Gone (35 page)

He jerked in the direction of her voice, his hands flying up defensively. He took a step back and peered at the barge as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard.

‘
Here
. In the boat.’ She pushed her fingers through the hole and wiggled them. ‘Here.’

‘Shit.
Flea
?’

‘Here!’

‘Christ.’ He waded towards her, his boots and trousers getting soaked in the muck. ‘Jesus, Jesus.’ He stopped a foot away, blinking stupidly at her. ‘Jesus, look at you.’

‘Oh, fuck.’ She gave a shiver. A body-length shiver like a dog coming out of water. ‘I really thought I was stuck here. I thought you hadn’t got my message.’

‘Message? I didn’t. I lost my phone. I saw your car in the village and put it together with the way you . . .’ He shook his head. ‘
Christ
, Flea. Everyone’s shitting bricks over what’s happened to you. Inspector Caffery – everyone. And . . .’ He looked up and down the barge as if he still couldn’t quite believe she’d been stupid enough to get down here. ‘What the hell are you doing in there? How the fuck did you get
in
?’

‘From the stern. The barge goes back under the rockfall. I came through the tunnel on the other side. I can’t get out.’

‘Through the
tunnel
? Then, how come . . .’ Something seemed
to occur to him. He turned slowly and looked back at the air shaft. ‘You didn’t drop that rope down the shaft?’

‘Paul, listen,’ she hissed. ‘
This is it
. This is where he brought her. He carried her across the fields. That’s
his
climbing kit, not mine.’

Prody pressed his back up to the barge as if he expected the jacker to come up behind him. He took a deep breath and let it out with a loud
hoah
. ‘Right. OK. Fair enough.’ He fumbled in the little traveller’s bumbag and pulled out a pen torch. ‘
OK
.’ He clicked it on and held it out in front of him as if it was a weapon. His breathing was fast.

‘It’s OK. He’s not here now.’

Prody swept the light around the darkest corners. ‘You sure? You haven’t heard anything?’

‘I’m sure. But look – over there in the water. The shoe. See it?’

Prody turned the torch on to it. He was silent for a long time, just the sound of his breathing coming through the hole. Then he pushed himself away and waded back through the water, stopping next to the shoe. He bent to study it. She couldn’t see his face but he was still for a long time. Then he straightened abruptly. Stayed for a moment, angled a little bit back at the waist, a fist planted on his chest as if he had indigestion.

‘
What?
’ she whispered. ‘What is it?’

He pulled a phone out of his pocket and jabbed the keyboard with his thumb. His face was ashen in the pale-blue glow of its screen. He shook the phone. Tilted it. Held it in the air. Waded to a point directly under the shaft and held the mobile aloft, squinting at the screen, hitting the call button with his thumb over and over. After a few minutes he gave up. He put the phone in his pocket and came back to the barge. ‘What network are you?’

‘Orange. You?’

‘Shit. Orange too. Pay-as-you-go at the moment.’ He took a step back, looked up and down the length of the barge. ‘We need to get you out of here.’

‘Hatch on the deck. I’ve tried, can’t budge it. Paul? What’s with the shoe?’

He put both hands on the gunwales and levered himself up, supporting himself on trembling arms, his body dangling against the hull. After a moment or two he let himself slither back into the water.

‘What’s with the shoe, Paul?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I’m not stupid.’

‘Let’s concentrate on getting you out. You’re not coming through the hatch. There’s a sodding great windlass on top of the deck.’

He walked along the side of the barge, his hand on the hull, stopping at places to examine it. She heard him hammer on it further down near the rockfall. When he came back there was a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. He was wet and muddy and, suddenly, looked terrible.

‘Listen.’ He didn’t meet her eyes. ‘Here’s what we do.’ He bit his lip and peered at the shaft. ‘I’m going to climb back up, get a signal.’

‘Was there one in the shaft?’

‘I . . . Yes. I mean, I think so.’

‘You don’t know for sure?’

‘I didn’t check,’ he admitted. ‘If there’s not one in the shaft there will be at the top.’

‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Course there will.’

‘Hey.’ He bent at the waist so his face was level with the hole and he could hold her eyes. ‘You can trust me on this. I’m not going to leave you alone. He won’t be back – he
knows
we’ve been searching the tunnel and he’d be crazy to come here. I’m only going to be at the top.’

‘What if you have to leave the entrance to get a signal?’

‘Then it won’t be far.’ He paused. Stared at her. ‘You look pale.’

