Mo Hayder - Poppet

Time for a coffee. He inspects his chipped old cup – empty. He picks it up and stands, pausing briefly to look at the area map on his wall. It’s an unprofessional map because there are places he should have put pins and hasn’t – like the quarry at Elf’s Grotto, the road near Farleigh Park Hall. Nevertheless, it’s an aid to him. Sometimes a thought provoker when he needs the inspiration.

He looks at it for a bit longer. Then, not sure what he’s looking for, he clicks on the kettle. While he’s waiting for it to boil, he looks out of the window at a fog bank lifting above the high rises. What are you up to, Handel, he thinks. What is going on in your screwed-up brain?

The kettle boils. Caffery makes his coffee. He’s pouring in a little milk, and is about to spoon in the sugar when something becomes clear to him. He stops what he’s doing and jerks his head up, looking across the room.

The map. The fucking map.

He puts down the spoon, crosses the room, and stands, arms folded, staring at it.

There it is, plain as day. Just below Upton Farm, a tiny annotation, written in the Old English calligraphy beloved of OS maps:

The Wilds.

AT LAST AJ gets up the courage to go and tell Melanie about Jack Caffery. He knocks on her door and when he goes in she is sitting at her desk, smiling up at him.

‘Hi,’ he says cautiously. ‘Earlier – did you come to see me for something?’

‘Only to give you a hug. Say hi.’ She gives a sheepish smile. There’s no suggestion she knows he’s lied about the phone call. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine. I mean, sort of.’

‘Sort of?’

‘Yes, I … I need to speak to you. Something’s happened.’

‘Something?’

He sits down. Puts his keys and phone on the desk – looks her in the eye. He fumbles in his head for the first sentence of the speech he’s prepared. But when he opens his mouth, what pops out is: ‘Stewart’s ill. He’s been at the vet.’

Melanie’s face falls. ‘The vet? Is he OK?’

‘Yeah – he’s going to be fine. Patience dealt with it.’

‘God, I’m sorry. Poor Stewart. Maybe he ate something while he was – you know …’ She wrinkles her brow. ‘Wherever it is he keeps yomping off to.’

‘Maybe. But it’s OK. He’s going to be fine.’

‘That’s good.’ She smiles again, and he smiles stupidly back at her. She’s waiting for him to speak, but he can’t bring himself to say the words. He’s a wuss. A coward. A lily-livered surrender monkey. He casts around for a way of changing the subject, a way of justifying being here. ‘So.’ He indicates the corridor that leads from the director’s office to the kitchenette. ‘So. Do you mind if I make some coffee?’

‘Be my guest. I’ll have a cup too.’

He can feel her eyes on him as he leaves the office. He knows she knows there’s something more. He will say it. He will . He fills up the coffee-maker, clicks it on and starts getting the jewelled cups out, repeating under his breath: ‘ I’ve lied to you, not because I’m like the others, but because I was trying to do the right thing …’

He puts milk and sugar on the tray. The coffee-maker pings, and he pours coffee into the cups. His heart is thudding.

He puts two biscuits on a plate and carries the tray through, sets it in front of her.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

She sips the coffee and he places his cup on the desk. But instead of sitting and drinking he remains standing. Not speaking. Eventually she notices. She lowers her cup and raises her eyes to him.

‘AJ? What is it?’

‘Zelda Lornton. Pauline. Moses. The police want to open an investigation.’

The response is instantaneous, and exactly what he’d dreaded. Her face drains of colour. ‘What?’ she murmurs, disbelieving. ‘ What? ’

PENNY PILSON ISN’T answering her phone. Caffery leaves a message – ‘When you have time I want to ask you something. Wonder what you meant when you said Handel would be “off into the wilds”. Give me a call.’ Then he checks his watch. The super is in a meeting at HQ and he’s going to be there until lunchtime. AJ LeGrande has Caffery’s mobile number. There’s nothing keeping him here. He finds his keys, and at the last minute gets his North Face Triclimate jacket from the cupboard and his walking boots.

Wotton-under-Edge is named because it sits under the edge of the Cotswolds. An old market town, it retains that atmosphere of a place people gather. But at this time on a chilly late-October day it is peopled only by a few shoppers, ducking in and out of the brightly lit shops. Caffery drives through, watches the town dwindle in his rear-view mirror. Upton Farm is only two miles from here. Wotton would have been the place the Handel family shopped. He wonders if Isaac has been here more recently. Whether he’s sat in that bus shelter or on that bench and watched people coming and going.

Wire and pliers. Something left unfinished?

The road winds up the escarpment until he’s cresting along the summit, passing Westridge and North Nibley. Using his phone and his memory of the map, he locates a small farm track that leads through an abandoned orchard. A rusting skip lies on its side under the gnarled trees, as if some giant has got fed up apple picking and cast it aside. The grass hasn’t been cut – it lies flat and bedraggled under the sodden heaps of rotting apples.

Where the track stops, Caffery parks. He pulls on the boots and jacket, and from under the driver’s seat takes a torch. It is weighty and solid and feels good in his hand. He locks the car, turns up his collar, and heads off down the footpath that leads into the trees.

It takes him fifteen minutes to pick his way to the place named The Wilds. Several times his phone drops its GPS connection and finds it again. As he comes down a path and sees daylight ahead where it opens into a glade, the signal flashes to SOS, and then, in the next moment: No Service. He tucks it inside his jacket and continues.

The moment he gets to the clearing the shape leaps out at him. A mountain – a white-boned giant. It’s a tree, he recognizes that immediately, but like no other tree he’s ever seen: it is huge and dead in the thin light. The collapsed skeleton of an ogre.

He scans the surrounding woods, then, drawn to the tree, moves forward a few steps, approaching it slowly, his feet crunching the dead leaves. As he circles it he finds, half hidden, an arch leading to an empty chasm where its heart must have once been. One hand on the nearest root arch, he bends and shines the light inside. He sees beer cans, a soaking wet sleeping bag on an unfolded cardboard box.

‘Hello?’ The torch picks up the gnarled interior of the tree, pocked with sealed knots and bumps – like polished rock walls. ‘Anyone home?’

Silence. He flicks the torch on from side to side – as if the movement will shake anything hiding in the tree out into the open. He switches it off and waits, his breath held. There is no noise at all. Nothing.

He sniffs. There’s a strong smell of wet earth and leaf mould – and something else. A lower keynote under the damp that touches a deep nerve and makes him hold his mouth open slightly like a cat testing a scent. He’s smelled it recently – it’s too familiar. The uncared for, urinated-on funk of Handel’s dolls.

He stoops and, bent almost double, enters. It’s impossible to stand up inside. The smell is so strong it makes him cover his mouth. He finds a broken stick on the ground and uses it to poke through the items on the floor. It’s like going through a recycling bin. Beer cans are squashed into bumpy discs. There are flattened plastic bottles and a few empty crisp bags. He uses the stick to lift the corner of the sleeping bag. Sees that lying on top of the cardboard, serving as a half-hearted waterproof layer, is a Wickes carrier bag.