Wolf

  ‘You wanker,’ he says. ‘You’re the wanker, I’m the good guy. Try to keep the two clear in your head.’

  Think Like Me

  AN OLD INJURY of Caffery’s comes back to haunt him as he climbs the stairs. Years ago he had his calf muscles half ripped out of his leg and something about the exertion in the kitchen must have tripped it off again, because the pain shoots through him with every step. That and the ache in his back from landing on a stone in the field. Old git. Losing it. He has to use the banisters to haul himself up the last part.

  A few steps from the top he slows. Not because of the pain, but because of the blood on the landing in front of him. It lies in gelatinous ribbons across the floorboards. A rug, another ancient kilim, has been crumpled and kicked as if in a struggle. Ahead of him a door is ajar.

  ‘Hello?’

  Silence. He approaches the door and uses his foot to push it. It swings open to reveal a room with high ceilings and green striped curtains at the windows. It should be bright and breezy, but everywhere are long loops of red-brown blood. On the floor, under a green-and-white striped duvet, lies a man. He’s dead, Caffery doesn’t have to check on that – you don’t lose that much blood and live to talk about it. There’s a wound at the back of his skull, at the top of his neck. A deep, hair-matted hollow, the inside of his brain visible, congealed and hard where the air has dried it. He’s got blond hair and although it’s hard to tell, he looks to be in his thirties. His hand, outstretched and motionless, has a good Tag Heuer adorning the wrist, so possibly he is money, or new money, or just a poser. Either way, he doesn’t fit into any of the profiles of the family Caffery’s memorized.

  Bad guy, Caffery thinks. Almost certainly.

  He holds on to the door frame for a moment and takes a mental shot of the room with the body. He doesn’t take his hands off the frame, but turns just his head to the right and looks along the landing. He freezes in his head everything he can see there: an opened door – beyond it a room with pink, red and white rose-decorated walls. There’s a pair of handcuffs next to a radiator – radiators are great places to manacle human beings. But there’s no one in the room.

  A noise to his left; he turns suspiciously and looks in the opposite direction. There’s a door at the very end of the landing – slightly open – and a triangular slice of reddish sunlight comes from within the room and spreads across the floorboards. Everything is completely still.

  Oliver Anchor-Ferrers is a clever man. He turned his fascination with science into a glittering career. His brain will have been working on his situation constantly. Caffery presses his own brain into the same pattern – trying to see the hallway through Oliver’s eyes. He looks up at the ceiling. The Turrets is remote – if he was Oliver, what would he do to protect his family? Cameras. There must be cameras somewhere. Caffery has had experience with hidden cameras before – he knows how cleverly they can be disappeared in a room.

  He lets his eyes rove across the ceiling and within sixty seconds has found it. A tiny reflective eye like a dot of black, lodged in the oak panelling. Everything he is doing is being recorded. Most people would walk straight past and not notice it.

  Cautiously he crosses the landing, the floorboards creaking gently under his weight. He nudges open the door, sees what’s there, and has to stop. Has to pinch his nose and take long breaths from the diaphragm, forcing his ribs to lift.

  He’s come to the heart. He is slap-bang into the nub of what he’s been circling for the last few days.

  The room is painted a deep purple and strange faces stare down at him from the wall. There’s a poster of Patty Hearst aiming a gun at someone just out of sight. The window is open and a small breeze lifts the voile curtains. A woman’s body lies on the floor, dressed in brown slacks patched with blood. Her hair is thinning and yellowish grey – this must be Matilda. He cannot think what Molina has done but her face is destroyed. Her arm is draped loosely over a second body. A male, old. He lies on his side, embracing her. Caffery is sure this is Oliver Anchor-Ferrers. The man he’s been tracking all this time. He doesn’t need to know what Oliver looks like to be certain. Yes, there are physical clues, he fits the age bracket – but it’s more than that. Something indefinable.

  He drops to a crouch and closes his fingers on Oliver’s wrist to check his pulse. Oliver is dead. Caffery presses his fingers into the man’s hand. ‘Shit, I’m sorry, mate. I should have got here sooner.’

