by Mo Hayder
'So if there's no redemption what's left to us? Revenge? Revenge and then death?' He put the cigarette into his mouth and lit it. He met the Walking Man's eyes. His face, he thought, wasn't very lined. So why did he always seem so old? 'I asked you before and you didn't answer. What did you mean when you said I was looking for death?'
The Walking Man snapped a pick from his Swiss Army knife and began to clean his teeth carefully. 'You have two children in your life, Jack Caffery, the one that is dead and the one that doesn't yet exist. The child that could be.'
'Yeah,' Caffery laughed. 'What crap.'
'You had a woman in London, you told me, who wanted a child but you walked away. So you have to ask yourself, is that the last chance you had?'
Caffery sighed. He rubbed his sore ankle, bruised by Flea and her ASP, and looked out at the valley, to a line of poplars on the horizon. He had a sudden picture in his head of a woman. She had fair hair and was wearing jeans, but he couldn't see her face. She had her back to him and was gazing into a pool of water, hardly moving. He wanted to make her turn round. He wanted to know if she was Flea. But whatever he did she wouldn't move.
'No,' he said. 'There won't be any children.' He took a long drag on his cigarette. 'You?'
The Walking Man chuckled. 'Look at me. I could father a child but could you imagine anyone mothering it? It's different for you. Maybe you still have a chance.' He found something on the toothpick and wiped it on the grass. Then he buried the pick in his mouth again. 'When I said you're looking for death I meant that you've chosen to follow the child that's gone. Every step you take in your job, every move, is you making gifts to him — to Ewan. Every case you solve is just something else to lay at his altar. And so you have chosen death. On this course it will not be a painful thing, your death.'
'What does that mean?'
The Walking Man didn't take his eyes off him. His voice was very quiet when he spoke, but every consonant and vowel came lightly through the clean air. 'It means…' he whispered. His eyes reflected the firelight. For a moment he looked all things at once: he looked monstrous, he looked sad. He looked old and he looked wise. 'It means that it's not too late. It's not too late for you. You can change your mind. You can still care about a different child. You,' his eyes locked on Caffery's — inescapable, an inescapable truth, 'you, Jack Caffery Policeman, can still care. You can care about the child that might be.'
57
It was dark when she got home, and the clouds moving across the moon were sending predatory shadows to patrol up and down the hill, slipping across it like wraiths. Exhausted and hungry, Flea parked her car with its back to the valley so she didn't have to look at them. Her PPE body armour and the jeans she'd been wearing had been taken by the CSI team: they'd loaned her a police sweatshirt and combats and there wasn't much left in her car except a set of overalls. She shoved them into the holdall and was getting out of the car when she noticed a wavering square of artificial light on the gravel.
She stopped what she was doing and turned to look at the towering face of the Oscars' house just in time to see a light go out, leaving the windows blank, reflecting the gathering night. Dark now, but she thought she saw the movement of a curtain at one. Just a faint shifting of form and colour. Earlier, when the team had been bringing Tig out of the flat, strapped into emergency restraint belts — in spite of Caffery he was alive — she'd noticed one member of the unit standing on the scrappy little piece of grass outside the flat, staring up at the windows in the tower blocks. When she'd asked what he was looking at he'd shrugged, given a little shudder and said something like, 'I dunno. I feel like I'm being watched. It's the windows.'
At the time, her first thought had been of the boarded-up window outside the bathroom — the way the corrugated iron had been torn up just enough to allow someone small to crawl through. Stupid to think it, because everyone who'd been in the flat was in custody now, but it came back to her, that window, and the words: I feel like I'm being watched.
Another movement of light from the Oscars' — someone stepping back from the window, maybe. She had an impulse to walk round to their front door and hammer on it — demand to see Katherine, demand to know when she was going to stop spying. But she didn't. Instead she took a few calming breaths and, with all the control she could muster, raised her hand, acknowledging them, letting them know she knew and that it wasn't going to get to her. Then, she calmly pulled the holdall out and closed the door.
