Mo Hayder: Gone

There was DC Prody. A big, neatly dressed thirty-something new guy who hadn’t long come over to plainclothes. He’d done four years as a traffic cop in the Road Policing Unit and although no one would say it to his face this detail put him at the bottom of the food chain in the police cred hierarchy. Caffery was prepared to give him a chance, though. He had a feeling from first impressions that Prody might have the makings of a steady-hand cop. Plus he had background in Traffic. That ticked a couple of Caffery’s boxes on a case involving cars. Next there was Detective Sergeant Paluzzi, who always said that if the guys in the team were going to call her Lollapalooza behind her back then she’d just as soon they cut to the chase and said it to her face. They did. Lollapalooza was a real number, with olive skin, sleepy eyes and an obsessive taste in high heels. Turned up at work each day in a lipstick-red Ka that she occasionally, cheekily, parked in the superintendent’s unofficial bay just to get a rise out of him. Lollapalooza should by rights have been a disruption in the team but she was a solid worker and Caffery needed a woman if the case was going to take the paedophile turn Flea Marley had said it would.

Last on the list was DS Turner. An old hand, Turner was hitand-miss as an investigator. He had two speeds – the ‘interesting-job speed’, which turned him into an up-all-night-living-on-his-nerves grafter, and the ‘uninteresting-job speed’, which made him a slothful bastard who had to be threatened with a disciplinary to get him out of bed. Turner was a father of two. On this case Caffery knew where his dial would be set. By ten o’clock that morning Turner was hard at it. He’d already rustled up two victims of the earlier carjackings and had brought them into the MCIU offices, where Caffery took them off his hands. The two should probably be interviewed separately, but Caffery was prepared to shove procedure if it meant he’d gain a few hours. He led them together to the only place he could find in the whole building with a modicum of sound insulation – a side room at the end of a corridor on the ground floor.

‘I’m sorry about that.’ He closed the door with his foot, shutting out the din, switched on the flickery fluorescents and put his pile of papers on the desk with his MP3 player. ‘Take a seat. I know it’s not glamorous.’

They each chose a chair.

‘Damien?’ Caffery held out his hand to the young black guy on the right. ‘Thanks for making the time.’

‘No worries.’ He half rose and shook his hand. ‘Hi there.’

Damien Graham was built like a professional footballer, wearing a magenta leather jacket and, on his massive legs, designer jeans. His credentials were all Jack-the-lad: you could tell just in the way he sat, his hand held casually with the sleeve up enough to display the heavy Rolex watch. He kept his knees open just the right distance to show he was in control. Sitting next to him, Simone Blunt was poles apart. White, mid-thirties, blonde and coolly elegant, dressed in top-drawer career-woman wardrobe: wide-collared shirt, killer legs in black nylons, and a suit cut short, crisp and not overtly sexy. Too professional to flirt.

‘And Mrs Blunt.’

‘Please – Simone.’ She leaned forward to shake his hand. ‘Good to meet you.’

‘Hope you didn’t mind not having Cleo here. Didn’t think it was going to be appropriate. I’d like to speak to her later if that’s OK?’ Lollapalooza was babysitting Simone’s ten-year-old daughter in another room. ‘We’re waiting for someone from CAPIT to come along and be with us. They’ll know how to speak to her. CAPIT is the unit that—’

‘I know CAPIT. They interviewed her when it first happened. Child Abuse and Protection something or other.’

‘Protection Investigation Team. They’re on their way.’ Caffery swung a chair round and sat, elbows on the desk. ‘Now, Mr Turner told you both why you’re here?’

Damien nodded. ‘It’s that little girl last night.’ The way he said girl – ‘ geh-awl ’ – pinned him as a Londoner. South London, Caffery guessed, maybe even from his old stamping ground, the south-east. ‘Been on the news.’

‘Martha Bradley,’ said Simone. ‘I take it you haven’t found her.’

Caffery inclined his head a touch towards her. ‘Not yet. And we don’t know if it’s connected with what happened to you both. But I’d like, if it’s OK with you, to explore that eventuality a bit.’ He switched on the MP3 player, then twisted it so the mic pointed to them. ‘Damien. Do you want to start?’

Damien pushed his sleeves back. Uncomfortable in the police station with the posh totty next to him and determined he wasn’t going to show it. ‘Sure. I mean, it’s going back a few years now.’

‘2006.’

‘Yeah – Alysha was only six at the time.’

‘Did Turner say we’d like to arrange an interview with her when the time suits?’

‘You’ll have a job. I haven’t seen her in two years.’

Caffery raised his eyebrows.

‘She’s gone. Gone back to the homeland, bruv. With her damn gully mother always running at the mouth. Sorry.’ He made a show of correcting himself, smoothing his shirt and putting his head back, hands on his lapels, pinkies up. ‘I do beg your pardon. I mean, my daughter is out of the country at the moment. I believe she might be in Jamaica. With her talkative mother.’

‘You’re separated?’

‘Best thing I ever did.’

‘Does Turner—’ Caffery swivelled to the door, as if Turner might be standing there with a Moneypenny notepad, pen poised. He turned back. ‘I’ll tell Turner. If you could give us her number.’

‘Don’t know it. Haven’t got a clue how to find her. Or my daughter. Lorna’s . . .’ he made inverted commas with his forefingers ‘. . . finding herself. With some wack person called Prince, runs a boat-rental place.’ He cocked his head sideways, did his best Jamaican again. Probably for Simone’s benefit. ‘Him make him coil showing dem tourists da crocs. Know what I is sayin’?’

‘She’s got family here?’ said Caffery.

‘No. And good luck finding her is all I’m saying. And if you do, tell her I want a picture of my girl.’

‘OK, OK. We’ll come to that. Let’s – let’s think back to 2006. To what happened.’

Damien touched his fingers to his temples, then flicked them outwards as if the whole incident had scrambled his brains. ‘It was a weird thing. A weird time, if I’m honest. We’d had a break-in, me and Lorna and Alysha, and that shook us up, plus we weren’t seeing eye to eye, things were a bit rocky at work, get me? Everything’s pretty fucked up anyway and suddenly this happens. We’re in this car park—’

‘Outside the theatre.’

‘Yeah, the Hippodrome, and we’re getting out the car and Alysha’s bitch of a mother’s out already, like she always was, doing some airhead thing with her makeup next to the car. But my little girl’s still in the back, and I’m untangling the sat nav, like, and suddenly out of nowhere comes this – this person , all tooled up. When I look back I think it was the shock because it’s not me to put up with crap – not in my nature, get me? But this time I’m like that. I just go rigid. And this person comes in and next I know I’m on the tarmac. See that?’ He held up his hand for Simone to look at. Showed it to Caffery. ‘Broke my damn wrist, damn eediat .’

‘He took the car?’

‘Takes the thing from under my nose. Think I’m so clever, don’t I? But the man’s fast – before I know it, it’s all over and he’s driving my car up into Clifton. He’s only gone a bit and my kid’s yelling at him in the back so much he loses it.’