Mo Hayder - Poppet

She gets up and chucks the food in the bin. Washes the plates. She’s got a long day ahead of her. If she’s lucky, by the time Jack Caffery arrives at the search site she’ll have got an explanation together. If she’s unlucky it’s going to be the coldest, wettest day of the year and she’ll end up crying in the shower at the end of it.

AJ REMEMBERS CAFFERY well. At the Criminal Justice Forum he overheard two of the female delegates whispering about Caffery as he left the hotel. They were giggling and blushing, and from that AJ understands the inspector is attractive. Probably for the very reasons that AJ doesn’t have women giggling and blushing: Caffery exudes something – a brand of confidence or carelessness – AJ doesn’t know exactly, but he wishes he had some of it.

Now, sitting in his office, AJ sees the inspector hasn’t got any less good-looking, the bastard. He’s maybe early forties, going slightly grey at the temples in the way some women find madly attractive. There is something about the way his eyes move, a bit too quick, but AJ guesses that’s intelligence and determination at work and not dishonesty. There’s no hint of a personal life in the office. No framed photographs or certificates – just a couple of OS maps of the Avon and Somerset district covered with coloured pins, and a giant photo of a woman AJ recognizes vaguely. He thinks she’s the celebrity that went missing last year, Kitty someone? He can’t remember the details.

‘Zelda Lornton – the one who died a week ago from a heart attack …’ From his rucksack AJ pulls out the painting Zelda did and puts it on the table in front of him. Caffery leans over to study it. ‘She’d had an episode of self-harm about three weeks previously. She said this – this ghost thing, The Maude, did it. It wrote on her arms – a lot of biblical stuff. The sort of thing it’s hard to believe Zelda would have come up with on her own. Two weeks later she was dead.’ He runs his fingers over The Maude’s smooth face. ‘I found this amongst her OT work. This weird little bugger here? It fits exactly the way the patients describe The Maude. And this – the sweater, these dolls in its hands?’

‘Yes?’

‘That fits one of our patients. It can’t be a coincidence Zelda did this.’

‘One of your patients?’ Caffery looks at him over his glasses. AJ can’t tell whether he’s mocking or taking this seriously. ‘One of your patients is the Scooby ghost?’

‘When I say one of our patients, I mean one of our ex-patients. He was discharged two days ago. Which kind of puts him’ – AJ nods at the window – ‘out there somewhere. And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.’

Caffery picks up a pen and begins to jot some notes. He writes today’s date. ‘Name?’

‘Isaac Handel.’

‘Isaac …’ Caffery stops writing. He raises his eyes to AJ. ‘Isaac Handel? Is that the Upton Farm Isaac Handel?’

‘You know him?’

‘I know of him. The case was before my time, and the Senior Investigating Officer retired a while ago. But Handel and what happened at Upton Farm? It gets talked about a lot around this place.’

‘Because what he did was pretty memorable?’

‘Memorable.’ Caffery nods. ‘Yes, you could call it that. Memorable .’

‘I don’t know much about it. I’ve nursed him for years, but I’ve only just worked out he was connected to Upton Farm. And even though I grew up not far from there, and I know he killed his parents, the exact details of what happened are … well, you know, it’s all rumour and people doing that hush-voice thing?’ He wonders briefly if Caffery would give him the minutiae of the case if he asked. But, no, he’s decided he doesn’t want to find out. It was something out of the ordinary – something particularly nasty, and he’s happy just to know that sketch, rather than get all the close-up pictures. ‘You get the drift, reading between the lines, that he didn’t get locked away for a parking ticket.’

‘I can assure you it wasn’t a parking ticket.’

‘He was fourteen? Is that right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘He killed his parents. Some schizophrenics can be unnecessarily … violent . Under the wrong circumstances?’

Caffery nods, as if agreeing. ‘I don’t know the full story – I’d have to get the case called up. I remember there was some problem with the post-mortems. It took a long time for the pathologist to be given access to the bodies. Something odd about it.’ He moves papers around on his desk as if he’s uncomfortable. Then he clears his throat, picks up his pen and begins to write again. ‘So you’re connecting him to a death, a possible suicide? And two … no, three episodes that were put down as self-harm?’

‘Yes.’ AJ watches him writing. He says, ‘Can I just reiterate, I’d like this to be confidential?’

‘Confidential from whom?’

‘Anyone in the Trust.’

Caffery glances up. ‘That’s going to limit what I can do. If you want me to look into this, I’ll need to pay a visit to the unit.’

‘Do you have to? Can’t you just, I don’t know, find Isaac Handel? Find out what he’s doing out there? Speak to him. I mean, I can’t be here. Seriously – if this comes out, I could lose more than just my job. And if you have to come out to the unit I’ll have to …’ He waves his hand vaguely in the direction of the door. ‘I’ll have to make like I wasn’t here. I just can’t be seen talking to you.’

Caffery gives a small, non-committal shrug and puts down the pen. Opens his hands as if to say, Fine. No skin off my nose if we don’t pursue this .

‘Please – I’m sorry,’ says AJ. ‘It’s awkward, that’s all.’

‘Maybe if you were more specific about who we’re keeping this from?’

‘Some people in the Trust. They’re protective – they wouldn’t be happy, knowing I was here. The clinical director in particular. Melanie Arrow.’

‘I think I met her. At the conference? Blonde?’

AJ is caught by surprise hearing the word ‘blonde’ in Caffery’s mouth. He knows they talked, but for how long? Caffery remembers she’s blonde, what else does he remember? He wonders whether Caffery flirted with Melanie. And worse, whether she flirted back.

‘Yes. Blonde. And she would definitely not be pleased to discover I was opening up a can of worms. Not because she is bad. Or wrong. Just because she wants to keep her job.’

‘We’d all like to keep our jobs. In an ideal world.’

‘Are you going to take me seriously?’ AJ says. ‘Are you?’

There’s a long silence. Then Caffery pushes his chair back. ‘Leave it with me, Mr LeGrande. I’ll see what I can do.’

CAFFERY WASN’T LOOKING forward to the superintendent’s new case, but now he’s not so sure. Maybe there are benefits. They say the watched pot never boils – it might be good to keep himself occupied while Flea has time to let the shock work through her system and decide what she’s going to do. And maybe by then he’ll have a plan B for if she says no.

He reports back to the superintendent, sits through the inevitable lecture – how much longer will the teams be out searching for Misty Kitson? How he can justify the spend? Surely the press must be satisfied by now? – and then announces his intention to check out the Beechway case. Just have a sniff.

The superintendent isn’t easily won over. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘But I want to know tomorrow at the latest how we’re going to categorize it. And if it’s a case for us then I want you full throttle on it.’

The first thing Caffery does is get the three grand spend for a forensic post-mortem OK’d by the scientific investigations coordinator, then he calls the coroner’s office to put a snatch on Zelda’s body, stop it going to burial. She’s still in the mortuary at Flax Bourton where all the post-mortems are done now the hospitals in the area have closed down their facilities. He gets put through to his old friend Beatrice Foxton, the on-call Home Office pathologist. He’s lucky she didn’t do the original PM – he’d be embarrassed to ask her to do it again – nevertheless, she’s still a little uncomfortable about it. Firstly the conclusion on the current PM – heart attack secondary to obesity – is a new syndrome which is only just finding its way to death certificates. Secondly she hasn’t seen the deceased yet and is concerned the incision to open the body might be the one used for ordinary hospital PMs which can interfere with the neck area she’d want to examine. But Beatrice promises to do her best, and to make Zelda a priority.