Poppet

Priddy

FLEA FOLLOWS CAFFERY in her car – she can hear her pulse thumping away in her ears. She’s always half wondered where Caffery lives. She’s expecting a slick apartment on the Bristol Docks, one of the recycled metal-and-glass ecohouses. Instead he drives out into the Mendips, along country lanes, past barren, frost-blasted fields, finally slowing in the ghostly village of Priddy; a place she’s only driven through, never stopped in. The Priddy Circles – the famous ancient earthwork enclosures – are somewhere out in the darkness to her left. On her right there’s a drenched and dirty plastic children’s climbing frame in the local pub garden, a solitary beer glass on the top of the slide, half full of rainwater.

She’s expecting some villa or secret golf course or driveway to open itself up and is surprised when he indicates and turns left into a bedraggled cinder driveway that leads to a thatched cottage.

This is karst land, and in the headlights it is easy to make out the depressions and scars of sinkholes in the limestone caused by acid rain and the porous nature of the bedrock. It’s poor land, prone to flooding, colonized by sedge grasses that can’t be eaten by livestock. It’s dangerous too – apt to open up and swallow a man who doesn’t take care where he places his feet. This is not at all what she imagined. She should be relieved; instead she’s set off balance. Once again Caffery has walked all over her expectations and prejudices.

She climbs out of the Clio, pulling on her fleece, and stares at the bowed white walls, deep-set mullioned windows and grey thatch. ‘What’s this?’

He slams his car door. ‘This?’ He eyes the place. ‘This is where I live.’

It looks so small, so rundown, domesticated. So romantic. Lots of tiny comforting windows instead of what she expected: vast glass walls with water and city lights reflected in them. The biggest threat here, she decides, is how familiar it all feels.

‘What?’ he says across the car roof. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s a rental.’

‘Oh,’ she says noncommittally. ‘It’s lovely. Where’s the coffee?

He slaps the top of the roof twice. Beckons. ‘Come on. Let’s do it.’

They go into the cottage. Inside she’s in for another surprise. It looks a lot like her place, with boxes everywhere and piles of notes and paper files. An iPad charging – propped on the skirting board in the hallway under the radiator. The staircase is in the living room; once it must have been walled off, now it’s got open banisters. A sweater is looped over the crevice of the bottom post. She wants to stare at the sweater – suck up the clues it can give her about him. But she can’t let her interest in him be that naked, so she settles for surreptitious glances, taking in everything from the empty flight bag at the bottom of the stairs to the almost-empty bottle of expensive Scotch on the windowsill. It’s like being a camera. Click, and she’s committed everything to memory for later analysis. Click, store. Click, store.

She goes into the kitchen where he is pulling milk out of the fridge. There’s a metal espresso pot bubbling on the hob. ‘So are you moving?’ she asks.

‘No – I haven’t unpacked yet.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘I dunno. Two years?’

‘Two years and you haven’t unpacked?’ She isn’t sure whether that impresses the hell out of her or makes her incredibly sad. ‘Has to be some kind of record.’

He looks at her now. Blinks as if the comment has made him realize how stupid she is. ‘It’s not a record,’ he says levelly. ‘It’s the problem. When you don’t finish something it’s what happens. You never settle. Not ever.’

He says it so decisively she knows what he’s talking about. His brother – years ago – never found. Her own parents, whose bodies never came back after the accident. Lost for ever. Jacqui Kitson too – still wondering where Misty is. It’s his attempt to chasten her. To remind her why they’re here. She waits while he makes coffee, not speaking, because she can’t think of anything sensible to say. When he hands her the cup, she gives a brief smile and sips politely. ‘Nice,’ she says. ‘Very nice.’

‘Thank you.’

‘In fact it’s lovely – but it’s not going to make me change my mind. I still can’t do it.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Both. Please – I’m just starting to be able to deal with life again – I can’t turn back now. And I’ve given you the other reasons.’

‘Yes – and they’re all surmountable. Sit down. It’s my turn.’

Resignedly she obeys – sitting at the kitchen table, with all the scars and pocks of life in its surface. He puts down sugar and the milk carton. Automatically she scans the carton, absorbing the details, the brand he’s chosen. She’s also noticed that on the sideboard is a stack of V-Cig cartridge refills and on the windowsill is a pile of mail, unopened. Part of her is readying itself for what he’s going to say – the other part of her, the part that’s always secretly found Caffery crazily sexy, is over at the window, nosing through that pile of mail. Opening anything that might give her more of a clue about him.

‘Do you know what I’ve been doing all day?’ He stirs sugar into his coffee. ‘I’ve been talking to people about a case at Beechway High Secure Unit. Ring any bells?’

Beechway. She knows the place – she’s done a job up there, but she doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

‘Pauline Scott?’ he prompts.

Pauline, if she remembers correctly, was a misper her team failed to find. To her eternal shame Pauline’s body turned up months later, three metres outside their search zone.

‘What about her?’

‘You didn’t find her for one reason: she was a few metres outside your parameters. The ones set by some combed-over old POLSA twonk. So it is all possible. And feasible.’

Flea smiles. ‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘I wish you’d met my dad. He’d have loved arguing with you. He’d have ripped you limb from limb.’

‘Nah – I’d have let him win.’

‘He’d have won, whether you let him or not.’

Caffery inclines his head politely, as if to concede that possibility. ‘But give me my time in the witness stand, OK? First off – your car isn’t a time bomb.’