  ‘Help.’

  A woman’s voice. He turns sharply.

  ‘Help me. Here. I’m here.’

  He stands. Goes quickly to the bed, and sees on the floor on the other side a woman lying there, her hands bound to the leg of the bed with a pair of tights. She’s got very dark, very clear eyes with thick dark lashes. Her black hair is in disarray, she’s covered in blood and she’s been beaten – her face is swollen and bruised on one side. She is quite naked. White skinned and defenceless. But she is alive. She’s silently watching him with big black eyes, as if she’s seeing him from the other side of the universe. As if her soul has gone away to a very very distant place and she can only just make him out as a fellow human being.

  He checks the family snapshot he’s crystallized in his head.

  ‘Lucia,’ he says. ‘You must be Lucia.’

  She nods mutely. Her eyes are watering.

  ‘I’m police.’ He fumbles out his card and holds it up to her. ‘DI Caffery. Are you hurt?’

  ‘Where is he?’ Her mouth is trembling so she can hardly get her words out. ‘I heard you downstairs – what’s happened to him?’

  ‘He’s secure. He won’t be going anywhere. Are you hurt?’

  She squirms, tugging at the tights which are looped around the bedstead. ‘Let me out of these. Help me.’

  ‘Wait. Keep still. You need to tell me – the one downstairs, is he on his own?’

  ‘There are two.’

  ‘Two? One of them is tall – blond?’

  ‘I think he’s …’ She jerks her chin up – in the direction of Kiran’s room. ‘I think he’s … my mother was in the room, I don’t know what happened …’

  She begins to shake. He wants to touch her – to reassure her – but checks himself. He’s not a human, he is a cop. A machine that has to account for everything. Evidence and behaviour.

  ‘The other one? Short, redhead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No one else?’

  ‘Just them.’

  He gestures to the bodies on the floor. ‘Are these your parents?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve been kept for four days.’ She twists, trying to get out of the bindings.

  ‘Wait, wait. Keep still. Tell me – what’s happened to you? Are you sure you’re not injured?’

  ‘No – not injured, just …’ She breaks off. Tears are standing in her eyes.

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘The one downstairs, he … he … What he did to me, I can’t even begin to …’

  Caffery lets out all his breath. ‘OK, OK, I understand. Now, Lucia, I know this is difficult, but you’ve got to do one more thing. You’ve got to listen to me. OK?’

  She nods.

  ‘I’m on my own, but there are people coming. I’m not going to come any closer because if you don’t need medical attention I don’t want to destroy any evidence. I’m going to find something to cover you first.’ He hunts around, finds a sheet folded in a cupboard. Places it over her body. ‘There – now take it easy. Take it easy.’

  ‘Is it going to be long?’ she whimpers. ‘Please please please. I can’t stay here much longer. I can’t.’

  Lucia and the Detective

  THE DETECTIVE PRODUCES a small Swiss army knife, selecting a blade. He opens the scissor tool and begins to snip through the tights. ‘I’m not going to undo this knot,’ he tells her. ‘I’m going to cut it. The scene of crime guys prefer it that way.’

  Lucia knows that sometimes the best acting is the silent kind because people will interpret silence to suit
their interpretation of the situation, so she doesn’t speak while he works. She’s good at acting. She’s been doing it for years – pretending to the world that she can live in this family. All she has to do is force a little hitch into her breathing to mimic fear.

  Inspector Caffery is very near her as he studies the knotted tights she’s used to bind herself to the bed. She can smell a faint tang of aftershave and something else – wood smoke maybe. She can see the details of his windcheater jacket and the sinews in his wrists. He is good-looking. Actually – no, not exactly good-looking, his face is too careworn to be a poster boy, as if he’s had too many late nights. But he’s got this slow, calm confidence about him that’s riveting – as if there isn’t much in the world could shake him. When he came in the front door earlier she could tell just from listening to the conversation he had with Ian, even without being able to distinguish the words, that this isn’t a man used to having to explain himself. He simply walked in as if it was his God-given right.

