He ignored them, ignored the reporters craning over the ornate parapet, some resting cameras in the decorative alcoves. He got to the towpath, sat down on the freezing earth and tugged off the waders. He kept his face down – didn’t want anyone getting a photo of how pissed off he was.
He pulled on his shoes, did up the laces. At the tunnel entrance Flea Marley and her officer appeared streaked with black mud and blinking in the daylight. Caffery got up and went along the towpath until he was directly above her. ‘I am so, so fucking pissed off with you at this point,’ he hissed.
She looked up at him coldly. She had faint blue bulges under her eyes as if she was very tired. ‘I’d never have guessed.’
‘Why didn’t you come out when I told you to?’
She didn’t answer. Without taking her eyes off him she began to pull off the great chunks of wet clay that clung to her body harnesses. She handed her gas meter and the emergency rebreather to a team member to hose down. Caffery leaned closer so that the reporters wouldn’t hear what he said. ‘You’ve wasted four hours of everyone’s day for what?’
‘I thought I heard something. There was a gap in the rockfalls. I was right about that, at least, wasn’t I? She could have been there.’
‘What you’ve done is illegal, Sergeant Marley. Breaching the parameters of an assessment that complies with the HSE’s rules is technically illegal. You want the chief constable in the dock, do you?’
‘My unit is statistically one of the most dangerous units to work on. But in three years I’ve never once had one of my boys hurt. No one in the decompression pot, no one in A and E. Not even for a broken nail.’
‘You see, that –’ he dug a finger at her ‘– that, what you’ve just said, is exactly what I think this morning has all been about. Your unit. You’ve done this just to grandstand your poxy unit—’
‘It’s not a poxy unit.’
‘It is. Look at you – it’s in pieces.’
The bullet was out before he knew he’d even chambered the round. It hit its target head on. He saw it clearly. Saw it find its spot, bore through bone and skin, saw the pain blossom behind her eyes. She dropped her harness, handed her helmet and gloves to a unit member, clambered up on to the towpath and walked steadily back to the unit’s Sprinter van.
‘Christ.’ Caffery put his hands in his pockets and bit down hard, hating himself. When she’d got into the vehicle and closed the door he turned away. Prody was gaping down at him from the parapet.
‘What?’ Another, cold flare of anger went through him. It still rankled that Prody was sniffing around the Kitson case. Maybe rankled even more that the guy was acting exactly as he, Caffery, would act. Asking questions where he shouldn’t. Stepping outside the box. ‘What, Prody? What is it?’
Prody closed his mouth.
‘I thought you were supposed to be magicking CCTV footage out of thin air, not on some coach outing to the Cotswolds.’
Prody muttered something – might have been ‘sorry’, but Caffery didn’t much care. He’d had enough – enough of the cold and the media and the way his force was behaving.
He felt in his pocket for his keys. ‘Get back to the office and take your friends with you. You’re all about as welcome here as a cockroach in a salad bowl. If it happens again a little bird will be winging its way to the superintendent.’ He turned smartly, walked away and mounted the steps that led up to the village green they were using as a RV point, doing up his raincoat as he went. The place was almost deserted, just a man in a torn sweater in the back garden of one of the houses, emptying leaves into a large wheelie. When Caffery was sure no one had followed he opened the door of the Mondeo and let Myrtle out.
They went under an oak tree – the dead leaves still clinging to it rustled in the breeze – and the dog squatted unsteadily to pee. Caffery stood next to her, hands in his pockets, looking at the sky. It was bitterly cold. Driving out here he’d had a phone call from the lab. The DNA from the milk tooth matched Martha’s. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured to the dog. ‘I still haven’t found her.’
Myrtle looked back at him. Drooping eyes.
‘Yeah, you heard me. I still haven’t found her.’
