Mo Hayder - Poppet

It’s as if she’s flicked a switch, releasing a stream of endorphins that surges through him. He shakes his head, sighs. ‘Yeah yeah yeah – OK. I’ll need to see to Stewart first though. I’m going to have to walk him – I leave him with Patience too long and he turns into a butter ball.’

‘It’s a shame you can’t bring him to my place. The lease is pretty dogmatic about animals.’ She pauses. ‘ Dog matic.’

AJ laughs. She’s everything he thought she wasn’t – she’s funny and sweet and silly and he’s falling in love with her. After less than twenty-four hours he’s actually toppling over the cliff he never thought he would. ‘How about after I’ve walked him? Say yours at eight?’

‘Sounds like a date to me.’

He walks on air out of the office. On the next floor down the Big Lurch happens to be crossing the hallway. AJ hesitates – wondering whether to back up on to the gallery and wait for a moment when he won’t be seen, but it’s too late. The Big Lurch glances up – sees him, sees his face. Maybe AJ’s expression speaks volumes, maybe it’s advertising to the world that he wasn’t in the director’s office on plain business, because there’s a pause, during which neither of them seems to know how to react, then a sly, understanding grin creeps over the Big Lurch’s face. He goes on his way, his clenched fist held up to AJ, throwing him a gang sign.

He’s saying, Congratulations . He’s saying, Respect .

THE DAY PASSES slowly in the grey outdoors. The sky is low and furred. The trees in east Somerset reach down and drop bright wet leaves on to the men and women in black all-weather gear who move painstakingly and agonizingly across the steaming forest floors. It’s the Avon and Somerset support group on their second day of deployment to find the remains of Misty Kitson.

At the RV point, the place all the search teams have parked their vehicles, Jack Caffery sits in his car, radio on to some chat show or other, window open to the bracing air. He wears an RAB fleece over his suit and is slowly puffing a V-Cig. He didn’t sleep last night – even half a bottle of Scotch couldn’t stop his hamster-wheel head shuffling away. Trying to decide how to work this – how to place himself in a flawed scenario he’s created. He thought he’d waited long enough for her to get into the place where she’d see the situation. But he hasn’t. She’s shocked and combative and reluctant; it’s up to him to deal with that.

He looks out at the skyline – leafless, spindly trees against a boiled-white sky. There aren’t many days left for him to put his long-game into action. To add to the weight, first thing this morning the superintendent was waiting for him at the office, telling him grudgingly he was lucky – no new cases had come in. Reminding him that the moment a job did come up, things would change.

It dawns on Caffery now that the person speaking on the radio is Jacqui Kitson. He clicks out the cigarette cartridge and closes the window, turns the volume up.

‘The police are doing everything they can – and I, you know, I want to say I think it’s about time too.’

He taps the cartridge on the steering wheel as Jacqui continues.

‘Of course I pray my daughter’ll still be found alive. Even after all this time, I’m not giving up hope.’

He clicks off the radio. Sits for a minute, head lowered. His mother was a Catholic; she’d say he’s committed an original sin. She’d search around for the name to the sin and what had led him to it: cowardice or lust. Not greed. That’s one thing she’d never be able to point at him.

Knock knock knock. He jolts up straight. Blinks. Flea is staring through the passenger window at him, her breath fogging the pane. She’s still wearing her Tyvek search suit, hood rolled down. He hesitates then leans over and unlocks the door. She opens it, climbs in, and slams the door.

‘Right,’ she says. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Going on?’

‘We searched the road once and now the POLSA is saying we’ve got to do it again. You’ve directed that, haven’t you?’

‘I had to make sure you hadn’t missed anything.’

‘Bullshit. It’s the only place you’ve chosen to have re-covered. You did it to put pressure on me.’

He closes his eyes. Counts to ten. ‘OK.’ He puts his elbow on the steering wheel and turns to face her. ‘I’ve protected you for a long time – and in return I get rudeness.’

She takes a long, levelling breath. Her face is ruddy from the cold. Her hair is tangled. ‘I’m sorry. Tell me what you were going to say last night. I might not agree with it but at least you’ll be done with it.’

He puts the cartridge of his fake cigarette into the pocket of his fleece. Takes a few moments to get the words into his head. He’s gone through this before, rehearsed it, but he’s never done it in the face of this hostility.

‘I’m going to give you a scenario of what could happen. Picture this. You are searching the area we omitted to search last time. You find skeletized remains, say – oh, I don’t know … somewhere, anywhere out here and—’

‘Wait, wait ! Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

‘Think about it – how often have you dealt with a situation like that? Someone’s gone missing – you search, but you draw the search area a fraction too tight … Usually the remains are so decomposed it’s impossible to identify them or give cause of death. And in Misty’s case? She was an addict, depressed, her marriage was falling apart, she was in the press for all the wrong reasons. Maybe she found a quiet place to fix herself up, got a bit lost, lay down to sleep and didn’t wake up. It was May but it got cold that night – I’ve checked the temperatures. That night was a blip on the average. In her state she could have got hypothermic quite quickly, disorientated. It’s so common it’s almost a cliché. We scatter the bones the way animals would – a pathologist’s nightmare. And let’s not forget one salient point. The person who directs the forensics: the SIO. And in this case the SIO being …’

She turns away. She knows that as Senior Investigating Officer he has control over where the forensics budget is concentrated. He could guide the pathologists in any direction he wanted.

‘And,’ he pushes home the point, ‘if I was there when you found the remains, any trace evidence we’d overlooked would just go down as a contaminated-evidence trail. We’re covered every which way.’

She stares out of the window. In her holster the radio makes a low crackling noise. Outside, all the teams are coming and going, stopping to speak in the car park. The earnest faces of people who don’t know they’re on a wild-goose chase.

When eventually she speaks it’s in a quiet, controlled voice. ‘I can’t dive. My ears are shot. And getting to the place you want to go is impossible. Even if you knew exactly where to go, you’d have to be a brilliant diver. An exceptionally brilliant diver.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘What will you do if I say no?’

‘I haven’t thought that far ahead.’

She sighs. Pinches her nose. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I thank you for what you’ve done, but no. I’ve thought about it and thought about it – gone through and through it in my head and really this is the best way. The safest way. I’m really, really sorry.’

ISAAC HANDEL WAS the pudding-basin haircut guy who alerted AJ to what Moses was doing with the spoon in the breakfast room that day. Until yesterday morning when he was released into a halfway house, he had spent all of his adult life in Beechway High Secure Unit. He was admitted to the acute ward as a referral from a juvenile unit seven years before AJ arrived, and according to all the stories from that time he didn’t start off as the easiest patient.