Gone

4

By eight thirty that evening there was still no sign of Martha. But the investigation already had some legs. A lead had come in. A woman in Frome had seen the local news bulletin about the carjacking and decided she had something to tell the police. She gave the statement to the local officers, who passed it on to MCIU.

Caffery drove there using the minor routes, the country lanes where he knew he could go fast and not get a tug from some bored traffic cop. It had stopped raining, but it was still blowing a gale. Every time it seemed the wind had died down to nothing it sprang out of nowhere and raced down the road, shaking raindrops from the trees, sending them arcing across his headlamps. The woman’s house was centrally heated, but he couldn’t get comfortable there. He declined tea, spoke to her for ten minutes, then went and got a takeaway cappuccino from a service station, took it back to her street and stood drinking it outside her house, coat buttoned against the wind. He wanted to get a feel for the road and the area.

This lunchtime, about an hour before Rose Bradley had been attacked, a man had pulled up here in a dark-blue car. The woman in the house had watched him from the window because he’d looked nervous. He had his collar turned up, so she never saw his face, but she was fairly sure he was white, with dark hair. He was wearing a black Puffa jacket and carrying, in his left hand, what she didn’t recognize at the time but thought, in retrospect, might have been a rubber mask of some sort. She’d noticed him leave the car, but a phone call had diverted her attention and when she came back the street was empty. The car stayed there, though. All day. It was only when she saw the news bulletin and looked out of the window that she saw it had gone. It must have been collected at some point in the evening.

She was fairly sure the car had been a Vauxhall – she wasn’t good at car marques but it had a dragon on it, she was sure – and when Caffery’d taken her outside and found a Vauxhall sitting under a streetlamp a few doors down she’d looked at the badge and nodded. Yes. In dark blue. Not very clean. And it may have had WW at the end of the numberplate, though she wouldn’t swear to it. Apart from that she couldn’t recall anything, much as she wanted to help.

Caffery stood at the place the car had been parked and tried to picture the scene, tried to work out who else might have seen it. At the very end of the dark, windswept street, a convenience store blasted light into the night: plastic shop sign above the window, offers posters pasted to the glass, a waste-paper bin with the local newspaper poster flapping under the chicken wire. He crossed the street, draining the last of the coffee, and dropped the cup into the bin as he entered the building.

‘Hi,’ he said, holding up his warrant card to the Asian woman behind the till. ‘Manager in?’

‘That’s me.’ She squinted at the card. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Caffery – Jack, if you’d like first-name basis.’

‘And what are you? A detective?’

‘That’s one word for it.’ He nodded at the camera above the till. ‘Is that thing loaded?’

She glanced up. ‘Are you going to give me back my chip?’

‘You what?’

‘The robbery?’

‘I don’t know anything about a robbery. I’m a centralized unit. I wouldn’t get that sort of information. What robbery?’

There was a line of customers waiting. The manageress gestured to a young man stacking shelves to take over from her. She pulled her till fob out, hung it round her neck on a pink rubber spring, and motioned Caffery to follow her. They went past the lottery-ticket station, past two post-office booths, blinds down, and into a stock room at the back of the shop. They stood among the Walkers crisps boxes and unsold magazines that had been bundled up ready for return.

‘Someone came in last week and pulled out a knife. A couple of boys, you know, hoodies. I wasn’t here. They only got about forty pounds.’

‘Boys, though. Not men?’

‘No. I think I’ve got a good idea who they are. It’s just a question of making the police believe me. They’re still looking at the footage.’

In the corner a black-and-white TV monitor showed the back of the sales assistant’s head as he cashed up a lottery ticket, beyond him the rows of sweets, and beyond that the street outside, litter blowing around in the dark. Caffery scrutinized the screen. In the bottom left-hand corner, past all the posters and magazines and parked cars, was the space where the woman had said the blue Vauxhall had been parked. ‘There was a carjacking this morning.’

‘I know.’ The manageress shook her head. ‘In town. That little girl. It’s terrible. Just terrible. Everyone’s talking about it. Is that why you’re here?’

‘Someone we’d like to speak to about it might have parked here.’ He tapped the screen. ‘The car was there all day. Can you pull up the footage?’

The woman unlocked a unit sunk into the wall using another key on the pink springy necklace. A door swung open to reveal a video recorder. She dropped the key and pressed a button. She frowned, pressed another button. A message appeared on screen: Insert media card. Swearing under her breath she hit another button. The screen cleared, for a second or two, then the message popped back up again. Insert media card. She was silent. She stood with her back to Caffery, not moving for several seconds. When she turned to him her face had changed.

‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s not running.’

‘What do you mean it’s not running?’

‘It’s not switched on.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. No.’ She waved a hand, dismissing the words. ‘That’s a lie. I do know. When the police took the chip?’

‘Yes?’

‘They said they’d put another card in it and switched it back on. I didn’t check. This card’s completely empty. I’m the only one’s got the keys so there’s nothing on it since Monday when the police came for the pictures of the robbery.’

Caffery opened the door and stood looking through the shop, past the customers with their magazines and bottles of cheap wine to the road, to the cars parked in the pools of light dropped by the streetlamps.

‘I can tell you one thing.’ The manageress came and stood beside him, looking at the road. ‘If he parked up there to walk into town he’d have been coming from Buckland.’

‘Buckland? I’m new here. What direction’s Buckland?’

‘It’s Radstock way. Midsomer Norton? You know?’

‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’

‘Well, that’s where he’d have been coming from. Radstock, Midsomer Norton.’ She fiddled with the key fob on the spring around her neck. She smelt of a floral perfume – light and summery but cheap. The sort of thing you’d get from a corner chemist. Caffery’s father had been a racist, in the sort of casual, everyday-pub-conversation way a lot of people had been back in those days. Lackadaisical and thoughtless. He’d told his sons that ‘the Pakis’ were OK and hard-working, but smelt of curry. Simple as that. Curry and onions. Now, in the back of his head, Caffery realized part of him still expected it to be true. And part of him was still surprised when it wasn’t. That, he thought, showed how deep parenting could burrow. Showed how raw and skinless a child’s mind was.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Her face pursed. It seemed to close in at the mouth and the nose to a small point. ‘Just one question?’

‘Sure.’

‘That little girl. Martha. What do you think he’s going to do with her? What terrible thing is that man going to do to her?’

Caffery took a long, deep breath, stretched a good, calm smile across his face. ‘Nothing. He’s going to do nothing. He’s going to drop her somewhere – somewhere safe where she can be found. And then he’s going to run for the hills.’