Poppet (23 page)

There’s a pause – then Melanie lowers her head. ‘Oh God,’ she says miserably. ‘Honestly, I just looked at Isaac and …’ She laces her fingers into her hair, as if she’s got a headache. ‘Shit – OK, I’m just going to be honest. I thought he hadn’t been any trouble for years and years, he’d completely toed the line – he’d be a good candidate. Fuck.’ She digs her heels back into the grille under the seat. ‘Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. You’re right, AJ – it was Isaac in my garden. Two nights in a row. I couldn’t bring myself to admit it before.’ She gives a long sigh. ‘There – I’ve said it. I suppose this means curtains for our little dalliance. You must hate me now.’

‘Hate you? Christ!’ He lets out a short, ironic laugh. ‘
Hate
you? Jesus, if you only knew …’

‘Knew what?’

‘Melanie,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Come on, beautiful woman – I am
insane
about you. I’m like Monster Mother on a lilac day all the time just thinking about you. I’m like Moses when he hears it’s sausages for breakfast. I am like Fred Astaire dancing – I am NUTS. About. You.’

‘Seriously?’

‘I told you – I’m a wimp around you, pathetic.’

She gives a hopeful little smile. A quick sniff – as if tears had been close. ‘I’m sorry – it’s all driving me mad.’

‘I know.’

‘And I’m scared. If that was Isaac in the garden – then why? What does he want?’

AJ doesn’t answer. A memory flashes up in his brain like a giant billboard – Isaac watching Melanie walk down the corridor.

‘There’s always the police,’ he says tentatively.

‘We
can’t
,’ she says wearily. ‘Maybe Isaac will just … you know,
vanish
into the ether. But whatever – we can’t speak to the police. Can you imagine what would happen to someone in my position if it came out I’d been lying to the tribunal?
Lying?
’

AJ colours when she says the word ‘lying’. She has no way of knowing where he’s been today, but he’s defensive nonetheless. He coughs loudly. Taps his fingers harder on his knees.

‘OK, let’s say he doesn’t vanish into the ether. If we can’t go to the police, I’m not about to sit back and let him hound us. I reckon it was him in your garden. Probably the first thing he did when he was discharged was to find out where you live – he’ll have made it his business. Your house is a bad place to be right now. This might sound a bit forward – and please don’t misinterpret me, but …’

‘But?’

He hesitates. He doesn’t know how to say it. And he doesn’t know if it’s the right thing. All he knows is he wants Melanie where he can see her.

‘I live – well, I live closer to Upton Farm than you do, but Isaac hasn’t got a clue where I am. So I was thinking … why don’t you come stay at my place for a while? Give it some time for things to settle down, see where everything lands? No – it’s a crazy idea, I know, forget I said it, I was just thinking aloud, but at least check into a hotel somewhere – just to get you away from your—’

‘AJ!’

He stops talking. A smile has broken across her face, revealing her small, perfect teeth.

‘AJ, it’s fine. It’s not crazy at all. In fact, it’s a fabulous idea. I’ve been dying to meet Patience.’

Wickes

THE DAYS ARE
short this far into autumn and it’s pretty much dark when Caffery gets to the shop at the north end of Bristol. CCTV cameras are trained on the entrance, the tills, with three or four more above the aisles. The store is divided into Decoration/Plumbing/Electrical/Tools. At least two of those categories sit uneasily with Caffery. Even without reading the full report he knows that the things Handel did to his parents involved objects purchased from a place like this.

‘Manager.’ He flashes his warrant card to the security guy. ‘Please.’

He is shown to a small office piled with paperwork. Kieran Bolt is small and clean-shaven with eyes reddened through tiredness. He’s getting ready to go home, and doesn’t look pleased to see Caffery. He squints at the receipt for a few seconds. ‘This is for cash. I can’t give you a name from this.’

‘I don’t need a name,’ Caffery says. ‘I’ve already got that. I’m interested in what else he bought.’

‘What makes you think he bought more?’

‘Seven empty carrier bags.’

Bolt looks at him, startled, then at the receipt again, examining it as if he thinks he must have missed something. ‘Where did you say you were from?’

‘Major Crimes Investigation Unit.’ Caffery watches the manager run through the reasons a police officer might be asking questions about purchases at a hardware store. When he finally looks up again, the wariness behind Bolt’s eyes says he’s thinking National Security, terrorist threat.

‘We just sell the stuff. We don’t ask people what they’re going to do with it.’

‘Nobody’s accusing you of anything. I’m making inquiries, that’s all.’