24
The night that Thom killed Misty Kitson had been clear and warm. The moon had been up. He had been driving on a remote country lane when it happened. There was no one around and after he’d accidentally hit her, he’d bundled the body into the car boot without being seen. Drunk and with his back firmly to the wall, he’d driven to Flea’s house to take refuge. On the way his reckless driving had picked him up a tail, a traffic cop who’d arrived seconds after Thom on Flea’s doorstep, breathalyser kit in hand. Flea must have left her brains in a pot under the bed that night because, with almost no coercion, she’d stood in for her brother. At the time she hadn’t known what was in the boot of the damned car. If she had she wouldn’t have done the breathalyser for him. Wouldn’t have sworn to the cop that she had been driving. Given him a nice zero reading.
The cop who’d breathalysed her was here now, a few feet away in the low-ceilinged pub, his back to her, ordering a drink. DC Prody.
She moved her half-finished pint of cider to the other side of the table, pulled her sleeves down over her hands, tucked them into her armpits and shuffled down in the seat. The pub – at the easternmost entrance to the canal, the place they’d made the first exploratory entry – was typical of the Cotswolds, stone-built, thatched, with enamel signs on the walls and soot-flashed brick-work above the fireplace. Guest ales and lunchtime menus scrawled on blackboards. But at two o’clock on this dreary November day the only living souls in the place were an elderly whippet asleep next to the fire, the barman and Flea. And Prody. He’d notice her eventually. No way he wouldn’t.
The barman gave him his lager. Prody ordered food and took a few sips of the drink. He relaxed a little, turned on the stool to look at his surroundings. And saw her. ‘Hey.’ He picked up the glass and came across the room. ‘Still here?’
She forced a smile. ‘Guess.’
He stood behind the other chair at the table. ‘Can I?’
She pulled her wet jacket off the back so he could sit down. He got himself comfortable. ‘Thought all your unit had gone home.’
‘Yeah, well. You know.’
Prody put his glass neatly on a beer mat. He wore his hair very short. A widow’s peak. His eyes were pale green and he looked as if he’d been on holiday in the last month, somewhere hot – there were white creases at his temples. He turned the glass round and round on the mat, looking at the wet mark it made. ‘I didn’t like hearing you get that bollocking. Wasn’t necessary. He didn’t need to talk to you like that.’
‘I dunno. Maybe it was my own fault.’
‘Nah – it’s him. He’s got his hair off over something. You didn’t hear the chewing out he gave me after you went. I mean, what’s his fucking problem?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re sulking too, then? Not just me?’
‘Honest truth?’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve worked eighteen-hour days since this thing started and it’d be nice to think there was a pat on the head at the end of it. Instead I get the big fuck-off pill. So, far as I’m concerned, he can stick his CCTV warrants. Stick his overtime. Don’t know about you,’ he raised his glass, ‘but I intend taking the afternoon off.’
Since that night in May, Flea had seen Paul Prody a few times at work – once on the day the unit had searched a quarry for Simone Blunt’s car, other times around the offices the USU shared with the traffic police. Prody had struck her as a gym bunny, always on his way to the shower with a triangle of sweat down his Nike T-shirt. She’d avoided speaking to him directly – had watched him carefully from a distance – and over the months she’d become sure he had no idea what had been in her car boot that night. But that had been back when he was in Traffic. Now he was at MCIU, which would give him more reason to think back to that night. It killed her not knowing just how high
in MCIU’s priorities the Kitson case was, what sort of staffing level was assigned to it. Course, these weren’t the sort of questions a person could just pop out indiscriminately whenever they felt like it.
‘Eighteen-hour days? That’d take the smile off your face.’
‘Sleeping on the sofa, some of us.’
‘And . . .’ She tried to melt the urgency from her words so they came out nonchalant. ‘And how much manpower – sorry, staffing – have you got? Are you still working other cases too?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Not really?’
‘That’s right.’ Something cautious came into his voice, as if he knew she was feeling him out. ‘No other cases. Just this – the jacker. Why?’
She shrugged, turned her eyes to the window, pretended to be watching the rain dripping off the woody wisteria stems that hung in front of the panes. ‘Just thought eighteen-hour days must be tough on everyone. On your personal lives.’
