Mo Hayder - Gone

‘What time?’

‘Christ knows. Maybe ten o’clock? Emily had woken up with all the noise.’

‘The window was forced. There’re marks in the grass. A ladder.’ He nodded to where the entry team had rigged up some police tape tied to three temporary barriers that cordoned off an area. ‘Less visible round the side. He would have taken you first. In the kitchen. No one would have heard in the rest of the—’ He broke off. A police Beemer slowed in the street and stopped at the kerb. Cory Costello got out. His overcoat was unbuttoned to reveal an expensive suit. He was neat and tidy – shaved and showered. So wherever he’d spent the night it hadn’t been a bench. Nick, who had been sitting in Caffery’s Mondeo making phone calls, instantly jumped out and stopped Cory in his tracks. They spoke for a moment, then Cory glanced around the assembled police officers and onlookers. His eye fell on Caffery and Prody. Neither man moved. They simply sat there and let him look at them. For a while a hush seemed to fall on the entire street. The father who’d lost a daughter. And the two cops who should have done something about it. Cory began to walk towards them.

‘Don’t speak to him.’ Caffery pushed his face close to Prody’s, spoke hard and fast: ‘If there’s anything to be said, let me say it.’

Prody didn’t answer. He kept his eyes locked on Cory, who stopped a few feet away.

Caffery turned. Cory’s face was quite smooth, no wrinkles or creases in his forehead. A small jaw, feminine nose and very clear grey eyes fixed on the side of Prody’s face. ‘Cunt,’ he said quietly.

Caffery sensed Nick, somewhere to his right, getting frantic, panicking about what was going to happen.

‘Cunt. Cunt. Cunt.’ Cory’s face was calm. His voice was almost a whisper. ‘Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt.’

‘Mr Costello . . .’ Caffery said.

‘Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt.’

‘Mr Costello. That’s not going to help Emily.’

‘Cunt cunt cunt cunt CUNT.’

‘ Mr Costello! ’

Cory shuddered. He took half a step back and blinked at Caffery. Then he seemed to remember who and where he was. He straightened his cuffs and turned to look around the street, a polite, reasonable expression on his face, as if he was thinking of buying the house and sizing up the neighbourhood. Then he took off his overcoat and dropped it on the ground. He unwound the scarf he was wearing, dropped that on top of the coat. He stopped to consider the pile, as if he was mildly surprised to see it there. Then, without any warning, he took three steps round the side of the picnic bench and launched himself at Prody.

Caffery had time to leap to his feet before Prody was wrestled off the bench and thrown on his back on the grass. He didn’t resist: he let Cory get on with it and lay there, his arms half raised across his face, allowing the man in the business suit to rain punches on him. Almost patient, as if he accepted this as his punishment. Caffery dodged round the picnic bench and got to Cory, grasped the backs of his arms as Wellard and another officer came steaming across the lawn.

‘Mr Costello!’ Caffery yelled into the back of the guy’s head – into his perfect haircut. The two other officers grappled for his hands. ‘ Cory , let him go now. You have to let him go or we’ll have to cuff you.’

Cory managed to land two more punches in Prody’s ribs, before the support-group guys got his arms behind his back and pulled him away. Wellard rolled Cory away across the ground, gripping him from behind, lying on his side, spooning him with his face pressed against the back of his neck. Prody managed to get to his hands and knees and crawl a few paces away. He stopped there, panting.

‘You didn’t deserve that.’ Caffery squatted next to Prody, got him by the shirt and pulled him upright so he rocked back on his heels. His face was slack, his mouth bleeding. ‘You really didn’t deserve that. But you still shouldn’t have been there.’

‘I know.’ He wiped his forehead. Blood was trickling down from his scalp where Cory had managed to pull out a clump of hair. He looked as if he might start crying. ‘I feel like shit.’

‘Listen – and listen carefully. I want you to go to that nice young paramedic over there and tell her you want to go to hospital, get checked over and patched up – you hear? And then I want you to discharge yourself and call me. Tell me you’re OK.’

‘And you?’

‘Me?’ Caffery straightened up. Brushed off his jacket, the knees of his trousers. ‘S’pose I’ll have to go and have a sniff around this bloody lock-up. Not that we’ll find him there. Like I said.’

‘Too clever?’

‘Exactly. Too effing clever.’

The area was quiet, rural and very pretty. At the edge of the Cotswolds, it was scattered with cottages and manor houses built from the local sugary brown stone. The lock-up Ted Moon rented was among a development so out of character with its surroundings it couldn’t be long before the developer’s wrecking ball paid a visit. It comprised five squat breezeblock buildings, each roofed with moss-covered corrugated iron. They must have been cattle sheds once. No commercial signage and no activity. God only knew what they were used for.

Ted Moon’s lock-up was the last of the buildings at the western end where the development gave way to farmland. To look at it now, dark and featureless in the sparkling autumn sunlight, you wouldn’t guess it was only half an hour out of one of the most intensive and fraught police searches conducted in years. The entry teams had broken in through a side door and within minutes the place had been swarming with cops. They’d stripped the place to its bones, found nothing. Now, however, they were nowhere to be seen. The place was quiet. The cops were still there, though. Somewhere out in the silent trees a team of surveillance officers surrounded the building. Eight pairs of eyes watching and waiting.

‘What’s the signal like inside?’ In a lay-by near the entrance, sheltered from the road, Caffery sat in the front seat of one of the entry team’s Sprinter vans, twisted round, his elbow on the back of the seat, quizzing the team sergeant. ‘Did the radios drop out at all?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I’m going to have a look round. Just want to be sure that if he makes an appearance I get the heads up.’

‘Fine, but you won’t find anything. You’ve seen the evidence list. Ten stolen cars, five stolen mopeds, a stack of moody numberplates and some respectable citizen’s brand-new Sony widescreen TV and a Blu-ray still in their boxes.’

‘And the unit’s Mondeo?’

The sergeant nodded. ‘And a Mondeo believed to have been taken without consent from the MCIU car park. There’s a four-by-four that – from the brake discs – has been driven in the last twenty-four hours and, apart from that, just some bits of rusting agricultural stuff in the corner. And the pigeons. It’s a giant nesting box for them.’

‘Just make sure the surveillance teams know to give me some warning.’ Caffery jumped out of the van. He checked that the radio clipped to his belt was showing a signal, pulled his coat on and raised his hand to the sergeant. ‘OK?’

The sun on the cracked driveway made the world feel almost warm for the first time in days. Even the ragwort stems that grew out of the ballast seemed to be straining upwards to the sky, as if they were aching for spring. Caffery walked quickly, head down, feeling the urge to hurry. At the side window of the building – which had just one neatly broken pane and no police tape or other signs they’d been here – he covered his hand with his coat sleeve, pushed his arm through, and unfastened the latch. He was careful as he climbed in. In just a year he’d gone through two good suits in the course of his job and wasn’t about to ruin another. He closed the window behind him, and stood, silently, looking around him.