‘Yeah.’ She hunched her shoulders and gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘I’m . . . you know. It’s fucking freezing. That’s all.’

‘Here.’ He rummaged in the bumbag. Pulled out a squashed sandwich in cellophane and a half-f bottle of Evian. ‘My lunch. Sorry – bit manky.’

She pushed her hand through the hole and took the sandwich. The bottle of water. Tucked them in the rucksack hanging under the deck. ‘No whisky in there, I s’pose?’

‘Just eat it.’

He was halfway across the canal when something stopped him. He looked back to her. There was a pause. Then, without a word, he waded back and put his hand through the hole. She looked at it for a moment – his warm white fingers against the blackened inside of the hull – then lifted her own hand and rested it in his. Neither said anything. Then Prody pulled his hand away and waded back to the chain. He paused for a moment, to scan the tunnel one last time – the nameless bumps and mounds in the water – then hauled the rope away from the wall and began to climb.

Janice Costello had a sister who lived out near Chippenham and Caffery headed over there in the afternoon. The village was sleepy, with hanging baskets outside the cottages, a pub, a post office and a plaque that read:
Best Kept Wiltshire Village 2004
. When he got to the house – a stone-built cottage, with a thatched roof and mullioned windows – it was Nick who appeared in the low doorway. She was wearing a soft mauve dress, her highheeled boots replaced with turquoise Chinese slippers she must have borrowed. She kept putting her fingers to her lips to get him to keep his voice down. Janice’s mum and sister were upstairs in the bedroom and Cory had taken off, no one was quite sure where.

‘And Janice?’

Nick made a face. ‘You’d better come to the back.’ She took him through the low-ceilinged cottage, past an inviting fire dancing in the grate, two Labradors asleep in front of it, and out into the cold of the back terrace. Here the back lawns sloped away to where a low hedge met the great oolite plain at the south of the Cotswolds, its furrowed fields lay frosty, the skies lead grey.

‘She hasn’t spoken to anyone since she left the hospital.’ Nick pointed to a figure sitting on a bench at the bottom of a small rose garden, her back to the cottage, a duvet wrapped around her shoulders. Her dark hair had been pushed back off her face. She was staring out across the fields to where the autumn trees touched the sky. ‘Not even her mother.’

Caffery buttoned up his coat, shoved his hands into his pockets and made his way down the narrow, yew-lined path to the lawn at the end. When he came and stood in front of Janice she raised her eyes to his and gazed at him, trembling. Her skin was naked of makeup, her nose and chin red. Her hands clutching the duvet at her neck were grey with cold. Emily’s toy rabbit was on her lap.

‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it? Have you found her? Please say it, whatever it is – just
say
it.’

‘We don’t know anything – we still don’t know anything. I’m sorry.’

‘Jesus.’ She sank back on the bench, her hand on her forehead. ‘Jesus, Jesus. I can’t bear this. I just can’t bear it.’

‘The moment we hear something you’ll be the first to know.’

‘Bad or good? Do you promise me I’ll be the first, bad or good?’

‘Bad or good. I promise. Can I sit down? I need to talk to you. We can get Nick to sit in if you’d rather.’

‘Why? She can’t change anything, can she? No one can change it. Can they?’

‘Not really.’

He sat on the bench next to her, legs pushed out and crossed at the ankles, arms folded. His shoulders he kept hunched against the cold. On the ground at Janice’s feet was an untouched mug of tea and a hardback copy of
À la recherche du temps perdu
in a library’s plastic dust jacket. ‘Isn’t that the difficult one?’ he said after a while. ‘Proust?’

‘My sister found it. It was in some Sunday paper’s top-ten list of things to read in a crisis. It’s either that or Kahlil Gibran.’

‘And I bet you can’t read a word of either of them.’

She bent her face and touched the end of her nose. Stayed like that for what seemed almost a minute, concentrating. ‘Of course I can’t.’ She took her hand away and shook it, as if it was polluted. ‘I’m sort of waiting for the screaming in my head to stop first.’

‘The medical staff are going crazy. You shouldn’t have
discharged yourself like that. You look OK, though. Better than I expected.’

‘No, I don’t. That’s a lie.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve got to apologize, Janice. You’ve been let down.’

‘Yes, I have. I’ve let me down. Emily’s been let down.’

‘On the force’s behalf I apologize for Mr Prody. He should have done better than he did. And he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. His behaviour was entirely inappropriate.’

‘No.’ She gave a pained, ironic smile. ‘There was nothing inappropriate about Paul’s behaviour. What is inappropriate is the way you’ve handled this. And that my husband is having an affair with Paul’s wife. That’s what’s
inappropriate
. Really totally bloody inappropriate.’

