Poppet

by Mo Hayder

  ‘I don’t know. He’s left us.’

  ‘Where is he now? Is he coming here?’

  ‘No. He’s not coming back. I promise you.’

  ‘A promise?’

  ‘Yes, a promise.’

  Monster Mother lowers her chin and frowns. Her eyes close halfway. She mutters to herself again, words AJ can’t hear.

  ‘Gabriella? Tell me something else. Our clinical director, Miss Arrow – do you remember Isaac ever talking about her?’

  Monster Mother glares at AJ, her breathing suddenly picking up speed.

  ‘Gabriella?’

  In reply she jumps up from her chair and turns away so she’s facing the window.

  She sways, muttering under her breath, massaging her arm stump the way she does when she is anxious.

  AJ rubs his eyes tiredly. He has gone as far as he can. Her silence is the answer he wants.

  Enough is enough.

  Triumph

  CAFFERY HAS SLEPT badly again and wakes aching all over. He drinks coffee, takes paracetamol, showers, dresses and drives through the Bristol traffic, hearing police sirens and car horns, drive-time on the radio. No mention of Misty Kitson this morning. She’s there, regardless, somewhere behind the headlines and the jingles and the music. Misty is always going to be in the public’s consciousness.

  Flea says the body isn’t at the bottom of the quarry. That it’s more complicated than that. Is that the truth? Diving is outside his experience, it’s an intricate and highly technical world, but there have to be other people who would be able to tell him. He digs his fingernails into the leather-covered steering wheel, considering this – seriously considering it. There are other police diving teams. And commercial divers too. Where do you start? The irony isn’t lost on him – if he’s prepared to involve someone else then why has he kept this a secret up until now?

  He wonders who he’s more fucked off with – Flea? Or with himself for carrying around this tiny remnant of faith that eventually she’ll change her mind.

  When he arrives at work the superintendent is waiting for him in reception. From his smug expression it’s clear a new case has come in. He’s waiting under the framed photograph of the late chief constable, one hand resting nonchalantly on the water cooler, a patient, faintly triumphant smile on his face. Next to him stands a dark-haired guy – mid-forties, dressed in a suit that seems to be making him uncomfortable. Caffery recognizes him vaguely from somewhere.

  ‘Jack – allow me to introduce Mr LeGrande. He’d like a word with you.’

  Caffery offers his hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr LeGrande.’

  ‘Mr Caffery.’ They shake.

  LeGrande has already been given a visitor’s pass, hanging from one of the new-issue MCIT lanyards, decorated comically with silhouettes of Sherlock Holmes and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. ‘Call me AJ. We met at the Criminal Justice Forum?’

  ‘Yes – I recognize you.’

  ‘Jack!’ The superintendent has the air of a well-polished political campaigner as he touches both men on their arms, encouraging them. He’s riding this triumph like the wind. ‘Why don’t you take Mr LeGrande on upstairs? Let me know how it goes?’

  They make their way to his office, and as they walk the corridors, in his head Caffery is going through the probabilities of what AJ wants. Please, not some jobsworth: Mr Caffery, good of you to see me. I wanted to follow up the discussions we had at the forum. I’ve written up a proposal for you on implementing smoother transitions from the custody suite … blah de blah …

  In his office he makes them each a cup of coffee – AJ looks as if he needs it almost as much as Caffery does, maybe more – and they sit, AJ on the sofa, Caffery at the desk.

  ‘So, AJ, what can I do for you?’

  AJ puts his hand to his mouth and gives an embarrassed cough.

  ‘Well, uh – before we go any further – this has to be in confidence.’

  Caffery raises an eyebrow. ‘In theory that’s OK. But no promises until I know what we’re talking about.’

  ‘It’s extremely important no one knows I’m here.’

  ‘Someone’s threatening you?’

  ‘No, it’s not that – it’s …’ He hesitates, then says in a rush, ‘Something’s going on where I work. Or rather, it was going on. We’re a high-secure unit, if you remember, and things have been happening that don’t feel right … I’m uneasy.’

