Gone

68

As dawn came Caffery slept, fully dressed, half curled up on four chair cushions he’d dropped on to the office floor at three a.m. He dreamed, incongruously, of dragons and lions. The lions looked like real ones. Their teeth were a hard-grained yellow, coated with blood and saliva. He could smell their hot breath and see the matting in their manes. The dragons on the other hand were two-dimensional, children’s tin dragons, as if they were wearing armour. They clanged and clattered across the battlefield, carrying their streaming banners. They reared and rolled their long metallic necks. They were huge. They crushed the lions like ants.

From time to time he half woke. Surfaced a little to a place where the caustic remnants of worry sat. Niggles he hadn’t untangled before he’d slept. Prody’s sour face in the car as he drove away last night and how that had rankled. Flea going off for three days’ climbing and how that hadn’t sounded right. Worse, the whole sad, fat fact of Ted Moon still out there. Martha and Emily still missing six days into the case.

He came awake properly, lay with his eyes closed, feeling the cold, the stiffness in his body. He could smell Myrtle’s comfortable old-dog scent rising from where she lay a few feet away under the radiator. He could hear traffic outside, people talking in the corridors and mobile phones ringing. So it was morning.

‘Boss?’

He opened his eyes. The office floor was dusty. Paperclips and screwed-up balls of paper congregated under the desk. And, in the open doorway, a pair of good, feminine ankles ending in wellpolished high heels. A man’s shoes and trousers next to them. He raised his eyes. Turner and Lollapalooza. Both holding sheaves of paper. ‘Jesus. What time is it?’

‘Seven thirty.’

‘Shit.’ He rubbed his eyes, propped himself up on an elbow and blinked. On her makeshift bed under the window Myrtle yawned, sat up and gave herself a little shake. The office was blitzed, packed with the evidence of Caffery’s up-all-nighter. The whiteboard covered with the photos and notes he’d been studying – everything from Sharon Macy’s autopsy shots to the pictures of the kitchen at the Costellos’ safe-house, the window broken, the washed-up cocoa mugs on the draining-board. His desk, too, was crammed with stuff – pile after pile of paper, different-coloured plastic envelopes containing photographs of crime scenes, reams of hastily scribbled notes and countless half-finished cups of coffee. The melting pot that nothing had come out of. No clue. No way of knowing where Moon was going next.

He rubbed his sore neck and squinted up at Lollapalooza. ‘Got any answers for me?’

She made a sour face. ‘Got more questions. Will that do?’

‘Come in.’ He sighed, beckoning to them. ‘Come in.’

They came into the office. Lollapalooza folded her arms and leaned back against the desk, her feet pushed primly together. Turner turned a chair round and sat astride it, rodeo style, elbows resting on the back, looking down at his boss.

‘Right. First things first.’ Clearly Turner hadn’t slept much either. His tie was a bit crooked and his hair hadn’t seen a shower recently. But still no earring. ‘Overnight the Met’s dead-body dogs’ve been searching Moon’s little rabbit warren under the lock-up.’

‘And found? Oh.’ Caffery waved his hand dismissively. ‘Don’t answer that. I can see from your face. Nothing. Next?’

‘Moon’s tribunal psychiatric evaluation arrived. Sitting in my mailbox this morning.’

‘He talked? When he got into the slammer?’

‘Couldn’t stop him, seems like. Anyone who stood still for more than a second would get it. A confession every day of his ten years’ stir.’

This was important. Caffery pulled his legs round and sat upright, trying to make the room stop blurring. ‘So? He talked?’

‘But it’s just like his dad said. Ted killed Sharon because of the fire, because of Sonja dying. No excuses, no justification. Black and white. All the psychiatric reports say the same thing.’

‘Fuck. What about the Macys? Did you find them?’

Turner lowered his chin at Lollapalooza. Made a face that said, Your turn in the dock, girl.

She cleared her throat. ‘OK. So one of my men finally tracked the Macys down at two o’clock this morning – coming home from the pub. I’ve just had breakfast with them.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Nice couple. Nice level of sophistication. You know, believe cars belong on bricks and that the right place for a refrigerator is the front garden. Must do a lot of outdoor entertaining is all I can think. But they did speak to me.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing happened. After Sharon disappeared they didn’t hear anything from Moon. Not a dickie.’

‘No notes? No letters?’

‘Nothing. Not even when Ted was arrested. As you know, he didn’t say a word at his trial and as far as the family are concerned they don’t expect to hear anything from him. Neither of them would even say his name. They let your friend from the high-tech unit look around. Q? He told me that was his name, though personally I think he’s got a warped sense of humour. He used every gizmo he had, couldn’t find a thing. No cameras, nada. The Macys have been in the place years, had it decorated a few times, but never found anything suspicious.’

‘What about Peter Moon and Macy’s mother? Any urty-urty going on there?’

‘No affair. I believed her too.’

‘Fuck.’ He pushed his hair back off his face. Why was it that when it came to Ted Moon every alley Caffery turned down seemed to have a stonking great brick wall at the end of it? Fitting Moon and his actions together just wasn’t smooth. Not like the best cases where the connections, when they came, felt as liquid and natural as honey. ‘What about the others? The Bradleys, the Blunts?’

‘No. And that’s straight from the FLOs, who, as we know, usually get to the truth. Statistical anomaly maybe, but these might be the only couples in the whole UK who aren’t doing the bad thang on the side.’

‘Damien? He’s not with his wife.’

‘But it wasn’t him called time on that marriage. It was Lorna. If it was a marriage. He says they were married, but we can’t find any record of it. Call it more of an international arrangement, shall we?’

Caffery got to his feet and went to the whiteboard. He studied the pictures of the Costellos’ safe-house Moon had broken into: the kitchen, the empty double bed where Emily and Janice had slept. There should be progress by now. There should be a new perspective. He stared at the mock-up of the dark blue Vauxhall, the pictures of the Costellos’ car in the CSI surgery. He scrutinized the faces – Cory Costello looking seriously into the camera – and all the lines he’d drawn between the photos, connecting them to Ted Moon at the top. Caffery lifted his face and looked into Moon’s eyes again. He felt nothing. No flicker.

Without a word he took a chair and placed it at the window. Sat with his back to the room, facing out into the dismal street. The sky was a uniform lead colour. Passing cars swished through puddles. He felt old. So old. Once he’d fought this case, what would be next? Another mugger or rapist or child abductor to strip the skin from his back, make his bones ache?

‘Sir?’ Lollapalooza began, but Turner stopped her with a sssh.

Caffery didn’t turn to them. He knew what that sssh meant. It meant Turner didn’t want Lollapalooza to interrupt him. Because he believed Caffery sitting at the window meant he was thinking, was taking all the information he’d been given and was making alchemy of it with his brilliant brain. Turner really, really thought Caffery was going to spin round on his chair and pull out a theory, like a bright bunch of circus flowers from a hat.

Well, he thought despondently, welcome to the land of crashing disappointment, mate. Hope you like it here, because we’re going to be making it our home for a while.