Mo Hayder - Poppet

Penny went to the local library and browsed several books on voodoo. The books explained that a voodoo fetish, or ‘poppet’, must contain an object close to the person represented – ideally something taken from the body: fingernail clippings or hair. Excretions too – urine, faeces, semen, mucus, sweat, blood – could be collected and used. Even clothing. A shaman or medicine man would then chant spells which had the power to transfer physical acts committed on the doll to the person or thing it represented.

‘Mrs Handel has these books out on loan all the time,’ said the librarian with a sniff. ‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? You know – the way the boy’s turned out.’

Louise was doing an OU history course, and when Penny dug a little deeper she discovered Louise had indeed chosen voodoo and the slave trade for one of her papers. It was clear to Penny that Isaac had somehow seen the books, or been influenced by Louise’s interest, but when she questioned Graham about the books he made light of her unease. This marked the beginning of her loss of faith in her lover. Slowly, over the next few months, she began to suspect he wasn’t serious about her. She even began to wonder if she wasn’t the only lover Graham had known during his marriage, and whether Louise’s ‘business’ trips were actually getaways to visit her own boyfriends. Penny’s anxiety and guilt about her husband – her quiet, unargumentative, unadventurous, unsexy husband – exploded.

That month Penny and her husband were invited to the Handels’ Halloween party. Graham insisted it would seem odd if they didn’t attend. Penny can still remember it in vivid detail – she spent most of the night in the kitchen wearing her gypsy blouse and patchwork skirt, clutching her handmade witch hat in one hand, bemused by all the strange women dressed in green wigs and suspender belts who smoked and laughed and swallowed champagne in gulps and outlined their mouths in red gloss.

To her husband’s bewilderment, Penny went home crying. Her error had been exposed in the clearest light. Graham was a different person from the one she’d believed she was in love with. She made up her mind she would end the affair with Graham – whatever the cost.

Now, sitting on the sofa in the mill, her attention goes to the windows. They open out on to the bottom of the valley. On the other side of the stream the forests slope up and up – ending where the mists at the top crowd around Upton Farm. Maybe it was her punishment, the world teaching her a lesson, but she never did get the chance to tell Graham it was over.

Ironically, the day she chose to do it – All Souls’ Day – happened to be the day Isaac Handel had decided to end his parents’ lives.

HARRY PILSON STILL lives in the police house he worked from for thirty years. He retired at fifty to avoid a move out of the village to Chipping Sodbury police station and purchased the house under the right-to-buy scheme.

Pilson has just got in – he delivers ready-meals to the elderly in his area. He’s a lean and healthy sixty-year-old dressed in a pullover and corduroys. He glances at Caffery’s card, then shows him through to the back room, past his wife, who stands in the kitchen drying a plate and gaping at them. ‘Job,’ he murmurs to her, pulling the door closed on her disapproving frown. ‘Won’t be long.’

If Caffery knows cops, it’s probably been this way for years in the Pilson household – Harry’s job taking him away all the time, his wife always abandoned in the middle of something in the kitchen, wondering when it’s all going to stop.

Pilson closes the living-room door behind him and leans against it for a second. It’s one of those very ordered rooms – a cabinet full of crystal and figurines, the TV remote set neatly on top of today’s folded newspaper. DVDs shelved in alphabetical order.

‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’

‘Can we talk? Properly.’

‘Isn’t that what we’re doing?’

‘No – I mean, properly .’ Caffery sits at the small dining table and places the case file in front of him. He nudges the chair opposite with his foot. Looks up at Pilson. ‘Not fucking-around talking, not job talking and not canapé talking either.’

Pilson hesitates. He sits down obediently, but there’s a chink in his expression that warns Caffery not to push it. He folds his arms.

‘Go on then.’

‘It’s about Isaac Handel and what happened at Upton Farm.’

Pilson’s face sags visibly. Caffery has opened a wound. A hatch into the past. ‘Why now, after all this time? Why MCIT?’

‘Can we talk or can we not?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘We can talk.’

‘You must have known the family. What were they like?’

‘What does your intel tell you?’

‘Not much.’

Pilson taps his fingers on the table, as if he’s considering his options. ‘OK,’ he says eventually. ‘And I’m only telling you this because it’s so long ago. I did know them. Graham Handel – the father – he was the start of the problem. Playing away from home like an addiction. He never tired of it. His wife? She gave up waiting for him to change and followed suit – ended up almost as bad.’

‘The report says people in the village used to talk about them dabbling in voodoo?’

Pilson snorts. ‘Nah – Louise did a course and had some books out from the library – that’s all. You get a double murder like that and the local grapevine goes sonic – two plus two becomes a hundred.’

‘Talk me through what happened, after you got the call.’

‘It’s a long time ago – my memory’s not what it was.’

‘I’m sure you can remember taking the call.’

‘What I can remember is in the file.’

‘Is it?’

Something in the room shifts at Caffery’s tone. Pilson’s attention narrows and hardens to a point. ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘I’ve been up to the farm – it’s not the kind of place you just happen to be passing and notice something odd. So your tipster must’ve gone out of their way to get up there.’

Harry rubs his forehead distractedly. ‘I wouldn’t know – I swear. So many years have gone by it’s hard to recall details.’

Caffery shakes his head, opens the file. ‘Just so you know? The poor-memory thing? It isn’t working for you.’ He finds Pilson’s report, pulls it out. ‘It’s very detailed – exemplary, in fact. Except some of the details don’t make sense when you stand them up against each other.’

He slides out the crime-scene photos, placing them on the table.

Pilson becomes quite still. Stiff. He averts his gaze from Graham and Louise’s faces, their mouths pulled open. ‘Do we have to?’

‘We do. I like to get things very clear in my head. And thinking about what you went through, I can kind of see how the facts might have got a bit scrambled.’ He leaves the briefest of pauses. ‘How some details might have slipped your mind.’

Caffery has just given him the chance to own up and keep his reputation intact. Pilson doesn’t take it. Instead he shoves the photographs back across the table to a place he can’t see them.

Caffery folds his arms. Sighs. ‘OK – we’ll do it the hard way. So let’s see … you arrived at the house at six forty-five p.m. – ten minutes after the call? The front door was open, but you didn’t go into the house – you went straight to the barn. Now why would you do that?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Says here that you saw a trail of blood leading into the barn.’

‘Well, then, that must have been it.’

‘You’re not sure?’

‘Like I said, it was a long time ago.’

Caffery stares at him. ‘You’re really not in a position to lie any more. Let’s talk about the blood trail.’ He finds the photograph of the farmyard and barn. He makes a show of peering closely at the photograph. ‘I can’t see any sign of a blood trail. Can you?’