‘I said, you’re not in the media, are you?’
‘No. I mean, I’m a—’
‘You’re a cop. Your official stance might be “We’re still pursuing lines of enquiry,” but the truth in here,’ he tapped his temple, ‘is you’ve moved on. The unit’s screwed the lid on the Kitson case. It’s over. Finished.’
‘But—’
‘But what?’
‘Be honest. Aren’t you intrigued?’
Caffery didn’t need to be intrigued. He knew exactly where Misty Kitson was. He even knew roughly the route she’d taken out of the clinic’s grounds because he’d walked it himself. He knew who had killed her too. And how. ‘No,’ he said levelly. ‘Of course I’m not.’
‘Not in the slightest?’
‘Not in the slightest. I’m fighting one serious fire here with the jacker case. And I need all hands on deck. I don’t need my men wandering into the review team and “having a flick through” old cases. Now.’ He dropped the file on Prody’s desk. ‘Do you want to take it back or shall I?’
Prody was silent, looking at the file. There was a long pause, and Caffery sensed him struggling not to argue. In the end he swallowed it. ‘Yeah, whatever. I’ll do it.’
‘Good.’
Caffery left the office, feeling irritated and jangled. He closed the door softly, not giving in to the urge to slam it. Turner was standing outside his room, waiting for Caffery as he came down the corridor. ‘Boss?’ He was holding a piece of paper in one hand.
Caffery stopped in his tracks, gave him a long look. ‘From your face, Turner, I’d say I’m not going to like what you’re going to tell me.’
‘Probably not.’
He held out the paper. Caffery closed his thumb and forefinger on it. But something stopped him taking it from Turner’s hand. ‘Tell me.’
‘We got a call from boys in Wiltshire. They found the Bradleys’ Yaris.’
Caffery’s grip on the paper tightened. Still he didn’t pull. ‘Where?’
‘On some disused farmland.’
‘And Martha’s not in it. Is she?’
Turner didn’t answer.
‘If she’s not in it,’ Caffery’s voice was calm, ‘it doesn’t mean she won’t still turn up.’
Turner coughed, embarrassed. ‘Uh – read it first, Boss. Wiltshire faxed it over. They’re getting their own SOCOs to drive the original down to us personally.’
‘What is it?’
‘A letter. It was on the dashboard, rolled up inside some of her clothing.’
‘What clothing?’
‘Uh.’ He gave a long sigh.
‘What?’
‘Her underwear, Boss.’
Caffery stared at the paper. His fingers were burning. ‘And what does it say?’
‘Oh, Christ. Like I said, Boss, maybe you should read it.’
11
The man crouched at the edge of the camp, the fire lighting his filthy face and beard red, making him look like something born not of woman but of a volcano. Caffery sat a few feet away, watching him in silence. It had been dark for four hours already, but the man was busy planting a bulb in the frozen earth. ‘There was once a child,’ he said, trowelling the earth away. ‘A child called Crocus. Crocus was a girl child with golden hair. She loved to wear purple dresses and ribbons.’
Caffery listened in silence. In the short time he had known the vagrant, whom the locals called the Walking Man, he’d learned to listen and not to question. He’d learned that in this relationship he was the pupil and the Walking Man was the teacher – the one who chose most things about their encounters: what they talked about, where and when they met. It was six long months since they’d last sat together, but maybe the twentieth time Caffery had searched for him. Those hunts had been long lonely nights, driving lanes at five miles an hour, stretched up in the driver’s seat, craning his neck to see over the hedgerows. Tonight, almost the moment he’d begun looking, the campfire had sprung up like a beacon in a field. As if the Walking Man had been there all along, watching Caffery’s efforts with amusement. Waiting for the time to be right.
