‘He was a bastard to me,’ Clare said behind Caffery. ‘A bastard. I lost count of the black eyes.’
‘Yes.’ Caffery rested his fingers on the window, thinking, You’re coming to us, Prody. You’re coming. ‘It’s a shame you didn’t tell the police.’
‘I know. Of course now I can see how stupid it was, but I believed everything he told me – so did the boys. We never thought the police would help us, that’s how brainwashed we were – we thought you were like a club. All in it together and you’d never turn on your own. I was more scared of the police than I was of Paul. So were the boys. It’s just—’ She broke off. There was a moment’s silence. Then he heard her suck in a small, shocked breath.
He turned. She was staring at a point in the middle of the air, an expression of dawning horror on her face. ‘What is it?’
‘Christ,’ she said faintly. ‘Oh, Christ.’
‘Clare?’
‘Dehydration,’ she murmured. ‘Dehydration?’
‘Yes.’ She turned her eyes to him. They were glittering. ‘Mr Caffery, do you know how long it takes to die from dehydration?’
‘It depends,’ he said cautiously, coming to sit opposite her, ‘on the conditions. Why?’
‘We’d had an argument. The biggest of them all. Paul locked me in a toilet – the downstairs one where there was no window I could shout out of. He sent the boys to his mother’s and told everyone I’d gone away on holiday with friends.’
‘Go on,’ Caffery said, feeling something loosen in his chest that had been clenched from the moment he’d walked into Rose Bradley’s kitchen. ‘Go on.’
‘He switched off the water. For a while I drank from the toilet cistern, and he switched that off too.’ Her face was stark and rigid. ‘He kept me there for four days. I don’t know but I think I nearly died.’
Caffery breathed slowly and quietly. He wanted to put his head down on the desk and yell. Because he knew instinctively that Clare was right: it was what Prody had done to Martha and Emily. Which meant they could still be alive. Just. Emily had a good chance. Martha – probably not. Caffery’d had reason, on a case back in London, to speak to doctors about dehydration and knew that, whatever the bushcraft rule said – a person could only live three days without water – the limit of life without water could be more than ten days. Martha was a child and that would limit her chances but if, as a dumb cop, he’d had to play the doctor he’d say five, maybe six days tops. If the universe was shining its good grace on her.
Six days. He looked at the calendar. She’d been gone exactly that. Six days. All but six hours.
The phone on the desk rang. Both he and Clare stared at it, immobilized. Even Myrtle sat up, ears pricked, suddenly all attention. It rang again and this time he lifted the handset. Listened, his heart thudding. He put the phone down and looked at Clare. She was gaping at him, her eyes wide.
‘Skye Stephenson.’
‘Skye? The solicitor? Shit.’
Caffery hooked his jacket off the back of his chair. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’
‘She’s got a baby. Skye’s got a baby. A little boy. I never thought of her—’
‘I’ll get you an escort. DC Paluzzi. She’ll drive you out there.’
‘Drive me where?’ Clare gripped the desk – as if to stop herself being moved. The blue blanket flopped and fell to the floor, revealing her thin shoulders in the black jogging T-shirt. ‘Where’s she driving me?’
‘Out to the Cotswolds. We think we know where he is. We think we might’ve got him.’
74
Outside the MCIU offices it was raining. The side turning that led from the main street to the car park was packed with vehicles. There were people on the pavement, men in suits, uniformed officers. There was an armoured Sprinter van with the back doors open. Cold blue lights turned on vehicle roofs.
Janice already knew that MCIU had figured out about Prody: at the same time as she’d been with the families, Caffery had been putting it together. But as the four of them – Janice, Nick, Cory and Rose Bradley – pulled up in the Audi, she could tell from the seriousness in the men’s faces that something more had happened. There was something terrible about the way the officers were concentrating, talking in neat, nipped sentences. Urgent. That serious intent was the worst thing for Janice. It meant it wasn’t a dream. Maybe it meant they’d got him. Found the girls.
Nick saw it too. She unclipped her belt, her face fixed. ‘Wait here.’ She got out and walked fast in the direction of the offices.
Janice hesitated, then unbuckled her seatbelt and got out. She set off across the street after Nick, her shoulders hunched in the rain, her coat half hitched up over her head. Past the vehicles, through the gates that stood wide open and into the car park. She had almost passed a long black car parked against the wall when something about it caught her eye. She came to an abrupt halt. She stood, facing ahead for a moment, motionless.
Someone was sitting in the back seat of the car. A woman. A woman with pale hair and a sorrowful, drawn-down face. Clare Prody.
Janice turned very slowly. Clare stared back at her from behind the rain-spattered window. She had a blanket around her shoulders as if she’d been rescued from a fire, and there was pure horror in her eyes – to be face to face suddenly with Cory’s wife. With Emily’s mother.
Janice couldn’t move. Couldn’t turn away, couldn’t go forward. All she could do was stare back. Her eyes were dry – dry and sore as if they’d never close. There was nothing to say. Nothing adequate to express how it felt to be standing there wretchedly in the rain. Hopeless. Watched by the woman who was sleeping with Cory and whose husband had stolen Emily. She’d never felt so transparently weak and miserable in her life.
Her head dropped forward. She didn’t have it in her any more – even standing was too much effort. She turned to trudge back to the Audi. Behind her the window of the black car opened with a shushing sound. ‘Janice?’
She stopped. She couldn’t take another step, couldn’t turn back. Dog-tired.
‘Janice?’
Painfully she lifted her chin and twisted her head. In the car Clare’s face was so white it was almost luminous. There were black tracks on her cheeks where she’d cried her mascara off. Her expression was pinched and cloudy with guilt. She half leaned out of the window and checked quickly around the car park that no one was watching her. Then she leaned further towards Janice and whispered, ‘They know where he is.’
Janice’s mouth opened numbly. She shook her head. Not getting it. ‘What?’
‘They know where he is. They’re taking me now. I’m not supposed to be saying anything, but I know.’
Janice took a step back towards the car. ‘What?’
‘He’s somewhere called Sapperton. I think it’s in the Cotswolds.’
Janice felt her face widen. Felt a squeezed-up part of her head come to life. Sapperton. Sapperton. She knew that name. It was the tunnel where the teams had searched for Martha.
‘Janice?’
She wasn’t listening. She was running back to the Audi, as fast as her legs would carry her, splashing crazily through the puddles. Cory was out of the car now, a strange look on his face. He wasn’t looking at her, but at Clare sitting in the car. Janice didn’t stop. She didn’t care. She opened her arm out behind her. ‘She’s all yours, Cory. All yours.’
She jumped into the car. Rose was leaning forward from the back seat, her face full of questions.
‘They’ve found him.’
‘What?’
‘The Sapperton tunnel. The place they searched for Martha? They don’t want us there but that doesn’t matter.’ She jammed her keys in and started the engine. The windscreen wipers came on, cannoning back and forth with urgent squeaks. ‘We’re going too.’