Gone

41

Caffery had the taste of tobacco in his mouth. While scrawny little Peter Moon had helped his son get dressed, supported him as he walked down the corridor into the living room, Caffery had gone outside to where his car was parked, stood next to the window nearest to Myrtle and rolled his first cigarette in days. His fingers were shaking. The rain made the paper dissolve. But he kept at it and lit it, his hand round the lighter flame. He blew the smoke upwards in a thin blue line, Myrtle watching him steadily. Caffery ignored her. He didn’t know what trick he’d expected of the jacker, but it wasn’t this at all.

The tobacco helped. When he went back into the living room he felt toxic and tight, but at least he wasn’t still trembling. Peter Moon had made tea, strong and not too milky. The pot sat on the scruffy little peeling veneer table, along with a plate of Battenberg cake, carefully sliced. Caffery hadn’t seen a Battenberg in years. It made him think of his mother and Songs of Praise on a Sunday. Not of mean little council flats like this. Next to the cake lay Moon’s photo ID, which the force’s HR department had hung on to. It showed the handyman – soft jaw, dark hair. Overweight, but nothing like the Richard Moon who sat on the sofa, wheezing, as his father busied himself around him, supporting him with cushions, getting his legs raised, putting a mug of tea into his swollen hands.

Turner had been in touch with the employment agency the force used for casual staff and the manager who’d hired Moon – put him through his CRB clearance, interviewed him – was here now. A middle-aged Asian man in a camel coat with the beginnings of grey in his hairline. He looked anxious. Caffery wouldn’t have wanted to be in his shoes.

‘He’s nothing like the man I employed.’ He scrutinized Richard Moon. ‘The man I employed was a quarter this weight. He was healthy and reasonably fit.’

‘What ID did he give you?’

‘A passport. A utility bill from this address.’ The folder he’d brought was full of paperwork: photocopies of all the ID evidence he had for Richard Moon. ‘Everything the CRB dictates.’

Caffery sorted through the paperwork. He pulled out the photocopied sheet of a UK passport. It showed a young man of about twenty-five, grim-faced, a fixed hardness to his face. Richard F. Moon, Caffery held the photograph at arm’s length, compared it to the man on the sofa. ‘Well?’ He pushed it across the table. ‘Is that you?’

Richard Moon couldn’t lower his head enough to look at it. He could only swivel his eyes to squint at it. He closed his eyes and breathed hard. ‘Yes.’ His voice was high and feminine. ‘That’s me. That’s my passport.’

‘That’s him,’ his father said. ‘Twelve years ago. Before he gave up on his life. Look at that photo. Is that the face of someone who doesn’t give a toss? I don’t think so.’

‘Stop it, Dad. It hurts when you talk to me like that.’

‘Don’t use your therapist speak on me, son. I’ll give you the meaning of hurt.’ Peter Moon looked his son up and down as if he couldn’t believe the monstrosity the world had visited upon him. ‘Seeing you turning into a garage in front of my eyes. That’s the meaning of hurt.’

‘Mr Moon,’ Caffery held up his hands to quieten them, ‘can we take this slowly?’ He studied the face in the photo. It was the same forehead, the same eyes, the same hairline. The same dirty blond hair. He looked at Richard. ‘You mean it’s taken you twelve years to go from this,’ he tapped the photo, ‘to what you are now?’

‘I’ve had problems—’

‘Problems?’ his father interrupted. ‘Problems? Well, you’d win the understatement of the year, son. You really would. You’re a fucking vegetable. Face it.’

‘I am not.’

‘You are. You’re a vegetable. I’ve driven cars smaller than you.’

There was a pause. Then Richard Moon put his hands to his face and began to cry. His shoulders shook, and for a few moments no one spoke. Peter Moon crossed his arms and scowled. Turner and the agency manager looked at their feet.

Caffery picked up the handyman’s ID card and compared it to the passport photo. The two men were not dissimilar – same wide forehead, same small eyes – but the agency manager must have really been asleep if he hadn’t noticed they weren’t the same man. But bollocking him here and now, in front of the Moons, wouldn’t get them anywhere, so he waited for Richard to stop snivelling and held out the ID card. ‘Know him?’

Richard wiped his nose. His eyes were so swollen they were barely visible in his face.

‘Not a friend of yours you’ve helped out? Someone you’ve loaned your squeaky-clean record to?’

‘No,’ he said dully. ‘Never seen him before in my life.’

‘Mr Moon?’ He flipped the ID card round.

‘No.’

‘You sure? He’s a dangerous, dangerous bastard, and he’s using your son’s name and identity. Have another think.’

‘I dunno who he is. Never seen him in my life.’

