‘No. I seen him in the news.’
‘Ted didn’t know him?’
‘How the hell would Ted know someone like that?’
‘Before Mr Bradley was ordained he was a headmaster. At St Dominic’s School. Did Ted have any connections in that area?’
‘I told you – he’s not a paedo. He doesn’t hang out at schools.’
‘What about Farrington Gurney, Radstock? Why does he feel so at home out there? He knows the roads round there like the back of his hand.’
‘Ted wouldn’t know Farrington Gurney if it was the last place on earth. Arsehole of the Mendips, innit?’
Caffery turned to Ted Moon’s photograph. Looked into his eyes – stared into them, trying to draw something out. ‘Look at the pictures again, Mr Moon. Really concentrate. Is there anything? Anything at all? You don’t need to feel stupid. Just say it.’
‘No. I told you. Nothing. I’m trying to help here.’
Caffery chucked down the paperclip he was fiddling with. He got to his feet. His stomach hurt with all the bloody junk food he’d been shovelling down the hatch. It was the place these cases always got you. In the belly. He went to the window and opened it, stood for a moment with his hands on the frame, feeling the cool air on his face.
‘OK. This is where I need you to have an open mind, Mr Moon. Where I’ve got to ask you to dig deep.’ He turned and went to the whiteboard. He uncapped a marker pen and placed it next to Janice Costello’s name. He drew a slow line from her face across to Rose Bradley’s. ‘Look at the women – Simone Blunt, Janice Costello, Lorna Graham, Rose Bradley. Now, I want you to do something difficult. I want you to think about your wife.’
‘Sonja?’ Moon made a noise in his throat. ‘What about her?’
‘Is there something about these women that reminds you of her?’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ Moon was incredulous now. ‘You are joking?’
‘I’m just asking you to keep an open mind. To help me.’
‘I can’t help you. None of them looks like her.’
Peter Moon was right, of course. If there had ever been a time Caffery’d clutched at straws this was it. The women couldn’t have been more different: Janice Costello was fresh-faced, straightforwardly nice-looking, Rose Bradley was fifteen years older and two stones heavier – their colouring wasn’t even similar. The ultra-groomed Simone looked like a harder-edged blonde version of Janice, it was true, but Lorna Graham, the only one he hadn’t met, was black. If he was honest she looked more as if she should be hanging on to the arm of some R&B dude, with her polished nails and hair extensions.
The husbands, then. Something with the husbands? He put the marker pen next to Cory Costello’s name. He’d love to know what had happened between Janice Costello and Paul Prody the night Moon had broken in. He probably never would. And maybe it wasn’t his business to be pissed off with Prody. But Cory Costello whoo-hooing with Prody’s missus? Funny guy, Prody, he thought. Private. To talk to him you wouldn’t know he had any family at all. He went back to Cory’s face, looked at it again. Into his eyes. Thought – affairs. ‘Mr Moon?’
‘What?’
‘Tell me – because it’ll never go outside this room, I can guarantee that – did you ever have an affair? When Sonja was alive.’
‘Jesus. No. Of course not.’
‘Of course not?’ Caffery raised an eyebrow. The answer had been there. Right in Peter Moon’s mouth. Waiting. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m sure.’
‘You weren’t seeing Sharon Macy’s mother, were you? Even just casually?’
Peter Moon’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again. His face went tight and he moved his head forward on his neck. Like a lizard. Trying to crick a spasm out of his head. ‘I don’t think I heard you right. What did you say?’
‘I said you weren’t seeing Sharon Macy’s mother? Before Sharon was killed?’
‘You know something?’ He closed his mouth briefly, as if he was struggling to hold himself together. ‘You have no idea – no idea – how much that question makes me want to land one on you.’
Caffery raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m just trying to make that link, Mr Moon.’ He capped the pen. Threw it on to the desk. ‘Still trying to connect the families together. The Macys with these people.’
‘The Macys? The shagging Macys? None of this has got anything to do with the Macy family. Ted never killed Sharon because of her shagging parents.’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘No! No, he fucking didn’t. He done it because of the fire. Because of what she did to Sonja.’
‘What Sharon did to your wife?’
Moon looked from Caffery to Turner and back again. ‘You don’t fucking know, do you? It was Sharon done it. She was the bloody arsonist, little bitch. Tell me you know that much at least?’
Caffery glanced at Turner, who met his eyes and shook his head slowly. The psychiatric reports from the hospital and the probation officers’ reports on Ted Moon’s release weren’t in the paperwork that had come down. In the suspect interview transcripts Moon had refused to say why he’d killed Sharon Macy. He’d refused to speak even to deny it.
Peter Moon sat back in his seat, arms crossed. Angry that the police were so damned useless. ‘The fucking system. Lets you down every time, don’t it? If it can’t fuck you one way it asks you to turn round and has a good look at you to see if it can fuck you some other way. Did it to us back then. No one even told us Ted had it up here.’ He tapped his temple. ‘Schizophrenia. People just thought he was simple. Brain-dead Ted. Sharon Macy thought that made him fair game so he turns round one day, calls her a couple of names, and she turns round and pours petrol through our letterbox. Sets fire to the fucking place. At first we’re thinking it’s something to do with the Chinky lot downstairs, but then there’s Sharon gloating about it to my lads, saying as how it served them right. Course, there wasn’t a person in Downend would stand up in court and swear it was her. If you’d met her and her family you’d know why.’
Caffery had a photo of Sharon Macy from those days pinned to the giant corkboard on the opposite wall. When he’d first seen it, his instinctive thought had been that if ever the word ‘dysfunctional’ needed a human face to illustrate it, then Sharon Macy’s was the one. By thirteen there had already been an abortion and a line of police cautions jostling for position. You could see her past and her future written in her slack eyes. He’d had to force the professional in him to wade in and remind him that she was a victim. That he had the same duty of care to her as to anyone else.
‘You’re thinking what I’m thinking, ain’t you?’ Moon’s eyes were hard. ‘You’re thinking that if ASBOs had been handed out in those days Sharon would’ve got herself a whole fucking trophy cabinet. I mean, she could take care of herself, that one, and she was a big girl too. Broad, you know. Course, Ted was bigger. And madder. My Sonja tops herself – don’t make me go there with what that was like. Having my whole entire heart pulled out through my mouth was what it was like, losing her, because, no, I wasn’t having an affair whatever your filthy cop brains are telling you – but she tops herself and if that was bad for me it was even worse for Ted. He’s like that.’ Moon jutted his head forward, teeth bared, one fist balled. The sinews on his neck stood out, high tensile, rigid. ‘Next thing I know he turned around to me and Richard and goes, “I ain’t sitting still no longer, Dad.” Never bothered to hide what he did next. He dragged that girl through the streets – everyone saw it, thought it was boyfriend and girlfriend arguing, sort of thing you’d see a lot round there. They look the same age so no one calls it in, do they? So he’s off then, getting away with it, and before anyone knows it he does her in the bedroom. In his own bedroom. With a kitchen knife.’ He shook his head. ‘Me and Richard weren’t there. The neighbours, though, they heard the whole thing through the walls.’