Gone (34 page)

There was a hook in the underside of the deck to which she attached the rucksack so it stayed dry. She fumbled out the mobile, unwrapped it from the plastic she’d protected it with, switched it on and checked the signal. Nothing. The mast icon was crossed out. Keeping her breathing very slow, her mouth open to reduce the noise, she inched herself to one of the holes in the hull. At first she stayed shy of it, just kept her ear near to it, letting her imagination crawl out into the echoey tunnel, searching the sound patterns for any hint that she wasn’t alone. Then, still breathing carefully, she put her face to the hole and peered out.

About five yards away the bag on the hook hung solid and shadowed. Now she could see it properly, she saw there was no moss or debris on it. It had been used recently. She hadn’t had time to notice that last night. By pressing her body flat against the hull and wedging her cheek hard into the hole, she could see another section of the tunnel. Could see the pale dab of light. The child’s shoe. The electrostatic prickle she’d felt earlier was
stronger here than it had ever been. She was close. Martha had been down here. No doubt about it. This may have been the place she’d been raped. The place she was killed, even.

Flea pushed the mobile through the hole in the hull. Held it at arm’s length as far out into the tunnel as she could. Tilted it to face her.

No signal. So – she licked her lips and glance upwards – it was the hatch.

She switched off the mobile, returned it in its plastic to the rucksack and put her hands on the underside of the deck. The hatch opened from above. Not as easy as the last one. It was rusted too. She got the chisel out of the rucksack and used the handle to thump the hatch. A few flakes of rust and coal dust came down, but the hatch didn’t move or rattle. She fished her Swiss Army knife out of the immersion suit and began to chip at the rust around the join. It was harder and more encrusted than it had been on the bulkhead hatch. She had to bend her knees, pull part of the dry suit down and wedge it into the knife to stop the blade folding itself up. At the tough bits she had to bring the knife down from over her head as if she was using a mallet, catching the deck at a glancing angle.

When the joints were clear she gave the hatch three more blows with the chisel handle. Still nothing happened. There was no rust left so it should be ready to give. She unfolded the knife again, gave it another go round, her left hand placed over the right to give it more force. But the knife wasn’t man enough for the job and on the sixth thump it snapped, deflecting her hand, which plunged down and landed on her thigh. The broken blade penetrated the immersion suit and sank deep into her flesh.

She jerked her leg up, her back arcing with the pain. The steel blade was buried in the muscle, just the little enamel handle visible, sticking out of the blue neoprene. Forgetting her first-aid training, she pulled it out instantly, letting it clatter away in the muck. She dropped on to the shelf and unzipped the suit, swung her feet in their heavy boots on to it and lifted her backside so she could peel the legs down. The skin on her thighs was white and
mottled, like a freezer chicken’s, the hairs standing up individually, stiff and stark. There was a dull blue area where the knife had sunk in. She put her thumbs on either side of the patch and peered at it. As she did so a thin crescent of red appeared. It thickened then, all at once, bloated up and the blood broke over the surface. It ran down her raised thigh in two rivulets and soaked into her underwear.

She clamped her hands over the wound, biting her lip. It wasn’t the femoral artery. If it had been it’d be shooting blood into the air, hitting the hull sides. Still, any bleed she couldn’t afford. Not down here in this cold. She ripped off her T-shirt and pressed it to the wound, tied the fabric using a clove hitch knot at the back of her thigh. Then she put the leg straight on the bench, rested her hands in her groin, and leaned as much pressure on it as possible.

She sat there for a long time, like a ballet dancer doing a warmup exercise, pushing back against the pain, pushing her mind into pictures of getting out.

A noise came from the air shaft. The screech of metal on rock. She raised her head. Another noise – this time she knew she wasn’t imagining it. A pebble or something hard had just bounced down the shaft and landed with a plink in the water. And then more: stones, some leaves and a branch.

It wasn’t someone throwing things down. It was someone climbing down.

‘You’re wrong. He’s not watching you. You can relax.’

Caffery was in the kitchen with the guy from the high-tech unit at Portishead, a tall, sculpted, ginger-haired guy who didn’t look as if he worked for the police. He wore a skinny tie, a weird sixties suit with narrow lapels, and the bag he carried was fake crocodile skin. He’d turned up in some vintage Volvo number, like an extra from a Sean Connery flick. But he seemed to know his stuff. He made Caffery remove the camera from the slot in the wall and rest it on a piece of card on the kitchen table. Then the two men stood together, peering down at it.

