by Mo Hayder
‘Our unit was informed, as is the protocol. Though most relevant parties are retired now, like yourself. Besides, what’s to worry about? The doctors say he’s stabilized. The tribunal reckons he’s safe to live in the community.’
There’s a pulse beating in Pilson’s temple. He glances towards the kitchen where his wife is.
‘Would you like me to get her to lock the doors?’ Caffery says. ‘Would that make you feel better?’
‘They don’t know what they’ve done. Letting him out.’
‘But you do. Who called it in? Who were you protecting?’
For half a minute, Pilson says nothing, just keeps taking deep breaths, shaking his head every so often. He reaches across the table and with trembling fingers he turns the crime-scene photographs over so they are face down.
‘My sister,’ he says miserably. ‘I was protecting Penny.’
The Old Mill
THE STORY HARRY Pilson has to tell is old, and sadly familiar to Caffery, who has heard every imaginable tale of adultery over the years. Every possible combination, every conceivable twist. Still he can’t help feeling sorry for the guy. The more he talks, the more Caffery understands why he lied.
Fifteen years ago Pilson’s sister, Penny – who was married at the time – was having an affair with Graham Handel, Isaac’s father. On the day of the killings she went up to the house to see him. She intended finishing the affair. By the time she arrived, Graham Handel and his wife had both been dead some hours.
Penny knew she had to report it, but she had no excuse to give her husband for her presence up at the house. So Harry agreed to cover for her. Together they conjured up the phone call. The fake woman. Fake name, fake address.
‘She’s drifted away from me,’ Harry says. ‘Or I’ve drifted from her. I think she’s ashamed, even now – it was a bleak spot in her life. When you see her, will you send her my love? Tell her I still think about her. Ask her how that mongrel dog of hers is.’
Penny is now divorced from the husband she wanted to protect, and lives in the last house in the village. The Old Mill. Harry has told Caffery it’s the house with grass growing on the roof, and he sees it immediately, even in the dark: a green froth on the old clay roof tiles. At the windows are Swiss-style shutters – a heart cut in each centre – and there’s a hand-carved business sign above the porch – Forager’s Fayre, Home-made Preserves.
He has to rap loudly to get an answer. When the door opens, he sees Penny is quite different from her brother. Much younger – probably mid-forties – and very pretty, with heavily kohled eyes and bright henna-red hair cut pixie-style. A faint, quizzical smile.
‘Yes?’
‘Penny Pilson?’
‘That’s me.’
He holds up his card. ‘Have you got a moment? Just some routine questions.’
Penny’s face falls a little. But she doesn’t ask him what the routine questions are. She holds the door open and lets him in. The hallway is narrow with bare stone walls, the floor tiles also stone – worn in clear twin grooves by centuries of foot traffic. Penny beckons him to follow and heads away down the corridor. She’s small and voluptuous. She wears a falling cascade of bracelets on her arms, battered jeans and beaded leather thong sandals on her dainty feet, which are bare, in spite of the cold.
It’s a high-ceilinged building – brick-walled, but warmed by a huge wood burner in the centre of the floor. At one end of the space is what looks like a commercial kitchen, where industrialsized pots simmer on a huge catering-style stainless-steel cooker, filling the air with the smell of stewing fruit. There are pyramids of freshly picked apples in the corner, and a trestle table at the far end of the room houses a range of jars – all hand-labelled, and tied with hemp or raffia. Every wall is covered in shelves similarly piled with jars.
Penny clicks on the overhead light and takes a pile of paperwork off a chair for Caffery to sit.
‘Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?’
He smiles. ‘I’d love a Scotch, but under the circumstances …’
‘I make the best plum vodka. I’ll get you some.’
Caffery tilts back in his chair, his head turned to watch her moving around the kitchen. ‘Can I just say that you’re a bad woman. If I was an alcoholic – which I probably am on some level – you’d have co-dependent or enabler stamped on your forehead. Not to mention I’m driving.’
‘I’ll make it a small one. Just to taste. Just to leave you wanting more.’
