Poppet (42 page)

A hole. That’s what Gabriella called it. She couldn’t have described it any better if she tried. As he drives home that day, slowly down the windy lanes, he pictures himself as a carcass. A grey shell, dressed in a tired suit, driving a beat-up old Astra with mismatched tyres.

AJ and Patience are now sure Melanie poisoned Stewart. AJ found a packet of rat poison in the cellar that had been opened. But Melanie poisoned more than just animals – she poisoned minds. He wouldn’t have her back if his life depended on it – he’d rather be dead. What he would have back, however, in the blink of an eye, is the peace of mind he had before she arrived. He’d guarded that for a million hours and he only let it go to her with reluctance. He thought he was getting into an adult relationship – he hadn’t realized that he was the only mature person in it. Melanie has cracked him open in the place he’d healed so well and hard – and now he’s got an open wound that won’t go away.

‘AJ, will you stop this?’ For his breakfast Patience has made fried pumpkin fingers and an omelette with handfuls of dried mushrooms and cheese. She throws the plate down impatiently. ‘I’m getting tired. You chose the wrong one – I tried to tell you, but you didn’t listen.’

‘I’m not missing her. I’m just …’ He shakes his head, staring down at the omelette. He can’t eat. It is insanity. All insanity. ‘I’m just tired.’

‘And I’m tired too. I’m tired of you and I’m tired of our damned dog – who thinks I’m named after my nature – which I’m not.’

‘We all know that.’

‘Well, tell the dog that, will you?’

AJ draws his hands down his face. Stewart is in the corner – not in his usual place next to the Aga, but by the back door, his eyes hopeful.

‘I’ve walked him and walked him – and look at the animal’s face. The dog won’t be told.’

AJ sighs. He pushes back his chair, leaving the omelette untouched. ‘Come on,’ he tells Stewart. ‘Let’s go.’

He pulls his fleece and walking boots on and opens the back door. He ignores Patience’s outrage – to scorn her food offerings is to dice with death. The omelette will probably end up in his bed, under his pillow maybe. So what? Life is different now. He’s ready to be taken wherever the tide goes.

‘Come on, mate. Let’s do it.’

The daylight is filtered through a cloying mist. It hangs low on every field. AJ hasn’t brought Stewart’s lead and the dog is half ecstatic with joy. He runs, nose down across the garden, stops and puts his head up to check this isn’t a trick, that he’s actually being allowed to do this.

‘It’s OK.’ AJ waves a hand. ‘Just let me know where you are.’

Stewart runs on ahead – and it’s no surprise the direction he takes. He crosses the field and makes a beeline to the stile which leads into the forest. AJ pulls his fleece closer around him and sets out to follow. Stewart seems to have an inbuilt safety instinct, because now that AJ isn’t yelling at him and chasing him to come back, he doesn’t head for the hills. He actually stops and waits for AJ to acknowledge him and his position, waits for him to cover enough ground, before he races off again.

Nothing much in the woods has changed – everything is a little damper, a little colder. His trousers are covered in drops of melting frost where he brushes against hedges and stiles. The trees have lost a few more leaves; otherwise it’s exactly as it was a week ago – including Stewart’s trajectory, which, unsurprisingly, leads them back into the wooded crest of land where Old Man Athey’s orchard is. They pass the rusting disused skip and move down the path.

Last time AJ was here he was nervous. This time weariness and sadness weigh down and muffle his fear. His hands and face are cold, but apart from that he feels very little. He trudges along obligingly until they enter the clearing.

Only now does Stewart hesitate. He hovers at the edge of the clearing, a line of fur rising like a brush along his spine. The old walking yew is there – bone-white. Stewart stares at it, but he doesn’t back off.

‘Jesus, Stewart. If this is a prolonged dating game – I mean, if this is you on the hunt for some skirt you haven’t got the cojones to face up to alone, then I’m going to have a sense-of-humour failure. And it’s going to happen pretty soon.’ He checks his watch. ‘Like in about twenty seconds.’

The dog trots forward. AJ lowers his hand and watches him. Stewart has his head low, his ears pinned back. AJ’s never seen his dog like this before.

He follows, squelching heavily through the wet leaves. Now he sees the core of the tree has rotted, hollowing out the centre to a deep black cave. It should be dead, but it isn’t. Stewart has ducked inside. AJ pulls his phone out and checks the signal – nothing – so he switches the phone light on, rests his hand on the arch at the entrance and shines the light inside.

