Mo Hayder - Poppet

‘Forager’s Fayre? How comes I’ve never heard of you before?’

‘I dunno. Welcome to wild-and-woolly Gloucestershire. The crusties. Note my attire? Every piece of fruit I use has been foraged – or donated by friends. You walk around these days and see apples rotting on the ground. People just don’t bother to pick them. Ever noticed that?’

‘Now you mention it.’

‘People’d rather go to the supermarket and buy stuff grown thousands of miles away than eat what’s growing in their back garden. Go figure. Want to know my best-selling variety?’

‘It was the first thing I was going to ask you.’

‘Church Car Park Crab-apple Jelly.’

‘Car Park Jelly?’

‘Yup.’ She reaches to a shelf and grabs a jar. ‘A church car park in Wotton and ten crab-apple trees just drop their fruit every September. What was the diocese doing with the fruit? Not sending out a work party to collect them, I can promise you. Instead they were partitioning off that side of the car park so no one could park there. Didn’t want complaints from the congregation that their cars were getting sticky. Here—’

She comes to the table and opens the jar for him. The vacuum makes a reassuring thwock . He leans over and smells it. ‘Mmmm.’

‘Tastes even better – there you go, all yours.’

‘Thank you.’ He takes the jar, recaps it, and sets it in front of him on the table. Folds his arms. ‘And now, I think we should talk.’

‘Do we have to?’

‘We have to. Even though you’re doing everything you can to avoid the subject.’

She gives a grim half-smile. ‘And in my position? A cop turning up on your doorstep? It means bad, bad, bad. I can only think it’s Harry – and I don’t want to.’

‘Harry’s fine. He says to send his love.’

She gives a small frown. ‘Not Harry?’

‘He sent me here, but he’s OK.’

There’s a tiny pause. She sits at the table, meets his eyes head on. ‘OK – then what?’

‘Upton Farm. Harry told me the truth.’

She is silent for a long time, her eyes roving over his face. Then she shakes her head. ‘So, tell me. Am I in trouble? That was years ago – in the end I don’t know how what we did could be seen as obstructing the police – I mean, I did report it, and …’

The sentence dies. Caffery is shaking his head. ‘It’s not about what you did back then. It’s what’s happening now. It’s Isaac.’

‘Isaac. What’s happened to Isaac?’

‘He’s out.’

That knocks Penny’s expression in half. She pales. Her mouth opens slightly, but she doesn’t speak. In the corner a grandfather clock ticks the seconds out, as if emphasizing the way time is stretching. And then she leans forward, elbows on the table.

‘He’s out ? Really?’

‘Really.’

‘OK, OK. OK.’ She pinches her nose tightly. ‘This is insane. I was only thinking about him this morning … And he’s out, you say? What happened? He escaped?’

‘No – he had a tribunal – he was discharged. He’s rehabilitated.’

‘ Rehabilitated? No – oh no. Someone like him doesn’t …’ She lets the sentence drift off. ‘Where’s he been released to?’

Caffery doesn’t answer.

‘Not back here ? You are kidding me, aren’t you?’

‘I need you to help me fill in the details. I’m trying to get an idea of what Isaac was like. The sort of things that preoccupied him. Things that interested him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it might help me pin down the places he’s likely to gravitate to.’

‘You’ve lost him, haven’t you? He’s gone.’

‘I’m not here to alarm you – there’s nothing to suggest he presents a danger. I’m trying to get a feel for what he’s like, that’s all. Take me through what happened.’

Penny scrapes her chair back. She stands for a few moments, nervously unbuttoning and buttoning the front of her cardigan, her eyes darting around the room. She crosses to the windows that face out over the valley. The trees on the far side have turned purple in the failing light. She opens the window and stands for a moment, looking up the valley in the direction of Upton Farm.

Then she pulls the shutters closed. She locks them. She goes to the next window and locks those shutters. And the next. She circulates the entire room – locking every window. She disappears into a side room where he can see fruit piled and he hears her locking and bolting the door there. A moment later she crosses the living room and goes to the front door, which she also locks.

‘Jesus.’ She grabs a glass and comes back to sit at the table. She fills it with the plum vodka, knocks it back in one. Then a second. She wipes her eyes and makes an effort to calm herself. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose it serves me right. If Harry had put my name on the report – if we’d been honest – then I’d have been warned, wouldn’t I?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Lost my little old dog the other night too. It never rains, eh? All my fault. I know – all my own fault.’

Caffery watches her drink more vodka. He watches the colour come slowly back to her face.

‘November the second,’ she says suddenly. ‘That’s when it happened. It was a horrible November – a bad year for the fruit. We’d had a wet summer and some of the trees were empty. I remember worrying that the wildlife was going to starve – all the birds and the squirrels. The business had only just started, so that was a worry too. And I was trying to work out how to end it with Graham. As it turned out that was the last thing I should have been worrying about. They told me later Isaac had been with the bodies for three hours. Doing things to them. I suppose if I hadn’t arrived he’d have gone on and on.’

Caffery nods silently. ‘You know about the trip wire, don’t you?’

She looks up. ‘The explosives? Yes. They said it was meant for whoever found the crime scene – but Isaac told Harry he’d planned on setting the bodies alight remotely. He could deal with all the things he’d done to their bodies, but he couldn’t stomach seeing them burn. He’d got some sort of device to start the fire – he was always clever with his hands. Electronics and things like that. Second nature.’

Caffery clears his throat. Clever with electronics?

‘So what happens now?’ Penny asks.

‘That’s what I’m here to ask – what do you think happens now?’

Car headlights shaft through the heart-shaped holes, finding the rows of glass jars with their multi-coloured preserves. Honey gleams gold, blackcurrant jam a deep amethyst. Penny taps her foot a few times, seems to be considering whether to continue. When she does, it’s in a lower, more confidential voice.

‘He’ll be off out there in the wilds, living like an animal. But he’ll be back. He hates this world – he hates it. The warning signs were there all along. I could have predicted what he was going to do – if I’d known how to read the signs.’

‘Meaning?’

‘His poppets. The ones of his mum and dad. He’d sewn their eyes shut. I should have known what he was planning.’

‘I beg your pardon? His what?’

‘His poppets, his dolls? You do know about his poppets?’

‘Yes. I just never heard them called—’

‘He was holding them when he came out of the house. One in each hand. I knew what he’d done just from the way he was clutching them. Eyes stitched closed.’ She gives him a curious smile, as if he’s stupid. ‘Don’t you know what the poppets are for? Don’t you know about Isaac and why he makes his dolls?’

THE DIVE UNIT have spent their day searching and bitching, hunched against the cold and the wet. They’ve continued to scour the wide band, Flea alongside them, dragging her empty body from hedge to hedge, field to field. It’s been the longest two days she can remember. She hasn’t caught up from diving all night then going straight to work yesterday – all she’s wanted to do is sleep. But whatever and whenever, you always stand shoulder to shoulder with your men.