  Caffery takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes tiredly. ‘Just for future reference, Mr LeGrande, “I’m uneasy” is not a phrase cops are fond of. Don’t expect to be welcomed if you go bandying it about. Has an unwelcome ring. But go ahead anyway.’

  ‘OK. This is going to sound a bit nuts – but there you go, I work in a nuthouse, so what can I say.’

  ‘Are you allowed to call it a nuthouse?’

  ‘I am, you’re not. You’re on the outside. On the inside we have special privileges. Believe me, we deserve them.’ He gives a brief smile. ‘It’s a loony bin. And in our particular loony bin, ever since I can remember, there’s been an even loonier myth doing the rounds. It’s a …’ He sighs, half embarrassed. ‘A ghost story that kind of circulates amongst the patients from time to time. They’re suggestible – you can imagine. We try to keep a lid on it where we can. But it’s popped up a few times, and at least three times I know of, what’s ended up happening has been a bizarre cluster of DSH cases.’

  ‘DSH?’

  ‘Sorry – deliberate self-harm. People cutting themselves, that sort of thing. A few years back it escalated to a death – maybe a suicide, we don’t know for sure. Then a week ago there was another death – a heart attack, according to the doctors. But it doesn’t feel right.’

  Caffery taps his pen thoughtfully, studying AJ’s face. It’s a sad story, one he’s heard before. Suicides in a secure unit always make the senior staff unhappy – deeply unhappy – but they rarely turn out to be anything MCIT needs to be interested in. Maybe this can be moved through the system quickly.

  ‘One guy put his own eye out.’

  ‘Nasty.’

  ‘Nasty, though not that uncommon in a, you know, loony bin. But he had the same hallucinations – just like the patient we lost last week. Her heart attack was after delusions. And it was the same a few years ago, when the other patient died. She’d convinced herself she’d seen The Mau— Sorry, I didn’t explain: they call this thing “The Maude”.’

  ‘The Maude?’

  AJ shakes his head. ‘It’s a long story. But whatever was going on in this one patient’s mind was so bad that one day she walks out of the unit and no one sees her again. Not until months later when they find her body in the grounds. The autopsy never did say for sure how she died – I think everyone had it in the back of their head it was a suicide, but it got moved on down the tracks.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Pauline Scott.’

  It rings vague bells for Caffery.

  It was before his time, but he’s fairly sure it’s a case Flea mentioned, notable because it was embarrassing for everyone concerned: Beechway, for letting a vulnerable patient wander out, and the police search advisor, the POLSA, on Flea’s unit, who was tasked with the search and didn’t quite extend the parameters far enough. So easy to miss someone a few metres outside. He doesn’t move his eyes, but his attention trails across the room to Misty’s face. A search like that? Metres, even centimetres, can count.

  ‘Except,’ AJ says, ‘I think it’s a case of the Scooby-Doo ghost.’

  ‘A case of the what?’

  ‘Scooby-Doo. You know – Scooby and Shaggy and the gang always catch the ghost, pull off its mask and turns out to be … I dunno, the local property developer or something? Wants to make people believe the place is haunted so the land prices drop? That’s what I call a Scooby ghost – something that’s real but it’s made to look supernatural. I reckon we’ve got one haunting the corridors of Beechway.’

  ‘And you’re Shaggy—’

  ‘No,
I’m Velma. I’m the brains. And I’m Scully, by the way, because sometimes I get asked that too.’

  ‘Velma. Scully. The stage is all yours. Hit me.’

  AJ nods. If he had nerd glasses he’d push them up his nose.

  ‘OK. I can’t find out for certain, but I’m pretty sure every time it’s happened there’s been a power cut.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Power cuts put the CCTV system down.’

  ‘Have a lot of power cuts, do you?’

  ‘No. Two, maybe three – that’s all I can remember in the four years I’ve been there.’ He puts his rucksack on the floor and unzips it. ‘I’ve got something I want you to see. It won’t mean anything to you, but to me …?’ He gives a small, pained smile. ‘Well, it frightened the daylights out of me.’

  The Grief Calculator

  FLEA STANDS IN her low-ceilinged kitchen and makes breakfast. Standing so close to the stove at last a bit of warmth begins to crawl back into her bones. She’s showered and scrubbed, but it’s taking for ever to get the cold of the quarry out of her.

