Poppet

by Mo Hayder

  It’s a tree, but its trunk is three metres across. The branches are so thick that at seven or eight metres from the centre, bowed under their own weight, they stoop to the ground, as if the old tree at the centre was resting its elbows on the cold earth. Under the arching branches, the earth is dry and the air is silent and still, like a cathedral. And where the walking tree leans its elbows, it takes root, creeping outwards from the centre. Around it, an outer ring – a magic circle of seven trees. All identical, all cloned from the older one at the centre.

  Taxus baccata: its needle-thin leaves, bark, seeds and sap are all deadly. The walking yew. A tree as old as time. As mean and still and deadly as a snake.

  AJ lets out all his breath. Just a tree. Nothing to be scared of. Absolutely nothing here. He and Stewart stand for a moment longer, breathing in and out, in and out. Nope. Not a thing.

  Even so, he’s not going to get any closer to the damn thing – and he certainly isn’t going to pass it.

  ‘Come on, mate.’ AJ clips on Stewart’s lead, turns him in the direction of the house. ‘Whatever you thought was there, it’s not there now. Let’s get breakfast.’

  Inside the Poppets

  IN THE MENDIPS, Caffery wakes aching in every bone and joint. He lies there with his hands over his face, feeling the pain as a death sense. Dull and ancient. It takes a long time to go, and for him to find the energy to get up.

  He sits in the kitchen drinking coffee – waiting for it to work. Then, when his head starts to move a little, he realizes he feels like this because something has occurred to him overnight. Something that outside in the real world would be unspeakable, but viewed from inside Handel’s skewed world order makes perfect, nasty sense. He pulls on an old sweater that’s hooked over the banisters and gets his glasses. He finds his Swiss Army knife and, buoyed up by the caffeine, opens the door to the utility room.

  The window has been open overnight – cracked on to the secure setting so some air can circulate – and the room is freezing. Early sunlight comes through the window. The poppets lie on the tiled surface, motionless, eyes staring at the ceiling. What is it about them that makes him sure they’ve only lain down like this in the last few seconds? That all night while he’s been asleep they’ve been moving? Maybe creeping out of the window frame. Finding the nearest churchyard and lifting gravestones.

  He pulls on his gloves and picks up the male doll. Graham Handel. Using the knife’s tweezer head, he carefully unpicks the stitching. Underneath the outer layer is an inner layer of stained muslin. This is covered in writing, though Caffery can’t immediately decipher it – or even decide which language it’s written in, the ink is so smudged. He finishes stripping the outside covering, lays it out to one side, like a miniature flayed skin, and sets to work unpicking the muslin. Inside is another layer.

  When both dolls are unpicked he has lined up in his utility room eight tiny skins all in different shades and fabrics. One set of four has all the characteristics of a female, with breasts and hips. The other has a penis. Scattered among the fabric wrappings are the other things he’s discovered stuffed inside the dolls. The dolls’ teeth, he sees, are not fashioned from polished shells as he’d thought, but human. Eight of them – yellow and old. Incisors and molars. Two tangled masses of hair – one blond, one dark – and something that looks, to his experienced eye, like the shrivelled, mummified remains of human ears.

  Suki and the Snow

  THE RECURRING DREAM is different tonight. It starts, as always, in a room with smooth walls. There’s the length of silk reaching into a hole from the ceiling, but this time it’s a wire. And this time Penny knows the room is in a wood. She can hear the chatter of birds and smell the fresh air. She gets a glimpse of an opening – sees snow. She stands and turns towards it, and there is Suki, a puppy again, leaping in the snow, leaving the ground and landing on all four paws, her ears flopping. She snaps at the flakes, turns and turns, chasing one flake that evades her.

  Oh, Suki, Suki.

  The dog lifts her head and bounds towards her. There are wet snow and leaves in her hair – but Penny is so overjoyed to see her she scoops her up and sits down, hugging her, burying her face in her fur. She smells like a wet jumper and she is soaked, completely soaked, and so, so cold.

  Come on, Penny says, come on – let’s get you dry.