He shakes his head. This is the sort of woman who can spell trouble for men. Earthy and sexy. Knows how to feed the senses. Obviously her appeal wasn’t lost on Graham Handel. She fills a tiny glass with a ruby-coloured liquor. It catches the light and reminds him Christmas is not far off. He sniffs and sips. It’s the taste of a hundred different berries, a hundred different spices.
‘Forager’s Fayre? How comes I’ve never heard of you before?’
‘I dunno. Welcome to wild-and-woolly Gloucestershire. The crusties. Note my attire? Every piece of fruit I use has been foraged – or donated by friends. You walk around these days and see apples rotting on the ground. People just don’t bother to pick them. Ever noticed that?’
‘Now you mention it.’
‘People’d rather go to the supermarket and buy stuff grown thousands of miles away than eat what’s growing in their back garden. Go figure. Want to know my best-selling variety?’
‘It was the first thing I was going to ask you.’
‘Church Car Park Crab-apple Jelly.’
‘Car Park Jelly?’
‘Yup.’ She reaches to a shelf and grabs a jar. ‘A church car park in Wotton and ten crab-apple trees just drop their fruit every September. What was the diocese doing with the fruit? Not sending out a work party to collect them, I can promise you. Instead they were partitioning off that side of the car park so no one could park there. Didn’t want complaints from the congregation that their cars were getting sticky. Here—’
She comes to the table and opens the jar for him. The vacuum makes a reassuring thwock. He leans over and smells it. ‘Mmmm.’
‘Tastes even better – there you go, all yours.’
‘Thank you.’ He takes the jar, recaps it, and sets it in front of him on the table. Folds his arms. ‘And now, I think we should talk.’
‘Do we have to?’
‘We have to. Even though you’re doing everything you can to avoid the subject.’
She gives a grim half-smile. ‘And in my position? A cop turning up on your doorstep? It means bad, bad, bad. I can only think it’s Harry – and I don’t want to.’
‘Harry’s fine. He says to send his love.’
She gives a small frown. ‘Not Harry?’
‘He sent me here, but he’s OK.’
There’s a tiny pause. She sits at the table, meets his eyes head on. ‘OK – then what?’
‘Upton Farm. Harry told me the truth.’
She is silent for a long time, her eyes roving over his face. Then she shakes her head. ‘So, tell me. Am I in trouble? That was years ago – in the end I don’t know how what we did could be seen as obstructing the police – I mean, I did report it, and …’
The sentence dies. Caffery is shaking his head. ‘It’s not about what you did back then. It’s what’s happening now. It’s Isaac.’
‘Isaac. What’s happened to Isaac?’
‘He’s out.’
That knocks Penny’s expression in half. She pales. Her mouth opens slightly, but she doesn’t speak. In the corner a grandfather clock ticks the seconds out, as if emphasizing the way time is stretching. And then she leans forward, elbows on the table.
‘He’s out? Really?’
‘Really.’
‘OK, OK. OK.’ She pinches her nose tightly. ‘This is insane. I was only thinking about him this morning … And he’s out, you say? What happened? He escaped?’
‘No – he had a tribunal – he was discharged. He’s rehabilitated.’
‘Reha
bilitated? No – oh no. Someone like him doesn’t …’ She lets the sentence drift off. ‘Where’s he been released to?’
Caffery doesn’t answer.
‘Not back here? You are kidding me, aren’t you?’
‘I need you to help me fill in the details. I’m trying to get an idea of what Isaac was like. The sort of things that preoccupied him. Things that interested him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it might help me pin down the places he’s likely to gravitate to.’
‘You’ve lost him, haven’t you? He’s gone.’
‘I’m not here to alarm you – there’s nothing to suggest he presents a danger. I’m trying to get a feel for what he’s like, that’s all. Take me through what happened.’
Penny scrapes her chair back. She stands for a few moments, nervously unbuttoning and buttoning the front of her cardigan, her eyes darting around the room. She crosses to the windows that face out over the valley. The trees on the far side have turned purple in the failing light. She opens the window and stands for a moment, looking up the valley in the direction of Upton Farm.
