Mo Hayder: Gone

‘Yes.’

‘You weren’t trying to hide it, were you? Under the branches?’ She laughed. ‘God. Of course not. Why would I do that?’

‘You didn’t put those branches in front of it?’

She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the rain and made a show of staring at the car. ‘Wind must have blown all the stuff around it. Still, I see what you mean, what you’re saying. It looks like someone’s tried to hide it, doesn’t it?’

The cop turned the torch on her again and studied her cagoule. If he noticed the sticky boots he didn’t dwell on them. He came a couple of steps nearer her.

She reached into the inside pocket of her jacket. The cop’s reaction was lightning fast: in under a second he had jammed the torch under his arm. He had his right hand on the radio, the left on the canister of CS gas in his holster.

‘It’s OK.’ She lowered her hand, unzipped the jacket and opened it so he could see the lining. ‘Here.’ She pointed to the pocket inside. ‘In here. My authority for being here. Can I show you?’

‘Authority?’ The cop didn’t take his eyes off the pocket. ‘What sort of authority is that?’

‘Here.’ She stepped forward and held the jacket out to him. ‘You do it. If it makes you less nervous.’

The cop licked his lips. He took his hand off the radio and reached out. He rested his fingers on the edge of the pocket.

‘There’s nothing sharp in here, is there? Anything sharp I could cut myself on?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’d better be telling the truth, young lady.’

‘I am.’

He slowly slid his hand into the pocket, felt what was in there. He let his fingers run over it. A frown crossed his face. He pulled the object out and studied it.

A police warrant card. In a standard black leather wallet.

‘A cop?’ he said slowly. He opened it, read the name. ‘Sergeant Marley? I’ve heard of you.’

‘Uh-huh. I run the Underwater Search Unit.’

He handed her back the card. ‘What the hell’re you doing out here?’

‘I’m thinking of running a training session in the quarry next week. This is a recce.’ She looked up dubiously at the clouds. ‘In this weather you may as well be freezing your arse off under water as top side.’

The cop switched off his torch, shrugged his coat a little closer round his shoulders. ‘USU?’ he said.

‘That’s the one. Underwater Search.’

‘I hear a lot of things about your unit. It’s been bad – hasn’t it?’ She didn’t answer but felt a hard, cold click in the back of her head at the mention of the unit’s problems.

‘Visits from the chief superintendent, I heard. Professional Standards starting an investigation, are they?’

Flea made her face go light. Pleasant. She folded the wallet and put it back in her pocket. ‘Can’t dwell on past mistakes. We’ve got a job to do. Just like you.’

The cop nodded. He seemed about to say something but must have changed his mind. He put a finger to his cap, turned and walked slowly back to the car. He got in and reversed about ten yards, did a sweeping three-point turn, and drove back up through the gates. The car slowed a little as he passed Flea’s car, hidden in the bushes. He gave it a good look over, then put his foot down and was gone.

She stood, motionless, the rain pouring down on her.

I hear a lot of things about your unit . . . It’s been bad – hasn’t it?

She shivered, zipped up her jacket and looked around at the deserted quarry. The rain dripped down her cheeks like tears. No one had said anything about the unit to her face. Not so far. When she tested how it made her feel she was surprised to find the truth. It hurt that the team was in trouble. Something solid in her chest buckled a bit. Something that had been put there at the same time as she’d hidden the corpse in the cave. She took a breath, pulled the solid thing back together. Held it in tight. Kept breathing slow and sure until the feeling went away.

By eight thirty that evening there was still no sign of Martha. But the investigation already had some legs. A lead had come in. A woman in Frome had seen the local news bulletin about the carjacking and decided she had something to tell the police. She gave the statement to the local officers, who passed it on to MCIU.

Caffery drove there using the minor routes, the country lanes where he knew he could go fast and not get a tug from some bored traffic cop. It had stopped raining, but it was still blowing a gale. Every time it seemed the wind had died down to nothing it sprang out of nowhere and raced down the road, shaking raindrops from the trees, sending them arcing across his headlamps. The woman’s house was centrally heated, but he couldn’t get comfortable there. He declined tea, spoke to her for ten minutes, then went and got a takeaway cappuccino from a service station, took it back to her street and stood drinking it outside her house, coat buttoned against the wind. He wanted to get a feel for the road and the area.

This lunchtime, about an hour before Rose Bradley had been attacked, a man had pulled up here in a dark-blue car. The woman in the house had watched him from the window because he’d looked nervous. He had his collar turned up, so she never saw his face, but she was fairly sure he was white, with dark hair. He was wearing a black Puffa jacket and carrying, in his left hand, what she didn’t recognize at the time but thought, in retrospect, might have been a rubber mask of some sort. She’d noticed him leave the car, but a phone call had diverted her attention and when she came back the street was empty. The car stayed there, though. All day. It was only when she saw the news bulletin and looked out of the window that she saw it had gone. It must have been collected at some point in the evening.

She was fairly sure the car had been a Vauxhall – she wasn’t good at car marques but it had a dragon on it, she was sure – and when Caffery’d taken her outside and found a Vauxhall sitting under a streetlamp a few doors down she’d looked at the badge and nodded. Yes. In dark blue. Not very clean. And it may have had WW at the end of the numberplate, though she wouldn’t swear to it. Apart from that she couldn’t recall anything, much as she wanted to help.

Caffery stood at the place the car had been parked and tried to picture the scene, tried to work out who else might have seen it. At the very end of the dark, windswept street, a convenience store blasted light into the night: plastic shop sign above the window, offers posters pasted to the glass, a waste-paper bin with the local newspaper poster flapping under the chicken wire. He crossed the street, draining the last of the coffee, and dropped the cup into the bin as he entered the building.

‘Hi,’ he said, holding up his warrant card to the Asian woman behind the till. ‘Manager in?’

‘That’s me.’ She squinted at the card. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Caffery – Jack, if you’d like first-name basis.’

‘And what are you? A detective?’

‘That’s one word for it.’ He nodded at the camera above the till. ‘Is that thing loaded?’

She glanced up. ‘Are you going to give me back my chip?’

‘You what?’

‘The robbery?’

‘I don’t know anything about a robbery. I’m a centralized unit. I wouldn’t get that sort of information. What robbery?’

There was a line of customers waiting. The manageress gestured to a young man stacking shelves to take over from her. She pulled her till fob out, hung it round her neck on a pink rubber spring, and motioned Caffery to follow her. They went past the lottery-ticket station, past two post-office booths, blinds down, and into a stock room at the back of the shop. They stood among the Walkers crisps boxes and unsold magazines that had been bundled up ready for return.