Skin

8

‘Sir?’

Flea might have said something else to Caffery that day. She might have said a little more and things might have panned out very differently if at that moment Stuart Pearce, the rolypoly search adviser who’d ordered the quarry search, hadn’t interrupted them.

‘Sir? Sir? I’d like a word.’

They both turned to watch him come across the car park, smiling at Caffery, his finger held up in the air as if he was making a point. He stopped a few feet away, breathing hard from the exertion. He had a soft face and a thick, sunburnt neck. His hair was combed across his balding pate. He addressed Caffery, acting as if Flea didn’t exist. ‘You’re the SIO, are you, sir?’

‘No – he’s gone. Wells station. You’ll catch him there in about ten.’ Caffery started to turn away, but Pearce wasn’t going to be put off.

‘Is it Lucy Mahoney in there?’ He gestured at the coroner’s van pulling out of the car park.

‘Who wants to know?’

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a business card. ‘I was the search adviser on her disappearance. Today’s my rest day but I thought I’d better come in when I heard they’d found someone.’

That figured, she thought. He was the type: an officer freshly trained in a new job, full of enthusiasm, such a need to be involved that he’d turn up on rest days probably for no pay. All because he liked the glory. He was the sort who’d accidentally let his warrant card drop out of his wallet on to the bar when he was trying to pull someone. Thought women were more likely to open their legs for a cop.

‘You can see, can’t you, now that you’ve got the lie of the land, how I would never have put this place on my search parameters? I’d never have found her with what I had to go on – it was like a needle in a haystack.’

‘Don’t waste your breath, mate,’ said Caffery. ‘I’m just floating here. It’s not mine, it’s F District’s. I’m MCIU.’

‘MCIU?’

‘Major Crime.’

‘Yes. I know what MCIU is.’ He wiped his forehead. ‘You must be doing the Kitson case, then. I was the search adviser on that too, before the review got it bumped up to you from District.’

Bloody celebrity junkie, Flea thought. People like Pearce loved the media scrums that the Kitson case was attracting, the spotlight on the force. God, she didn’t like the guy. The more he talked, the more he ignored her, the more the fuses popped in her head.

‘I heard you got a fix on her phone from the Macrocell base station?’ he said. ‘Used that call analysis team, right?’

‘You’ve had your ear to the ground, then,’ said Caffery.

‘That mast was in the parameters I drew up, but it wasn’t a good area – not well covered by masts.’ Pearce put his hands on his hips and, head back, gazed out across the trees. Then he squinted in the other direction, at the horizon. ‘Somewhere like this would have been better. If Misty Kitson was out on that railway line we’d have got a fix on her in no time. But her phone was switched off, wasn’t it?’

‘Whose?’ Flea could hear irritation creeping into Caffery’s voice.

‘Lucy Mahoney’s. It was switched off, District told me. Bizarre, if you ask me – usually suicides use their phones. Make last-minute calls, even just to hear someone speak, or texts before they pull the plug. You can see why my job was difficult, can’t you? She broke all the rules.’

‘What rules?’

‘All the geographical profiling rules, everything. To start off, look how far away her car is – she had to walk half a mile to get here. Why didn’t she park nearer?’

‘She was wandering? Distressed?’

‘Nah. Suicides generally know where they’re going to do it before they set out. And, anyway, I spoke to the ex-husband and he said she doesn’t know this area. She never walked her dog here or anything like that. There was nothing connecting her to this place. I mean, most suicides are less than half a mile from a road, and she must be topping that, surely? And they go somewhere high, suicides. They go and sit somewhere – somewhere they can see lights, buildings, so they can see what they’re saying goodbye to. But not her. You can’t see a thing from that embankment. I’ve been over there. Had a look.’

Flea’d had enough. She stepped forward. Hand up. Big smile on her face. ‘Hi.’ Her best, brightest voice. Waved the hand for good measure. ‘Remember me? Sergeant Marley? The one who did most of your searching?’

He gave her a cool look. ‘Yes.’

‘We dived the quarry yesterday. You missed it.’

‘I was looking at other possible sites.’

He turned back to Caffery, but she’d started now and she wouldn’t stop until she’d got in his face. ‘Yeah, well. Don’t worry about it. I didn’t think she’d be in there anyway.’

‘Of course not,’ he said quietly, his eyes still on Caffery, ‘because you’re psychic.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You knew she wouldn’t be in the quarry. So you must be psychic.’

She started to laugh, but stopped when she saw the look on his face. ‘What did you say?’

‘I’ve had to come in on my rest day for this. And it doesn’t help when whatever blood, sweat and tears you throw at it, whatever profiles, Blue 8 mapping you generate, some people still won’t believe you. This is the second time you’ve undermined my authority.’

She knew what he was talking about, of course: earlier this week she and Pearce had got into what Wellard called ‘a full and frank discussion’ about whether the team should be searching for Misty Kitson in a lake near the rehab clinic. Flea hadn’t thought Kitson would be found in the lake and she’d told Pearce so. She probably hadn’t done it in the sweetest way imaginable either. ‘Misty Kitson again?’

‘You decided she wasn’t going to be in the lake either. Didn’t you? A bit dispiriting, that – being told I was wrong before you’d even finished the search.’

‘I was right, though, wasn’t I? She wasn’t there. You get an instinct after a while. She was never going to be in the lake. She was never going to drown herself, a girl like that.’

‘You’re going to tell me the lottery numbers next.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I can’t reason with you so I think I’m finished here.’ She put her arm out, gesturing for Pearce to stand back so she could pass, but he didn’t move, didn’t meet her eyes. She tried to go round him the other way but he shifted his boxy body a little, hemming her in. He held Caffery’s eyes while he did it, a half-smile on his face.

She stopped and raised her eyes to his. ‘You know what?’ She was calm. ‘It’s been years since I got my hair off over a case like Kitson just because the victim was a celeb. You know why?’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’d be just a little bit afraid someone would turn around and call me an effing media monkey. Now,’ she paused, breathing hard, ‘are you going to step out of my way, you combed-over old twonk? Or do I have to push you?’

Pearce’s nostrils widened a tiny amount. There was a moment when she thought he might just take his life into his hands and stand his ground. But in the end he hadn’t the balls. He rubbed his nose and stepped out of her way.

She made a small, victorious noise in her throat, slung the towel over her back, turned and trudged back to the unit van. Bloody Newbs. Probably moved up from the Specials, that one. She just didn’t have the patience.

‘Marley,’ Caffery called. But she raised her hand, goodbye, and continued to where the team were throwing the last few pieces into the van. She got into the Focus, started the engine and pulled out on to the road. The sun was beating down on the windscreen, making patterns in the dust. As the car park disappeared in her rear-view mirror she allowed herself to smile.

Do I have to push you, you combed-over old twonk?

Good one, girl. She jacked up the volume on the end of that Arctic Monkeys CD. She liked the way Caffery had looked at her breasts. As if the T-shirt wasn’t even there. As if he could see right through it, and as if her breasts were round and big and something to be respected. It was an age since someone had looked at her like that. An age. She’d like it to happen again.

She laughed and opened the window. Combed-over old twonk. Yeah. She was proud of that one. Really proud.