  Lucia believes men like this are secretly confident about one thing: how they perform in bed. She wants to smile, but checks herself.

  ‘Who tied this?’ Caffery asks.

  ‘He did. Why?’

  ‘He hasn’t done a very good job of it.’ He snips through the nylon and immediately she is released she rolls into a foetal curl, shivering, pulling the sheet tight around her. ‘God,’ she mutters. ‘God.’

  ‘It’s OK – stay where you are. It won’t be much longer.’

  ‘I want a bath.’

  ‘I know, I know. And as soon as my men get here, you can. You’ve put up with a lot – you just need to be patient a while longer.’

  He pulls another glove from his pocket and drops the knot from the tights into it. He puts them in his pocket then he goes to the window and looks down, towards the driveway. She watches him. Her DNA will be on the knot – but some of it will be Ian’s too. When Ian went to answer the door she used the tights to swab between her legs, picking up traces of their sex.

  She was going to call the police herself – from the first hotel she and Ian got to. The moment she was alone. She’d have said she’d been abducted. Lucia has no intention of staying with Ian – he is right, she’s using him. Again. Just like she did on the Donkey Pitch that night. Ian is just an ignorant animal. He’s pretended to be a technical genius but he’s only taken what she’s told him and used it. She told him about the book, and she calmed his fears that there was something hidden in the alarm system. The idiot didn’t question her and it never occurred to him to adequately check the house for spy cameras.

  The cameras will tell the police the story the way she’s planned it: with Ian as the predator.

  ‘What?’ Caffery says suddenly. ‘What did you say?’

  She blinks at him. He’s turned from the window and is frowning.

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t speak.’

  He scrutinizes her, as if searching for signs she’s lying. Then he turns and slowly scans the room. He wears the expression of someone listening to a distant sound – straining to interpret music or a voice from a long way away. After a long silence, he turns to her again.

  ‘Have you been held here all this time? In this room?’

  ‘I was in the other room for four days. He brought me in here this morning – the man, Ian – the one who let you in.’

  ‘You know his name?’

  ‘I overheard the other one calling him that.’

  ‘Where was your father kept?’

  ‘In here, I think. I don’t know exactly … Why?’

  Caffery doesn’t answer. He turns abruptly and stares at the radiator. He goes to it, crouches and runs his hand under the radiator pipes. There are scuff marks on the skirting board. There’s a series of grooves on the copper feed pipe where Dad was manacled. DI Caffery stays crouched there, his fingers on the pipe.

  Something about a foot away catches his attention. It is something dark – just visible under the skirting. It’s one of Lucia’s pens, which appears to have fallen there from the desk. She can’t imagine why he is paying this pen so much heed. But he is intent on it and picks at it until it rolls out on the floor in front of him. He studies it for a while. Then he puts his elbows on his knees and appears to be concentrating – his eyes darting around the room, taking in everything.

  After almost a minute he moves. He tips on to his knees, puts his hands on the floor and looks up under the radiator.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He pushes himself back. ‘I don’t know.’ He sits on his heels and looks around again. Another minute passes then he leans over and rolls back the hem of the rug. He looks at it intently, then he pulls from his pocket a pair of reading glasses, which he puts on. She can’t see what he’s noticed on the rug, but he spends a long time studying it. His face is locked as if he’s reading.

  ‘What is it?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Your dad was a clever man. He’s written a diary here.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘He’s talking about … well, he’s talking about Hugo Frink.’

  She nods. Bites her lip. ‘Yes,’ she says waveringly. ‘Hugo used to be my boyfriend.’

  ‘I know. Hugo’s grandmother told me.’

  ‘What does Dad say about it?’

  ‘He just says that someone was convicted for their killings—’

  ‘Minnet Kable.’

