Gone

63

‘My son is not a nonce. He’s a bad boy, a very bad boy, but he’s not a fucking nonce.’

It was nearly midnight. The lights were still on in the MCIU building. Still the clatter of keyboards in distant offices, the noise of phones ringing. Turner and Caffery sat in the meeting room at the end of one of the corridors on the second floor, the blinds drawn, the fluorescent tubes on. Caffery was fiddling with a paperclip. Three cups of coffee sat on the table, and Peter Moon was seated at the other side of the desk on a swivel chair, dressed in a diamond-design jumper and saggy blue sweatpants. He’d agreed to talk on condition they released him from the cell overnight. He didn’t want to talk under caution, didn’t want a lawyer present, but he’d been thinking about it all night and now he wanted to set the record straight. Caffery let him do it. He didn’t plan to let the guy off. He planned to bang him up again the moment he’d coughed.

‘Not a nonce.’ Caffery looked at him dully. ‘Then why have you been covering for him?’

‘The cars. His problem is with cars – he’s like a little kid with them. He’s nicked scores of them. It’s like he can’t help himself.’

‘We found most of them in his lock-up.’

‘That’s why he got a job here.’ Peter looked thin and defeated. Embarrassed. Here was a man whose only legacy to the world was two sons, one of whom would die at home in bed before he was thirty, and the other in prison. An A4 blow-up of Ted was pinned to the whiteboard on the wall. It had been taken from the police-staff pass. Ted stared down into the room with his blank dead eyes, his shoulders hunched slightly forward, his forehead lowered. Peter Moon, Caffery noticed, avoided looking at it. ‘He’s stolen so many he thought you were on to him. Thought if he worked here he could – I dunno – get into your computers. Change the records or whatever.’ He put his hands in the air. ‘God knows what ideas he had – that he was some computer genius or something.’

‘He went into our system – but to find out what we knew about his stolen cars?’ Caffery looked at Turner. ‘Does that sound right to you? That he was looking for stolen cars?’

Turner shook his head. ‘No, Boss. Doesn’t sound right to me. To me it sounds more like he was doing it to find the places we’d housed that family. The one he’s targeted. And the traffic-surveillance cameras.’

‘Yes – those traffic cameras. Amazing how he avoided them.’

‘Amazing,’ Turner agreed.

‘See, Mr Moon, your son’s kidnapped four children now. Two he hasn’t given back. He’s got good reason to want to stay ahead of us.’

‘No, no, no . I swear on the heads of all the saints, he’s not a nonce. My son is not a nonce.’

‘He killed a thirteen-year-old girl.’

‘Not for nonce reasons.’

On the desk there was a single sheet covered with Caffery’s handwriting – the scribbled notes he’d made of a phone conversation earlier this evening. After the post-mortem on Sharon Macy’s remains, Caffery’d had a brief informal call from the pathologist. The man wasn’t going to say anything official, that would be in the report later, but he could give him a few things on the QT. Sharon Macy’s body was so decomposed that no one could be 100 per cent sure of anything, but if he’d been a betting man he’d say she had been killed either by the blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull or by blood loss from the enormous gash in her throat. There was evidence she’d struggled: one of her fingers was broken on the right hand, but when it came to evidence of sexual assault the pathologist had drawn a blank. The clothing wasn’t disturbed and her body hadn’t been displayed in a sexual way.

‘I know,’ Caffery said now. ‘I know he’s not a nonce.’

Peter Moon blinked. ‘You what?’

‘I said I know he’s not a paedo. The fact he’s taken girls? All under the age of thirteen? It’s a red herring. Coincidence. They could just as well been boys. Or teenagers. Or babies.’

Caffery shook a set of copied photographs out of an envelope, stood and began very carefully taping them to the whiteboard, one by one, lined up under Ted Moon’s picture. Caffery had got one of the DCs to print out little tags with all the relevant information he could think of: name, age, appearance, socioeconomic class, job, background, etc. He stuck the tags beneath the faces. ‘You’re here because your son has got a list of victims. A whole catalogue of people he’s got something against. But it’s not the kids he hates, it’s the parents. Lorna and Damien Graham. Neil and Simone Blunt. Rose and Jonathan Bradley. Janice and Cory Costello.’

‘Who the fuck are they?’

‘Your son’s victims.’

Peter Moon stared at the pictures for a long time. ‘You’re honestly saying my boy’s supposed to have attacked these people?’

‘In a manner of speaking. What he’s done with the children he abducted, God knows. I’ve given up hoping. But I can’t see him worrying much about their human rights, because they’re incidental. Dispensable. He knows the facts of life: hurt the young and you may as well kill the parents. And that’s what he wants. All these people.’ Caffery sat down, waved a hand at the photos. ‘They’re the ones who mean something to your son. They’re the ones we’re looking at now. Ever heard of victimology?’

