Caffery swore lightly under his breath. ‘How’s the bastard doing it? He got past the ANPR cameras – there’s no way he could have known where the units were going to be, is there?’
‘I can’t see how.’ He clicked the kettle off and poured hot water into the cups. ‘They’re mobile, not fixed.’
Caffery nodded thoughtfully. He’d just noticed a familiar file on Prody’s windowsill. Yellow. From the review team. Again.
‘Sugar?’ Prody was holding a loaded spoon above one of the mugs.
‘Please. Two.’
‘Milk?’
‘Yes.’
He held the mug out to Caffery, who looked at it steadily, but didn’t take it. ‘Paul.’
‘What?’
‘I asked you not to look at that file. I asked you to return it to the review team. Why did you ignore me?’
There was a pause. Then Prody said, ‘Do you want this coffee or not?’
‘No. Put it down. Explain why you’ve got the file.’
Prody waited a second or two longer. Then he put the coffee on the desk, went to the windowsill and got the file. He pulled up a chair and sat, facing Caffery, with it on his lap. ‘I’ll fight you over this, because I can’t let it go.’ He found a map in the file and unfolded it on his knee. ‘This is Farleigh Wood Hall and this, roughly, is the radius you initially searched. You concentrated a lot of your resources on the fields and villages in that radius. You did some house-to-house outside the radius too. Around here.’
Caffery didn’t let his eyes drop to the map. He could tell from his peripheral vision that Prody was pointing to a place about half a mile from where Flea’s accident had happened. He kept his eyes on Prody’s face. Kept the huge fat fist of rage tucked under his sternum. He’d been wrong. Prody was never going to be a steady-hand cop. There was something else underneath: a hard, urban intelligence that could make him a brilliant cop in the right circumstances – and a dangerous one in the wrong.
‘But mostly outside that radius you went wide, to the bigger towns. Trowbridge, Bath, Warminster. Looked at railway stations, bus stops, some of the dealers around there because she was a junkie. It occurred to me – what if she got out of this radius but didn’t get as far as one of the towns? What if something happened to her on one of the roads? What if she was picked up by someone, given a lift? Taken somewhere miles away – God knows, Gloucestershire, into Wiltshire, London. But, of course, you’d thought of that. You had checkpoints set up. You interviewed drivers for two weeks. But then I thought, What if it was a hit-and-run? What if it happened on one of these small roads? Some of them only serve these little hamlets.’ Again that finger, right over the place of the accident. ‘There’s hardly any traffic down there. Something happened and there’d have been no one to witness it. Seriously, have you thought of that? What if someone hit her, panicked and hid the body? Or maybe even loaded the body into the car – disposed of it somewhere else?’
Caffery took the map from him, folded it up.
‘Boss, listen. I want to be a good cop. That’s all this is. It’s just the way I’m made – I have to put my back into everything I do.’
‘Then start by learning how to take orders and how to be respectful, Prody. This is the last warning: you don’t stop being a prick I’ll get you shifted to that prostitute murder the others are working on. You can spend your days down at City Road interviewing the slag meth dealers if you prefer.’
Prody took a breath. His eyes went to the map in Caffery’s hand.
‘I said, is that what you’d prefer?’
There was a long silence. Two men fighting without saying a word or moving a muscle. Then Prody breathed out. Let his shoulders droop. Closed the file. ‘But I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.’
‘Oddly enough,’ Caffery said, ‘I really didn’t think you would.’
32
Twenty minutes after Caffery’s meeting with Prody, Janice Costello appeared unannounced at his office door in a rainstreaked coat, her hair untidy, her face flushed. She looked as if she’d been running. ‘I’ve called nine nine nine.’ She was holding a piece of paper in her right hand. ‘But I wanted to show you in person.’
‘Come in.’ Caffery got up and pulled back a chair. On her bed under the radiator Myrtle pricked her ears and blinked at Janice. ‘Sit down.’
She took a step inside and, ignoring the chair, pushed the crumpled paper at him. ‘It came through the door at my mother’s. We’d been out. The note was on the doormat when we got back. We didn’t stay in the house for a second after that. We got straight out and came here.’
Her hand was trembling and Caffery knew, without having to ask, what the paper was. Almost knew what it would say. A long, slow wave of nausea came up from his stomach. The sort of nausea that could only be sent away by cigarettes and Glenmorangie.
‘We need you to put us somewhere safe, somewhere we’re protected. We’ll sleep on the floor of the police station if we have to.’
‘Put it down.’ He went to a filing cabinet and found a small box of latex gloves, pulled on a pair. ‘That’s it – on the table.’ He bent and straightened it. Some of the ink was smudged from the rain on Janice’s hands, but he recognized the writing instantly.
Do not believe it is over. My love affair with your daughter has only just begun. I know where you are – I will always know where you are. Ask your daughter – she knows we’re supposed to be together . . .
‘What do we do?’ Janice’s teeth were chattering. The rain in her hair scattered the fluorescent light. ‘Has he been following us? Please – what the hell’s going on?’
Caffery gritted his teeth hard and fought the desire to close his eyes. He’d put a lot of energy into making sure the story wasn’t leaked. And everyone, from the FLO to the press office, was telling him it was watertight. So how in Christ’s name had the jacker found out not only where they lived but where her damned mother lived? Trying to keep a step ahead of him was like trying to stop lightning.
‘Did you see anyone? Any reporters? Outside your house?’
‘Cory spent all afternoon watching. There wasn’t a soul.’
‘And are you sure – one hundred per cent cast-iron sure – that you haven’t told anyone?’
‘I’m sure.’ Tears were in her eyes. Tears of real fear. ‘I swear. And my mother hasn’t either.’
‘No neighbours saw you coming or going?’
‘No.’
‘And when you went out?’
‘It was just to the local shops first thing this morning. In Keynsham. Just to get bread for breakfast. Mum had run out.’
‘You didn’t try to go back to Mere?’
‘No!’ She paused, as if her vehemence had shocked her. She pushed her sleeves up her arms, shivering. ‘Look – I’m sorry. It’s just I’ve gone over and over it. And we haven’t done anything. I swear.’
‘Where’s Emily now?’
‘With Cory. In the office downstairs.’
‘I’m going to find you somewhere. Give me half an hour. I can’t guarantee it’ll be as nice as your place – or your mother’s – or that it’ll be close to Keynsham. It could be anywhere in Avon and Somerset.’
‘I don’t care where it is. I just want to know we’re safe. I want my mother to come too.’
Something occurred to Caffery as he picked up the phone. He replaced the handset and went to the window, put a finger on a blind slat and peered out into the street. Dark and rainy, the streetlamps on still, even though it was morning. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘Outside. Round the back.’
He looked a little longer at the street. One or two cars were parked – empty. Another went past slowly, headlights making silver domes in the rain. He released the blind. ‘I’m going to get a driver to take you.’