Mo Hayder - Poppet

He fumbles his keys out from his trouser pocket and, using the passive security fob, which is a rigid slab of plastic, he carefully pries the top corner of the panel away from the bath and peers inside. The fibreglass bottom of the bathtub is visible, but not much more. He gets out his mobile phone, and opens the torch app. Pushing his right hand in between the panel and the bath, he uses his arm to increase the space, then shines the torch into the dark.

Something is wedged down there. A large holdall with ‘Adidas’ written on it. He grits his teeth – stretches for it, catching the handle on the tip of his finger and dragging it closer. He won’t be able to pull it out intact – he’ll have to open it and empty the contents while it’s still behind the panel. When the bag is close enough, he shifts position so he can keep the phone light shining on it and get leverage on the zip.

He pulls the zip back, feeling the soft tick tick tick of the slider bumping along the teeth. There’s a smell coming out of the bag – a smell of old laundry. You only have to work in a place like this for one day to learn that patients will store the strangest of things in the strangest of places – you never put your hands anywhere you can’t see first. So he nudges the phone closer and squints through the gap.

What he sees makes him hurriedly pull his hand out. The bath panel snaps closed with a loud crack and he sits back, breathing hard.

THE PHONE WAKES Caffery. It is morning and he is lying on the sofa in his office. He jerks upright, thinking it’s his mobile, thinking it’s Flea. It’s not. It’s the office phone. He rolls over, reaching across to the desk for it. It’s reception – AJ’s here again – something he wants to talk about.

‘Give me five. I’ll be down.’

He loosens his tie and sits for a while rubbing his face, reorientating himself. Isaac’s report is scattered on the floor around him – he must have fallen asleep reading. In the incident room there are three civilian officers already at their work stations. He’s slept through it all. The first proper night’s sleep he’s had since Jacqui Kitson walked into Browns Brasserie five nights ago.

He fishes his mobile out and checks for texts or calls or emails from Flea. Nothing. Now there’s a surprise. After a while he gets up. He avoids looking at Misty’s photograph – as if he’s ashamed to have been thinking about something else. He finds his spare toothbrush in the top drawer, has a quick, make-do wash in the men’s, then goes down to meet AJ, who is standing shyly in reception, holding an enormous Adidas holdall. Is it just Caffery or is he a little paler than he was yesterday?

‘Thank you for letting me come up,’ he says when they get back to the office. ‘Everything OK?’

Caffery shrugs. Pulls a seat out for AJ. There’s a briefing on another case going on in the CCTV viewing suite – he has to close his door on the noise.

‘I had a word with the pathologist last night – they’re going to take a second look at Zelda.’

‘So you are going to follow up on it?’

‘I’ve already started. Yesterday I went to the hostel Isaac’s supposed to be staying at.’

‘And?’

‘He’s not there. Hasn’t been since the day before yesterday.’

‘Fuck.’ AJ sits down with a bump. ‘Fuck.’

‘I know.’ Caffery checks his watch again. He didn’t mean to sleep this late – it’s set him back. ‘We don’t know where he is but I’ve got some leads I’m going to follow.’ His eyes travel down to the holdall. ‘I take it there’s something important in the bag?’

‘Yes, I … or rather, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s important, but I found these. Hidden in Handel’s bathroom.’

He lifts the holdall on to the desk, unzips it and spills out the contents. Caffery puts his glasses on and shuffles his chair forward for a closer look. He gets a whiff and covers his nose with his hand. ‘Jesus. They stink.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I don’t even know if I should have them – if they’re stolen property – or evidence or what. Maybe I should have left them where I found them – but I didn’t.’

‘I wish you had.’ Caffery pushes his chair away from the desk and gets to his feet to open the window.

‘I thought you’d want them.’

‘Why would I want them?’

AJ shifts uncertainly. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket and looks at his feet. ‘I don’t know,’ he says lamely. ‘I suppose I thought you might get Handel’s DNA from them? Maybe?’

‘Right.’ Caffery fastens the window open as far as it will go. The chill morning air comes in. ‘Right.’

They stand together in silence and stare at what is on the desk. A pile of dolls. Nightmarish things, made from a variety of plastics and fabrics. Most have awful, lifelike eyes – tiny plastic things from a hobby shop. Like frogs’ eyes they blink open and closed when the dolls are moved. A few have stitch marks where the eyes should be. One has a normal eye on the left and a red boiled sweet in place of the right one.

Each is different and unwholesome in its own way. Some seem to represent females – they have long string hair and crude breasts sewn from sheets of knitting. Others are males with tiny appendages of hobby-shop felt or dangling, crocheted sacs. Some have miniature strips of masking tape placed over their eyes and mouths. Others have their arms tied behind their backs with lengths of garden twine. Some have horrible little sets of teeth – made of maybe shells or fake pearls, Caffery can’t tell. Some are enshrined on pink satin cushions, their hands crossed on their chests, the way medieval saints and warriors are often depicted on their tombs – brave, sacred and martyred.

‘They were in his bathroom?’

‘Uh-huh. Hidden behind the bath panel.’

‘They stink. No one noticed the smell?’

‘You’d have to put it in context. You know, of the overwhelming completely unavoidable, completely constant and disgusting smell that is normality in the unit. Don’t tell me you’ve never been in a place like that?’

Caffery inclines his head. ‘Not pleasant, I grant you.’

‘And everyone was used to Isaac smelling. Especially in the beginning. These—’ He waves a hand over the dolls, as if he’s struggling to find the words to describe them. ‘These things he made. It was all he ever did with his time. He’d always carry one or two around with him – couldn’t be separated from them. Not ever. We gave up trying. If you’d spent most of your time sandwiched under Isaac’s armpits you’d smell too.’

He unfolds a piece of paper torn from a ring binder and holds it out to Caffery. On it have been written several lines in a very small, neat hand. Caffery peers at them. He can make out one or two phrases that sound biblical in origin.

AJ runs a finger under a few of them:

Be thou not one of them that committeth foul acts .

Avoid idleness and intemperance .

‘This is what Pauline wrote on her thighs. And this is what Zelda wrote. And this … ?’

He locates a line at the bottom and taps it.

Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart .

‘That is what Moses wrote on his walls before he pulled his eye out.’

Caffery nods slowly. He raises his eyes and finds AJ looking at him steadily.

‘If I had any doubt at all before – when I saw this I thought …’

‘I know what you thought.’ Caffery wants to be going and he wants to be going now. ‘And for the record? I’m thinking it too.’

MOMENTS AFTER AJ leaves the building Caffery gets a call from Beatrice Foxton, the pathologist. She’s done the second post-mortem on Zelda and hasn’t been able to reach any further conclusions. Sometimes, she explains, we just have to hold our hands up. And say we don’t know for sure.