  Thank you, Suki says in a deep voice. Thank you – you’ve always been so kind.

  Surprised, Penny puts the puppy on the floor. Suki looks up at her. Her face is different – bigger and coarser. Her eyes are narrowed like a human’s.

  Suki?

  In reply, Suki lifts her paw. It’s a human hand – large and hairy like a man’s. She takes Penny’s hand and squeezes it.

  You locked me in, says Suki. You locked me in and now I want to get out.

  Penny wakes with a jolt. She is panting. The smell is real and someone is holding her hand. It’s dark in the bedroom, darker than usual. But she can just make out the face on the pillow next to hers.

  Not Suki’s but Isaac Handel’s. He is inches away from her, his mouth open in a smile.

  Dirty Pink Satin

  CAFFERY UNPICKS THE dolls and finds they contain a grotesque array of body parts and excretions. However, aside from the dolls representing Handel’s parents, the contents are things that have been taken or gleaned from people without violence: hair snippings, nail parings, scraps of clothing, numerous balled tissues stained in some unnameable secretion.

  Isaac spent time in that big bedroom taking pieces of his parents and sewing them into the dolls. He didn’t eat the missing parts, or throw them out of a window. He carried them out in plain view.

  As for the remaining dolls … this is where Caffery is on less concrete ground. He’s not sure who they are supposed to symbolize, but he’s guessing staff and other patients at Beechway. There is a male doll with, hideously, a red boiled sweet stitched into the socket where an eye would be. Caffery hasn’t forgotten AJ’s conviction that Handel had somehow talked one of the patients into taking his own eye out with a spoon. Moses.

  Penny said she imagined there was a doll for her too. He hasn’t found anything that represents her – so maybe Isaac didn’t have any long-term plans for her. Nor has he found anything that relates to AJ or to Melanie Arrow – which is surprising, given that, as head of the unit, she would have represented power and authority in Isaac’s eyes. She’s an attractive woman in a position of power – even someone as sick as Handel would have noticed that.

  Caffery isn’t sure whether he should be concerned by this absence or if it’s just a distraction. A case of projecting his own thoughts into someone else. He scribbles a note on the edge of his writing block. Pushes it to one side and continues his study of the other dolls.

  Two have been set aside for particular scrutiny. These are the only dolls apart from the parents that have their eyes stitched closed. Maybe they represent other people Isaac has targeted. The two dolls are female. Although they appear to be dead, they are not twisted and tortured and stabbed the way Graham and Louise’s poppets are. Instead these two are cushioned on dirty pink satin, their hands folded over their chests. One is depicted as overweight, dressed in a garish red T-shirt and red socks. The other is dressed simply in crude pyjamas of blue ticking. Her hair is fashioned from strips of silk and it is the colour of soft cheese. Her body is nothing more than a wire frame draped in felt. She looks like a skin-covered skeleton.

  On Caffery’s phone is an ante-mortem photograph of Pauline Scott. He looks at the poppet. He looks at the photo. He stares at the poppet again.

  And then he picks up the phone.

  Red T-Shirt

  AJ IS IN his office, trawling the Internet for articles on MHRT tribunals and post-care plans, wondering how the hell Isaac Handel could have disappeared with all the so-called ‘safeguards’ in place. The phone rings. It’s DI Caffery. AJ gets up and closes the door to the office.

  ‘Yeah – hi,’ he says. ‘I was about to
call you. How’s it going?’

  ‘Sort of OK, sort of not. Tell me – did you look through any of this stuff you brought me?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You weren’t curious?’

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat. Not having a sense of curiosity is the chief reason I’ve survived in this job.’

  At the other end of the line Caffery gives a small ironic laugh. ‘Strange, because curiosity is the reason I’ve survived in my job.’

  AJ clears his throat. He goes to the window and looks out at the grounds. It’s a squally day; from here he can see the windows of Myrtle Ward. Above it a little electric light comes in slices through the lowered blinds in Melanie’s office. He drops his blind. Turns away from the window.

  ‘Is there news?’

  ‘Yes, it’s good news. You’ve convinced me. I’m opening an investigation.’