‘I beg your—’

‘Yes.’ She gave a sudden hard laugh. ‘Oh – didn’t you know? My wonderful husband is fucking Clare Prody.’

Caffery turned away, looked at the sky. He wanted to swear. ‘That’s . . .’ he cleared his throat ‘. . .
difficult
. For all of us – that’s difficult.’

‘Difficult for you? Try the fact that my daughter is missing. Try the fact that since she went my husband hasn’t even fucking spoken to me. That,’ she held a finger out at him, tears in her eyes, ‘is what’s fucking difficult. That my husband hasn’t spoken to me. Or even said Emily’s name. He’s forgotten how to say her
name
.’ She dropped her hand and sat for a minute looking at her lap. Then she lifted the rabbit and pressed it against her forehead. Tight. As if the pressure would stop her crying.

The hospital registrar had said it was odd her mouth and throat were free of the blisters they’d have expected from gas. They still hadn’t worked out what substance Moon had used to subdue them. Rags soaked in turpentine had been left in some of the rooms. They were what had been filling the flat with fumes, not chloroform. But turps hadn’t knocked everyone out.

‘I’m sorry.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Sorry – I don’t mean to . . . It’s not your fault.’ She put the rabbit to her nose, breathed in the
smell. Then she opened the neck of her sweater and pushed it inside, as if it was a living creature that needed body warmth. She kept her hand in her sweater and worked the toy around, until it was sitting in her armpit. Caffery let his eyes travel across the garden. Coppery leaves had been swept into a pile in the corner where the low picket fence met the farmland. A spider’s web shivered lightly in the slight breeze that came up, smelling of manure from the fields. Caffery watched the web, trying to picture the way it would be frosted and dewed in the morning. He thought of the skull in the sheet. Of the fuzzy yellow-brown matter staining the cloth.

‘Janice, I’ve tried speaking to Cory. He’s not taking my calls either. Someone needs to answer some questions. Will you do it for me?’

Janice sighed. She pulled her hair back and looped it in a knot at the nape of her neck, then ran her hands down her face, smoothing the skin. ‘Go on.’

‘Your house has never been broken into, Janice?’ He pulled his pocket book out of his jacket, clicked a biro on his knee and wrote the date and time there. The book was only a prop. He wouldn’t fill it in now – only later. Having it there just helped him focus. ‘In your house? No burglaries?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said, you’ve never had any burglaries in your house, have you?’

‘No.’ She stared at the pocket book. ‘Why?’

‘You’ve got an alarm system, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it was on when you left that day to go to your mother’s?’

‘It’s always on. Why?’

Her eyes were still on the book. Suddenly he understood why, and immediately felt like a prize dick. The book made him seem inexperienced, like a probationer. He closed it and put it back in his pocket. ‘Your sister says you had some work done on the house, that you didn’t have the alarm system until then.’

‘That was months ago.’

‘You stayed here with your sister for a lot of the time, didn’t you, when the house was being worked on? Left the place empty?’

‘Yes.’ Janice’s eyes were still on the pocket where the book had gone. ‘But what’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Detective Prody showed you a picture of Ted Moon, didn’t he?’

‘I didn’t recognize him. Neither did Cory.’

‘You’re sure he wasn’t one of the people who came in? Worked on the house?’

‘I didn’t see all of them. There’d be people in and out – subcontractors, that sort of thing. We sacked one lot of builders, brought in another. I lost track of all the faces – all the cups of tea I made. But I’m sure – almost sure – I never saw him.’

‘I’d like, if possible, when Cory turns up, to get the details of all those workmen. The names of the builders you sacked. I’d like to be speaking to them as soon as possible. Have you got it all in a file at home? All the details? Or can you remember them?’

She sat for a few moments with her mouth half open, staring at Caffery. Then she let the air out of her lungs, dropped her head and rapped her forehead with her knuckles. One-two-three. Onetwo-three. One-two-three. Hard: making the skin redden. As if she wanted to knock some thoughts out of her head. If it had gone on any longer he’d have grabbed her hand. But the rapping stopped as abruptly as it had started. She composed herself – eyes closed now, hands folded primly on her lap. ‘I know what you’re telling me. You’re telling me that he’d been watching Emily.’ She kept her eyes closed and spoke rapidly, as if she had to concentrate on getting every word out before she forgot it. ‘That he’d . . .
stalked
her? That he was in our
house
?’