‘No.’

‘You should watch more TV, Mr Moon. Sometimes we investigate crime by studying the people it’s happening to. Usually it’s to learn who our perpetrator is. In this case we don’t need to know who’s doing it, we know that already, in this case we need to know why he’s choosing the people he is, and we need to do that because he’s going to do it again. And soon. Something – something – in your son’s head is telling him he has to do it again. Look at these faces, Mr Moon. Look at their names. What do they mean to your son? This guy on the left is Neil Blunt. Neil works for the Citizens Advice Bureau. When I was with him this evening he said he knew he’d pissed people off now and then, and he’s had a couple of threats from clients at work. Has Ted had any dealings with the CAB?’

‘My wife went to the CAB when we had the fire. But that was eleven years ago.’

‘What about since he’s been out of the slammer?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘He works as a handyman. But when we went to check out his references they were all faked. So what experience did he have as a general builder?’

‘He’s good. Really good. He can turn his hand to any—’

‘I didn’t ask you how good he is. I asked you what experience he had.’

‘None. That I know of.’

‘Never did any work over in Mere? All the way down near Wincanton? Gillingham? A nice place. Family house. Name Costello. That’s them at the bottom.’

‘Costello? It doesn’t ring a bell. I swear it doesn’t.’

‘Look at the man on the left.’

‘The black geezer?’

‘He works in a car showroom in Cribbs Causeway – BMW. Does that ring any bells? With Ted’s fondness for cars?’

‘No.’

‘His name’s Damien Graham.’

Moon stared at the photo, shook his head. He pointed to Jonathan Bradley’s face. ‘Him.’

‘Yes?’

‘Vicar bloke.’

‘You knew him?’

‘No. I seen him in the news.’

‘Ted didn’t know him?’

‘How the hell would Ted know someone like that?’

‘Before Mr Bradley was ordained he was a headmaster. At St Dominic’s School. Did Ted have any connections in that area?’

‘I told you – he’s not a paedo. He doesn’t hang out at schools.’

‘What about Farrington Gurney, Radstock? Why does he feel so at home out there? He knows the roads round there like the back of his hand.’

‘Ted wouldn’t know Farrington Gurney if it was the last place on earth. Arsehole of the Mendips, innit?’

Caffery turned to Ted Moon’s photograph. Looked into his eyes – stared into them, trying to draw something out. ‘Look at the pictures again, Mr Moon. Really concentrate. Is there anything? Anything at all? You don’t need to feel stupid. Just say it.’

‘No. I told you. Nothing. I’m trying to help here.’

Caffery chucked down the paperclip he was fiddling with. He got to his feet. His stomach hurt with all the bloody junk food he’d been shovelling down the hatch. It was the place these cases always got you. In the belly. He went to the window and opened it, stood for a moment with his hands on the frame, feeling the cool air on his face.

‘OK. This is where I need you to have an open mind, Mr Moon. Where I’ve got to ask you to dig deep.’ He turned and went to the whiteboard. He uncapped a marker pen and placed it next to Janice Costello’s name. He drew a slow line from her face across to Rose Bradley’s. ‘Look at the women – Simone Blunt, Janice Costello, Lorna Graham, Rose Bradley. Now, I want you to do something difficult. I want you to think about your wife.’

‘Sonja?’ Moon made a noise in his throat. ‘What about her?’

‘Is there something about these women that reminds you of her?’

‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ Moon was incredulous now. ‘You are joking?’

‘I’m just asking you to keep an open mind. To help me.’

‘I can’t help you. None of them looks like her.’

Peter Moon was right, of course. If there had ever been a time Caffery’d clutched at straws this was it. The women couldn’t have been more different: Janice Costello was fresh-faced, straightforwardly nice-looking, Rose Bradley was fifteen years older and two stones heavier – their colouring wasn’t even similar. The ultra-groomed Simone looked like a harder-edged blonde version of Janice, it was true, but Lorna Graham, the only one he hadn’t met, was black. If he was honest she looked more as if she should be hanging on to the arm of some R&B dude, with her polished nails and hair extensions.

The husbands, then. Something with the husbands? He put the marker pen next to Cory Costello’s name. He’d love to know what had happened between Janice Costello and Paul Prody the night Moon had broken in. He probably never would. And maybe it wasn’t his business to be pissed off with Prody. But Cory Costello whoo-hooing with Prody’s missus? Funny guy, Prody, he thought. Private. To talk to him you wouldn’t know he had any family at all. He went back to Cory’s face, looked at it again. Into his eyes. Thought – affairs. ‘Mr Moon?’

‘What?’

‘Tell me – because it’ll never go outside this room, I can guarantee that – did you ever have an affair? When Sonja was alive.’

‘Jesus. No. Of course not.’

