Poppet

Thom Marley

THE DIVE UNIT have spent their day searching and bitching, hunched against the cold and the wet. They’ve continued to scour the wide band, Flea alongside them, dragging her empty body from hedge to hedge, field to field. It’s been the longest two days she can remember. She hasn’t caught up from diving all night then going straight to work yesterday – all she’s wanted to do is sleep. But whatever and whenever, you always stand shoulder to shoulder with your men.

Jack Caffery, who is supposed to be the SIO on this, hasn’t shown his face in all that time. Why should he? she reasons. He knows there’s going to be no new find – no evidence. Maybe it was for the best – it’s given her time to work through in her head what she wants to explain to him.

At five, when it’s getting dark and all her men are freezing and exhausted, she takes them into a huddle, gives them hot chocolate from the giant flask she’s kept in her back seat and supermarket cakes from a Tupperware container. She explains that if it was up to her, they would be paid not by the number of hours but by the difficulty and by the toll each hour takes on the spirit. Around them the RV car park is in chaos, the other support-unit teams are packing up for the night. She almost fails to notice the old Mondeo that pulls off the road and into the far corner of the car park. But then two of the big vans drive off and the car is out in the open.

Jack Caffery. At last. She sends her team home with the truck and when she’s certain they’re on their way, she approaches. He rolls down the window.

‘Hi. You OK?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Do you want to talk?’

She shrugs and walks round to the passenger seat, rattles the door. He clicks off the locking and she opens the door and gets in. Her body is aching from the cold of the day in the field – out here play-acting trying to find Misty – and the car isn’t as warm inside as she’d expected. It’s not lush and easy to sit in, her breath still fogs the air. Caffery’s in his work suit with a thick corded jacket over the top. He’s turned in his seat, waiting for her to speak.

‘Yeah.’ She buckles the seat belt. Nods out of the windscreen. ‘Can we just go?’

He doesn’t argue. He starts the car and pulls out of the parking area.

‘Take a right. Go through Monkton Farleigh.’

He does as she says. She sits with her elbow jammed against the door, her forehead against her fingers. The night countryside squirms past the car, swallowed up under the wheels.

‘At the main road take a right – head towards Bath.’

He obeys her instructions without a word. She lets her eyes sneak sideways and follow his hand on the gear stick. She’s watched his hands several times before. They are hard and slightly tanned, no rings. She’s never seen a ring on his fingers. Not even the white mark from one that has existed there in a past life.

‘OK,’ she says when they are on the main road and have reached cruising speed. ‘I did want to talk. And when you didn’t come on site I thought about calling. I did. Just didn’t know how to start.’

‘Now’s a good time.’

‘First let me say sorry about the other night. I didn’t mean to be as blunt as I was.’

He gives a grim smile. Changes gear. ‘Understandable. It wasn’t an everyday conversation – a coffee-morning chat.’

‘To put it mildly.’

‘I could have been better about it. I could have been more gentle.’

She turns her eyes away – focused on the road, because she knows he’ll be trying to see her expression.

‘Before you judge why I said no you need to know some of the things that happened. After Misty was …’ She stops. Starts again. ‘After she died.’

‘What things?’

‘You’ll see that what I did was the best thing I possibly could – the best route. It’s not as simple as you think.’

‘Try me.’

She takes a long, deep breath. Leans her shoulders back in the seat. She really doesn’t want to go through it again. Not at all.

‘OK,’ she starts tentatively. ‘Imagine it’s late spring. Here … the same road, but eighteen months ago. Thom’s borrowed my car. It’s eleven at night and he’s off his head and … well, you and I both know what’s happened back on that road. He’s coming along here – just like we are, except he’s trousered and he’s going fast because he’s got something awful in the boot of his car. Something he really shouldn’t have – you know what I’m talking about. As he comes round this corner, he picks up a tail—’

‘A traffic cop?’

‘Yes. One of ours. Avon and Somerset’s finest – someone you and I happen to know, but that’s another story. Left here.’

Caffery swings the car to the left and they begin to wind their way down the side of the valley that leads off the escarpment.

‘So he comes down here with the cop on his back, and I’m in the house – we’re going to get there in a minute – you’ll see – and the first I know about it is headlights and noise and Thom crashing into the house so pissed, so pissed he’s straight into the toilet and throwing up and crying. And then the cop – minutes behind. It was a split-second decision: I couldn’t even begin to go forward and guess what it would mean in the end.’ She breaks off for a moment, knowing the next bit is insanity. ‘But anyway – I told the cop I was driving.’

‘You what?’ His eyes go to hers and she isn’t quick enough to look away. ‘Say it again?’

‘And I did the breathalyser for Thom.’

‘What the—’

‘I know, I know …’ She massages her temples wearily. ‘But I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t know Misty was in the boot until four days later. She was in my car for four days before I realized. My shithead brother? He’s picked up her body, put it in my car, and doesn’t even tell me – leaves me to find it. The next morning he’s gone – and after that I can’t contact him – he won’t take my calls. I had to doorstep him to even get a word out of him.’

Caffery shakes his head. Lets out a low whistle. ‘And still you protected him?’

‘By then it wasn’t me protecting him, it was me protecting myself. From him and his mondo-bizarro bitch of a girlfriend, who turned the whole thing around so it looked like I …’ She rubs her arms. She realizes she is trembling. A sweat is coming out on her forehead. ‘So it looked like I did it all. Take a right here. This is it. My house.’