’ stir.’

This was important. Caffery pulled his legs round and sat upright, trying to make the room stop blurring. ‘So? He talked?’

‘But it’s just like his dad said. Ted killed Sharon because of the fire, because of Sonja dying. No excuses, no justification. Black and white. All the psychiatric reports say the same thing.’

‘Fuck. What about the Macys? Did you find them?’

Turner lowered his chin at Lollapalooza. Made a face that said, Your turn in the dock, girl.

She cleared her throat. ‘OK. So one of my men finally tracked the Macys down at two o’clock this morning – coming home from the pub. I’ve just had breakfast with them.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Nice couple. Nice level of sophistication. You know, believe cars belong on bricks and that the right place for a refrigerator is the front garden. Must do a lot of outdoor entertaining is all I can think. But they did speak to me.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing happened. After Sharon disappeared they didn’t hear anything from Moon. Not a dickie.’

‘No notes? No letters?’

‘Nothing. Not even when Ted was arrested. As you know, he didn’t say a word at his trial and as far as the family are concerned they don’t expect to hear anything from him. Neither of them would even say his name. They let your friend from the high-tech unit look around. Q? He told me that was his name, though personally I think he’s got a warped sense of humour. He used every gizmo he had, couldn’t find a thing. No cameras,
nada
. The Macys have been in the place years, had it decorated a few times, but never found anything suspicious.’

‘What about Peter Moon and Macy’s mother? Any urty-urty going on there?’

‘No affair. I believed her too.’

‘Fuck.’ He pushed his hair back off his face. Why was it that when it came to Ted Moon every alley Caffery turned down
seemed to have a stonking great brick wall at the end of it? Fitting Moon and his actions together just wasn’t smooth. Not like the best cases where the connections, when they came, felt as liquid and natural as honey. ‘What about the others? The Bradleys, the Blunts?’

‘No. And that’s straight from the FLOs, who, as we know, usually get to the truth. Statistical anomaly maybe, but these might be the only couples in the whole UK who aren’t doing the bad thang on the side.’

‘Damien? He’s not with his wife.’

‘But it wasn’t him called time on that marriage. It was Lorna. If it was a marriage. He says they were married, but we can’t find any record of it. Call it more of an international arrangement, shall we?’

Caffery got to his feet and went to the whiteboard. He studied the pictures of the Costellos’ safe-house Moon had broken into: the kitchen, the empty double bed where Emily and Janice had slept. There should be progress by now. There should be a new perspective. He stared at the mock-up of the dark blue Vauxhall, the pictures of the Costellos’ car in the CSI surgery. He scrutinized the faces – Cory Costello looking seriously into the camera – and all the lines he’d drawn between the photos, connecting them to Ted Moon at the top. Caffery lifted his face and looked into Moon’s eyes again. He felt nothing. No flicker.

Without a word he took a chair and placed it at the window. Sat with his back to the room, facing out into the dismal street. The sky was a uniform lead colour. Passing cars swished through puddles. He felt old. So old. Once he’d fought this case, what would be next? Another mugger or rapist or child abductor to strip the skin from his back, make his bones ache?

‘Sir?’ Lollapalooza began, but Turner stopped her with a sssh.

Caffery didn’t turn to them. He knew what that
sssh
meant. It meant Turner didn’t want Lollapalooza to interrupt him. Because he believed Caffery sitting at the window meant he was thinking, was taking all the information he’d been given and was making alchemy of it with his brilliant brain. Turner really, really thought
Caffery was going to spin round on his chair and pull out a theory, like a bright bunch of circus flowers from a hat.

Well, he thought despondently, welcome to the land of crashing disappointment, mate. Hope you like it here, because we’re going to be making it our home for a while.

Not long after dawn and the huge garden in Yatton Keynell was covered with frost. But inside the cottage it was warm – Nick had built a fire in the living-room grate and Janice sat near it, in a chair next to the window, the bleak winter sunlight throwing her into sharp silhouette. She didn’t move as her sister opened the front door at the appointed time and showed the guests through. No one pointed Janice out, but they all knew immediately who she was. It must have been something to do with the way she was sitting. They automatically came forward and introduced themselves to her, muttering things under their breath.

‘
I’m so sorry to hear about your little girl
.’

‘
Thank you for calling. We really wanted to speak to someone else
.’

‘
The police have pulled our place apart. I can’t believe he’s been watching us
.’

Janice nodded, shook their hands and tried to smile. But her heart was cold. The Blunts came first. Neil was tall and slim, with Cory’s Scottish colouring – sandy hair, eyelashes and brows. Simone had blonde hair, slightly olive skin, brown eyes. Janice studied them. Had some similarity in their appearances tipped something in Moon’s mind? Made him target them? Rose and Jonathan Bradley were even more worn down than they’d looked in the newspaper photos. Rose had fine-blonde hair, her skin so washed out and thin you could see the veins through it. She was wearing sensible stretch trousers, soft shoes, a pink floral sweater
and a pink scarf tied at the neck. There was something pathetic about that scarf – about the attempt to keep up appearances. She and Jonathan shook Janice’s hand and slouched almost apologetically into their chairs, sitting a pace away and clutching the cups of tea Janice’s sister had poured from the pot standing next to the fire. Then Damien Graham came in and Janice knew for sure that the idea of physical similarities was nuts. He was tall and black with powerful thighs and shoulders, his hair cropped close to his skull. Nothing like Cory, nothing like Jonathan, nothing like Neil.

‘Alysha’s mum can’t make it.’ He was a little shy, out of place in this delicate country room. He settled on the last chair – a fragile, ornate winged affair that made him look even more powerful – and sat self-consciously plucking at the creases on his trousers. ‘Lorna.’ He crossed one leg over the other, making the little chair creak.

Janice stared at him dully, an enormous weariness coming over her. People talked about feeling empty, numb, at times like this. She wished she could feel either of those things. Either would be better than this hard, sharp ache under her ribs where her stomach used to be. ‘Look. I should introduce myself to you all properly. I’m Janice Costello. That’s my husband Cory over in the corner.’ She waited for everyone to turn and hold their hands up to him in greeting. ‘You won’t have heard our names because they kept it quiet when our little . . . little girl was taken.’