Gone

11

The man crouched at the edge of the camp, the fire lighting his filthy face and beard red, making him look like something born not of woman but of a volcano. Caffery sat a few feet away, watching him in silence. It had been dark for four hours already, but the man was busy planting a bulb in the frozen earth. ‘There was once a child,’ he said, trowelling the earth away. ‘A child called Crocus. Crocus was a girl child with golden hair. She loved to wear purple dresses and ribbons.’

Caffery listened in silence. In the short time he had known the vagrant, whom the locals called the Walking Man, he’d learned to listen and not to question. He’d learned that in this relationship he was the pupil and the Walking Man was the teacher – the one who chose most things about their encounters: what they talked about, where and when they met. It was six long months since they’d last sat together, but maybe the twentieth time Caffery had searched for him. Those hunts had been long lonely nights, driving lanes at five miles an hour, stretched up in the driver’s seat, craning his neck to see over the hedgerows. Tonight, almost the moment he’d begun looking, the campfire had sprung up like a beacon in a field. As if the Walking Man had been there all along, watching Caffery’s efforts with amusement. Waiting for the time to be right.

‘One day,’ the Walking Man continued, ‘Crocus was taken by a witch and condemned to live trapped among the clouds where her parents could neither speak to her nor see her. They still don’t know for sure if she’s alive, but every spring, on her birthday, they turn their eyes to the sky and pray that this spring will be the one their child is returned.’ He patted the ground around the bulb and dribbled some water on to it from a plastic bottle. ‘It is an act of faith, to continue to believe their daughter is still there. An act of absolute faith. Can you imagine what it must have been like for them never to know for sure what had happened to their daughter? Never to know for sure if she was dead or alive?’

‘Your daughter’s body was never found,’ Caffery said. ‘You know how they felt.’

‘And your brother’s wasn’t either. So that makes us twins.’ He smiled. The moonlight caught his teeth, which were even, clean and healthy in his blackened face. ‘Peas in a pod.’

Peas in a pod? Two men who couldn’t have been more different. The insomniac lonely cop and the bedraggled homeless guy, who walked all day and never slept in the same place twice. But it was true they shared things in common. They had the same eyes. Astonishingly when Caffery looked at the Walking Man he saw his own blue eyes staring back at him. And, more importantly, they shared a story. Caffery had been eight when his older brother Ewan had disappeared from the family’s back garden in London. The ageing paedophile Ivan Penderecki, who lived over the railway tracks, was to blame, Caffery had no doubt, but Penderecki had never been charged or convicted. The Walking Man’s daughter had been raped five times before she was murdered by an itinerant offender on probation, Craig Evans.

Craig Evans hadn’t been as lucky as Penderecki. The Walking Man, who in those days had been a successful businessman, had taken his revenge. Now Evans lived in a chair in a long-term care facility near his family home in Worcestershire. The Walking Man had been precise about the injuries he’d inflicted. Evans no longer had eyes to watch children nor a penis to rape them with.

‘Is that what makes you different?’ Caffery said. ‘Is that what makes you able to see?’

‘To see? What does that mean?’

‘You know what I mean. You see. You see more than others see.’

‘Supernatural powers, you mean.’ The Walking Man snorted. ‘Don’t talk mumbo-jumbo. I live out here and off the ground, like an animal. I exist and I absorb. My eyes are open wider and more light gets into them. But it doesn’t make me a seer.’

‘You know things I don’t.’

‘So? What do you expect of yourself? Being a cop doesn’t make you superhuman. No matter what you think.’

The Walking Man came back to the fire. He lifted some more wood on to it. His walking socks were spread out to dry on a stick shoved into the ground near the flames. They were good socks. The most expensive money could buy. Made from alpaca. The Walking Man could afford it. He had millions tucked away in a bank somewhere.

‘Paedophiles.’ Caffery sipped his cider. It stung the back of his throat and sat flat and cold in his stomach, but he knew he’d drink the whole mug and more before the night was finished. ‘My specialist subject. Stranger kidnaps. The outcome is usually the same: if we’re very lucky the child gets returned almost immediately after the assault, and if we’re not, the child will be killed within the first twenty-four hours.’ It was nearly thirty hours since Martha had gone. He lowered the mug. ‘Or, now I think of it, maybe that’s when we are lucky.’