  AJ bites his lip. Thinks about the light glowing in Melanie’s office window behind him. ‘Does that mean you’ve got to come out to the unit?’

  ‘It does. You know we’re taking this seriously, so maybe you can clear things your end.’

  AJ scrunches up his face. What promise did he make himself yesterday? And has he kept it? No.

  ‘Can you give me a day or so? Is it urgent?’

  There’s a tiny pause – a reticence from Caffery. ‘A day or so?’

  ‘Yes, it’ll give me time to open all the – uh – channels.’

  ‘I’d prefer it sooner. I’d like to be there this afternoon or first thing in the morning at the latest. We have to motor on this – we don’t know where Handel is.’

  ‘OK. OK, I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Please do.’ AJ hears Caffery shuffling papers at the other end of the line. ‘And something else, while I’ve got you, just so I can get some questions sorted – red T-shirt and red socks? Mean anything to you?’

  AJ takes a deep breath. His heart hammers in his chest. ‘Red socks, red T-shirt? Meaning?’

  ‘The dolls – they look random, but they’re not. Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘No – I mean, I didn’t examine them.’

  ‘Each one symbolizes someone in Isaac’s life. Probably most are people from the unit, since those are the only people he’s had contact with the last eleven years. One of the dolls is dressed in a red T-shirt and socks, that’s why I’m asking.’

  AJ’s heart sinks. He wishes everything that has happened was just his imagination. ‘Zelda,’ he says. ‘The red socks, the red T-shirt? We had to fight her all the time about the socks – the staff hated washing them because they turned everything pink …’ He trails off, his throat dry. ‘Mr Caffery, do any of them look like anyone else in the unit?’

  ‘Like you? No.’

  ‘Ummm – how about our clinical director. Remember? Blonde?’

  ‘Maybe you should look at them when I come to the unit. There’s one I think is Moses Jackson.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘And a very thin girl in pyjamas …’

  ‘Long hair? Blonde?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pauline,’ he murmurs. ‘She was wearing pyjamas when she …’

  He stops speaking. Framed in the glass panel of his door is Melanie. She is smiling and waving through the window. He gives her a weak smile, holds up a finger. Won’t be a second, he mouths. He turns away from the window and speaks in a rapid voice.

  ‘I’m going to do what I can to sort things. I’ll let you know as soon as I have.’

  ‘OK. I really want to move on this so—’

  ‘I’m going to hang up now – it’s not a good time to talk.’

  ‘Fair enough. Let me know as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Will do.’ He presses his thumb on the red button. Takes a moment to calm himself. Turns and smiles at Melanie. Beckons. ‘Come in.’

  She comes in. ‘Sorry – I didn’t mean to interrupt.’

  ‘That’s OK, it was nothing.’ She doesn’t ask him to explain, but he finds himself doing so anyway. ‘It was a sales call – I don’t know who sells our damned numbers on. An urgent message about my payment-protection policy, apparently. Can I make you a coffee? It’s not the best coffee, down here in the bowels of the unit, but I’ll do my best.’

  ‘That’s OK – I just had one.’

  AJ gives a nervous cough. He’s lied. He’s lied again. ‘Did you … I mean, was there something you wanted to—?’

  Before he can finish the sentence the phone rings again in his hand. His heart sinks. Melanie looks at it. There’s an awful awkward moment while his heart races, trying to think what he’ll say if it’s Caffery again.

  ‘Go ahead,’ she smiles. ‘I can wait.’

  ‘Yes, I mean, I …’ Resignedly he turns the phone over. Sees to his immense relief the name ‘Patience’ flashing on and off on the screen. He gives Melanie a pained expression. Holds it up so she can read it.

  ‘I’m going to have to …’ he says.

  She nods. Blows a kiss, turns for the door and leaves. He stands at the door and watches through the window, waiting for her to disappear round the turn in the corridor before he answers the phone.

  ‘Now, AJ,’ says Patience. ‘Don’t get upset about this …’

  ‘That’s exactly the way to break news to someone, Patience.’ He turns from the door. ‘Something, I dunno, so soothing about it. What is it? You been gambling with our council-tax money again?’

