Poppet

Under the Flyover

LIFE HAS JUST taken exactly the slow, unstoppable flip of fortune Caffery hoped it wouldn’t. He’s got it wrong – so wrong it is spectacular. He imagined Flea would at least recognize what it’s cost him to keep her secret, if not actually thank him and call him a hero. But life has a way of not behaving. And anyway, saints and heroes aren’t in the spectrum of colours Caffery plays. He has to look at things afresh.

He drives back to the offices slowly, through the streets of Bristol, where the last wave of drinkers are trailing home. This town was built on the slave trade – all the spindly town houses grown up from the money of that trade, unabashed by their finery. He’s tired. He’s hungry and he wants a drink. He holds his pass to the automatic barrier and slides into the car park. The place is almost empty, just one or two Scientific Investigations vans and a scatter of vehicles belonging to civilian staff. He parks under the flyover, nose into the railway line, pulls on the handbrake. He’s about to get out when he senses he’s not alone here. There’s someone else.

It’s Flea. Sitting in her Renault four lanes away, half concealed behind the green shipping storage container that sits amongst bushes in the middle of the car park.

He gets out of his car, pulling on his jacket. He clicks closed his door and stands for a moment. Her silhouette doesn’t move. He approaches the Renault and tries the door – it’s open. He knows he’s supposed to get in, so that is what he does, no apologies or pretence. She is sitting with her elbows on the steering wheel, her face in her hands. She’s still wearing the waterproofs. Just the curve of her ear is visible, peeking out from her tangled hair.

It smells in here of the polyurethane bags the support group use to carry their kits, and a faint, feminine perfume. Shampoo or body lotion. He waits.

‘OK,’ she says eventually. ‘OK,’ she says, not looking up at him. ‘I don’t think I have ever felt so ashamed in my life.’

‘You were protecting your brother. For some reason.’

‘Yes.’ She lets a small silence elapse. She taps her fingers on her forehead. ‘Will you tell me how you found out?’

‘Someone saw the accident.’

‘Someone who is … ? You?’

‘No.’

‘Then?’

‘My friend.’

A pause. He thinks she’s going to turn to him, but she doesn’t. ‘Your friend?’

‘Yes.’ Caffery considers the word ‘friend’. The old vagrant who saw Thom hit Misty? Is he strictly a friend? Caffery doesn’t know for sure. He gives a small cough. ‘He’s no one you need to worry about. I promise.’

‘You promise? And you tell the truth? Always?’

‘Not always. But in this case, yes. Trust me.’

‘I don’t think I’ve got a choice.’ She taps a little harder. ‘Next question – how long have you known?’

‘A year and a half. Give or take.’

‘And why haven’t you said anything?’

‘Some days I ask myself the same question.’

‘But you’ve said something now.’

‘I’ve been waiting for you to recuperate – from the accident. And suddenly I’ve got sharks snapping at me.’

‘We all have sharks.’

‘Yes. But I’m tired of mine. And I need you to help me get rid of mine. See, though I don’t know how Thom talked you into it, I do know what you did with the body.’

Her fingers stop tapping. She tilts her face sideways and one eye appears. It is smudged with the remnants of mascara. It blinks. ‘Say that again.’

‘I saw you, Flea. I saw what you did. Elf’s Grotto. The quarry. I saw you putting the body in the water.’

She raises her face and stares at him, her mouth a little open. He can almost feel the heat of her brain labouring, the glucose it is eating up to get all the information into the right slots. Absorbing that comment.

‘It’s true. I’m sorry.’

Her mouth moves soundlessly. Then she drops her head, shakes it. ‘I can’t believe this,’ she says. ‘You know everything? You’ve known all about me, all about Thom and you’ve known all this time. And you’ve kept it a secret? Why?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe the same reason you covered for Thom.’

She starts to answer, but seems to think better of it. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, as if she’s trying to blot an image out. She’s small and delicate compared to the men in her unit – it’s difficult to picture what she did with the body. If he hadn’t witnessed it, hiding himself in the darkness, he wouldn’t have believed it was possible. But it happened. He’s checked the quarry schematics and worked out that Misty could be almost sixty metres underwater at the bottom of the quarry. The thought makes him cold – the quarry is one of the nastiest, freakiest places he’s ever been. Isolated, disused and flooded, it’s got a mean, supernatural drag to it. A suicide mecca – he’s lost count of the number of people who’ve ended their lives there. Sometimes the body has come back, sometimes not.

‘If they ever drained that place,’ he says, ‘it would be like wading into hell.’

‘Yes. But if they did, they still wouldn’t find Misty.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘She’s not at the bottom of the quarry.’

Caffery lowers his chin and scrutinizes her. This doesn’t click with what he saw. Not at all. ‘You took her into the quarry. I saw you – you did something with her.’

‘Yeah – I did something. Certainly I did something.’ Flea pulls her jacket tight around her, sniffs. ‘Are you going to tell anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Then why the search? You ordered it – you must be doing it for a reason.’

‘Yes. I’ve got a … a way for us to sort it all – make it go away. I’ve thought about it from every single angle. It can’t go wrong.’

‘Nothing can go wrong now if we leave it as it is. She’ll never be found. I might be ashamed but I can at least sleep easy at night.’

Caffery stares out of the window. The rust stains on the flyover struts, the flickering of headlights on the highway up there. He feels a weight of water – a million tonnes of it. A freezing black quarry, a giant ice heart. He doesn’t believe Flea when she says she sleeps easy at night.

‘I need her remains back.’

A sharp intake of breath. She turns and stares at him. ‘I’m sorry. Did you just say what I think you just said?’

‘For it to work, I need whatever is left of her. I can’t do that – only you can. And …’ He trails off. Her eyes are so frozen with shock he knows he’s gone too far. He’s going to lose her. He gives a small, embarrassed cough. ‘Tell you what – I’m going to leave this now. Let you sleep on it.’

She doesn’t answer. Just continues staring.

‘Are you going to be all right?’

She gives him a tight, barely controlled nod. ‘Yes. Yes.’

‘Do you want some coffee? A drink?’

‘No thank you. I think I’d better go home.’

‘OK,’ he says. ‘OK.’

He waits for a little longer, wondering whether to say anything else, but when she doesn’t speak or move he gets out. Zips up his jacket. He watches her start the engine and swing the Renault out of the car park. It pulls out into the feeder road and soon is swallowed up amongst the buildings. He waits for almost five minutes before he realizes she’s not going to come back.

He turns his collar up and heads back to the offices.