Mo Hayder - Gone

‘OK,’ Caffery said. ‘I can take it from here.’

Philippa nodded and turned away. She threw herself on to the sofa and sat with her knees drawn up, a cushion pressed to her face, her eyes above it wide, as if she was watching the most appalling movie and couldn’t quite drag them away.

‘Are you sure, Rose?’

‘Quite sure.’

He established the Bluetooth pairing and transferred the jpeg across. Martha, the love of my life.jpg Everyone sat with their eyes glued to the screen as the photo slowly downloaded, from the bottom up, the picture filling itself in line by line. At first it showed a blue carpet. Then the divan drawer of a child’s bed came into view.

‘Her bed,’ Rose said matter-of-factly. ‘Martha’s. He’s taken a picture of her bed. The stickers on the base. We had an argument about them. I—’ She broke off. Her hand went to her mouth as the rest of the photograph filled in.

‘ What? ’ Philippa said from the sofa. ‘Mum? What is it?’

No one answered. No one breathed. They all inched a little closer to the screen. The picture showed Martha’s bed: white, covered with stickers, pink bed linen. On the wallpaper behind it there was a border, ballerinas pirouetting along it. But no one was looking at the walls, or the bedcovers: they were looking at what was on the bed. Or, rather, who was on the bed.

A man in jeans and a T-shirt, his muscles clearly defined. His hands were gripping his crotch. His face and neck were covered with a full-bearded Santa Claus mask. Caffery didn’t need to see under the mask to know what Moon’s face would be like. Underneath it he’d be grinning.

As the day wore on past midday, a bank of cumulus clouds that had been lowering on the western horizon eventually began to move east. Caffery glanced at them from time to time on the way to the vicarage in Oakhill. They looked like the towers of wild heathen cities, trundling across the sky. He rode on the passenger seat of an unmarked Mercedes van driven by a traffic officer, who’d taken off his epaulettes and tie. Caffery had dropped Myrtle back in his office at Kingswood, parked there and ordered the lift. Behind him, on the bench seat, sat Philippa and Rose; Jonathan and the FLO were in a Beemer behind. Rose was still convinced Martha would try to call her and didn’t want to be more than a few steps away from her phone, but Caffery had managed to finesse it away from her by saying it needed to be with a professional in case Moon called. Truth was, the only professional who should have had the phone was a hostage negotiator. Caffery didn’t mention that. From the get-go he’d been determined not to cede the case to one of those. The phone was tucked into his back pocket, all alerts switched to loud.

They arrived at the vicarage just before one o’clock. The driver switched off the engine and Caffery sat for a moment, looking at the scene. The curtains were closed, there was still an empty milkbottle holder on the front step, but apart from that the place was nothing like it had been the day he’d evacuated the Bradleys. Now it was swarming with cops, lights flashing, blue and white tape fluttering, vans parked everywhere. A unit from Taunton had come out and checked the place over. There was a dog handlers’ van parked outside, dogs staring out through the back-window grilles. Caffery was secretly pleased not to see the dogs out. He hadn’t expected Moon to be waiting there for them in the vicarage, his hands up, but he didn’t need to be reminded by a dog how clever the bastard was. What a piss-poor show the force had put up so far. He didn’t think he could stand another tracker German shepherd turning in confused, whining circles.

An unmarked Renault van was parked about ten metres away, three plainclothes officers lingering around it, smoking cigarettes and talking among themselves. The surveillance team who had been watching the house since the Bradleys had left, hoping Moon would come back, show his face.

Caffery unsnapped his seatbelt, got out of the car and crossed to them. He stood a few feet away, his arms folded, not saying a word. He didn’t need to speak. The force of his expression was loud enough. The men’s conversation died and, one by one, they turned to him. One put his cigarette behind his back and gave Caffery a brave smile; the second stood to attention, looking at a point over Caffery’s shoulder, as if Caffery was a drill sergeant. The third just lowered his eyes, began nervously to smooth his shirt. Oh, great, Caffery thought, the three monkeys.

‘I swear,’ one began, holding up his hand, but Caffery cut him off with a look, shook his head disappointedly. He turned and walked back to the house, where Jonathan stood, pale and drawn.

‘I’m coming in with you. I want to see her bedroom.’

‘No. That’s not a good idea.’

‘Please.’

‘Jonathan, what’s it going to achieve?’

‘I want to check he hasn’t . . .’ he looked up at the window ‘. . . done anything in there. Just want to be sure.’

Caffery wanted to look at the room too. Not for the same reason. He wanted to see if he could do what the Walking Man could: soak up something about Ted Moon just by being there. ‘Come on, then. But don’t touch anything.’

The front door was open and they went in. Jonathan’s face was a mask. He stood for a moment, gazing around the familiar hall, the surfaces covered with black fingerprint dust. A member of the CSI team that had been through – dusting the place, tweezering hairs from Martha’s pillow, removing all the bed linen – wandered past in his spacesuit, collecting up bits and pieces of equipment. Caffery stopped him. ‘Found a forced entry?’

‘Not yet. It’s a mystery at this point.’ He did the na na na na, na na na na Twilight Zone theme and realized too late that the two men were gazing at him stiffly. He made his face go serious and pointed sternly at their feet. ‘You coming in here?’

‘Give us some bootees and nitriles. We’ll be good.’

The CSI gave Caffery a pair of each and passed a set to Jonathan. They pulled them on and Caffery held out a hand to indicate the stairs. ‘Shall we?’

Caffery went up first, Jonathan following him despondently. Martha’s room was just as the jacker’s photo had shown it: pictures framed on the walls, ballerinas twirling along a pink border, Hannah Montana stickers on the divan drawer. Except now the mattress was bare, stripped right back. And the divan, walls and windows were covered with fingerprint dust.

‘Looks shabby.’ Jonathan turned slowly, taking it all in. ‘You live somewhere for so long and you don’t notice it’s getting shabby.’ He went to the window, his gloved finger resting on the pane, and for the first time Caffery noticed the guy had lost weight. Just like that – in spite of the lectures on keeping up the family’s strength, in spite of his apparent loading on of food, Jonathan was the one, not Rose or Philippa, who was becoming scrawny around the neck, trousers a bit baggy. He’d taken on the look of a sick, ageing vulture.

‘Mr Caffery?’ He didn’t turn away from the window. ‘I know we can’t talk in front of Rose and Philippa but, man to man, what do you think? What do you think Ted Moon has done with my daughter?’

Caffery studied the back of Jonathan’s head. The hair he’d once thought curly seemed thin. He decided the man had a right to be lied to – because the truth, Mr Bradley, is this: he has raped your daughter. He’s done it as many times as he could manage. And he has killed her – to shut her up, stop her crying. That part has already happened – probably some time on the day after the kidnap. There’s nothing human left in Ted Moon so he might even have used her body after he killed her. He probably went on doing that for as long as he could, but that part’s over too by now. I know that because he took Emily. He needed another. What’s probably happening to Martha now is he’s trying to decide what to do with her body. He’s good at building tunnels. He makes fine, well-engineered tunnels . . .