‘Of course not?’ Caffery raised an eyebrow. The answer had been there. Right in Peter Moon’s mouth. Waiting. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’m sure.’

‘You weren’t seeing Sharon Macy’s mother, were you? Even just casually?’

Peter Moon’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again. His face went tight and he moved his head forward on his neck. Like a lizard. Trying to crick a spasm out of his head. ‘I don’t think I heard you right. What did you say?’

‘I said you weren’t seeing Sharon Macy’s mother? Before Sharon was killed?’

‘You know something?’ He closed his mouth briefly, as if he was struggling to hold himself together. ‘You have no idea – no idea – how much that question makes me want to land one on you.’

Caffery raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m just trying to make that link, Mr Moon.’ He capped the pen. Threw it on to the desk. ‘Still trying to connect the families together. The Macys with these people.’

‘The Macys? The shagging Macys? None of this has got anything to do with the Macy family. Ted never killed Sharon because of her shagging parents.’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘No! No, he fucking didn’t. He done it because of the fire. Because of what she did to Sonja.’

‘What Sharon did to your wife?’

Moon looked from Caffery to Turner and back again. ‘You don’t fucking know, do you? It was Sharon done it. She was the bloody arsonist, little bitch. Tell me you know that much at least?’

Caffery glanced at Turner, who met his eyes and shook his head slowly. The psychiatric reports from the hospital and the probation officers’ reports on Ted Moon’s release weren’t in the paperwork that had come down. In the suspect interview transcripts Moon had refused to say why he’d killed Sharon Macy. He’d refused to speak even to deny it.

Peter Moon sat back in his seat, arms crossed. Angry that the police were so damned useless. ‘The fucking system. Lets you down every time, don’t it? If it can’t fuck you one way it asks you to turn round and has a good look at you to see if it can fuck you some other way. Did it to us back then. No one even told us Ted had it up here.’ He tapped his temple. ‘Schizophrenia. People just thought he was simple. Brain-dead Ted. Sharon Macy thought that made him fair game so he turns round one day, calls her a couple of names, and she turns round and pours petrol through our letterbox. Sets fire to the fucking place. At first we’re thinking it’s something to do with the Chinky lot downstairs, but then there’s Sharon gloating about it to my lads, saying as how it served them right. Course, there wasn’t a person in Downend would stand up in court and swear it was her. If you’d met her and her family you’d know why.’

Caffery had a photo of Sharon Macy from those days pinned to the giant corkboard on the opposite wall. When he’d first seen it, his instinctive thought had been that if ever the word ‘dysfunctional’ needed a human face to illustrate it, then Sharon Macy’s was the one. By thirteen there had already been an abortion and a line of police cautions jostling for position. You could see her past and her future written in her slack eyes. He’d had to force the professional in him to wade in and remind him that she was a victim. That he had the same duty of care to her as to anyone else.

‘You’re thinking what I’m thinking, ain’t you?’ Moon’s eyes were hard. ‘You’re thinking that if ASBOs had been handed out in those days Sharon would’ve got herself a whole fucking trophy cabinet. I mean, she could take care of herself, that one, and she was a big girl too. Broad, you know. Course, Ted was bigger. And madder. My Sonja tops herself – don’t make me go there with what that was like. Having my whole entire heart pulled out through my mouth was what it was like, losing her, because, no, I wasn’t having an affair whatever your filthy cop brains are telling you – but she tops herself and if that was bad for me it was even worse for Ted. He’s like that.’ Moon jutted his head forward, teeth bared, one fist balled. The sinews on his neck stood out, high tensile, rigid. ‘Next thing I know he turned around to me and Richard and goes, “I ain’t sitting still no longer, Dad.” Never bothered to hide what he did next. He dragged that girl through the streets – everyone saw it, thought it was boyfriend and girlfriend arguing, sort of thing you’d see a lot round there. They look the same age so no one calls it in, do they? So he’s off then, getting away with it, and before anyone knows it he does her in the bedroom. In his own bedroom. With a kitchen knife.’ He shook his head. ‘Me and Richard weren’t there. The neighbours, though, they heard the whole thing through the walls.’

There was a long silence. Moon looked from Caffery to Turner and back again. ‘He killed her.’ He held his hands up in the air. ‘I’m not saying he didn’t. He killed Sharon Macy. But not to piss the parents off. And I wasn’t having an affair with that slag of a woman. Definitely not. Cut me open.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Cut me open and give me to your scientists. They’ll tell you what’s on my heart and what ain’t. I wasn’t having an affair with her.’

Caffery smiled lightly, meaning, yeah, yeah, yeah. You keep going with your fantasy, Peter, but we’ll get to the truth of it. ‘Sure there’s nothing you want to add?’ he said. ‘Bearing in mind we’re speaking to the Macys tonight?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Just here’s me thinking we’re going to hear a totally different story from them.’