The electronic key fob must have broken; it wouldn't open the boot, so instead of slinging her kit in there overnight, she let herself into the house and dropped it inside the front door. As she straightened she saw a light on in the kitchen at the end of the corridor. There was a smell too, of cooking, of ginger and citrus and molasses. She knew who it was — there was only one person who knew where the spare key was kept, wedged in the branches of the wisteria. Kaiser.
She should ignore him, go upstairs, get warm, get washed. Instead, pulling the police sweatshirt down over her cold hands, she came down to the kitchen. Kaiser was standing at the table, using his fingers to lever muffins in paper cases into a tin.
'Hello,' he said, not looking up at her. 'I've left the molasses tin out on the side to remind you to get some more.'
'Why are you here?'
'Oh,' he said lightly. 'Because you want to talk to me. There are things you still haven't talked about.'
She sighed and sat down at the table, next to the window, her hands tucked in her armpits. She watched him work. He was so familiar to her, so familiar and yet so unfamiliar. He was still wearing the stained white shirt from earlier, and although he kept his enormous African goat face turned from her, she could tell he'd been crying. She noticed Dad's safe from the study was on the table next to the tin. Kaiser must have taken it off the shelf and put it there. She reached over and touched it.
'Kaiser?' she said. 'It's got something to do with Nigeria, hasn't it? Whatever's in here is something to do with the experiments.'
Kaiser stopped what he was doing and looked across at her. 'It was my project, Phoebe. David was simply an observer. Don't blame him too much. He saw nothing in what we did to be ashamed of, but when I was thrown out of the university he knew he had to hide his involvement. I am sorry we didn't tell you, but it was long before you were born and we never thought you needed to know.' He put the last of the muffins away and leaned on the lid to close the tin. 'The safe contains his notes. I don't know the combination, but now he can't speak for himself I think he deserves his privacy, don't you?'
He turned, took the baking tray to the sink and ran the tap. She took her hands out from her armpits and rubbed her tired eyes, looking out of the window to where the moon hung low in the sky beyond Bath, the clouds cruising past it lit grey and yellow like bruises. The nightmare that had started with the hand in the harbour was over. She could put it to bed, everything that had happened: Jack Caffery on the bathroom floor with a light in his eyes that shouldn't be in any police officer's eyes, and Jonah, his neck leaking, his dead eyes on hers as she tried in vain to start his blood-parched heart. Tig was in custody and it was over, the whole thing was over. She should feel a weight lifting. But she didn't. Instead she felt heavier.
'Kaiser,' she murmured, not taking her eyes off the valley. 'When you say ibogaine can let you talk to the dead, do you really believe that?'
He scrubbed at the tray. 'What about you, Phoebe? Do you really believe it?'
'I saw Mum. I didn't tell you but I saw her that night. She told me two things: she said she and Dad were going to be found — soon. She said when they were found I shouldn't try to bring their bodies up. And Kaiser…' She hesitated, her voice smaller, almost inaudible. 'This is the part I can't understand, the part I haven't told you about. It's happened. Just like Mum said it would. Someone's found them, Kaiser. Someone's found them in Boesmansgat.'
There was a beat of silence while she wondered if he'd heard her, then he laid the tray down in the sink, wiped h
is hands on his trousers and took a handkerchief from his pocket. He blew his nose. 'Yes,' he said, his voice muffled. He shovelled the handkerchief back in his pocket and raised his head to look out of the window. 'Oh yes. I know.'
'You know?'
'I know. David was my only friend, Phoebe. I've waited two years for them to be found. I check every day.'
'But I don't. Not any longer. So how did I know, Kaiser? I'm sure I didn't really speak to the dead.' She paused, thinking about it, then added, more faintly, 'Or did I?'
He turned to look at her. 'Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. But you knew the bodies had been found because you went on the computer during the ibogaine trip.'
'I'm sorry?'
'You looked at the site. I came in from the kitchen and found you at the computer.'
'I got on to divenet?'
'You were crying.'
'But I…' She put her fingers on her forehead, frowning, trying to understand how she had forgotten, trying to understand how neatly the ibogaine had excavated her memory.
'I know what you're thinking — that it's impossible. But you don't give the ibogaine enough credit. And you don't give your instincts enough credit either.'
