‘I know.’
‘The officers on his tail think he knew about them for the last ten miles. He could have opened the window and thrown the baby seat out. But he didn’t. He kept it in the car.’
Caffery eyed the seat. ‘Why?’
‘He was pulling the damned thing apart as he drove. Furious with us, I guess.’
They went to the seat and looked down at it. The life-size baby doll Skye had dressed in Charlie’s clothes had been reduced by Prody to a pile of plastic limbs, deposited in the baby seat. A foot away, half covered by Charlie’s Babygro, lay the doll’s head. Squashed flat. A muddy footprint stamped across it.
‘How is she doing?’ asked the CSM. ‘The stand-in?’
Caffery shrugged. ‘She’s in shock. I don’t think she really believed it was going to happen the way we said it would.’
‘I know her. Through the force. She’s a good officer but if I’d thought she’d volunteer for a stunt like that I’d’ve told her to go have a lie-down in a darkened room and rethink it. Still,’ he said grudgingly, ‘that was some good bet. To guess where it would happen.’
‘Not really. I was lucky. Very lucky. And lucky everyone played their part. That it worked.’
Only now was Caffery realizing that for once in this godforsaken case something in the great unknowable universe had come down on his side: even before Clare had got to the office and given them her list of Prody’s possible victims, Caffery, Turner and Lollapalooza had already written down three names they thought could be next. People who’d been contacted by the police and warned. Who’d spent the morning with covert surveillance units outside their houses. Skye Stephenson had been the one the team had been rooting for because she was the only person they could use a substitute with. Prody had never met her personally until today – he’d known her only from her address and from a photograph on the company website. The unit’s fortunes were changing.
Caffery bent over, hands on his knees, to study the tracking unit Q had attached to Skye’s four-by-four in case the tail cars outside her house had lost Prody.
‘What?’ said the CSM.
‘Are these the ones the force always uses?’
‘I think so. Why?’
He gave an ironic shrug. ‘Nothing. It’s the same as Prody used on the Costellos’ car. Must’ve half inched it from the technical department. Sly sod.’
‘Knows his stuff, then.’
‘You could say that.’
From the other side of the wood a dog began to bark. Loud enough to be heard above the helicopter. Every person at the crime scene stopped what they were doing. Straightened and stared out across the trees. Caffery and Turner exchanged a glance. They recognized the familiar note in the yap. A tracking dog made a sound like that for one reason and one reason only. It had found its target. The two men turned without a word, ducked under the tape and headed fast along the path in the direction of the noise.
As they moved through the woods, other figures in uniform appeared in the surrounding trees, all converging on the place the dog was barking. Caffery and Turner came through a soft and silent pine forest, their footsteps cushioned by the carpet of henna red needles, the clatter of the helicopter rotors growing louder the nearer they got. There was another sound too – the bellow of a loudhailer. Caffery speeded up. Sprinted through a glade littered with felled silver birch, back up a short slope, mud and leaves all over his trousers now – and out on to a cleared track where the thin winter sun glanced down in blades. He stopped. A tall man in riot gear, his visor up, was coming towards them, his arm held aloft to halt them. ‘Inspector Caffery? The SIO?’
‘Yes?’ Caffery flashed his warrant card. ‘What’s happening? Sounds like the dogs’ve got a knock over there.’
‘I’m the Bronze commander for today.’ He put his hand out. ‘Good to meet you.’
Caffery took a long, deep breath. He made himself return the card to his pocket and shake the hand calmly. ‘Yes. Very nice to meet you. What’s happening here? Have the dogs got him?’
‘Yes. But it’s not good.’ Sweat was popping out on the guy’s face. The Silver and Gold commanders on an exercise like this would be at HQ, organizing the operation from the safety of their seats, while this poor bastard, Bronze, was at the bottom of the pile. The tactical commander, the guy on the ground, he had to take Silver and Gold’s orders and translate them into action. If Caffery was in his shoes he’d be sweating too. ‘We know where he is, but we haven’t effected an arrest yet. It’s not a good place at all. There are air shafts all over this place – they feed the Sapperton tunnel.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, he’s got a belay rope in one of them. Went down like a fucking rabbit.’
Caffery let all his breath out at once. Flea’d been right. All along she’d been right. And suddenly he felt her – like he’d hear a shout in the darkness. A tug at his instinct. As if she was near by. He looked around at the empty expanse of trees. There hadn’t been anything yet from the PC in Bath sent out to check her house. Flea was definitely here somewhere.
‘Sir?’
He turned and there, as if Caffery had magicked him up from the strength of his anxiety for Flea, stood Wellard. Also dressed in dark-blue cargoes and an opened riot helmet. He was panting, his breath white in the freezing air. He had bluish circles under his eyes and Caffery knew from his face that the guy was thinking about exactly the same thing. ‘You haven’t heard from her?’
Caffery shook his head. ‘You?’
‘No.’
‘So what are we supposed to think about that?’
‘I don’t know.’ Wellard put a finger to his throat. Swallowed. ‘But, uh, look, what I do know is the tunnel. I do know about that. I’ve been down there before, I’ve got the schematics. That shaft he’s gone down is between two rockfalls. He’s a rat in a trap down there. Really. No way out.’
They turned expectantly to the Bronze commander. He unbuckled his helmet and used his sleeve to wipe the sweat off his forehead.
‘I’m not sure. He’s not responding to our challenges.’
Caffery laughed. ‘What? Someone with a megaphone yelling at him? Course he won’t.’
‘Best to establish communications first. Bring in a negotiator. His wife’s on her way, isn’t she?’
‘Fuck the negotiations. Get a rope-access team in there now.’
‘I can’t do that. It’s not that simple – we need risk assessments.’
‘Risk assessments? Do me a fucking favour. The suspect knows the area – we think he brought one of the vics here. She could still be alive. Tell that to your Silver and Gold. Use the words “grave and immediate danger”. They’ll get the drift.’
He pushed past the commander, headed along the track, his feet squelching in the mud, cracking the ice on the puddles. He’d gone a few yards when a noise louder than the helicopter, the dogs and the megaphone put together lifted from under his feet. The ground seemed to move beneath them. The bare branches quivered with the shock and a few dry leaves fluttered down. A flock of rooks took to the air, cawing.
In the silence that followed, the three men stood facing the air shaft. There was a pause, then, from inside the trees, dogs began to howl. A high-pitched, terrified sound.
‘What the fuck was that?’ Caffery turned and looked back down the track at Wellard and the commander. ‘What the fuck was that?’
76
Janice switched off the Audi engine and looked at the crowded pub car park. It was full of response cars and specialist trucks. There were people everywhere, moving around, their faces grim, their breath steaming the air. From somewhere over the forest came the din of a helicopter.
‘The team will want us to stay here.’ Nick peered out of the windscreen at a track that disappeared into the woods. ‘They won’t want us any nearer than this.’
‘Won’t they?’ Janice took the keys out of the ignition and pocketed them. ‘I see.’