Poppet (33 page)

Not Suki’s but Isaac Handel’s. He is inches away from her, his mouth open in a smile.

Dirty Pink Satin

CAFFERY UNPICKS THE
dolls and finds they contain a grotesque array of body parts and excretions. However, aside from the dolls representing Handel’s parents, the contents are things that have been taken or gleaned from people without violence: hair snippings, nail parings, scraps of clothing, numerous balled tissues stained in some unnameable secretion.

Isaac spent time in that big bedroom taking pieces of his parents and sewing them into the dolls. He didn’t eat the missing parts, or throw them out of a window. He carried them out in plain view.

As for the remaining dolls … this is where Caffery is on less concrete ground. He’s not sure who they are supposed to symbolize, but he’s guessing staff and other patients at Beechway. There is a male doll with, hideously, a red boiled sweet stitched into the socket where an eye would be. Caffery hasn’t forgotten AJ’s conviction that Handel had somehow talked one of the patients into taking his own eye out with a spoon. Moses.

Penny said she imagined there was a doll for her too. He hasn’t found anything that represents her – so maybe Isaac didn’t have any long-term plans for her. Nor has he found anything that relates to AJ or to Melanie Arrow – which is surprising, given that, as head of the unit, she would have represented power and authority in Isaac’s eyes. She’s an attractive woman in a position of power – even someone as sick as Handel would have noticed that.

Caffery isn’t sure whether he should be concerned by this absence or if it’s just a distraction. A case of projecting his own thoughts into someone else. He scribbles a note on the edge of his writing block. Pushes it to one side and continues his study of the other dolls.

Two have been set aside for particular scrutiny. These are the only dolls apart from the parents that have their eyes stitched closed. Maybe they represent other people Isaac has targeted. The two dolls are female. Although they appear to be dead, they are not twisted and tortured and stabbed the way Graham and Louise’s poppets are. Instead these two are cushioned on dirty pink satin, their hands folded over their chests. One is depicted as overweight, dressed in a garish red T-shirt and red socks. The other is dressed simply in crude pyjamas of blue ticking. Her hair is fashioned from strips of silk and it is the colour of soft cheese. Her body is nothing more than a wire frame draped in felt. She looks like a skin-covered skeleton.

On Caffery’s phone is an ante-mortem photograph of Pauline Scott. He looks at the poppet. He looks at the photo. He stares at the poppet again.

And then he picks up the phone.

Red T-Shirt

AJ IS IN
his office, trawling the Internet for articles on MHRT tribunals and post-care plans, wondering how the hell Isaac Handel could have disappeared with all the so-called ‘safeguards’ in place. The phone rings. It’s DI Caffery. AJ gets up and closes the door to the office.

‘Yeah – hi,’ he says. ‘I was about to call you. How’s it going?’

‘Sort of OK, sort of not. Tell me – did you look through any of this stuff you brought me?’

‘Not really.’

‘You weren’t curious?’

‘Curiosity killed the cat. Not having a sense of curiosity is the chief reason I’ve survived in this job.’

At the other end of the line Caffery gives a small ironic laugh. ‘Strange, because curiosity is the reason I’ve survived in my job.’

AJ clears his throat. He goes to the window and looks out at the grounds. It’s a squally day; from here he can see the windows of Myrtle Ward. Above it a little electric light comes in slices through the lowered blinds in Melanie’s office. He drops his blind. Turns away from the window.

‘Is there news?’

‘Yes, it’s good news. You’ve convinced me. I’m opening an investigation.’

AJ bites his lip. Thinks about the light glowing in Melanie’s office window behind him. ‘Does that mean you’ve got to come out to the unit?’

‘It does. You know we’re taking this seriously, so maybe you can clear things your end.’

AJ scrunches up his face. What promise did he make himself yesterday? And has he kept it? No.

‘Can you give me a day or so? Is it urgent?’

There’s a tiny pause – a reticence from Caffery. ‘A day or so?’

‘Yes, it’ll give me time to open all the – uh – channels.’

‘I’d prefer it sooner. I’d like to be there this afternoon or first thing in the morning at the latest. We have to motor on this – we don’t know where Handel is.’

‘OK. OK, I’ll do my best.’

‘Please do.’ AJ hears Caffery shuffling papers at the other end of the line. ‘And something else, while I’ve got you, just so I can get some questions sorted – red T-shirt and red socks? Mean anything to you?’