It’s an amazing, natural cave. There are crenellations and smooth, wavelike formations, polished and glowing. It goes back and back and back. He wonders where he’s seen this before, then remembers – it’s the dream – the recurring dream that seems to be linked to not being able to breathe. The dream of an all-consuming creature. Something that means life and death. Something that has no end and no beginning.

Stop it, he tells himself. Stop it.

He takes long slow breaths until the tightness in his ribs goes away. He opens his eyes and finds his sight has adjusted – there’s enough light in here to see. He turns the phone off and pockets it. Crouches to get through the opening. Stewart is running around inside, busily sniffing every nook and cranny. Someone has been here – there are things on the floor AJ doesn’t want to look at too closely. It smells too – like Beechway on a bad day.

‘Hey,’ AJ hisses. ‘What’s in here? Doggy Viagra or something?’

Stewart ignores him and heads further into the bole. Now AJ notices there’s another arched entrance. You wouldn’t see it if you weren’t a damned dog. AJ follows, fighting off cobwebs. He has to get down on his hands and commando crawl to get through the next gap, and when he’s through his eyes won’t adjust to the light at all. He needs the phone again. He clicks it on and shines it around.

They are in a second natural bole. An interconnecting chamber in the skeleton tree. The phone light falls on an odd tree stump in the centre of the ground. It hasn’t grown there, it’s been placed. Centrally – almost symbolically. He is about to move towards it when he realizes his route is impeded by a wire.

‘Ah.’ He is brought up short. ‘That’s interesting.’

He shines the light along the length of the wire. It is tough and relatively wide bore. It originates in an eyebolt embedded in the underside of the tree and extends across the opening to the tree stump. Moving closer, AJ sees its lower extremity is attached to what appears – unless he has completely lost touch with reality – to be a small doorway, cut out of the trunk with a hacksaw.

His dream. Alice in Wonderland. A hole he can fall down. A hole that opens into heaven.

Stewart lets out a low, anxious whine. He comes and sits next to AJ, his eyes flicking nervously up at him. His tail wags warily.

AJ puts his forefinger on the wire. Crooks it so it’s got control and can pull the hatch open with a simple twitch. ‘What do you say, eh, Stewart? Is it a yes? Or is it a no?’

Stewart opens his mouth. Lets his tongue out.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

He pulls.

MCIT

ISAAC HANDEL DIED
from a wound to the liver where the Stanley knife entered. He didn’t draw anyone’s attention to it at the scene and it wasn’t picked up by the police officers. Any blood was attributed to the thump he got on the nose in the scuffle. No matter how often they replay the tapes of what happened in the secure cell that day, no one can be sure how he got the wound.

Melanie insists it was self-inflicted. Her prints are on the knife, but she insists that happened in the scuffle and that she had nothing to do with Isaac’s death.

This is the part that Caffery can’t square up – because he is reasonably sure Isaac had something else planned. He is nagged by the sense there’s something he hasn’t seen, hasn’t attended to. The missing pliers and wire Isaac Handel bought at Wickes? What was he planning to use those for? A wire. To do what? Ignite a chemical fire somewhere, the way he did with his parents? If so – where? When there’s time, Caffery’s going to call Penny Pilson – ask her what she makes of it. Did Isaac leave the trip wire for the police – or was it really a way of setting fire to his parents’ bodies without having to be there? He’ll tell her that now he understands what she meant when she said …
Things are not what they seem
.

For now, though, he’s too busy with Melanie Arrow and the long, untidy string of deceptions and untruths she trails behind her.

Isaac’s doll of her – shiny face, slightly feline eyes – doesn’t do justice to her true nastiness. He can’t recall the last time he felt so contemptuous of a person. She continues – even in custody at Trinity Road – to argue her case. To lie and lie. When the CSI start coming back with hard proof of her involvement: her DNA on a pen in Zelda’s room, Zelda’s DNA on her father’s radiation mask, she changes tack. She admits the charges but pleads insanity. She blames the system, her childhood, her ex-husband. She even blames Caffery. When, during an interview, she unbuttons the top of her blouse, subtly, so that no one in the room aside from him notices, he tells the PACE officer to stop the recording because he’s leaving. He tells him to carry on without him. He’d prefer never to see Melanie’s face again.

