Gone

5

Night had set in with a sort of vengeful permanence. Caffery decided he didn’t need to pay the Bradleys another visit. There was nothing to tell them, and anyway, said the FLO, they were being swamped with well-wishers – neighbours and friends and members of the congregation bringing over flowers and cakes and bottles of wine to keep their spirits up. Caffery made sure the details of the Vauxhall were on the wire to all the ANPR points and then, because of the shitload of paperwork he had to catch up on, he drove back to the unit’s offices, tucked behind a police station in Kingswood, on the north-easterly tip of the sprawling octopus that made up Bristol’s suburbs.

He stopped the car at the electronic gate and got out in the full glare of the security lights, pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and studied the number scrawled in pen on his inner wrist. They’d had a theft from this car park three weeks ago – one of the unit cars had disappeared from right under their noses. Red faces all round and new access codes for everyone and he was still having problems remembering this one. He’d got half of the number on his wrist tapped in when he realized someone was watching him.

He paused, his hand on the pad, and turned. It was Sergeant Flea Marley. She was next to a car, holding the driver’s door open. She slammed it and began to make her way towards him. The security light timed out and snapped off. He lowered his hand and pulled down his sleeve, feeling irrationally trapped by her.

Caffery was nearly forty, and for years he thought he’d known what he needed from women. Most of the time they half-broke his heart so he’d learned to be precise and utilitarian about it. But the woman coming across the street had started him wondering if it was less efficiency he was carrying around and more a ragged, hard ball of loneliness. Six months ago he’d been getting closer to doing something about that, until the moment everything he’d thought he’d known about her had had a bomb dropped on it when he’d seen her do something that meant she was nothing like the person he’d imagined. The chance discovery he’d made had gone through him like a storm, taken away everything he’d thought he felt about her, leaving him confused, puzzled and choked. Choked and disappointed in a way that was more like something from childhood than adulthood. From a time when Pakis smelt of curry and things went deep. Like being on the losing football team. Or not getting the bike he wanted for Christmas. Since then he’d bumped into Flea at work once or twice and knew he should tell her what he’d seen, but the words weren’t there yet. Because he still hadn’t worked out in his head why she’d done what she’d done.

She stopped a few yards away. She wore standard support-group winter kit – black cargoes, a sweatshirt and a waterproof. Her wild blonde hair, usually tied back, hung loose to her shoulders. Really and truly a support-group sergeant shouldn’t look anything like she did. ‘Jack,’ she said.

He reached over and slammed the Mondeo door. Put some height and breadth into his shoulders. Made his face hard. His eyes ached from not looking too closely at her.

‘Hi,’ he said, as she got nearer. ‘It’s been a long time.’