  ‘Minnet Kable, but your father thought it was a mistake.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’

  She tucks her arms under her and massages the flesh of her right breast, which has been bothering her the last few days. There’s a tiny indentation in the skin where Sophie’s ring has left its mark. She’s worn it inside her bra for years. A hot coal against her skin – a memory she needs to wear like a sword in her side. Hugo gave it to Sophie, as if to say Sophie was a princess who deserved only the best. A ring. A piece of jewellery, which is supposed to be the way men treat the women they care about most. Hugo never treated Lucia like that. Now the ring is in the pocket of Ian’s jeans.

  ‘Yes. I know it was a mistake. I know who did it. The man downstairs. Ian.’

  Good Guys and Bad Guys

  AN ARMED RESPONSE unit was parked in a lay-by, drinking take-away coffee in their smoked-glass X5 when Caffery’s ‘Status Zero’ radio burst was routed through Communications. They were the nearest and the sergeant self-authorized, immediately flicking on the wailers and the high-intensity strobes hidden in the radiator grille of the X5, sending the vehicle steaming up the winding B roads in the direction of The Turrets.

  In the amethyst room Caffery hears the noise. It pricks the edge of his consciousness for less than a second before the sirens are killed and silence comes back. That’s protocol. From now on he won’t hear anything from them – no sign they’re on their way. There will be no warning. Not until the moment they appear – coming from the trees. And then the forests will bristle with men – marksmen, dog handlers and support groups.

  Lucia is sitting up now – her pale arms wrapping the sheet around her knees, locking him in her steady black gaze. ‘What do you think?’ she murmurs. ‘Do you think she’s all right?’

  Caffery can’t recall what she’s been saying. His mind has been working so hard. So hard. Flitting back and forward between the noises outside – the steady approach of the cops – the long sentences on the underside of the rug – and the girl sitting opposite him.

  ‘I missed that. Say it again.’

  ‘My dog.’ She sniffs. Wipes her nose with the back of her hand. ‘That’s been the worst of it. My little dog, I think she’s dead.’

  There’s a crackle from somewhere outside. Both of them turn to the window.

  ‘Is that them?’

  He holds a hand up to silence her. There’s a pause, then the unmistakable feedback of a loudhailer. ‘Police—’ says the voice. ‘Come to a window and show yourself.’

  Caffery gets up and goes to t
he window. He throws his warrant card out. It flaps and pirouettes down through the air, landing face up on the gravel.

  ‘DI Caffery. MCIU,’ he yells. ‘I sent the “Status Zero” alert.’

  There’s a brief silence. A distant call of a crow, winging its way over the treetops, echoes through the air, wraps itself around the walls of the old house.

  ‘Is someone in there armed?’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘Any immediate danger to life and limb?’

  ‘Not that I can see, but you should clear the house regardless.’

  ‘There’s a marksman over here watching you. I’m coming to get what you’ve just thrown down.’

  ‘Sure. I know the routine.’

  Caffery leans out of the window, his hands raised palms outward. The shadows – which when Caffery walked up here were long – are shortening now, creeping their way across the lawn and back into the trunks. As if they sense something amiss and want to be somewhere safe. The man who emerges from the side of the building casts almost no darkness on the gravel. Like a vampire or a ghost.

  He’s wearing a Kevlar vest and ballistic helmet but he doesn’t hang around. He bends and snatches up the wallet. Walks back to the trees. There’s a long hiatus – the sounds of radio crackle.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Lucia whispers from behind.

  ‘They’re checking my ID.’

  There’s a burst of static, a crackle of the radio, and then the man shouts, ‘Is it safe to come in, Inspector Caffery?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘How many souls in the house?’

  ‘Including me, six.’ He makes it into two syllables, the way they are trained to speak on the radio: ‘SIX-UH.’

  ‘Injuries?’

  ‘Three fatalities. One suspect detained in the kitchen – cuffed – unarmed, needs paramedics, he’s had a CS blast. And another in the bedroom with me. Under guard.’

  ‘Sorry, sir – is that a suspect or a witness?’

  ‘Suspect. Confirm: I said two suspects. One with me, under guard.’