  She stares blankly at the eggs and bacon sizzling in the skillet, turns them automatically. The bacon is the Old Spot stuff from the local farmers’ market and the eggs are from a neighbouring family who, in spite of her insistence, are trying to say thank you for two hours she spent fixing a manifold pump on their under-floor heating. As a diver she knows about pumps, it wasn’t a difficult job, but they keep leaving eggs at her back door. Eggs, eggs everywhere. Eggs coming out of the walls.

  She slides breakfast on to a plate and plonks it down without ceremony on the table. A heavy mug of strong coffee and a jar of sugar with a spoon stuck in it. She’s a proper support-group sergeant – likes her breakfasts fried and unfussy. The ketchup is in a squeezy bottle. No airs and graces here. Mum and Dad would have both fallen down in a flat faint if they’d ever caught the faintest whiff of pretension.

  ‘So,’ she murmurs as she pulls up a chair and begins to eat. ‘Just as well you’re not here then, isn’t it.’

  She chews with concentration – elbows on the table. She doesn’t look up, doesn’t look to either side. It’s better sometimes not to remember where you are. Especially when it’s the house of your dead parents. Dad would know what to say to her now – he’d put his hand on her shoulder and answer her questions. She’d say: Dad, is it OK to just let things be? And if it is then what do I tell this guy – how do I explain it to him, because one thing’s for sure – he’s not going to leave it be.

  Dad would kiss her head, talk to her gently, reasonably. He’d know the answers. And if he didn’t know what to say, he’d talk to Mum. They’d go into the room at the end of the house, switch on the light over the piano and sit in facing armchairs. They’d speak in low voices – talking until they had a solution to her problem. They’d close ranks and Flea would be safe.

  She has to stop chewing then. She pauses, and, with an effort, swallows the mouthful. She picks up the mug and gulps a few swigs of coffee to wash it down. Then she sits for a while, her head lowered, staring at the eggs and bacon.

  There must, somewhere, be an equation for how long grief lasts. A calculator like they have for currencies online: you’d jab in things like your age, your gender, your job, your social life. You’d divide it by how close you were to the person who’s gone, you’d have to add lots of points for the fact you haven’t got a body to bury, and you’d get a number – a finite quantity – a guarantee that after exactly 573 days the pain would stop. Christ, if you can convert the Pakistani rupee into zlotys, if you can map the human genome and work out what Martian soil is composed of, why can’t you calculate when the hurt will be over?

  She gets up and chucks the food in the bin. Washes the plates. She’s got a long day ahead of her. If she’s lucky, by the time Jack Caffery arrives at the search site she’ll have got an explanation together. If she’s unlucky it’s going to be the coldest, wettest day of the year and she’ll end up crying in the shower at the end of it.

  Parking Tickets

  AJ REMEMBERS CAFFERY well. At the Criminal Justice Forum he overheard two of the female delegates whispering about Caffery as he left the hotel. They were giggling and blushing, and from that AJ understands the inspector is attractive. Probably for the very reasons that AJ doesn’t have women giggling and blushing: Caffery exudes something – a brand of confidence or carelessness – AJ doesn’t know exactly, but he wishes he had some of it.

  Now, sitting in his office, AJ sees the inspector hasn’t got any less good-looking, the bastard. He’s maybe early forties, going slightly grey at the temples in the way some women find madly attractive. There is something about the way his eyes move, a bit too quick, but AJ guesses that’s intelligence and determination at work and not dishonesty. There’s no hint of a personal life in the office. No framed photographs or certificates – just a couple of OS maps of the Avon and Somerset district covered with coloured pins, and a giant photo of a woman AJ recognizes vaguely. He thinks she’s the celebrity that went missing last year, Kitty someone? He can’t remember the details.

