Water. The rope had made her think of boats and marinas and water.
This morning the thought had gone as quickly as it had come – the other sergeant was talking to her and, anyway, there wasn’t any water around here so she’d let it flit away. She’d dismissed it. But now she’d had time to think about it she realized she’d been wrong. There was water here. And not very far away.
She turned slowly and looked towards the west, to where the low cloud cover was up-lit a faint orange by a town or highway. She began to walk. Like a zombie, Sarge – Wellard would crack up to see her now. She cut straight across the field, frozen grass soaking her boots, hardly looking down as if something had a hook in her sternum and was slowly dragging her along. Through a small glade of crowded rustling trees, over two stiles on to a short gravelled lane, silver in the diffuse torchlight. After ten minutes she stopped.
The path she stood on was narrow. To her right the ground sloped upwards. To her left it ran steeply down to a tarry gully. A decommissioned canal. The Thames and Severn. An eighteenth-century engineering miracle, built to carry coal from the Severn estuary – when it had become redundant it had seen some service as a pleasure canal. Half dried out now, what water was left in the bottom had shrunk to a dark, poisonous-looking mulch. She knew this canaclass="underline" knew its beginning and its end. To the east it extended twenty-six miles as far as Lechlade, to the west eight miles to Stroud. It was littered with the evidence of its former existence. The broken and rotting hulls of old coal and pleasure barges were dotted every few hundred yards. There were two in the short stretch she could see now.
She went a few yards along the towpath, sat down and swung her feet on to the deck of the nearest barge. The smells of decay and stagnant water were overpowering. Bacteria and moss. She put one hand on the deck and leaned over, shining the torch into the hull. This vessel wasn’t like the old iron-built coal barges that had first used this waterway: it was newer, a timber-hulled Norfolk wherry, perhaps, with its masts removed and an engine fitted. Probably brought to this side of the country as a canal cruiser. The timber had given in to the years of neglect and was now half submerged, debris from the canal floating on the black stinking water inside it. Nothing else to see. She knelt up and searched around on the tiller deck at the stern. Kicked aside beer cans and the plastic bags that floated on the water like jellyfish. She felt all around the platform and found nothing. She hauled herself out of the barge and went back along the towpath until she found the next. This one was older and might actually have been a working barge. It sat higher out of the canal and the water inside the hull was only knee-deep. She dropped into it, the freezing, inky water soaking into her jeans. She waded a little way, letting her feet in their trainers feel every inch of the hull below her. Every rivet, every piece of jettisoned wood.
Something clinked. It rolled away from her foot an inch or two. She pushed her sleeve to her upper arm and, bending at the waist, lowered her hand into the freezing water. Groped in the muck. She found the object and pulled it out.
A mooring spike. Straightening, she shone the torch on it. It was about a foot long and shaped like a long fat tent peg with a splayed top where, over the years, it had been hammered into the banks for tying up to. Thicker than a blade and sharper than a chisel, it could easily have made the spikes in the CSM’s plaster-of-paris cast. The jacker might have used it to score out his footprints.
She climbed out of the hull and stood, water streaming off her, on the towpath. She looked along the faintly gleaming canal. All the barges would have used a spike just like this. The place must be littered with them. She studied the spike in her hand. It would make a good weapon. You wouldn’t want to argue with someone holding this. No. You wouldn’t argue. Especially if you were only eleven years old.
21
The dog’s name was Myrtle. She was threadbare, half crippled by arthritis. Her white and black tail hung off the end of her bony back like a limp flag. But she hobbled along obediently behind Caffery, got in and out of the back seat of his car without complaining, though he could tell it hurt her. Even waited patiently outside the forensics lab at HQ in Portishead while he struggled with the technicians and tried to push forward the testing of the baby tooth against Martha’s DNA. By the time he was done with the lab he was feeling sorry for the damned dog. He stopped at a Smile store and got armfuls of dog food. The chew toy seemed a bit hopeful but he bought it anyway and put it on the back seat next to her.
It was late, gone ten, by the time he got back to the MCIU building. The place was still busy. He took Myrtle limping along the corridor, running the gauntlet of people poking their heads out of offices to speak to him, hand him reports, messages, but mostly to pat the dog or make wisecracks about her: Jack, your dog looks like I feel. Hey, it’s Yoda in a coat. Here, furry Yoda.
Turner was still there, dishevelled and a bit sleepy but at least no earring. He spent a little time bringing Caffery up to date on the trawl for the Vauxhall, which still hadn’t borne fruit, and gave him contact details for the superintendent who’d authorized the surveillance on the vicarage. Then he spent a longer time crouched down talking nonsense to Myrtle, who wearily lifted her tail once or twice in acknowledgement. Lollapalooza came in, still in full makeup, but she was letting her guard down: she’d taken off her high heels and rolled up her sleeves to reveal the down of fine dark hairs on her arms. She hadn’t done well on the sex offenders, she admitted. CAPIT had a short list of people they thought could meet the criteria: they’d been checked on overnight. But what she could tell Caffery was that chondroitin was the way to go with the dog’s arthritis. That or glucosamine. Oh, and cut all grains out of the poor animal’s diet. By which she meant all grains. All of them.
When she’d gone he opened a can of Chum and let it gloop on to one of the cracked plates from the unit kitchen. Myrtle ate slowly, her old head on one side, favouring the left side of her jaw. The food stank. At ten thirty, when Paul Prody stuck his head in the door, the smell was still there. He made a face. ‘Nice.’
Caffery got up, went to the window and opened it a fraction. Cold damp air came in, bringing with it the smells of drunks and takeaways. One of the shops opposite had Christmas lights in the window, Christmas officially beginning in November, of course. ‘So?’ He sat heavily in his chair. Arms hanging at his sides. He felt half finished. ‘What’ve you got for me?’
‘Just in the last few minutes spoke to the press office.’ Prody came in, sat down. Myrtle was lying on the floor, digesting her meal, her chin on her paws. She raised her head and watched him with a vague, burned-out interest. Even Prody was showing signs of wear and tear. His jacket was creased and his tie was undone round his neck as if he’d spent a couple of hours on the sofa at home, watching soaps. ‘The nationals, the locals and all the TV stations ran pictures of the Bradleys’ house. The number on the door was quite clear and so was the sign: “The Vicarage”. The cuttings agency is still searching, but so far all anyone can come up with is some copy about “the Bradleys’ house in Oakhill”. Nothing more specific than that. No road name. And no mention of the tooth. Anywhere.’