Then she pulls the shutters closed. She locks them. She goes to the next window and locks those shutters. And the next. She circulates the entire room – locking every window. She disappears into a side room where he can see fruit piled and he hears her locking and bolting the door there. A moment later she crosses the living room and goes to the front door, which she also locks.
‘Jesus.’ She grabs a glass and comes back to sit at the table. She fills it with the plum vodka, knocks it back in one. Then a second. She wipes her eyes and makes an effort to calm herself. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose it serves me right. If Harry had put my name on the report – if we’d been honest – then I’d have been warned, wouldn’t I?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Lost my little old dog the other night too. It never rains, eh? All my fault. I know – all my own fault.’
Caffery watches her drink more vodka. He watches the colour come slowly back to her face.
‘November the second,’ she says suddenly. ‘That’s when it happened. It was a horrible November – a bad year for the fruit. We’d had a wet summer and some of the trees were empty. I remember worrying that the wildlife was going to starve – all the birds and the squirrels. The business had only just started, so that was a worry too. And I was trying to work out how to end it with Graham. As it turned out that was the last thing I should have been worrying about. They told me later Isaac had been with the bodies for three hours. Doing things to them. I suppose if I hadn’t arrived he’d have gone on and on.’
Caffery nods silently. ‘You know about the trip wire, don’t you?’
She looks up. ‘The explosives? Yes. They said it was meant for whoever found the crime scene – but Isaac told Harry he’d planned on setting the bodies alight remotely. He could deal with all the things he’d done to their bodies, but he couldn’t stomach seeing them burn. He’d got some sort of device to start the fire – he was always clever with his hands. Electronics and things like that. Second nature.’
Caffery clears his throat. Clever with electronics?
‘So what happens now?’ Penny asks.
‘That’s what I’m here to ask – what do you think happens now?’
Car headlights shaft through the heart-shaped holes, finding the rows of glass jars with their multi-coloured preserves. Honey gleams gold, blackcurrant jam a deep amethyst. Penny taps her foot a few times, seems to be considering whether to continue. When she does, it’s in a lower, more confidential voice.
‘He’ll be off out there in the wilds, living like an animal. But he’ll be back. He hates this world – he hates it. The warning signs were there all along. I could have predicted what he was going to do – if I’d known how to read the signs.’
‘Meaning?’
‘His poppets. The ones of his mum and dad. He’d sewn their eyes shut. I should have known what he was planning.’
‘I beg your pardon? His what?’
‘His poppets, his dolls? You do know about his poppets?’
‘Yes. I just never heard them called—’
‘He was holding them when he came out of the house. One in each hand. I knew what he’d done just from the way he was clutching them. Eyes stitched closed.’ She gives him a curious smile, as if he’s stupid. ‘Don’t you know what the poppets are for? Don’t you know about Isaac and why he makes his dolls?’
Thom Marley
THE DIVE UNIT have spent their day searching and bitching, hunched against the cold and the wet. They’ve continued to scour the wide band, Flea alongside them, dragging her empty body from hedge to hedge, field to field. It’s been the longest two days she can remember. She hasn’t caught up from diving all night then going straight to work yesterday – all she’s wanted to do is sleep. But whatever and whenever, you always stand shoulder to shoulder with your men.
Jack Caffery, who is supposed to be the SIO on this, hasn’t shown his face in all that time. Why should he? she reasons. He knows there’s going to be no new find – no evidence. Maybe it was for the best – it’s given her time to work through in her head what she wants to explain to him.
At five, when it’s getting dark and all her men are freezing and exhausted, she takes them into a huddle, gives them hot chocolate from the giant flask she’s kept in her back seat and supermarket cakes from a Tupperware container. She explains that if it was up to her, they would be paid not by the number of hours but by the difficulty and by the toll each hour takes on the spirit. Around them the RV car park is in chaos, the other support-unit teams are packing up for the night. She almost fails to notice the old Mondeo that pulls off the road and into the far corner of the car park. But then two of the big vans drive off and the car is out in the open.