  ‘Zelda Lornton – the one who died a week ago from a heart attack …’ From his rucksack AJ pulls out the painting Zelda did and puts it on the table in front of him. Caffery leans over to study it. ‘She’d had an episode of self-harm about three weeks previously. She said this – this ghost thing, The Maude, did it. It wrote on her arms – a lot of biblical stuff. The sort of thing it’s hard to believe Zelda would have come up with on her own. Two weeks later she was dead.’ He runs his fingers over The Maude’s smooth face. ‘I found this amongst her OT work. This weird little bugger here? It fits exactly the way the patients describe The Maude. And this – the sweater, these dolls in its hands?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That fits one of our patients. It can’t be a coincidence Zelda did this.’

  ‘One of your patients?’ Caffery looks at him over his glasses. AJ can’t tell whether he’s mocking or taking this seriously. ‘One of your patients is the Scooby ghost?’

  ‘When I say one of our patients, I mean one of our ex-patients. He was discharged two days ago. Which kind of puts him’ – AJ nods at the window – ‘out there somewhere. And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.’

  Caffery picks up a pen and begins to jot some notes. He writes today’s date. ‘Name?’

  ‘Isaac Handel.’

  ‘Isaac …’ Caffery stops writing. He raises his eyes to AJ. ‘Isaac Handel? Is that the Upton Farm Isaac Handel?’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I know of him. The case was before my time, and the Senior Investigating Officer retired a while ago. But Handel and what happened at Upton Farm? It gets talked about a lot around this place.’

  ‘Because what he did was pretty memorable?’

  ‘Memorable.’ Caffery nods. ‘Yes, you could call it that. Memorable.’

  ‘I don’t know much about it. I’ve nursed him for years, but I’ve only just worked out he was connected to Upton Farm. And even though I grew up not far from there, and I know he killed his parents, the exact details of what happened are … well, you know, it’s all rumour and people doing that hush-voice thing?’ He wonders briefly if Caffery would give him the minutiae of the case if he asked. But, no, he’s decided he doesn’t want to find out. It was something out of the ordinary – something particularly nasty, and he’s happy just to know that sketch, rather than get all the close-up pictures. ‘You get the drift, reading between the lines, that he didn’t get locked away for a parking ticket.’

  ‘I can assure you it wasn’t a parking ticket.’

  ‘He was fourteen? Is that right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He killed his parents. Some schizophrenics can be unnecessarily … violent. Under the wrong circumstances?’

  Caffery nods, as if agreeing. ‘I don’t know the full story – I’d have to get the case called up. I remember there was some problem with the post-mortems. It took
a long time for the pathologist to be given access to the bodies. Something odd about it.’ He moves papers around on his desk as if he’s uncomfortable. Then he clears his throat, picks up his pen and begins to write again. ‘So you’re connecting him to a death, a possible suicide? And two … no, three episodes that were put down as self-harm?’

  ‘Yes.’ AJ watches him writing. He says, ‘Can I just reiterate, I’d like this to be confidential?’

  ‘Confidential from whom?’

  ‘Anyone in the Trust.’

  Caffery glances up. ‘That’s going to limit what I can do. If you want me to look into this, I’ll need to pay a visit to the unit.’

  ‘Do you have to? Can’t you just, I don’t know, find Isaac Handel? Find out what he’s doing out there? Speak to him. I mean, I can’t be here. Seriously – if this comes out, I could lose more than just my job. And if you have to come out to the unit I’ll have to …’ He waves his hand vaguely in the direction of the door. ‘I’ll have to make like I wasn’t here. I just can’t be seen talking to you.’

  Caffery gives a small, non-committal shrug and puts down the pen. Opens his hands as if to say, Fine. No skin off my nose if we don’t pursue this.

  ‘Please – I’m sorry,’ says AJ. ‘It’s awkward, that’s all.’

  ‘Maybe if you were more specific about who we’re keeping this from?’

  ‘Some people in the Trust. They’re protective – they wouldn’t be happy, knowing I was here. The clinical director in particular. Melanie Arrow.’

  ‘I think I met her. At the conference? Blonde?’

  AJ is caught by surprise hearing the word ‘blonde’ in Caffery’s mouth. He knows they talked, but for how long? Caffery remembers she’s blonde, what else does he remember? He wonders whether Caffery flirted with Melanie. And worse, whether she flirted back.