‘It is. I totalled it – but the yard didn’t crush it because there was too much nice stuff left on it and I couldn’t exactly push the point. It’s still there. Slowly being stripped down for parts.’

‘Is it? When was the last time you saw it?’

She shrugs. In truth she can’t recall. She knows it was before the explosion because of how little she’s done since her hospitalization. Before that things are hazy.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Caffery says. ‘It’s been almost a year. Since last November, it’s been a cube. I watched it go through the crusher myself. No one will ever trace it and if they do they’re going to have a good laugh trying to get any forensic from it.’

He raises an ironic eyebrow at her expression.

‘I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Don’t ask questions – just take the car off your list of “why nots”. And you can take the breathalyser off – if no one knows the car was involved then no one’s going to look at its records.’

‘I’ve got another why not: head injuries. She flew over the car – the side of her head was smashed completely.’

‘We lose the head.’

‘What?’

‘OK,’ he says, ‘all right.’ He is silent for a minute. Then he says, ‘What part of the head?’

‘What part? The head is the head, Jack.’

‘If she was hit from behind, my guess would be here.’ He touches the back of his head, just above the neck. ‘If she was facing Thom – the forehead. Or maybe, if she turned at the last moment in a reflex action—’ He turns his own head. ‘Here.’ He traces a line with his fingertips along the side of his head, above his right ear.

Flea doesn’t answer. Actually it was the left side of Misty’s head, but he’s still pretty damned close. Like her, he’s been to his fair share of car accidents. Misty’s ear was nearly torn off by the impact with the roof of the car.

‘OK.’ He seems to have taken her silence as agreement. ‘We can leave the jawbone for IDing. If they don’t find the skull, they’ll think it got carried off by a fox, or a badger.’

‘Jack – it won’t work. You’ve got no clothes. No belongings. I burned them all.’

‘So?’

‘No clothes is a red rag to any pathologist. No clothes equals sex, equals someone else there, equals not putting it down to hypothermia or overdose. No belongings equals theft, equals the same thing. You’d have to be seen digging deeper if there weren’t any clothes.’

‘Not necessarily. Hypothermia can do that to people, can’t it? Make them confused about whether they are hot or cold? With the bones pulled apart, her clothing could be anywhere – hidden in the undergrowth, lining a fox’s den.’

He pushes back his chair and stands. He’s still wearing his jacket. She gets a glimpse of the place his shirt is tucked into his trousers. It is creased. For the first time it strikes her that he sometimes has it hard. Living in this cottage with none of his belongings unpacked. Maybe he’d understand if she told him about boxes. And how important they are.

‘Put down your cup,’ he says. ‘There’s something you need to see.’

She gets up and follows him into the garden. It’s easier to see now it’s illuminated by the lights from the cottage windows. He goes to the garage. When he comes out again he’s holding a spade. Flea doesn’t speak as he begins to dig. He fumbles in his jacket pocket for a pair of nitrile gloves. Slips them on and begins tugging at something tough and organic-looking in the earth. Flea folds her arms. Over the years she’s had the responsibility for recovering several bodies – both in and out of the water, and what Caffery is uncovering now is putting her in mind of a shallow grave. She glances right and left, checking they can’t be overlooked here.

Caffery gives the material another tug and it pops out. He gives it a shake – clods of earth fall from it – and she sees what it is. A dress.

‘What the …?’

‘Misty’s dress.’

‘No – I burned it.’

‘You burned her dress – but we did a reconstruction. Remember?’

She does. A girl coming down the steps of the rehab clinic – acting stoned. Looking more like a shampoo commercial than a drug addict. She shakes her head and whistles under her breath. ‘Are these the clothes the actress wore?’

‘They disappeared from MCIT – must have got lost when we moved offices. Scandalous how things like this always seem to go missing.’

He pulls out a handbag and a pair of sandals and lines them up on the frozen ground. ‘Even if they called in a forensics specialist to check the clothes – which I doubt, because who’s going to raise that suspicion with me directing the investigation? – this is going to vaguely match the profile of the woodland. Wood or a fallow pasture with a similar soil composition to this one. Any amount of minerals the clothes have accumulated will match.’

He brushes his hands off and uses the sleeve of his jacket to wipe his brow. ‘Well? Could I make it any easier?’

Her eyes go to his. ‘I told you – I can’t dive.’

‘And is that the truth? Or is it an excuse?’

She can’t answer. She can’t because it would be something like – it’s an excuse. Actually I can dive, I just don’t want to open up the past … if I do it then everything’s going to come falling out and it’ll all go to hell.

And then she’d probably start crying too.

‘I’ve got to go.’ She fumbles in her pocket for the car keys.

He shakes his head, defeated. ‘Again? You’re going to walk out again?’

‘I’m sorry, Jack, it’s getting late.’

‘No – it’s really not funny any more. Really. Not funny. I’m getting tired of this – and I’m especially tired of you protecting your shit-head brother.’

‘It’s not that,’ she says, shocked. ‘It’s not my brother.’

‘Then what is it? Hmmm? What is it?’

She stands looking at him for a long time. That thing inside her that wants to give way is trembling. She’s not going to cry. Not going to cry.

‘Please, Jack – please, you don’t understand.’

‘Forget it.’ He turns away, his hand held up to stop her speaking. ‘Just forget it. I don’t want to hear it.’