Mo Hayder - Gone

Damien let out a sigh. ‘Come on.’ He stepped inside and closed the front door. He took off the pimp coat, hung it on a peg in the hall and beckoned to Caffery to follow. Up the stairs he went, ticker-tacker, fast, with his hand on the banister and his toes pointing out, his massive legs too big and strong on the old wood. Caffery followed, more slowly. On the landing they found Q. In a suit that had the glint and gleam of taffeta, he was tinkering with a tiny electronic unit that was resting on the banisters. He didn’t look up or acknowledge them as they passed and went along the landing.

The master bedroom at the front of the house was overdecorated. Three walls were painted a truffle brown, with air-brushed canvases of naked women, and the fourth was papered in flock silver and black wallpaper. The bed had a black suede headboard and silver scatter cushions, and there was an offthe-peg wardrobe system with mirrored doors.

‘Nice.’

‘D’you like it?’

Caffery pulled a Twix out of his pocket and unwrapped it. ‘Bachelor room. Not what you had when you were with Lorna, is it? Did you and she sleep here?’

‘I changed it when she’d gone. Got rid of some of her shit. But this used to be our room. Why?’

‘And before that. This was never Alysha’s room?’

‘No. She always had the one at the back. Since she was a baby. Do you want to see it? I got nothing in there, just Alysha’s stuff. For if she ever comes home.’

Caffery didn’t want to see it. He’d already been fed news on which of the rooms Moon had covered with his cameras. Damien didn’t know it yet, but there was a unit somewhere in the ceiling above his room. Q was expecting a ladder to arrive so he could get into the loft and strip the damned thing out. It was the same as it was at the Costellos’ and the Blunts’ and it didn’t entirely make sense: the cameras were not in the places Caffery’d anticipated. He’d have thought Moon would focus on places where the girls would undress. The bedrooms and the bathroom. But apart from Martha Bradley’s room there hadn’t been one camera in the girls’ bedrooms. Instead they’d been in the kitchens, the living rooms, and – most odd of all – in the parents’ bedrooms. Like here.

‘Damien, thank you for your consideration. Someone’ll be in touch. With an expense claim. For the – you know . . . mess.’ He pushed the Twix bar into his mouth, wiped his hands and went back on to the landing, past Q, and down the stairs, chewing as he went. At the bottom he glanced up at Alysha’s photographs. Three pictures, three outfits, but the poses weren’t any different. Hands under her chin. Teeth on display. A little girl trying her best to smile at the camera. He had the front door half open when something about the photos made him pause, stand still and consider them seriously.

Alysha. Nothing like Martha. Nothing like Emily. Alysha was black. Ticking away in the back of Caffery’s head was what the literature said – that paedophiles had types. Colourings and age ranges. It came up time and time again. If Moon was going to the trouble of selecting these girls, then why weren’t they more similar? All blonde and eleven? All brunette and four? Or all black and six?

Caffery ran his tongue around his mouth, dislodging the chocolate from his teeth. He thought about Martha’s tooth in the pie. And then he thought about the letters. Why, he thought, did you send those letters, Ted? Out of nowhere he thought of what Cleo had said – that the jacker had asked about her parents’ jobs. And then everything settled on Caffery all at once. He closed the front door and stood shakily in the hallway, his hand on the wall. He understood. He knew why things had felt so wrong for such a long time. And he knew why the jacker had asked Cleo the question. He’d been double-checking he had the right child.

Caffery glanced up at Damien, who was standing at the foot of the stairs lighting a cigarillo from a flat tin. He waited until he’d got it lit, then gave the guy a tight smile. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a spare one of those knocking around?’

‘Yeah, sure. You OK?’

‘I will be when I’ve had a smoke.’

Damien opened the tin and held it out. Caffery took one, lit it, drew in the smoke and paused, giving it time to damp down his pulse.

‘Thought you were on your way? Changed your mind? Stopping?’

Caffery took the cigarillo out of his mouth, blew the smoke in a long, delicious stream in front of him. Nodded. ‘Uh-huh. Can you put the kettle on? I think I’m going to be here a bit longer.’

‘How come?’

‘I need to talk to you seriously. I need to ask you about your life.’

‘My life?’

‘That’s right. Yours.’ Caffery turned his eyes to Damien. He was tasting the low, easy glow of things falling into place. ‘Because we were wrong. It was never Alysha he was targeting. He’s not interested in what happens to her. Never has been.’

‘Then what? What’s he interested in?’

‘You, mate. He’s interested in you . It’s the parents he wants.’

Janice Costello sat at her sister’s big wooden table in the huge kitchen at the back of the house. She’d been there most of the afternoon, ever since Nick had helped her in from the freezing garden. Cups of tea had been made, food had been offered, a bottle of brandy had appeared from somewhere. She’d touched none of it. It all looked unreal to her. Like something meant for someone else. As if there as an invisible barrier in the physical world and that everyday things – like plates and spoons and candles and potato-peelers – were meant to be used only by people who were happy. Not by those who felt like her. The day had dragged. At about four o’clock Cory had appeared out of nowhere. He’d come into the room and stood in the doorway. ‘Janice,’ he’d said simply. ‘Janice?’ She hadn’t answered him. It was too much effort even to look at him and eventually he’d left the room. She didn’t wonder where he went. She just sat there, arms wrapped around herself, Jasper the rabbit squashed hard into her armpit.

She was trying to remember the last moment she’d spent with Emily. They’d shared the bed, she knew that much, but she couldn’t remember if she’d been lying on her side, spooning Emily, or if she’d been on her back, her arm around her, or even, and this thought stung her more than anything, if on that occasion she’d fallen asleep with her back to Emily. The cold truth was that a bottle of prosecco had been shared and Janice’s thoughts had been more with Paul Prody asleep on the pull-out in the living room than on holding Emily, breathing her in as deeply as she could. Now she struggled towards the memory, stretched forward to it, like an exhausted swimmer straining for the shore. Searched and searched for just one scrap of Emily. The smell of her hair, the feel of her breath.

Janice leaned forward and rested her forehead on the table. Emily. A tremor went through her. The overwhelming urge to bang her head against the wood. Skewer herself. Shut her thoughts up. She screwed her eyes tight. Tried to focus on something practical. The parade of workmen who had wandered in and out of the house during the renovations – Emily had loved them: they’d let her climb their ladders, go through their tools and lunch boxes, examine the wrapped sandwiches and packets of crisps. Janice tried to find Moon’s face among them, tried to see him standing in the kitchen at the breakfast bar, drinking a cup of tea. Tried and failed.

‘Janice love?’

She jerked her head up. Nick was standing in the doorway, holding her red hair up in a coil behind her head, massaging her neck wearily.

‘What?’ Janice’s face was like ice. She couldn’t have moved it into an expression if she’d wanted to. ‘What is it? Has something happened?’