The superintendent has largely kept off Caffery’s back, but now that the Beechway case has moved down to interviewing and statement-taking and debriefings and liaising with the CPS, he wants to know what Caffery intends doing with the teams out in the cold at the Farleigh Park rehab clinic. They’ve got one or two more days until they complete the search; the staff hours spend on this is astronomical. Caffery’s time is nearly up – next week the case gets moved down to one of the detective sergeants. He hasn’t had a chance to get to the search site for three days and that’s fine – he isn’t going to deal with Flea Marley again, no matter how he’s felt about her for the last eighteen months. She’s missed their biggest chance to resolve Misty’s disappearance, she’s wasted all the effort and intricate planning he’d put into motion. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever forgive her. Eventually he’ll decide how to go about giving Jacqui Kitson what she wants, but he’ll have to start from scratch. Misty, meanwhile, stares at him from the wall. That constant, unspoken, disappointment in her expression.

Enough is enough. He’s been living on four hours’ sleep and coffee for the last seventy-six hours. He shuts down the computer, gets his jacket, and heads for the door. He’s crossing the car park to his Mondeo when he notes a little Renault parked next to the barrier. As he gets closer he sees Flea Marley is sitting at the wheel, the window open, watching him steadily.

He hesitates, looks left and right, half wondering if he can vanish, or find a distraction so he won’t have to speak to her. Then, resignedly, he heads over to the car.

‘Yes, what?’

She doesn’t answer. She is dressed in her regulation black combats and polo shirt. Her hair is tucked under a cap and she wears no make-up. She’s got a faint winter suntan from the long days of fruitless searching around the clinic.

‘Jack, we need to speak.’

‘Here we go again.’

‘Come with me?’

‘What, for another mystery tour that ends nowhere?’

‘Give me a chance.’

He glances all around the car park again. Half hoping for a reason to say no. There isn’t one. He pockets the keys, walks around to the passenger seat, throws his waterproof on the back seat and gets in. The car is tidy, her kit in the back, an iPod on a stand but no music playing. He fastens his seat belt. ‘Where are we going?’

She starts the car and begins to drive. They go out of the security gates and turn on to the feeder canal road, then head over the Lawrence Hill roundabout and on to the motorway. She’s got such a look of purposefulness that Caffery keeps quiet. If she’s going to drive off a cliff in her fury, part of him feels so weary he doesn’t know whether he’d fight. He doesn’t even reach into his pocket for his V-Cigs. Fighting is for those who have something to gain.

On the M4 the sun comes out behind them. He can see in the rear-view mirror the clouds stalling in the west, in a towering bank – almost as if they’ve given up chasing the little Clio and are content just to watch it make its escape. Flea takes the A46 exit, heading south in the direction of Bath. At first Caffery assumes she’s taking him to her house, but she doesn’t. She sails past the turning and continues on the bypass towards Chippenham. Then she takes a sudden left and a right and loses him in a morass of lanes he doesn’t recognize.

He fishes his phone out and tries to keep track of where they are, using his free hand to brace himself against the car frame as she throws the Clio around corners. Are they going to the clinic? If so, it’s not a route he’s taken before. But Flea knows this countryside well – she grew up here. Caffery’s only been here for three years and he is lost – the GPS signal ducks in and out, struggling to keep up. Eventually he gives up and sits in silence, the phone resting on his thigh.

After a quarter of an hour she pulls off the road on to a rutted, rain-soaked track which leads into a forest. It is so rarely used that the trees bend inwards over the car. Branches scrape the roof and brown autumn leaves stick to the windscreen as they bounce over the uneven ground.

About a hundred metres down, the track comes to an end and Flea stops, cuts the engine. Ahead is a stile – mossed and almost invisible with the amount of bramble that covers it. The woods are silent. Just the distant caw of rooks.

‘Right,’ Caffery says, looking around. ‘You want me on my own – probably to explain again why you won’t do it. Because there’s only one other thing you can want privacy for – and I’m guessing from the atmosphere that’s not on the cards.’

She ignores him. Throws the door open and gets out – goes to the back of the car. He doesn’t twist to watch her, he can monitor her in the mirror. Her face is fixed as she opens the boot, pulls something out, and returns to his side of the car. She stands next to his window and drops it at her feet.