Prody took a deep breath. ‘Weird – but you know something? That comment’s not especially funny. You’re a bright woman, but the sense of humour box is looking empty, if you don’t mind me saying.’
She shot her eyes back to him, puzzled by his tone. ‘Beg pardon?’
‘I said it’s not funny. You want to laugh at me, do it at a distance.’ He tipped back his head and drained his pint in one. There were patches of colour on his throat, as if he had a rash. He scraped the chair back and got to his feet.
‘Hey!’ She put a hand up to stop him. ‘Wait. I don’t like this. I’ve said something I shouldn’t have said, but I don’t know what.’
He pulled on his coat and buttoned it.
‘Jesus. A half-decent person would at least tell me what I’d said wrong. This just came out of nowhere.’
Prody gave her a long look.
‘What? Tell me. What did I say?’
‘You really don’t know?’
‘No. I really, really don’t know.’
‘The jungle drums don’t do USU?’
‘What jungle drums?’
‘My kids?’
‘Your kids? No. I’m . . .’ she put a hand in front of her eyes ‘. . . in the dark. Totally. I swear.’
He sighed. ‘I don’t have a personal life. Not any more. I haven’t seen my wife or my kids in months.’
‘How come?’
‘Apparently I’m a wife-beater. A child-abuser.’ He pulled off his coat and sat down again, the colour in his neck slowly disappearing. ‘Apparently I beat my kids to within an inch of their lives.’
Flea began to laugh, thinking he was messing around, then changed her mind again and wiped the smile. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Are you really? A wife-beater? A child-abuser?’
‘According to my wife. Everyone else believes it too. I’m even starting to suspect myself.’
Flea watched him in silence. His hair was cut so short you could almost see the shape of his skull under it. Kids he wasn’t allowed to see. Nothing to do with the Misty Kitson case. A slab of tension eased in her a little. ‘Jesus. That’s hard. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘I swear I didn’t know.’
‘Fair enough. Didn’t mean to be arsy about it.’ Outside, the rain fell. The pub smelt of hops, horse manure and old wine corks. The sound of beer kegs being changed came from somewhere in the cellar. The room seemed warmer. Prody rubbed his arms. ‘Another drink?’
‘A drink? Yeah, sure. I’ll—’ She looked at the cider glass. ‘A lemonade or a Coke or something.’
He laughed. ‘A lemonade? Think I’m going to breathalyse you again?’
‘No.’ She stared at him fixedly. ‘Why would I think that?’
‘I don’t know. Suppose I always thought after that night you were pissed off with me.’
‘Well – I was. Sort of.’
‘I know. You’ve avoided me ever since. Before that you always used to say hi to me – you know, in the gym or whatever. But after that it was completely . . .’ He drew a hand down his face, meaning she’d blanked him. ‘I have to admit that was tough. But I was pretty tough on you.’
‘No. You were fair. I’d have breathalysed me.’ She tapped the cider glass. ‘I wasn’t drunk, but I was acting like a twat. Driving too fast.’
She smiled. He smiled back. The dull light came through the window, picking out the dust hanging in the bar. It found the fair hairs on Prody’s arm. He had nice arms and hands. Caffery’s arms were sinewy and hard with dark hair. Prody’s were fairer and more fleshy. She thought they’d maybe be warmer to the touch than Caffery’s.
‘Lemonade, then?’
She realized she was staring. She stopped smiling and felt her face go numb. ‘Excuse me.’ She got up unsteadily and went to the Ladies, locked herself into a cubicle, peed, washed her hands and was standing with them under the dryer when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She leaned closer across the basin and examined her reflection. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold of the day and the cider. The veins in her hands, feet and face felt swollen. She’d used the on-board shower on the unit’s dive van but there was no hairdryer so her hair had dried naturally into white-blonde corkscrews.
She unbuttoned her shirt a short way. Underneath she wasn’t pink and flushed. She was tanned – a sort of year-round tan she must have developed as a child from all the diving holidays with Mum, Dad and Thom. Caffery’s face flashed into her head, yelling at her from the towpath. Furious. You’d never describe Caffery as congenial, but even so – that level of anger was inexplicable. She did up the buttons on the blouse and checked herself in the mirror. Then she undid the top two buttons again until a small amount of cleavage was just visible.
