‘Listen,’ he said carefully. He knew he had to be really cautious – the last thing he needed was a hysterical teenager upsetting this scenario. He’d called the two patrol cars that had been waiting just off the estate, out of the view of the press. They’d be rolling up any minute now, and when they did he wanted the whole family in and away before the reporters had time to wonder what the hell was going on. The head of Corporate Communications had been dragged out of a darts game in Brislington and was in hasty negotiations with some of the major newspapers. The jacker had tracked the Bradleys here from press photos of them coming and going from the house. It was a symbiotic relationship, and if the media wanted any more co-operation from the police they’d have to lay off any further coverage of the Bradleys.
‘You can’t take the dogs with you, Philippa. We can’t have animals in the safe-house. They’ll be looked after by the dog handlers. And you’re going to have to understand how serious this is. You’re going to have to understand that the man who did this to your sister is . . .’
‘Is what?’
He rubbed a finger across his forehead. He wanted to say, Is cleverer than anyone I’ve dealt with? Cleverer and twice, no, three times, as weird?
‘You can take one dog.
One
. The other’ll have to go with the handler. OK? But you have to take this seriously, Philippa. Do I have your promise that you will? For your parents’ sake. For Martha’s sake.’
She looked at him sullenly, her dyed black hair flopping down over half of her face. Her bottom lip moved almost imperceptibly, and for a moment he thought she was going to scream. Or tear
around the utility room kicking things. But she didn’t. She muttered an almost inaudible ‘S’pose.’
‘Which one?’
She looked across at the dogs. They looked back at her. The spaniel tentatively banged its tail on the floor, wondering if this human discussion was an elaborate preamble to a walk. Seeing them together like this Caffery noticed just how old and infirm the collie was compared to the spaniel.
‘Sophie.’
Hearing her name, the spaniel straightened eagerly, her tail metronoming side to side.
‘The spaniel?’
‘She’s the best guard dog,’ Philippa said defensively, taking the lead from the handler. ‘She’ll look after us best.’
The collie watched Sophie take her place next to Philippa.
‘What’re you going to do with the other one?’ Caffery asked the handler.
‘Probably ask around the force.’ He looked down at the collie, which had put its head back and was looking up at him, as if it already knew he was the new person in charge. ‘There’s usually an idiot on some unit or other soft enough to be a foster-parent for a day or two. Until the whole thing blows over.’
Caffery sighed. ‘Jesus.’ He felt in his pocket for his car keys. ‘Here.’ He chucked the keys to the handler. ‘Put it in my car.’ The collie raised its eyes to him, dropped its head on one side. He sighed. ‘Yeah, OK – don’t make a big thing of it.’
He took Philippa and Sophie into the hallway, where her parents and the FLO were waiting among the hastily packed suitcases. He stood next to the window and peered out through the crack in the curtains. He’d told the cars not to use their blues and twos. Didn’t want to stretch out the warning the reporters would get. ‘Now, you know the deal. Our press office doesn’t want you covering your faces when you go out there. The flashes will go off – just ignore them. Don’t be baited. Just go about this business as quickly and calmly as you can. Pretend it’s a fire drill. No panicking but just get everything moved along, OK?’
The family nodded. Caffery checked out of the window, looking along the silent estate. Still no cars. He was about to reach into his pocket for the phone when the door to the kitchen opened and one of the CSI officers who had turned up to forensicate the back garden, the basket and the pie dish appeared in the hallway.
‘What?’ Caffery turned from the window. ‘What is it?’
The man, who seemed barely out of his teens and still had pimples on his chin, gave Rose Bradley an uncomfortable look. ‘Mrs Bradley?’
Rose backed to the wall, her hands tucked tightly under her armpits.
‘What is it?’ Caffery said.
‘I’m sorry, sir. It’s the tooth you wanted to have tested.’
‘You don’t need it.’ Tears welled in Rose’s sore eyes. ‘You don’t need it.’
‘We do need it, Rose,’ the FLO said gently. ‘Really. We do.’
‘You don’t. You can take my word for it. It’s hers. The first tooth she lost and she never wanted to let go of it. We had it put into a locket for her. I promise – I’d know it anywhere.’