‘This guy is seriously warped – more so than anyone I’ve ever dealt with before. People like him, in my experience, don’t respect anyone, not their victims, not their friends – and certainly not the ones who help them. You help someone like that and nine times out of ten it comes back to bite you on the arse. ‘He looked from father to son and back again. Neither man met his eye. ‘So, have another think. Are you sure one of you hasn’t got some idea of who he is?’

‘No.’

‘So how did this,’ he put the passport photocopy on the table, ‘come to be presented as ID documentation for a Criminal Records Bureau search?’

Peter Moon picked up his mug and sat back on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other. ‘I haven’t seen that passport for years. Have you, son?’

Richard sniffed. ‘Don’t think so, Dad.’

‘In fact, have you seen it since that break-in?’

‘Eh?’

‘Not that you’ve needed it, you being the way you are. Don’t need a passport to get to the television set and back, do you, son? But have you seen it since the break-in?’

‘No, Dad.’ Richard shook his head very slowly, as if the effort might wear him out.

‘What break-in?’ said Caffery.

‘Some lowlife did the window at the back. Had away that much stuff I didn’t know if I was coming or going.’

‘Did you report it?’

‘With the way you’d have dealt with it? No disrespect, but it never crossed my mind. You lot’ve got a fine line in ignoring people. A diploma in looking the other way. Then, of course, the fire happened and that put things out of our heads for while. You know – the way a fire that destroys your life will.’

Caffery was studying Richard. His face was too loaded with flesh to give much away but his father had a con’s face, pure and simple, the look of someone with serious form. Yet there was nothing on the CRB check that flagged them up. ‘This fire – it’ll be in our records, I take it?’

‘Too effing right it will. Arsonist. Not nice. Council paid to have the place redone, but a bit of paint? That was never going to undo what happened.’

‘Finished Mother,’ Richard whispered breathlessly, ‘didn’t it, Da? Finished her.’

‘She survived the fire, but couldn’t take what it did to us as a family. Finished you too, son, didn’t it, in a way?’

Richard tipped his weight on to his left buttock, breathing hard at the effort. ‘S’pose it did.’

‘Smoke inhalation.’ Peter Moon’s knee was suddenly twitching, jumping up and down as if he had a motor running in his body. ‘Lung damage, asthma, plus, of course, the –’ he made inverted commas with his fingers ‘– cognitive and behavioural problems. They came from the carbon monoxide. Makes him moody – depressed. Makes him sit around day after day watching the telly and eating. Crisps and Twix bars. Pot Noodle if he’s on a health kick.’

‘I do not sit around all day.’

‘You do, son. You do nothing. And that’s what’s got you to the state you’re in.’

Caffery put his hand up. ‘We’re going to stop now.’ He put his mug down and got to his feet. ‘Under the circumstances I’m going to give you a choice. You can either accompany me to the station or—’

‘You’ll take us there over my dead body. My son hasn’t been out of the flat in over a year and he’s not going now. It’ll kill him.’

‘Or I’ll leave one of my men here. Just in case that burglar suddenly gets Christian on us and decides to return the passport to its rightful owner, eh?’

‘We’ve got nothing to hide. And my son needs to go to bed now.’ Peter Moon got to his feet and went to stand in front of his son. He hoisted his braces up on to his shoulders and bent at the waist, his arms out. ‘Come on, son. You stay out here for too long and it’ll be the death of you. Come on.’

Caffery watched Richard, sweating in his vest and jogging trousers, put his arms up to meet his father’s. He watched the sinews in the older man’s arms stretch and harden as he hauled the weight off the sofa, heard the soft exhalation of effort.

‘Need some help?’

‘No. Been doing it years. Come on now, lad. Let’s get you to bed.’

Caffery, Turner and the agency manager watched in silence as the son was lifted to his feet. It shouldn’t have been possible for this small guy, with his bald head and stooped back, to do it. But he lifted Richard to his feet and half carried him, step by painful step, to the corridor.

‘Follow them,’ Caffery murmured to Turner. ‘Make sure they haven’t got a mobile on them. I’ll send a support officer up to take over. Then I want you back at the office. Do a complete search on them. Criminal records on the dad – every logged incident relating to this address. And find out about that fire – if there really was one. I want them cross-referenced on HOLMES and a list of every known associate. Wring them dry.’

‘Will do.’

Turner headed for the door to follow the Moons, leaving Caffery and the manager together. Caffery felt in his pocket for his keys. He ignored the tobacco pouch sitting there like a bomb. For the first time in ages he was thinking about his own parents, wondering where they were and what they were doing. He hadn’t kept track of them for years and now he wondered if they were old enough for infirmity to have set in. And if they were, who was helping whom when it came time at the end of the day to struggle to bed?

He decided his father would be helping his mother. She had never got over losing Ewan and she never would. She’d always need help.

That was just the way it was.