Jack Caffery. At last. She sends her team home with the truck and when she’s certain they’re on their way, she approaches. He rolls down the window.
‘Hi. You OK?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Do you want to talk?’
She shrugs and walks round to the passenger seat, rattles the door. He clicks off the locking and she opens the door and gets in. Her body is aching from the cold of the day in the field – out here play-acting trying to find Misty – and the car isn’t as warm inside as she’d expected. It’s not lush and easy to sit in, her breath still fogs the air. Caffery’s in his work suit with a thick corded jacket over the top. He’s turned in his seat, waiting for her to speak.
‘Yeah.’ She buckles the seat belt. Nods out of the windscreen. ‘Can we just go?’
He doesn’t argue. He starts the car and pulls out of the parking area.
‘Take a right. Go through Monkton Farleigh.’
He does as she says. She sits with her elbow jammed against the door, her forehead against her fingers. The night countryside squirms past the car, swallowed up under the wheels.
‘At the main road take a right – head towards Bath.’
He obeys her instructions without a word. She lets her eyes sneak sideways and follow his hand on the gear stick. She’s watched his hands several times before. They are hard and slightly tanned, no rings. She’s never seen a ring on his fingers. Not even the white mark from one that has existed there in a past life.
‘OK,’ she says when they are on the main road and have reached cruising speed. ‘I did want to talk. And when you didn’t come on site I thought about calling. I did. Just didn’t know how to start.’
‘Now’s a good time.’
‘First let me say sorry about the other night. I didn’t mean to be as blunt as I was.’
He gives a grim smile. Changes gear. ‘Understandable. It wasn’t an everyday conversation – a coffee-morning chat.’
‘To put it mildly.’
‘I could have been better about it. I could have been more gentle.’
She turns her eyes away – focused on the road, because she knows he’ll be trying to see her exp
ression.
‘Before you judge why I said no you need to know some of the things that happened. After Misty was …’ She stops. Starts again. ‘After she died.’
‘What things?’
‘You’ll see that what I did was the best thing I possibly could – the best route. It’s not as simple as you think.’
‘Try me.’
She takes a long, deep breath. Leans her shoulders back in the seat. She really doesn’t want to go through it again. Not at all.
‘OK,’ she starts tentatively. ‘Imagine it’s late spring. Here … the same road, but eighteen months ago. Thom’s borrowed my car. It’s eleven at night and he’s off his head and … well, you and I both know what’s happened back on that road. He’s coming along here – just like we are, except he’s trousered and he’s going fast because he’s got something awful in the boot of his car. Something he really shouldn’t have – you know what I’m talking about. As he comes round this corner, he picks up a tail—’
‘A traffic cop?’
‘Yes. One of ours. Avon and Somerset’s finest – someone you and I happen to know, but that’s another story. Left here.’
Caffery swings the car to the left and they begin to wind their way down the side of the valley that leads off the escarpment.
‘So he comes down here with the cop on his back, and I’m in the house – we’re going to get there in a minute – you’ll see – and the first I know about it is headlights and noise and Thom crashing into the house so pissed, so pissed he’s straight into the toilet and throwing up and crying. And then the cop – minutes behind. It was a split-second decision: I couldn’t even begin to go forward and guess what it would mean in the end.’ She breaks off for a moment, knowing the next bit is insanity. ‘But anyway – I told the cop I was driving.’
‘You what?’ His eyes go to hers and she isn’t quick enough to look away. ‘Say it again?’
‘And I did the breathalyser for Thom.’
‘What the—’
‘I know, I know …’ She massages her temples wearily. ‘But I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t know Misty was in the boot until four days later. She was in my car for four days before I realized. My shithead brother? He’s picked up her body, put it in my car, and doesn’t even tell me – leaves me to find it. The next morning he’s gone – and after that I can’t contact him – he won’t take my calls. I had to doorstep him to even get a word out of him.’