'My instincts?'
'Your need to see your parents again.'
Your need to see your parents again. The words made her bite her lip. Suddenly, unexpectedly, her throat was tight and there were tears in her eyes. 'Kaiser,' she murmured. 'Oh, Kaiser. I keep thinking we should try to bring them up. Do you think we should try?'
'Only you can answer that. You and Thom. And maybe…'
'Maybe…?'
'Maybe your parents. What did your mother say to you in the hallucination?'
'She said to not bring them up. She said whatever happened to leave them there.'
He shook his head, pulled back a chair and sat with his elbows on the table, looking at her steadily. She saw the way the skin crinkled around his eyes and was reminded that he was old. As old and as mysterious as the continent he came from. 'Then don't you think you should listen to her? Let them rest? Let David's past rest, let their bodies rest?' He paused. 'And, Phoebe, more importantly…'
'Yes?'
He smiled. He reached over to cover her hand with his. 'Don't you think you should let yourself rest too?'
She pulled her hand away and wiped the tears from her eyes. Let yourself rest. Let yourself rest. The words rolled through her head. She turned her eyes to the window. Yes, there was pain — things from her past she didn't want to face. Yes, there were things in the future that would make her cry, probably.
In the distance some lonely wayfarer on the other side of the valley, where the Warminster road ran, must have lit a fire because she saw a small light flare red inside a canopy of knotted trees. It was too far away to see exactly, but she focused on it, and slowly, slowly, something about the light, something about Kaiser's words, began to settle inside her. She closed her eyes and sat back in her chair.
'What are you thinking?' Kaiser asked. 'What's that smile for?'
She didn't answer. She shook her head and just held on to it: the image of the small flame in the distance, the sound of his words repeated over and over, the beginning of something like peace. She was smiling because she now knew he was right. She could allow it. She could allow herself to rest.
THE END
Acknowledgements
Thank you to all those at Avon and Somerset Constabulary who helped me get the procedural details to approximate reality; everyone at the Underwater Search Unit, especially Sergeant Bob Randall, whose contribution to this series cannot be underestimated. Also to DI Steven Lawrence, CID training unit; DSupt Steve Tonks; PC Kevin Pope, Road Policing Unit; Alan Andrews and the Major Crime Review Team. And to Cliff Davies of the Homicide Review Team, Metropolitan Police.
To all my friends at Transworld including, but by no means limited to: Alison Barrow, Larry Finlay, Ed Christie, Nick Robinson, Simon Taylor, Claire Ward, Danielle Weekes, Katrina Whone, and especially Selina Walker, my awe-inspiring editor.
To Jane Gregory and her team: Jemma McDonagh, Claire Morris, Terry Bland and Emma Dunford.
For their help, their friendship and their inspiration: Christian Allis, John and Aida Bastin; Linda and Laura Downing; the Fiddlers; Tracey and Eddie Gore; the Heads; Mairi Hitomi; Sue and Don Hollins; Patrick and ALF Janson- Smith; the Larkhall girls (Kate, Karen, Rebecca and Ness); Lee the woodsman; Mel and Chris Macer; Margaret OWO Murphy and E. A. Murphy; Misty Marshall Welling for lending me her name; Selina Perry; Helen Piper for being outrageously brainy; Keith Quinn; Karin Slaughter for tirelessly devoting herself to weirding me out; Sophie and Vincent Thiebault; all the Vaulkhards, but particularly Gilly for her grace and friendship; Mark Watson; and to Tracey and Jo Waite for giving me a glimpse of what true courage means.
Most of all, thank you to Lotte Genevieve Quinn, my daughter, who is beautiful and keeps my world turning even when nothing else is right.
Mo Hayder talks about her relationship with Jack Caffery
The Problem with Caffery
Pygmalion, the Cypriot sculptor, famously fell deeply, sumptuously in love with the ivory statue he'd created, while P. D. James is said to have created in Adam Dalgliesh a man with the qualities she'd like to find in any man she loved. This link between creator and created chimes with me. I am in no denial about it: Detective Inspector Jack Caffery is my poster-boy. My beau, my BF, my petit copain. In him I was writing myself a fantasy lover.
