Next to her Emily had fallen asleep, Jasper tucked under her arm, the beaker resting on her chest, a dribble of chocolate coming out on to her nightie. She hadn’t cleaned her teeth. That was two nights in a row. But there was no point in waking her now, not after what she’d been through. Janice tucked her in, went downstairs to the kitchen and put the beaker in the dishwasher. Her glass was gone so she found another, poured some vodka and took it to the music room. The light was off, the room in darkness, and it took her a moment to grasp that Cory was in there too. Something cold crossed her chest. He was standing under the curtains. As if he was wearing them.
‘What are you doing?’
He jumped. The curtains billowed and his face appeared, shocked. ‘Janice, don’t creep up on me.’
‘What’s going on?’ She threw the light switch. He dropped the curtain hurriedly. She just had time to see the twin circles of steam on the pane where he’d had his face pressed to it.
‘Switch the light off.’
She hesitated, then did as she was told. The room fell into darkness again. ‘Cory?’ she said. ‘Don’t be weird. What are you looking for?’
‘Nothing.’ He came away from the window and gave one of his fake smiles. ‘Absolutely nothing. It’s a nice night.’
She licked her lips. ‘What did the detective say to you? He was talking to you in the garden when he left.’
‘Just chit-chat.’
‘Cory. Tell me.’ She couldn’t keep her eyes off the curtain. ‘What did he tell you? What were you looking for?’
‘Don’t get whiney, Janice, please. You know I can’t bear it when you do that.’
‘Please.’ She kept her sharp reply down and instead touched his sleeve, feigning an affectionate smile. ‘Just please tell me.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. You have to know everything, don’t you? Why can’t you just trust me for once? It was about the press. Caffery doesn’t want them finding us.’
Janice frowned. ‘The press?’ It wasn’t like Cory to shy away from attention. And he was genuinely afraid of what was out there in the darkness. She went to the curtain and pulled it back, looked down the long driveway to where the streetlamp shone yellow through the yew trees. Nothing. ‘It’s more than that. What does it matter to him if the press see us?’
‘Because,’ Cory said, with exaggerated patience in his voice, ‘the guy found out where the Bradleys lived and did something silly to them. Caffery doesn’t want it happening to us. Happy now?’
She took a step away from the window. Stared at him.
‘He did something silly to the Bradleys? What did he do?’
‘I don’t know. Made contact or something.’
‘And now Caffery thinks he might do the same to us? Do “something silly” to us? Jesus, Cory, thanks for telling me.’
‘Don’t make a big thing about it.’
‘I’m not making a big thing. But I’m not staying here.’
‘What?’
‘I’m going.’
‘Janice, wait.’
But she’d gone, slamming the door behind her. She dumped the vodka in the kitchen and ran up the stairs. It took her less than ten minutes to assemble Emily’s stuff – her favourite toys, pyjamas, toothbrush, her school things. A couple of changes for herself and some sleeping tablets – she had a feeling she would need them. She was in the kitchen shovelling two bottles of wine into her rucksack when Cory appeared in the doorway.
‘What’s happening?’
‘I’m going to my mother’s.’
‘Well, hold on, let me get some stuff together. I’m coming too.’
Janice put the rucksack on the floor and looked at her husband. She wished she could find a way back to caring about him.
‘What? Don’t look at me like that.’
‘Really, Cory, there’s no other way to look at you.’
‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘But if you’re coming you’ll have to get the suitcase out from under the bed. There’s no room in the rucksack.’
30
Caffery got a call from a cop in Gloucestershire. The Walking Man had been arrested for loitering around a local pharmaceuticals factory. He was interviewed at the police station in the old market town of Tetbury, then cautioned and released into the open air. The duty inspector had taken him to one side before he had left and suggested, in the politest possible way, that it might be a good idea for the Walking Man not to be spotted again anywhere near the factory. But Caffery was beginning to know some of the shapes and crevices of the Walking Man’s character and guessed that if he’d been interested in something he wouldn’t let a little thing like an arrest stop him.
He was right. When he arrived at half past ten, parked the car with Myrtle asleep on the back seat and got out, he spotted the Walking Man almost immediately. He’d set up camp about fifty yards from the barbed-wire perimeter in a clump of trees where he could see the factory compound without being spotted from the security post.
‘You haven’t walked far today.’ Caffery found a spare piece of bed foam and unrolled it. Usually it would be out ready for him. Usually there’d be a meal for him too. Tonight the scent of food hung in the air, but the pots and plates had been cleaned and replaced neatly near the fire. ‘You started the day up here.’
The Walking Man made a low grunt in his throat. He snapped open the flagon of cider and poured some into a chipped mug, set it next to his sleeping-bag.
‘I’m not here to give you more hassle,’ Caffery said. ‘You’ve already spent most of the day in the police station.’
‘Five hours wasted. Five good daylight hours.’
‘I’m not here on police business.’
‘Not here about that nonce? The letter-writer?’
‘No.’ Caffery ran his hands down his face. It was the last thing he wanted to talk about. ‘No. I’ve come for a holiday from that.’
The Walking Man filled a second mug with cider. Handed it to Caffery. ‘Then, it’s her you want to talk about. The woman.’
Caffery took the mug.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Jack Caffery. I’ve told you I’m not reading your mind. I’ve been wondering when you’d talk about her again. The woman. The one you’re always thinking about. When you were here in the spring she was all you could talk about. You were burning for her.’ He threw a log on the fire. ‘I envied you that. I’ll never feel like that again for a woman.’
Caffery bit the cuticle on his thumb and stared blankly into the fire. He thought ‘burning’ was the wrong word for the polluted, knotted mess of half-finished thoughts and impulses he had about Flea Marley. ‘OK,’ he said after a while. ‘Let me tell you how it starts. There’s a name you see in newspapers sometimes. Misty Kitson. A pretty girl. She went missing six months ago.’
‘I didn’t know that was her name but I know who you mean.’
‘The woman – the one we’re talking about – knows what happened to Kitson. She was the one who killed her.’
The Walking Man raised his eyebrows. His eyes glittered red. ‘Murder?’ he said lightly. ‘A terrible thing. What an immoral woman she must be.’
‘No. It was an accident. She was driving too fast. The girl, Kitson, stepped out of a field on to the road . . .’ He trailed off. ‘But you know that already, you bastard. I can see it in your face.’
‘I see things. I’ve watched you walking the route the girl took when she left the clinic. Over and over again. The night you walked until the sun came up?’
‘That was in July.’
‘I was there. When you found the place it had happened – the skidmarks in the road? I was there. Watching you.’
Caffery didn’t speak for a while. It didn’t matter what the Walking Man said, how much he denied it, being with him was like being in the presence of God: someone who saw everything. Someone who smiled indulgently and didn’t interfere when mortals made their mistakes. The night of the skidmarks had been a good one. A night when everything had fallen into place and the question had moved from being why Flea had killed Kitson – for a long time all Caffery’d known was that she’d disposed of the corpse – and became why the hell, if it was an accident, hadn’t she just given the straight cough? Walked into the nearest cop shop and told the truth. She probably wouldn’t have even done a custodial. And that was what was still eating him now, and blocking him every step of the way – why she hadn’t just confessed. ‘It’s funny,’ he murmured. ‘I never had her down as a coward.’