‘I promise you he’s not watching.’

‘But the gubbins on the back. That’s a radio transmitter, isn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh. He’s probably got it linked to a high-speed USB receiver so he can record directly to the hard drive. I dunno, maybe his plan was to be sitting somewhere out there in a car just watching the whole thing on his laptop, but he’s not there now.’

‘You sure?’

The guy smiled. Calm. ‘One hundred and twenty per cent. We scanned it. Anyway, this little thing’s nothing impressive. Very low end, off the shelf, cheap as chips. The stuff the security services use is about a hundred times more powerful – uses microwaves – but this? He’d have to be somewhere on the estate to pick it up and the units have run the whole diameter. There’s no one out there. Sorry. I have to admit I was excited for a bit.
Actually thought we might find the bastard sitting in his car tapping away on the keys of a nice little Sony.’

Caffery looked him up and down. The high-tech unit had already traced the phone number Moon had sent the the photo from. It was a pay-as-you-go, purchased in a Tesco somewhere in the south of England at least two years ago. Switched off, but they’d already been able to say where the text was sent from. Near junction sixteen of the M4. Halfway between anywhere and anywhere. Then the unit had sent this red-haired character to the vicarage. There were winklepickers on his feet and his blackframed glasses were out of
Alfie
. Caffery studied the shoes. Then his face. ‘What do we call you, then? Q?’

The guy laughed. An unamused, nasal sound. ‘Never heard that one before. Never, ever, ever. It’s true what they say about MCIU – you guys really are a stitch. A laugh a minute.’ He unzipped the bag and produced a small box with a circular red LED display. ‘No, I’m just an anorak. Two years in high-tech and before that two years in the technical support unit at Serious Crime – you know, SOCAT, who’ve got the covert-surveillance boys?’

‘Doing things we don’t admit to the Crown Prosecution Service?’

‘Hey-hey.’ He touched the knot of his tie. He had freckles across his nose. Pale eyes. Like an albino. ‘See, I know that’s a joke. I can tell by the cute way your eyes crease.’

Caffery bent to peer again at the camera. ‘Where would someone pick up a bit of kit like this?’

‘That? Anywhere. A few hundred quid, probably less. Off the Internet. They’d ship it, no questions asked.’ He smiled, revealing very small, evenly set teeth. ‘Nothing illegal about having an enquiring mind.’

‘What I’d like to know is why he wants to get a view of an empty bedroom. He knows they’re not here any more.’

‘Sorry, mate. I’m from the gadgetry department. Psychology’s second door on the right.’ He straightened, ran his hands down his tie and glanced around the kitchen. ‘But there’s another one – in here. If that’s of any interest.’

Caffery stared at him. ‘
What?
’

‘Yes. There’s one in here too. Can you see it?’

Caffery scanned the walls, the ceiling. He couldn’t see anything.

‘It’s all right. You won’t be able to. Look at this.’ He held out what looked like a small hand torch. A little circle of red diodes danced across the top of it. ‘I had my own budget at SOCAT, never had to go through Procurement. Believe me, I didn’t waste a penny. Everything I bought has made its money back in saved time and man hours. This is the Spyfinder.’

‘You really are out of a Bond movie.’

‘You know what? I’ve got an idea. How about we
abandon
that source of amusement – just for the time being.’ He held the unit at an angle for Caffery to look at. ‘That
Close Encounters
dance? That’s light reflecting off a camera optic.’

‘Where?’ Caffery’s eyes ran over the walls, the fridge, the cooker. The row of Martha’s birthday cards on the windowsill.

‘Concentrate.’

He followed the direction Q’s attention was locked on.

‘Inside the clock?’

‘I think so. Inside the number six.’

‘Fuck fuck fuck.’ Caffery went to stand in front of the clock, hands at his sides. He could see a glint in there but it was wasting. Tiny. He turned back to the kitchen: the old veneer cupboards, the frayed curtains. The carton of cream Jonathan had poured on the apple pie still sitting there, going rancid. And the pile of newspapers, the smell of vomit. Why the hell would Moon want to watch this empty kitchen? What would he be getting out of it? ‘How long would it have taken to put them in?’