‘You won’t.’

‘I think we will. I think we’ll hear that you were schtupping the Macy mother, and that your son killed Sharon because of it. I think we’re going to hear a whole catalogue of what he did to them later. The letters he sent them after the event.’

‘No, you won’t. Because he never did. He was banged up straight after.’

‘We will.’

‘You won’t. It’s not him,’ Moon said. ‘It’s not my son.’

There was a knock. Caffery let his eyes rest on Moon a bit longer. Then got up and went to the door. He found Prody standing in the corridor, slightly out of breath. He had a scrape on his cheek that Caffery didn’t remember seeing at the safe-house this morning. His clothing was a bit awry.

‘Jesus.’ Caffery closed the door behind him. He put a hand on Prody’s arm and led him a few steps down the corridor, away from the meeting room to the very back of the building where it was quiet and they couldn’t hear the phones ringing in the main offices. ‘You OK?’

Prody took a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face. ‘Just about.’ He looked exhausted, completely drained. Caffery almost said to him: Hey, about the missus. I’m sorry. Don’t let it get to you. But he was still pissed off about a lot of things. Mostly the staying-overnight thing. And about Prody not calling him with progress on what the hell had happened to Flea. He took his hand away from Prody’s arm. ‘Well? Have you found something?’

‘It’s been an interesting afternoon.’ He shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket and ran a hand across his bristly haircut. ‘I spent a long time at her office – turns out she was rostered today and never showed. So people are starting to get a bit antsy, saying it’s not like her, et cetera, et cetera. So I went to her house but it’s all shut up – locked. No car there.’

‘And?’

‘Spoke to the neighbours. Now it turns out they are a bit calmer about the whole thing, put it all into perspective. Said they saw her yesterday morning packing the car – diving equipment, suitcase. She tells them she’s going on a weekend break – away for three days.’

‘She was supposed to be at work.’

‘I know. All I can think is she’s got the roster wrong, got a dud DMS printout, thinks she’s on a long annual or something. The neighbours were absolutely clear about it. They spoke to her. Unless one of them’s cut her up and put her under the floorboards.’

‘They didn’t have the name of the place she’s staying?’

‘No. But maybe it’s somewhere out of signal range. No one can get her on her mobile.’

‘Is that all?’

‘That’s all.’

‘What about that?’ He gestured at the scrape on Prody’s face. ‘Where’d you get that little artefact?’

Prody pressed his fingers to it gingerly. ‘Yeah – Costello really gave it to me. Suppose I deserve it. Is it that bad?’

Caffery thought about what Janice had said: ‘My husband is fucking Paul Prody’s wife.’ God, life was never easy.

‘Go home, mate.’ He put his hand on Prody’s back. Patted him. ‘You haven’t had a break in two days. Go home and put something on that. Don’t want to see you in the office until the morning. OK?’

‘I guess. I guess. Thank you.’

‘I’ll walk you down to the car park. Dog needs a pee break.’

They stopped at Caffery’s office and collected Myrtle from her place under the radiator. The three of them walked silently through darkened corridors that sprang to life with light as they entered, the men letting the old dog set the pace. In the car park Prody got into his Peugeot. Started the engine. Was about to pull away, when Caffery banged on the window.

Prody paused, sitting forward in the seat, his hand on the key. A look of annoyance crossed his face, and for a moment Caffery was reminded of the thing he didn’t trust about Prody. That the guy was a usurper. Trying to step into his own shoes. But he cut the engine. Patiently unwound the window. His pale eyes were very still. ‘Yeah?’

‘Something I wanted to ask you. About the hospital today.’

‘What about it?’

‘The tests they ran – they can’t find what Moon used to knock you out. None of you are testing positive for any of the major inhalant groups. And you had different reactions from the Costello women. You were the only one who heaved. Can you maybe speak to the hospital? Give them a bit more information.’

‘A bit more?’

‘Yeah. Maybe just give them the shirt you were wearing if you haven’t washed it. They’ll test your stomach contents. Just give them a call, mate. Make the men in the white coats happy?’

Prody let all the air out of his lungs. Still his eyes hadn’t moved. ‘Jesus. Yes. Of course. If I have to.’ He wound up his window. Started the car again and drove out into the street. Caffery followed a few steps behind, then stopped with one arm looped wearily over the gate, watching until the little Peugeot lion logo, lit red by the brakelights, disappeared from view.

He turned to Myrtle. Her head was down. She wasn’t looking at him. Caffery wondered if she felt as empty as he did. As empty and as scared. There wasn’t much time. He didn’t need a profiler to tell him what was next. Somewhere there was a family with cameras in their kitchen. In the parents’ bedroom too. He could sense it. Could smell it coming. In fact, if he had to put a stopwatch on it, he’d say there was less than twelve hours left before it happened again.