The manager is easy to read; he’s anxious, he’s going to bend over backwards to help. ‘I can check the till receipts – if he used a credit card for anything else it should come up. But if he paid cash …’

‘That’s OK. We’ll find him on the CCTV.’

Bolt clasps a hand to his forehead.

‘Problem?’

‘No. No – absolutely no problem. It’s just …’ He checks his watch. ‘No – I’ll make a quick phone call and you’re fine. I can stay with you.’

Bolt is saying it’s going to take for ever to trawl through the footage. There are eight cameras dotted around the store, they keep twenty-one days’ worth of recordings, at a guess, and they’re open seven till eight, Monday to Saturday – and six hours on Sunday.

‘It’s OK,’ Caffery says. ‘You will get home tonight. I promise.’

Eden Hole

WHEN AJ AND
Melanie get back to the cottage, Stewart is barking like crazy. He doesn’t even seem to recognize AJ when he opens the door, he just sits in the hallway, head back, yapping at them.

‘Hey hey! Stewie? What’s up – it’s only me.’ AJ crouches beside him. ‘What’s up, Stewie?’

Stewart stops barking and sniffs AJ’s hands sullenly, his eyes rolling suspiciously up to Melanie. She regards him warily, holding her bags high out of his reach.

‘He’s … he’s lovely,’ she says uncertainly.

‘I swear he’s not like this usually.’ AJ gives the dog a scratch behind the ears. He’s panting and his heart is racing under his ribcage. ‘He’s been weird since yesterday. He disappeared for the day and now he’s acting like a nutjob – I don’t get it. What happened, boy?’

Stewart does a small, agitated circle on the floor. Then, reluctantly, he sits, tongue hanging out. AJ is mystified. ‘I’ll take him out later – run him until he’s too knackered to be neurotic. Come on – come and meet Patience.’

They carry Melanie’s bags through into the living room. AJ has called ahead and warned his aunt Melanie will be staying. Patience’s only comment was:
Tell the poor girl she’ll have to like my cooking. I don’t want any of your mincy little food Nazis in my house. If she wants to live on lettuce and air, she can go live in a warren
.

AJ has noted the way Patience says ‘poor girl’. As if any woman crazy enough to be involved with him must be a truly miserable specimen. Or very slutty and self-obsessed. When Melanie walks through the door in the simple white wool dress, her honey hair falling around her face, Patience’s face falls a mile. This is not what she was expecting. AJ can’t help smirking.

‘Well now,’ she says, getting to her feet. ‘Melanie. It’s good to meet you.’

She shakes Melanie’s hand, letting her eyes go slowly from her feet all the way up to her face and down again. Then she releases her hand, steps back and folds her arms, appraising her, eyebrows raised like question marks. She makes a loud tut in the back of her throat, tosses her head and sashays into the kitchen, hips swinging imperiously.

‘God!’ AJ scratches his head, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. She obviously didn’t expect me to be with someone who’s as … you know … nice as you.’

‘Okaaaaa-aaay.’ Melanie drops her hands. She surreptitiously wipes the palm Patience touched against her skirt. ‘That’s fine – I understand.’ She smiles waveringly, glancing around the room. It’s in a state of chaos: Patience’s jam jars on every surface and clutches of wildflowers in milk bottles on the windowsill, the water going brown. She shoots a look at the kitchen, then back at the hallway where Stewart is sitting moodily watching them.

AJ’s spirit sinks. This isn’t going well – not well at all.

‘Melanie, listen – you’re so welcome here. We’re not exactly conventional, I know. Patience takes a bit of getting used to—’

‘I heard that,’ Patience hollers from the kitchen. ‘I’ll have to get used to her is what you should be saying.’

AJ shakes his head, gives a small smile.

‘Like I say, you’ll have to get used to my
lovely aunt
, but we want you to be comfortable. If you need somewhere private – somewhere you can be yourself – you can have Mum’s old room.’ He jabs his finger at the ceiling. ‘There’s a bedroom above here and a bathroom – completely private. And clean – I promise – in spite of what it looks like down here, it is clean up there – I did it myself.’

‘I heard that too. Do you want your breakfast or not?’

‘
Breakfast?
’ Melanie whispers. ‘
Breakfast?
’

‘It’s a family tradition – when I come home from work. Don’t panic.’ He jabs a finger at the stairwell that leads to his section. ‘I’ve got the same thing up those stairs – mirror image. Only a wall separating us.’

Melanie raises her eyes to the ceiling – to the oak beams. ‘Is there a doorway?’