AJ takes a deep breath. His heart hammers in his chest. ‘Red socks, red T-shirt? Meaning?’

‘The dolls – they look random, but they’re not. Didn’t you notice?’

‘No – I mean, I didn’t examine them.’

‘Each one symbolizes someone in Isaac’s life. Probably most are people from the unit, since those are the only people he’s had contact with the last eleven years. One of the dolls is dressed in a red T-shirt and socks, that’s why I’m asking.’

AJ’s heart sinks. He wishes everything that has happened was just his imagination. ‘Zelda,’ he says. ‘The red socks, the red T-shirt? We had to fight her all the time about the socks – the staff hated washing them because they turned everything pink …’ He trails off, his throat dry. ‘Mr Caffery, do any of them look like anyone else in the unit?’

‘Like you? No.’

‘Ummm – how about our clinical director. Remember? Blonde?’

‘Maybe you should look at them when I come to the unit. There’s one I think is Moses Jackson.’

‘Shit.’

‘And a very thin girl in pyjamas …’

‘Long hair? Blonde?’

‘Yes.’

‘Pauline,’ he murmurs. ‘She was wearing pyjamas when she …’

He stops speaking. Framed in the glass panel of his door is Melanie. She is smiling and waving through the window. He gives her a weak smile, holds up a finger.
Won’t be a second
, he mouths. He turns away from the window and speaks in a rapid voice.

‘I’m going to do what I can to sort things. I’ll let you know as soon as I have.’

‘OK. I really want to move on this so—’

‘I’m going to hang up now – it’s not a good time to talk.’

‘Fair enough. Let me know as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting.’

‘Will do.’ He presses his thumb on the red button. Takes a moment to calm himself. Turns and smiles at Melanie. Beckons. ‘Come in.’

She comes in. ‘Sorry – I didn’t mean to interrupt.’

‘That’s OK, it was nothing.’ She doesn’t ask him to explain, but he finds himself doing so anyway. ‘It was a sales call – I don’t know who sells our damned numbers on. An urgent message about my payment-protection policy, apparently. Can I make you a coffee? It’s not the best coffee, down here in the bowels of the unit, but I’ll do my best.’

‘That’s OK – I just had one.’

AJ gives a nervous cough. He’s lied. He’s lied
again
. ‘Did you … I mean, was there something you wanted to—?’

Before he can finish the sentence the phone rings again in his hand. His heart sinks. Melanie looks at it. There’s an awful awkward moment while his heart races, trying to think what he’ll say if it’s Caffery again.

‘Go ahead,’ she smiles. ‘I can wait.’

‘Yes, I mean, I …’ Resignedly he turns the phone over. Sees to his immense relief the name ‘Patience’ flashing on and off on the screen. He gives Melanie a pained expression. Holds it up so she can read it.

‘I’m going to have to …’ he says.

She nods. Blows a kiss, turns for the door and leaves. He stands at the door and watches through the window, waiting for her to disappear round the turn in the corridor before he answers the phone.

‘Now, AJ,’ says Patience. ‘Don’t get upset about this …’

‘That’s
exactly
the way to break news to someone, Patience.’ He turns from the door. ‘Something, I dunno, so soothing about it. What is it? You been gambling with our council-tax money again?’

‘No – it’s Stewart.’

‘Oh.’ All AJ’s bravado drains away. He sits down at the desk. ‘Is he …?’

‘He’s OK. He’s right here with me, AJ. Fast asleep. But he hasn’t been all right. I’ve been at the vet with him and he’s had his stomach pumped and blood taken off of him, and—’

‘What?’

‘I know – it’s cost a fortune. But I didn’t have my phone with me at the vet, so I couldn’t check with you, and this vet lady’s yelling at me how I’ve got to make up my mind, just like
that
, or Stewart’s liver’s going to stop working and his kidneys and …’ She takes a few gulping breaths. ‘AJ, I thought we’d lost him.’

AJ can’t make sense of this. A few hours ago Stewart was running through the fields with him, his tail wagging like a mad thing. ‘What the hell happened – what’s wrong with him?’

There’s a long silence at the end of the phone. He can pretty much hear Patience weighing her words, testing each one before she gives them voice. When she does speak, it’s with the heaviness she employs whenever she wants AJ to read between the lines.

‘The vet says Stewart got poisoned somehow. It’s nothing
I’ve
given him.’