‘If the child is killed in the first twenty-four hours you’re lucky? What’s that? Police logic?’

‘I mean that maybe it’s a better outcome than those who are kept alive longer.’

The Walking Man didn’t answer. The two men were silent for a long time, pondering that. Caffery raised his eyes to watch the clouds roll across the moon. He thought how lonely and majestic they were. He imagined a child with golden hair peeping down from them, watching for her parents. Somewhere in the woods a fox cub was calling. And Martha was somewhere out in the great spread of the night. Caffery reached inside his jacket pocket. He pulled out the photocopied letter that had been wrapped inside her underwear and held it out. The Walking Man grunted. Leaned over and took it. Opened it and began to read, tilting the paper forward so it caught the light from the fire. Caffery watched his face. A handwriting expert had already decided the jacker was trying to disguise his writing. While the Bradleys’ car was being crawled over by the forensics guys, Caffery had spent a long time in his office, poring over the letter. Now he knew every word by heart.

Dear Mummy of Martha,

I am sure Martha would of wanted me to get in touch with you though it’s not like she’s said or anything. She’s not very TALKATIVE at the moment. She has told me she likes BALLET DANCING and DOGS, but you and I know very well that girls of this age lie all the time. THEY ARE LIARS. See what I think is I think she likes other things. Not like she’s going to admit that to you now, of course. She LOVED the things I did to her last night. I wish you could of seen her face.

But then she turns around and lies to me. You should see her face when she does that. Ugly don’t even come near it. Luckily now I have REARRANGED things in that department. She looks much better now. But please, Martha’s Mummy please can you find it in your heart to do me a kindly favour???? Pretty please? Can you tell the police cunts that they can’t stop me now so don’t bother. It’s started now, hasn’t it, and it ain’t going to stop just sudden. Is it now?

Is it?

The Walking Man finished reading. He looked up.

‘Well?’

‘Take it away from me.’ He thrust the letter at Caffery. His eyes had changed. They were bloodshot and dead.

Caffery returned it to his pocket. He repeated, ‘Well?’

‘If I was really a seer or a clairvoyant this would be the time I would tell you where that child is. I would tell you now and I would tell you to use whatever powers you have to get to her, whatever the cost to your life and profession, because that person,’ he jabbed a finger towards the pocket where the letter was, ‘is cleverer than any of the others you’ve brought to me.’

‘Cleverer?’

‘Yes. He’s laughing at you. Laughing that you think you can outsmart him, you petty Bow Street Runners with your truncheons and your dunce’s hats. He is so much more than he seems.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know.’ He unfurled his bedroll and laid it out. He began to arrange the sleeping-bag. His face was hard. ‘Don’t ask me more – don’t waste your time. For the love of God, I’m not a psychic. Just a man.’

Caffery took another swig of cider and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He studied the Walking Man’s face as he got ready for bed. Cleverer than any of the others. He thought about what the jacker had said: It’s started now, hasn’t it, and it ain’t going to stop just sudden. Is it now? He knew what the words meant: he was going to do it again. He was going to choose another car at random: any car, any driver. The only important thing would be the child in the back seat. A girl. Under twelve. He was going to steal her. And all Caffery had to go on was that it would, in all likelihood, happen within a radius of ten miles from Midsomer Norton.

After a long time of staring at the darkness on the edge of the firelight, Caffery picked up a foam mattress and unrolled it. He got out his sleeping-bag and settled on his back, the bag tucked around him to keep out the cold. The Walking Man grunted, and did the same. Caffery looked at him for a while. He knew he wouldn’t speak again tonight: it was the end of the conversation and from that moment on not another word would be uttered. He was right: they lay in their respective sleeping-bags, looking at their own section of the sky, thinking about their own worlds and how they were going to battle through what life brought them in the next twenty-four hours.

The Walking Man slept first. Caffery stayed awake for several hours, listening to the night, wishing the Walking Man was wrong, that clairvoyance or a supernatural power did exist and that it was possible to divine, just from the noises out there, what had become of Martha Bradley.