‘Depends on how good he is with the technology. And he’d have to have gone outside to check they were working, that he was picking them up on his receiver.’

‘He’d have been coming and going? In and out?’

‘To get it right. Yes.’

Caffery sucked air through his teeth. ‘A surveillance team is one of the biggest expenses the force can carry. Makes me wonder why we bother.’

‘I think I know.’

The two men turned. Jonathan was standing in the doorway. He was holding Philippa’s laptop in both hands. He wore an odd expression. His head was on one side, as if he was listening for the first knockings of madness.

‘Jonathan. You’re supposed to be in the car.’

‘I was. I’m not there now. Moon put the cameras in to look at Martha. He put them in before he took her. They’ve been here for more than a month. That’s why the surveillance team didn’t see anything.’

Caffery cleared his throat. He glanced at the techie, then beckoned to Jonathan.

‘Put it down.’ He moved things off the table. ‘Here.’

Jonathan came stiffly into the kitchen, put the laptop on the cleared space and flipped it open. The computer paused for a moment, then came to life. The photo of Moon in the Santa mask, lying on the bed, came up on the screen. It had been zoomed in so that only part of the wall and part of his shoulder were in the frame. ‘That.’ Jonathan tapped the screen. ‘See it?’

Caffery and Q gathered round. ‘What are we looking at?’

‘That picture. That drawing.’

Pinned to the wall above the bed was a felt-tipped picture – a young girl’s image of a mythic land. Martha had drawn clouds and hearts and stars and a mermaid in the top corner. She’d drawn herself standing to one side, holding the reins of a white pony. Near her, dislocated as if floating in space, were two dogs

‘Sophie and Myrtle.’

‘What about them?’

‘No necklace. No flowers.’

‘Eh?’

‘Philippa’s birthday is on November the first. Martha dressed Sophie up for the day. And when it was over she came up here and drew flowers and necklaces on Sophie in the picture. Rose remembers her doing it. So does Philippa. But look. No roses, no necklaces in this picture.’

Caffery straightened. Hot and cold needles pricked along his
back. Everything he’d thought he was certain of was wrong. Wrong, completely wrong, and built on foundations of sand. The whole case had just turned upside-down.

The kitbag clunked fitfully against the dripping canal wall, the sound echoing off the barge. In the bows Flea breathed shallowly, shaking uncontrollably. She peeled the T-shirt off her leg. It came slowly, parts of it sticking to the already drying blood. The wound had settled to a crusty red line. She gave it an experimental squeeze. It held. Quickly she unstuck the T-shirt and pulled it over her head, feeling the dried blood crack and flake. She peeled her immersion suit back up, zipped it carefully and slipped silently off the bench to crouch in the water at a place where she could see out of the hole.

The rope swayed and circled, casting long, ugly shadows. She dropped deeper into the water and began stealthily to move her hand through the muck. She was used to searching silt and water using touch alone – it was her profession: her fingers were trained for it even in the thick gloves. She found the broken Swiss Army knife quickly, wiped it on her T-shirt and opened it to the flathead screwdriver. She waded silently to the hole and stood with her back to the hull, her head tilted so she could see all the way up into the shaft.

Someone was on the grille. A man. She could see him from behind, his feet in brown hiking boots. Brown cargo trousers tucked inside. A black bumbag around his waist. He was gripping the plants that sprouted from the walls of the shaft to steady himself as he took a couple of steps nearer the edge of the grille and peered down into the tunnel. His back was to her, she couldn’t see
his face, but from his posture he seemed dubious, as if he really wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing. After a moment or two pondering he sank to a sitting position and shuffled his feet to the edge of the grille. Gravity took over and he began to slide. He grabbed the chain and slowed his descent, so he could lower himself into the dirty water below.

He stood in the shadows, both arms out defensively, looking carefully around. Then he bent at the waist, straining to see into the darker recesses of the cavern. His head and shoulders came momentarily into the light and Flea let all the air out of her lungs at once. It was Prody.

‘
Paul!
’ She pushed her face into the hole, her breathing loud and shaky. ‘
Paul
– I’m here.’