Mo Hayder - Gone

‘Orange. You?’

‘Shit. Orange too. Pay-as-you-go at the moment.’ He took a step back, looked up and down the length of the barge. ‘We need to get you out of here.’

‘Hatch on the deck. I’ve tried, can’t budge it. Paul? What’s with the shoe?’

He put both hands on the gunwales and levered himself up, supporting himself on trembling arms, his body dangling against the hull. After a moment or two he let himself slither back into the water.

‘What’s with the shoe, Paul?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I’m not stupid.’

‘Let’s concentrate on getting you out. You’re not coming through the hatch. There’s a sodding great windlass on top of the deck.’

He walked along the side of the barge, his hand on the hull, stopping at places to examine it. She heard him hammer on it further down near the rockfall. When he came back there was a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. He was wet and muddy and, suddenly, looked terrible.

‘Listen.’ He didn’t meet her eyes. ‘Here’s what we do.’ He bit his lip and peered at the shaft. ‘I’m going to climb back up, get a signal.’

‘Was there one in the shaft?’

‘I . . . Yes. I mean, I think so.’

‘You don’t know for sure?’

‘I didn’t check,’ he admitted. ‘If there’s not one in the shaft there will be at the top.’

‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Course there will.’

‘Hey.’ He bent at the waist so his face was level with the hole and he could hold her eyes. ‘You can trust me on this. I’m not going to leave you alone. He won’t be back – he knows we’ve been searching the tunnel and he’d be crazy to come here. I’m only going to be at the top.’

‘What if you have to leave the entrance to get a signal?’

‘Then it won’t be far.’ He paused. Stared at her. ‘You look pale.’

‘Yeah.’ She hunched her shoulders and gave an exaggerated shiver. ‘I’m . . . you know. It’s fucking freezing. That’s all.’

‘Here.’ He rummaged in the bumbag. Pulled out a squashed sandwich in cellophane and a half-full bottle of Evian. ‘My lunch. Sorry – bit manky.’

She pushed her hand through the hole and took the sandwich. The bottle of water. Tucked them in the rucksack hanging under the deck. ‘No whisky in there, I s’pose?’

‘Just eat it.’

He was halfway across the canal when something stopped him. He looked back to her. There was a pause. Then, without a word, he waded back and put his hand through the hole. She looked at it for a moment – his warm white fingers against the blackened inside of the hull – then lifted her own hand and rested it in his. Neither said anything. Then Prody pulled his hand away and waded back to the chain. He paused for a moment, to scan the tunnel one last time – the nameless bumps and mounds in the water – then hauled the rope away from the wall and began to climb.

Janice Costello had a sister who lived out near Chippenham and Caffery headed over there in the afternoon. The village was sleepy, with hanging baskets outside the cottages, a pub, a post office and a plaque that read: Best Kept Wiltshire Village 2004 . When he got to the house – a stone-built cottage, with a thatched roof and mullioned windows – it was Nick who appeared in the low doorway. She was wearing a soft mauve dress, her highheeled boots replaced with turquoise Chinese slippers she must have borrowed. She kept putting her fingers to her lips to get him to keep his voice down. Janice’s mum and sister were upstairs in the bedroom and Cory had taken off, no one was quite sure where.

‘And Janice?’

Nick made a face. ‘You’d better come to the back.’ She took him through the low-ceilinged cottage, past an inviting fire dancing in the grate, two Labradors asleep in front of it, and out into the cold of the back terrace. Here the back lawns sloped away to where a low hedge met the great oolite plain at the south of the Cotswolds, its furrowed fields lay frosty, the skies lead grey.

‘She hasn’t spoken to anyone since she left the hospital.’ Nick pointed to a figure sitting on a bench at the bottom of a small rose garden, her back to the cottage, a duvet wrapped around her shoulders. Her dark hair had been pushed back off her face. She was staring out across the fields to where the autumn trees touched the sky. ‘Not even her mother.’

Caffery buttoned up his coat, shoved his hands into his pockets and made his way down the narrow, yew-lined path to the lawn at the end. When he came and stood in front of Janice she raised her eyes to his and gazed at him, trembling. Her skin was naked of makeup, her nose and chin red. Her hands clutching the duvet at her neck were grey with cold. Emily’s toy rabbit was on her lap.

‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it? Have you found her? Please say it, whatever it is – just say it.’

‘We don’t know anything – we still don’t know anything. I’m sorry.’

‘Jesus.’ She sank back on the bench, her hand on her forehead. ‘Jesus, Jesus. I can’t bear this. I just can’t bear it.’

‘The moment we hear something you’ll be the first to know.’

‘Bad or good? Do you promise me I’ll be the first, bad or good?’

‘Bad or good. I promise. Can I sit down? I need to talk to you. We can get Nick to sit in if you’d rather.’

‘Why? She can’t change anything, can she? No one can change it. Can they?’

‘Not really.’

He sat on the bench next to her, legs pushed out and crossed at the ankles, arms folded. His shoulders he kept hunched against the cold. On the ground at Janice’s feet was an untouched mug of tea and a hardback copy of À la recherche du temps perdu in a library’s plastic dust jacket. ‘Isn’t that the difficult one?’ he said after a while. ‘Proust?’

‘My sister found it. It was in some Sunday paper’s top-ten list of things to read in a crisis. It’s either that or Kahlil Gibran.’

‘And I bet you can’t read a word of either of them.’

She bent her face and touched the end of her nose. Stayed like that for what seemed almost a minute, concentrating. ‘Of course I can’t.’ She took her hand away and shook it, as if it was polluted. ‘I’m sort of waiting for the screaming in my head to stop first.’

‘The medical staff are going crazy. You shouldn’t have discharged yourself like that. You look OK, though. Better than I expected.’

‘No, I don’t. That’s a lie.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve got to apologize, Janice. You’ve been let down.’

‘Yes, I have. I’ve let me down. Emily’s been let down.’

‘On the force’s behalf I apologize for Mr Prody. He should have done better than he did. And he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. His behaviour was entirely inappropriate.’

‘No.’ She gave a pained, ironic smile. ‘There was nothing inappropriate about Paul’s behaviour. What is inappropriate is the way you’ve handled this. And that my husband is having an affair with Paul’s wife. That’s what’s inappropriate . Really totally bloody inappropriate.’

‘I beg your—’

‘Yes.’ She gave a sudden hard laugh. ‘Oh – didn’t you know? My wonderful husband is fucking Clare Prody.’

Caffery turned away, looked at the sky. He wanted to swear. ‘That’s . . .’ he cleared his throat ‘. . . difficult . For all of us – that’s difficult.’

‘Difficult for you? Try the fact that my daughter is missing. Try the fact that since she went my husband hasn’t even fucking spoken to me. That,’ she held a finger out at him, tears in her eyes, ‘is what’s fucking difficult. That my husband hasn’t spoken to me. Or even said Emily’s name. He’s forgotten how to say her name .’ She dropped her hand and sat for a minute looking at her lap. Then she lifted the rabbit and pressed it against her forehead. Tight. As if the pressure would stop her crying.