James cites sensitivity, courage and intelligence as the qualities she admires in Dalgliesh, so it may say something about me that Jack Caffery is a woman-beating alcoholic who carries his anger around like a short-fuse Semtex and is congenitally incapable of sustaining a meaningful friendship, let alone a relationship. In fairness, it isn't these qualities I was most drawn to in Jack. Instead I was intrigued by a man who illustrated the dichotomy in a world where law and order increasingly tread a hazy line, where the protector can be the aggressor, the public servant the criminal. Jack Caffery is constantly challenged to define himself as good or bad.
And yet, according to my readers, these elements in Jack's psyche pale into insignificance when compared to his, apparently, most endearing trait. There is something far more memorable, far more remarkable about him. Because Jack, apparently, is sexy.
Yes! Sexy. Hugely, wantonly, red-bloodedly sexy. I have lost count of the number of women, and gay men, who have sidled up to me with a familiar and very private glimmer in their eyes, to whisper, 'I've never dared tell anyone, but I really, really fancy Jack.' And admittedly, yes, while I like to imagine him as a little more complex than just sex on legs, I confess I have had more than the occasional reverie of what the DI might be like between the sheets.
And yet the most studly Lotharios have their limitations. Familiarity breeds contempt. You can have too much of a good thing. By the time I had finished writing The Treatment, I was bored with Jack. The romance had gone. His flaws, which I had initially found endearing, I now found irritating. It was the toothpaste-cap syndrome. At the end of 2001 Jack, with all his masculine energy, had been leaving off the toothpaste cap for too many months and I wanted him out of my life. I fired him, dumped him, excommunicated him. He was never again going to set his cloven hoof across my threshold. I had pleading letters from readers who wanted more of him, but I was adamant. No more Jack. He could slink away, flies buttoned, to fictional limbo for the rest of his life.
I was moving on: there was the more historical book Tokyo and the gothicky Pig Island, to write. And, in thinking about what was drawing me next, I started to concentrate on water. Deep, dark water. A friend scuba-diving in the Red Sea witnessed a fellow diver disappear to her death. One minute she was swimming with the group, the next, maybe affected by deep-water blackout, she'd turned face down and was heading into the depths. The diving instructor tried to catch her, following as far as he safely could but, obeying the dark and demoralizing law of diving that states that o
ne should never tackle a diver at depths, was eventually forced to abandon her to an inevitable death. Stories like the Red Sea girl abound in the sport diving world: diving is a peculiarly seductive and dangerous pastime. Each year several divers perish — from toxic gaseous overloads, burst lungs or, most excruciatingly, from simply running out of air. This, I was sure, was something I wanted to write about. When I discovered that the police underwater search unit that covers much of the West Country was stationed only ten miles down the road from my new house in Bath I knew I was on the right path.
The underwater search unit doesn't have the most pleasant duties: primarily their remit is to recover items, including bodies and murder weapons, from the bottom of rivers, lakes, canals, water tanks, but because they are trained to use breathing apparatus and wear protective clothing they have been co-opted into dealing with any chemical, nuclear or biological contaminant. In theory they would attend a terrorist attack, should it ever come to the West Country. An even more depressing spin-off is that their ease in protective clothing makes them ideal for clearing up dead bodies wherever they are found. As one of their team put it: the force goes by the sniff test. If a police officer finds a body that makes him or her wrinkle his or her nose, the dive team is called. These are the people who scoop up corpses too decomposed to identify. Corpses that have become so remote from anything human that in some cases they have liquefied and run through the floorboards into the ceiling below.
With the diving unit, I knew I'd found a professional niche for a character, a female police diver. And the location too: out in the west where one has sun, sea and the excitement of the Atlantic, the Americas as the next stop over the horizon. Police diver Sergeant Flea Marley was born. She was going to be well occupied in the west of England, as far away from Jack Caffery and his troubled corner of London as possible. Everything seemed set for the start of the Flea Marley series. Until one hot day in June when I met the Walking Man. And everything changed.