Outside, the cars were sweeping into the driveway. Caffery sighed. Great timing.
‘Rose, please, give the gentleman the tooth.’ He glanced out of the window. No time to head them off now. They’d have to start the whole exercise again. ‘We can’t help Martha unless you give it to him.’
‘
No!
I won’t. You have my word for it, it’s her tooth.’ The tears plopped out of her eyes. She lowered her chin and tried to wipe them on the shoulders of her blouse. ‘It is her tooth. I promise it is.’
‘We don’t know that. It could be anyone’s. It could be a hoax – it could be anything.’
‘If you think it’s a hoax, why are you moving us out? You believe me. So why do I have to give it up?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ he hissed impatiently. The whole exercise was falling apart at the seams. ‘I have to tell your daughter to grow up and now I’m telling the mother to do the same.’
‘That’s not necessary,’ said the FLO.
‘Christ.’ Caffery ran his hands through his hair. Outside, the cars had stopped. Their engines were running. ‘Just –
please
, Rose. Please give the nice man the tooth.’
‘Mum.’ Philippa stepped up behind her mother, put her hands on her shoulders and held Caffery’s eyes. There was no respect, just a look that said she and her mother were in this together and no one,
no one
, could understand what this whole thing meant. ‘Mum, do what he says. I don’t think he’s going to give up.’
Rose was silent. Then she pushed her face into her elder daughter’s neck. The sobs shook her body noiselessly. After a moment or two her right hand came out from her armpit and slowly unclenched. She held out the tooth on her open palm. With a quick glance at Caffery, the CSI man stepped forward and carefully took it from her.
‘Good,’ Caffery said, feeling a line of sweat break just under his hairline and trail slowly down into the back of his collar. He hadn’t realized until now how tense he was. ‘Now can we all get going?’
At six o’clock that afternoon the inspector came into the office, put a hand on Flea’s desk and leaned over so that he was staring hard into her face.
She ducked out of his way. ‘What? What is it?’
‘Nothing. Just the superintendent likes you, apparently. I’ve had Professional Standards on the phone.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. That review of your competency pay? It’s been suspended.’
‘You mean they’ll get their bonus?’
‘Happy Christmas. Ching ching ching.’
When he’d gone she sat for a while in silence in her familiar office, surrounded by the things she’d got easy with over the years. The photos of the team on jobs pinned to the walls, the budget forecasts scribbled on the whiteboard. The stupid postcards stuck to the locker doors. One showed a man in snorkel and fins and read:
Steve had got all his diving gear, now all he needed was to find those elusive muffs his friends kept telling him about
. And a force poster on the wall about an anti-drugs operation:
Atrium: since 2001 we’ve arrested one person a day. Help us make that two
. One of the team had used a marker pen to delete ‘
a day
’. Flea would catch serious hell from the superintendents if they saw any of this, but she’d let the boys leave it all up. She liked their sense of humour. Liked the easy way they were around each other. They were going to get their money.
They could buy their Xboxes and their kids’ Wiis and their alloy wheels and all the guy things that would make it a real Christmas for them.
The front door opened, wafting in a blast of cold air and petrol fumes from outside. Someone came down the corridor. Wellard, carrying a bag and heading for the decontamination room. She stopped him in the doorway. ‘Hey.’
He put his head into the office. ‘What?’
‘You’re going to get your pay. The inspector just told me.’
He inclined his head. A small, chivalrous bow. ‘Well, thank you, kind lady. My poor disabled children will smile this Christmas for the first time in their sad, short lives. Oh, they will be content, kind miss. They will. It will be the best Christmas ever.’
‘Make sure the one with the polio gets the iPod Touch.’
‘You’re not as nasty as you like to pretend, Boss. No, really, you’re not.’
‘Wellard?’
He paused, door half open. ‘Uh-huh?’
‘Seriously. This morning.’
‘This morning?’
‘You saw the cast the CSI made. You didn’t recognize what the jacker used to score out his prints?’