‘No.’

‘So to get to you from there I’ve got to … what? Come down here and go up?’

‘Yes. Or you could just throw your chips in and stay with me.’

The One They All Avoid

THE COFFEE IS
from a little sachet like a teabag and has grounds floating in it. But it’s dark and strong and exactly what Caffery needs at this time of day. He loads it with sugar and eats four biscuits in the over-bright, fluorescent-lit staffroom at Wickes. Lately he’s been having to remind himself to eat. When he forgets, he’ll catch sight of himself in a window and see a stranger’s face that his inbuilt pigeon-holer immediately categorizes as:
Forty something. Stressful job. Not married
.

Bolt, who clearly
is
married and anxious to get home, has done a till-receipt search but turned up nothing under the name Handel. Now he’s setting up a laptop linked to the CCTV’s external drive. Caffery hangs his jacket on the back of the chair, sets his coffee down, and fishes out his phone. He blows up the photograph of Handel that AJ messaged him earlier and props the phone against the monitor.

There are fifteen hundred hours of video footage loaded on the drive, but he can narrow those hours down. Handel was released only fifty-four hours ago. The goods must have been purchased between then and last night, when he was last seen at the hostel. That info alone cuts out a huge wad of data. Also the receipt for the iPod dock is time-and-date stamped for five p.m. Tuesday and, though it’s a gamble, Caffery’s willing to bet Handel didn’t come all the way here from the hostel twice. Either he bought the dock and then remembered something and went back into the shop, or vice versa. More likely vice versa, since you don’t ‘forget’ seven carrier bags of hardware.

He quickly skips to the Tuesday-evening section of the till-camera recording and, sure enough, there is Handel standing in the queue, waiting to be served. Caffery compares it to the photo on the phone. Stained sweatpants and the stripy orange-and-brown sweater AJ talked about. The haircut is seriously random too – a bit like a monk’s. He is staring intently at other customers, making everyone uneasy – standing too close to the woman ahead of him. She steals nervous glances at him over her shoulder.

No – there’s no way he’d be able to walk into a hotel and book a room.

He is holding several carrier bags. Bulging. In fact he has to put them on the floor as he pays for the docking station. As he does, the assistant glances anxiously past him a few times. Probably trying to catch the eye of the security guard in case something kicks off. But Handel just picks up his bags and then walks out of the shop. The waiting customers exchange relieved glances.

Caffery skips back through the footage – the hurried blurs of customers, staff zipping in and out, stopping for milliseconds to talk to cashiers, customers, then equally quickly vanishing. Then, just ten minutes ahead of his iPod-dock purchase, Handel appears in the cash queue. This time he has no carrier bags but a trolley loaded with goods.

Caffery freezes the picture. The boxes and reels and tins in the trolley are unidentifiable from the image. He unpauses the video and lets it run real time.

Handel is as unsettling this time as he is in the later footage. Small though he is, something in his face makes people around him uncomfortable. One or two other customers push trolleys to the end of the queue, but within seconds of being in Handel’s vicinity they change their minds and steer their trolleys to another counter. One begins to unload goods on to the conveyor belt then changes her mind. She actually packs things back into her trolley and heads off, trying to appear casual, as if she’s forgotten something.

Caffery watches closely as the cashier runs Handel’s items through the till. Again he freezes the picture. He has nothing to write on so he rolls up his shirtsleeve and jots down the time code on his arm. He gets up, goes to Kieran Bolt’s office door, and knocks.

An Angel

SOMETIMES THINGS ARE
so beautiful you can tie yourself in knots trying to explain them or capture them. Maybe it’s Mum’s death, and the way he remembers her, or maybe it’s simply that AJ is a grown-up now – whatever, he’s learned to accept beauty when it comes his way, appreciate it, and believe it will come to him again. He doesn’t care that it’s a bit new-age, wisdom-of-the-universe stuff. It’s the way he’s learned to view the world.

Except there’s one problem with it. Because – while it’s easy to look out of his window at the acres of green, at the boundless cloudy horizon – and accept and believe in it all and its continuity – he finds he can’t accept the fact that Melanie Arrow is sitting here at the old kitchen table, eating Patience’s nine p.m. breakfast. He simply can’t believe it and he can’t help wanting to own it and contain it. Wishing he’d done it earlier yet at the same time being glad he waited until it was right. It’s as if Mum is sitting in the corner smiling contentedly at Melanie – proud and glad that at last he’s done the right thing. Because an angel may as well have plopped down in their cottage. Someone to transform him – make him a better person.