  ‘No – it’s Stewart.’

  ‘Oh.’ All AJ’s bravado drains away. He sits down at the desk. ‘Is he …?’

  ‘He’s OK. He’s right here with me, AJ. Fast asleep. But he hasn’t been all right. I’ve been at the vet with him and he’s had his stomach pumped and blood taken off of him, and—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know – it’s cost a fortune. But I didn’t have my phone with me at the vet, so I couldn’t check with you, and this vet lady’s yelling at me how I’ve got to make up my mind, just like that, or Stewart’s liver’s going to stop working and his kidneys and …’ She takes a few gulping breaths. ‘AJ, I thought we’d lost him.’

  AJ can’t make sense of this. A few hours ago Stewart was running through the fields with him, his tail wagging like a mad thing. ‘What the hell happened – what’s wrong with him?’

  There’s a long silence at the end of the phone. He can pretty much hear Patience weighing her words, testing each one before she gives them voice. When she does speak, it’s with the heaviness she employs whenever she wants AJ to read between the lines.

  ‘The vet says Stewart got poisoned somehow. It’s nothing I’ve given him.’

  ‘Poisoned?’ It’s as if something cold and scaly has dragged itself down AJ’s spine. All he can see in his mind’s eye is the walk in the woods this morning. ‘Poisoned how?’

  ‘The vet doesn’t know. She’s on about how it could have been lots of things, nothing obvious came out when they pumped him. But he’s eaten something – a toadstool maybe. You know Stewart’s not all that discriminating when it comes to eating.’

  ‘It’s OK, Patience, you did the right thing, don’t get upset about it. I might be late home tonight, but don’t worry about the money, OK? We’re going to be fine.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ she says drily. ‘I truly hope you’re right.’ ‘I am.’ He looks out of the window as he says it – at the lights on in Myrtle – and Melanie’s office window. He’s got to build up his nerve to tell her about Caffery. Somehow it has to be done. ‘I am right. Give Stewie a hug for me.’

  The Duck

  IF IT LOOKS like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then chances are it is … a duck.

  One of Caffery’s drill sergeants at police training college in Hendon was fond of this phrase; he’d bark it at the recruits during scenario training. It must have sunk in deep, because it comes back at Caffery now, as he sits in his office, staring at the piles of paper from the Upton Farm investigation.

  He’s brought in H
andel’s poppets. The superintendent has authorized an interim forensics budget and the CSM is coming up to Caffery’s office to bag and organize the dolls.

  Caffery looks at the doll in the blue ticking pyjamas and the one with the red T-shirt. Both laid to rest peacefully, on a cushion of satin, not twisted and hacked into. Yet their eyes are stitched closed. The same way Isaac stitched closed the eyes on the dolls of his parents.

  Zelda and Pauline …

  If it looks, swims and quacks like a duck …

  By late afternoon there will be a full team assembled. Someone is talking to Serious Crime about initiating a manhunt for Handel. The report on Pauline Scott’s disappearance and postmortem have already been circulated around the team. People talk about the cogs of bureaucracy moving slowly, but Avon and Somerset seems to have its wheels especially well oiled just now. All he’s waiting for is AJ to call him with the go-ahead to visit the unit.

  That is the big problem. It’s mostly Caffery being decent – out of some unexpected and inexplicable loyalty to the guy. The courtesy, however, can only be extended so far. Once the team is assembled, he’s going to have to pull the plug on AJ and go into Beechway, regardless.

  Time for a coffee. He inspects his chipped old cup – empty. He picks it up and stands, pausing briefly to look at the area map on his wall. It’s an unprofessional map because there are places he should have put pins and hasn’t – like the quarry at Elf’s Grotto, the road near Farleigh Park Hall. Nevertheless, it’s an aid to him. Sometimes a thought provoker when he needs the inspiration.

  He looks at it for a bit longer. Then, not sure what he’s looking for, he clicks on the kettle. While he’s waiting for it to boil, he looks out of the window at a fog bank lifting above the high rises. What are you up to, Handel, he thinks. What is going on in your screwed-up brain?