Back in the bar Prody was sitting at the table, two glasses of lemonade in front of him. When she sat next to him he saw the undone buttons instantly. There was an awkward, awful pause. He glanced at the window, then back again, and for a moment she saw it all clearly. She saw that she was a bit drunk, looking stupid with her tits showing, and that the wheel was about to come off the whole thing and put her in a ditch she wouldn’t know how to climb out of. She turned away, putting her elbows on the table and closing off her cleavage from him.
‘It wasn’t me,’ she said, ‘that night. It wasn’t me driving.’
‘I’m sorry?’
She felt stupid. She hadn’t planned to say it, had only opened her mouth to cover her embarrassment. ‘I’ve never told anyone this but it was my brother. He was drunk and I wasn’t so I covered for him.’
Prody was silent for a while. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Nice sister. I’d like one like you.’
‘No – I was stupid.’
‘I’d say. That’s quite something to protect someone from. A DIC charge.’
Yeah, she thought. And, believe me, if you knew what I’d really protected him from – if you knew it was much more than just a drink-driving charge – your head would spin round and your eyes would come out on springs. She sat woodenly, staring at the optics and hoping her face wasn’t as flushed as it felt.
Prody’s meal came then, and that saved them both. Gloucester Old Spot sausages and mash. Little red pickled onions on the side, like cloudy marbles. He ate in silence. For a moment or two she wondered if he was angry still, but she stayed anyway and watched him. Let the mood settle itself. They talked about other things – the unit, an inspector from Traffic who’d dropped dead of a heart-attack at a family wedding aged thirty-seven. Prody finished his meal and at one thirty they got up to leave. Flea was tired, her head stuffy. Outside, the rain had stopped and the sun was out but more rainclouds were banked in the west. The chalky earth of the car park was pitted with yellowish puddles. She stopped on the way to her car at the parapet above the tunnel’s eastern portal and peered down into the murky canal.
‘There’s nothing there,’ Prody said.
‘Something still feels wrong.’
‘Here.’ He held out an Avon and Somerset business card with his p
hone numbers on it. ‘If you remember what it is, call me. I promise not to yell at you.’
‘Like Caffery?’
‘Like Caffery. Now, will you go home and relax? Give yourself a break?’
She took the card but she didn’t leave the parapet. She waited for Prody to get into his Peugeot and pull out of the car park. Then she stared down at the tunnel, drawn inexorably by the glint of the winter sun on the black water, until the noise of his engine had faded, and the only sounds were the clink of the barman clearing the table in the pub, and the cawing of crows in the trees.
25
At three fifty Janice Costello sat at traffic lights and stared grimly at the rain trickling down the windscreen. Everything was dark and dismal. She hated this time of year, and she hated sitting in traffic. Emily’s school was only a short distance from the house, and although Cory usually drove if he picked her up from school – any mention of the greenhouse effect generally sparked off in him a diatribe about the blatant erosion of his civil liberties – on Janice’s days they walked, carefully adding up the minutes and diligently reporting back to Emily’s teacher as part of the Walk to School Challenge.
But today they were driving and Emily was thrilled. She didn’t know it was because Janice had a plan. She’d cooked it up overnight, lying in the darkened bedroom, her heart pounding, while Cory slept dreamlessly next to her. She was going to drop Emily at a friend’s house, then visit Cory at the office. On the front seat of the Audi, a bag contained a flask of hot coffee and half a carrot cake sandwiched between two paper plates. One of the things that had come up in the therapy sessions was that sometimes Cory felt his wife wasn’t exactly a traditional wife. That although there was always dinner on the table and a cup of tea in bed in the mornings, although she worked and took care of Emily, he still missed the little touches. A cake cooling on a wire tray when he came in. A packed lunch for work with maybe a little billet doux tucked inside to surprise him at lunchtime.
‘Well, we’ll change that, won’t we, Emily?’ she said aloud.