Skin

71

In the car outside Lindermilk’s bungalow Caffery washed down the hospital tramadol and codeine with a can of Sprite Lite. Given time, the drugs might touch the pain, but he knew they wouldn’t send him to sleep. Too much had happened today.

He drove to the bottom of the Farleigh Park Hall driveway and sat staring at its blazing lights for a long time, lighting cigarette after cigarette. Now it was dark the CSI team had stopped the examination of Gerber’s house. They’d start again in the morning. Maybe they should be looking for human remains, he thought. Misty Kitson’s. In the morning he’d tell them that, then go back to see Gerber’s secretary, Marsha. Misty had already had some cosmetic surgery on her nose to rebuild it after the damage done by years of hoovering up cocaine. He remembered that much from the files; the op had been done by an Iranian in Harley Street, but maybe she’d wanted more. Maybe she’d had an appointment to see Gerber. The names might be fake, people get embarrassed, one of the secretaries had said. Could you have done Misty too, you bastard? Could you?

When he’d smoked four cigarettes he still wasn’t sleepy. He left a message on Powers’s answerphone – Call me. Something important – started the car and headed east, meaning to go home. Instead he found himself thinking again about Amos Chipeta. About what he wanted. He thought of a bracelet of human hair, meant to ward off evil. He found his car meandering, taking him into the sharp dark forest of Stockhill. At just after two a.m., instead of coming into his darkened driveway at Priddy, he pulled off the main drag and into the little lane that led to the Elf’s Grotto quarries.

The headlights swept the new leaves on to the crowded gorse bushes. Obeying an instinct that told him to be stealthy, he parked the car just off the slip-road behind some skips and limped the last hundred yards to the edge of quarry number eight.

It was a milky night, the moonlight scattering in an oppressive glow. Low clouds pressed down, holding the light close to the land. Nothing moved in the shadows, no wildlife or wind. He stood for a moment at the edge of the water, his hands on the back of his leg, checking he hadn’t opened the wound in the walk here, that it wasn’t going to start bleeding again.

The quarry was quiet. Nothing moved. Where does he live? he wondered. Where does he hide?

He went fifty yards round the edge to the place where Ben Jakes had been found, stopped and looked at the undergrowth. Nothing had changed. He went on, anticlockwise around the quarry, pausing every few minutes to listen to the night sounds, pushing through brambles and dead branches in the places the footpath gave out. He was almost back to where he’d found the scooter when something stopped him in his tracks.

Ten feet away, parked in the undergrowth and covered with branches, was a car. A silver Ford Focus. It looked as if it had been there for a long time. Days, from the way it was covered. But he knew it couldn’t have been. He took a step nearer and held his hand above the bonnet. Still warm. Someone had parked it here to hide it. He turned and surveyed the quarry. The water and surrounding trees were absolutely motionless. Was someone else here? Were they watching him now? From the trees? From the other side of the quarry?

The tramadol still wasn’t working and his pulse was moving fast as he picked his way through the undergrowth to the back of the car. He looked at the registration thoughtfully. Y reg. A Y-registration Ford Focus.

It came to him slowly. It came like a slow wave.

He knew whose car it was.

Sergeant Marley was bored with the Focus, she’d said. Bored with it? He pulled his sleeve down again and tried the boot. Locked. At the quarry the day she’d found the dog, it had been the moment he’d asked her about this car that something had changed in her.

A half-remembered thought edged at him. He stepped back from the car into the undergrowth and stared at the number plate again. He’d seen this car a few times – once was on the day they’d made the arrests for Operation Norway: it had been parked outside a remote house in the Mendips and he’d had time to study it. He narrowed his eyes, remembering: there’d been a PSU-issue kit on the back shelf and something else… Something important. A piece of fabric hanging from the boot. A swatch of purplish blue velvet jammed into the lock.

In his pocket the phone began to ring. Startled him. He backed into the trees. Fishing it out of his pocket, he killed the noise as soon as he could.

‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘What?’

‘Jack?’ It was Powers. His voice soft and oiled from a night’s drinking. ‘Got your message. I only just heard what happened. I’m sorry, mate, really sorry.’

‘Yeah.’ Caffery didn’t take his eyes off the car. Purple velvet. Purple velvet jammed in the boot of the fucking car. ‘Sure.’

‘Where are you? In the hospital? I had someone from the CSI team trying to track you down. They said you promised them your clothes when you got out of the hospital.’

Purple velvet. Car, coat. Car, coat. Misty Kitson’s coat. Flea hadn’t wanted to search a lake for her.

‘And me – have you got something for me? You sounded excited. Was it about Kitson?’

‘Kitson.’ Caffery repeated it distantly as if he’d never heard the name before. ‘Misty Kitson.’

‘You said you’d have something by now. Remember?’ Powers paused. ‘Can you hear me, Jack? Look, just give me the intel you had, what your snout had to say, and we can take it from there. I’ll come to you, if you want. Now. Wherever you are.’

Caffery didn’t answer. Still staring at the car, he took the phone away from his ear and held it at arm’s length. He let Powers speak to the air for a few seconds. Then, using his thumb, he switched the phone off. He stood like that, motionless in the darkness, his arm outstretched, heart hammering in his chest.

There is no God, he thought. There is no such thing as God.