‘Poisoned?’ It’s as if something cold and scaly has dragged itself down AJ’s spine. All he can see in his mind’s eye is the walk in the woods this morning. ‘Poisoned how?’

‘The vet doesn’t know. She’s on about how it could have been lots of things, nothing obvious came out when they pumped him. But he’s eaten something – a toadstool maybe. You know Stewart’s not all that discriminating when it comes to eating.’

‘It’s OK, Patience, you did the right thing, don’t get upset about it. I might be late home tonight, but don’t worry about the money, OK? We’re going to be fine.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ she says drily. ‘I truly hope you’re right.’ ‘I am.’ He looks out of the window as he says it – at the lights on in Myrtle – and Melanie’s office window. He’s got to build up his nerve to tell her about Caffery. Somehow it has to be done. ‘I am right. Give Stewie a hug for me.’

The Duck

IF IT LOOKS
like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then chances are it is … a duck
.

One of Caffery’s drill sergeants at police training college in Hendon was fond of this phrase; he’d bark it at the recruits during scenario training. It must have sunk in deep, because it comes back at Caffery now, as he sits in his office, staring at the piles of paper from the Upton Farm investigation.

He’s brought in Handel’s poppets. The superintendent has authorized an interim forensics budget and the CSM is coming up to Caffery’s office to bag and organize the dolls.

Caffery looks at the doll in the blue ticking pyjamas and the one with the red T-shirt. Both laid to rest peacefully, on a cushion of satin, not twisted and hacked into. Yet their eyes are stitched closed. The same way Isaac stitched closed the eyes on the dolls of his parents.

Zelda and Pauline …

If it looks, swims and quacks like a duck …

By late afternoon there will be a full team assembled. Someone is talking to Serious Crime about initiating a manhunt for Handel. The report on Pauline Scott’s disappearance and postmortem have already been circulated around the team. People talk about the cogs of bureaucracy moving slowly, but Avon and Somerset seems to have its wheels especially well oiled just now. All he’s waiting for is AJ to call him with the go-ahead to visit the unit.

That is the big problem. It’s mostly Caffery being decent – out of some unexpected and inexplicable loyalty to the guy. The courtesy, however, can only be extended so far. Once the team is assembled, he’s going to have to pull the plug on AJ and go into Beechway, regardless.

Time for a coffee. He inspects his chipped old cup – empty. He picks it up and stands, pausing briefly to look at the area map on his wall. It’s an unprofessional map because there are places he should have put pins and hasn’t – like the quarry at Elf’s Grotto, the road near Farleigh Park Hall. Nevertheless, it’s an aid to him. Sometimes a thought provoker when he needs the inspiration.

He looks at it for a bit longer. Then, not sure what he’s looking for, he clicks on the kettle. While he’s waiting for it to boil, he looks out of the window at a fog bank lifting above the high rises. What are you up to, Handel, he thinks. What is going on in your screwed-up brain?

The kettle boils. Caffery makes his coffee. He’s pouring in a little milk, and is about to spoon in the sugar when something becomes clear to him. He stops what he’s doing and jerks his head up, looking across the room.

The map. The fucking map.

He puts down the spoon, crosses the room, and stands, arms folded, staring at it.

There it is, plain as day. Just below Upton Farm, a tiny annotation, written in the Old English calligraphy beloved of OS maps:

The Wilds.

How to Tell the Truth

AT LAST AJ
gets up the courage to go and tell Melanie about Jack Caffery. He knocks on her door and when he goes in she is sitting at her desk, smiling up at him.

‘Hi,’ he says cautiously. ‘Earlier – did you come to see me for something?’

‘Only to give you a hug. Say hi.’ She gives a sheepish smile. There’s no suggestion she knows he’s lied about the phone call. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine. I mean, sort of.’

‘Sort of?’

‘Yes, I … I need to speak to you. Something’s happened.’

‘Something?’

He sits down. Puts his keys and phone on the desk – looks her in the eye. He fumbles in his head for the first sentence of the speech he’s prepared. But when he opens his mouth, what pops out is: ‘Stewart’s ill. He’s been at the vet.’

Melanie’s face falls. ‘The vet? Is he OK?’

‘Yeah – he’s going to be fine. Patience dealt with it.’

‘God, I’m sorry. Poor Stewart. Maybe he ate something while he was – you know …’ She wrinkles her brow. ‘Wherever it is he keeps yomping off to.’