Mo Hayder - Gone

When the joints were clear she gave the hatch three more blows with the chisel handle. Still nothing happened. There was no rust left so it should be ready to give. She unfolded the knife again, gave it another go round, her left hand placed over the right to give it more force. But the knife wasn’t man enough for the job and on the sixth thump it snapped, deflecting her hand, which plunged down and landed on her thigh. The broken blade penetrated the immersion suit and sank deep into her flesh.

She jerked her leg up, her back arcing with the pain. The steel blade was buried in the muscle, just the little enamel handle visible, sticking out of the blue neoprene. Forgetting her first-aid training, she pulled it out instantly, letting it clatter away in the muck. She dropped on to the shelf and unzipped the suit, swung her feet in their heavy boots on to it and lifted her backside so she could peel the legs down. The skin on her thighs was white and mottled, like a freezer chicken’s, the hairs standing up individually, stiff and stark. There was a dull blue area where the knife had sunk in. She put her thumbs on either side of the patch and peered at it. As she did so a thin crescent of red appeared. It thickened then, all at once, bloated up and the blood broke over the surface. It ran down her raised thigh in two rivulets and soaked into her underwear.

She clamped her hands over the wound, biting her lip. It wasn’t the femoral artery. If it had been it’d be shooting blood into the air, hitting the hull sides. Still, any bleed she couldn’t afford. Not down here in this cold. She ripped off her T-shirt and pressed it to the wound, tied the fabric using a clove hitch knot at the back of her thigh. Then she put the leg straight on the bench, rested her hands in her groin, and leaned as much pressure on it as possible.

She sat there for a long time, like a ballet dancer doing a warmup exercise, pushing back against the pain, pushing her mind into pictures of getting out.

A noise came from the air shaft. The screech of metal on rock. She raised her head. Another noise – this time she knew she wasn’t imagining it. A pebble or something hard had just bounced down the shaft and landed with a plink in the water. And then more: stones, some leaves and a branch.

It wasn’t someone throwing things down. It was someone climbing down.

‘You’re wrong. He’s not watching you. You can relax.’

Caffery was in the kitchen with the guy from the high-tech unit at Portishead, a tall, sculpted, ginger-haired guy who didn’t look as if he worked for the police. He wore a skinny tie, a weird sixties suit with narrow lapels, and the bag he carried was fake crocodile skin. He’d turned up in some vintage Volvo number, like an extra from a Sean Connery flick. But he seemed to know his stuff. He made Caffery remove the camera from the slot in the wall and rest it on a piece of card on the kitchen table. Then the two men stood together, peering down at it.

‘I promise you he’s not watching.’

‘But the gubbins on the back. That’s a radio transmitter, isn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh. He’s probably got it linked to a high-speed USB receiver so he can record directly to the hard drive. I dunno, maybe his plan was to be sitting somewhere out there in a car just watching the whole thing on his laptop, but he’s not there now.’

‘You sure?’

The guy smiled. Calm. ‘One hundred and twenty per cent. We scanned it. Anyway, this little thing’s nothing impressive. Very low end, off the shelf, cheap as chips. The stuff the security services use is about a hundred times more powerful – uses microwaves – but this? He’d have to be somewhere on the estate to pick it up and the units have run the whole diameter. There’s no one out there. Sorry. I have to admit I was excited for a bit. Actually thought we might find the bastard sitting in his car tapping away on the keys of a nice little Sony.’

Caffery looked him up and down. The high-tech unit had already traced the phone number Moon had sent the the photo from. It was a pay-as-you-go, purchased in a Tesco somewhere in the south of England at least two years ago. Switched off, but they’d already been able to say where the text was sent from. Near junction sixteen of the M4. Halfway between anywhere and anywhere. Then the unit had sent this red-haired character to the vicarage. There were winklepickers on his feet and his blackframed glasses were out of Alfie . Caffery studied the shoes. Then his face. ‘What do we call you, then? Q?’

The guy laughed. An unamused, nasal sound. ‘Never heard that one before. Never, ever, ever. It’s true what they say about MCIU – you guys really are a stitch. A laugh a minute.’ He unzipped the bag and produced a small box with a circular red LED display. ‘No, I’m just an anorak. Two years in high-tech and before that two years in the technical support unit at Serious Crime – you know, SOCAT, who’ve got the covert-surveillance boys?’

‘Doing things we don’t admit to the Crown Prosecution Service?’

‘Hey-hey.’ He touched the knot of his tie. He had freckles across his nose. Pale eyes. Like an albino. ‘See, I know that’s a joke. I can tell by the cute way your eyes crease.’

Caffery bent to peer again at the camera. ‘Where would someone pick up a bit of kit like this?’

‘That? Anywhere. A few hundred quid, probably less. Off the Internet. They’d ship it, no questions asked.’ He smiled, revealing very small, evenly set teeth. ‘Nothing illegal about having an enquiring mind.’

‘What I’d like to know is why he wants to get a view of an empty bedroom. He knows they’re not here any more.’

‘Sorry, mate. I’m from the gadgetry department. Psychology’s second door on the right.’ He straightened, ran his hands down his tie and glanced around the kitchen. ‘But there’s another one – in here. If that’s of any interest.’

Caffery stared at him. ‘ What? ’

‘Yes. There’s one in here too. Can you see it?’

Caffery scanned the walls, the ceiling. He couldn’t see anything.

‘It’s all right. You won’t be able to. Look at this.’ He held out what looked like a small hand torch. A little circle of red diodes danced across the top of it. ‘I had my own budget at SOCAT, never had to go through Procurement. Believe me, I didn’t waste a penny. Everything I bought has made its money back in saved time and man hours. This is the Spyfinder.’

‘You really are out of a Bond movie.’

‘You know what? I’ve got an idea. How about we abandon that source of amusement – just for the time being.’ He held the unit at an angle for Caffery to look at. ‘That Close Encounters dance? That’s light reflecting off a camera optic.’

‘Where?’ Caffery’s eyes ran over the walls, the fridge, the cooker. The row of Martha’s birthday cards on the windowsill.

‘Concentrate.’

He followed the direction Q’s attention was locked on.

‘Inside the clock?’

‘I think so. Inside the number six.’

‘Fuck fuck fuck.’ Caffery went to stand in front of the clock, hands at his sides. He could see a glint in there but it was wasting. Tiny. He turned back to the kitchen: the old veneer cupboards, the frayed curtains. The carton of cream Jonathan had poured on the apple pie still sitting there, going rancid. And the pile of newspapers, the smell of vomit. Why the hell would Moon want to watch this empty kitchen? What would he be getting out of it? ‘How long would it have taken to put them in?’

‘Depends on how good he is with the technology. And he’d have to have gone outside to check they were working, that he was picking them up on his receiver.’