‘One day,’ the Walking Man continued, ‘Crocus was taken by a witch and condemned to live trapped among the clouds where her parents could neither speak to her nor see her. They still don’t know for sure if she’s alive, but every spring, on her birthday, they turn their eyes to the sky and pray that this spring will be the one their child is returned.’ He patted the ground around the bulb and dribbled some water on to it from a plastic bottle. ‘It is an act of faith, to continue to believe their daughter is still there. An act of absolute faith. Can you imagine what it must have been like for them never to know for sure what had happened to their daughter? Never to know for sure if she was dead or alive?’
‘Your daughter’s body was never found,’ Caffery said. ‘You know how they felt.’
‘And your brother’s wasn’t either. So that makes us twins.’ He smiled. The moonlight caught his teeth, which were even, clean and healthy in his blackened face. ‘Peas in a pod.’
Peas in a pod? Two men who couldn’t have been more different. The insomniac lonely cop and the bedraggled homeless guy, who walked all day and never slept in the same place twice. But it was true they shared things in common. They had the same eyes. Astonishingly when Caffery looked at the Walking Man he saw his own blue eyes staring back at him. And, more importantly, they shared a story. Caffery had been eight when his older brother Ewan had disappeared from the family’s back garden in London. The ageing paedophile Ivan Penderecki, who lived over the railway tracks, was to blame, Caffery had no doubt, but Penderecki had never been charged or convicted. The Walking Man’s daughter had been raped five times before she was murdered by an itinerant offender on probation, Craig Evans.
Craig Evans hadn’t been as lucky as Penderecki. The Walking Man, who in those days had been a successful businessman, had taken his revenge. Now Evans lived in a chair in a long-term care facility near his family home in Worcestershire. The Walking Man had been precise about the injuries he’d inflicted. Evans no longer had eyes to watch children nor a penis to rape them with.
‘Is that what makes you different?’ Caffery said. ‘Is that what makes you able to see?’
‘To see? What does that mean?’
‘You know what I mean. You see. You see more than others see.’
‘Supernatural powers, you mean.’ The Walking Man snorted. ‘Don’t talk mumbo-jumbo. I live out here and off the ground, like an animal. I exist and I absorb. My eyes are open wider and more light gets into them. But it doesn’t make me a seer.’
‘You know things I don’t.’
‘So? What do you expect of yourself? Being a cop doesn’t make you superhuman. No matter what you think.’
The Walking Man came back to the fire. He lifted some more wood on to it. His walking socks were spread out to dry on a stick shoved into the ground near the flames. They were good socks. The most expensive money could buy. Made from alpaca. The Walking Man could afford it. He had millions tucked away in a bank somewhere.
‘Paedophiles.’ Caffery sipped his cider. It stung the back of his throat and sat flat and cold in his stomach, but he knew he’d drink the whole mug and more before the night was finished. ‘My specialist subject. Stranger kidnaps. The outcome is usually the same: if we’re very lucky the child gets returned almost immediately after the assault, and if we’re not, the child will be killed within the first twenty-four hours.’ It was nearly thirty hours since Martha had gone. He lowered the mug. ‘Or, now I think of it, maybe that’s when we are lucky.’
‘If the child is killed in the first twenty-four hours you’re lucky? What’s that? Police logic?’
‘I mean that maybe it’s a better outcome than those who are kept alive longer.’
The Walking Man didn’t answer. The two men were silent for a long time, pondering that. Caffery raised his eyes to watch the clouds roll across the moon. He thought how lonely and majestic they were. He imagined a child with golden hair peeping down from them, watching for her parents. Somewhere in the woods a fox cub was calling. And Martha was somewhere out in the great spread of the night. Caffery reached inside his jacket pocket. He pulled out the photocopied letter that had been wrapped inside her underwear and held it out. The Walking Man grunted. Leaned over and took it. Opened it and began to read, tilting the paper forward so it caught the light from the fire. Caffery watched his face. A handwriting expert had already decided the jacker was trying to disguise his writing. While the Bradleys’ car was being crawled over by the forensics guys, Caffery had spent a long time in his office, poring over the letter. Now he knew every word by heart.