‘No. Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ She felt something cold and half opaque patter across the back of her head. A shadowy picture of the forests they’d searched. The farmland stretching away to either side. During the search this morning there had been whispers about the things the jacker had said in the letter. No one outside MCIU was supposed to know but things got around the other units, and this morning all the officers had worked with their heads full of vague, unsettling notions about what the jacker might have done with Martha. ‘Just a . . . feeling about that place. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.’
‘A hunch?’
She gave him a cold look. ‘I’m learning to trust my “hunches”,
Wellard. Learning I’m not as blonde as you think. And I feel like there’s something in the . . .’ she groped for the word ‘. . . the
environment
out there that was important. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘You know me, Sarge, I’m a grunt. It’s my stunning body I use to turn a dime. Not my loaf.’ He winked and left the office, his footsteps fading down the corridor. She smiled bleakly and listened to him go. Outside, rain had begun to fall, so slow, fat and nebulous it could almost have been snow. Winter really was here.
At six fifteen a dark Audi S6 screamed through the small streets of Mere, gunning itself around the bends. Janice Costello was racing to get home before her husband, her hands gripping the wheel, sweat making her palms slick. The radio was on – a media psychiatrist giving his opinion on the carjacker who had kidnapped a little girl in Frome the other day: it was probably a white male in his thirties. Could be a husband, could even be a father. Janice shakily turned the radio off. Why hadn’t she thought about that bastard before she’d left Emily on her own in the car? Frome wasn’t that far from here. She was so, so lucky nothing had happened. She was losing her mind, taking a risk like that. Losing it.
Clare. It was all
her
fault. Clare, Clare,
Clare
. The name bothered Janice more than almost anything. If it had been
Mylene
or
Kylie
or
Kirsty
, any one of those young-girl names, she’d have found it easier. She could have pictured a big-breasted teenager with straightened blonde hair and ‘BENCH’ written on her bottom. But
Clare
? Clare sounded like someone Janice might have gone to school with. And the pale woman at the clinic wasn’t sexy or brash or inexperienced. She looked like someone you could have a proper conversation with. She
looked
like a Clare.
It wasn’t the first time Cory’d had an affair. That had happened six years ago. With a ‘beauty therapist’ whom Janice had never met but pictured as someone with a year-round suntan, expensive underwear and maybe a Brazilian bikini wax. When Janice had
found out about it, the Costellos had gone into therapy together: Cory was so repentant, so mortified at the mistake he’d made, that for a while she almost forgave him. And then something else had entered the mix, something that changed her mind and convinced her to give him a second chance. She’d found she was pregnant.
Emily arrived in a rush in the winter and Janice was poleaxed with such unexpected love for her little girl that for years it didn’t matter what was happening in the marriage. Cory was in therapy and had a new job in Bristol as a ‘marketing consultant on sustainable product development’ to a printing company. It made her laugh, that title, with the earnest way he disregarded his own carbon footprint. Still, he was earning enough money for Janice to stop work and take small freelance editing jobs, which paid a pittance but kept her skills sharp. For a while life had moved along serenely. Until now. Until Clare. And now everything had narrowed down to this obsession – nights lying awake, staring at the ceiling while Cory snored next to her. The secretive phone monitoring, the checking of pockets at the dry-cleaner’s, the questioning. All leading to tonight – the darkened rush across town with poor Emily tucked up in the back of the car.
She lunged the Audi sideways, down the residential street. Screeched to a halt in the driveway of their Victorian semi. No Cory. When she turned round she saw that Emily, bless her – instead of sitting white-faced, terrified by the race home – really had fallen asleep, Jasper tucked between her chin and her shoulder like one of those neck pillows clutched by people trailing around in airports.
‘Come on, sweetheart,’ Janice whispered. ‘Mummy’s going to take you up to bed.’
She was able to bundle Emily out of the car and into her bunkbed without waking her. She rubbed toothpaste on a finger hurriedly round Emily’s sleepy mouth – it would have to do for now – kissed the little girl on the forehead, tore off her own coat and shoes and threw them into the wardrobe. She was in the kitchen emptying the last of the milk into the sink when Cory’s car pulled up outside. Quickly she rinsed the carton and carried it out to the front to put in the recycling bin.
Cory met her at the door, keys in his hand, suspicion on his face. ‘Hello.’ He looked her up and down, noting the outdoor shoes.