When they've disappeared he tries to bum some money from a passer-by, but she walks past, eyes on the distance, so after a while he decides to go down the docks, see if there's anything happening down there. Maybe one of them from the Barton Hill estate'll be there in a good mood. If not, he'll think again.
He's just got up and is ambling along when it happens. One minute he's on his own thinking bad thoughts, next minute, walking next to him is this tiny, skinny black guy with his hair real tight against his skull and a bit of a moustache. He's wearing jeans that've been factory faded down the front of the legs and an olive-green Kappa jacket, the hood sort of draped round his head, and Mossy recognizes him from the counselling session — he was sitting in the corner. But the main thing Mossy notices is the way he walks: like he's oiled. Like he wasn't born here on the dry Bristol streets, but in a better place. Like he's used to walking the bush day after day after day.
'You looking for something?' he goes. 'You looking for something?'
Mossy stops. 'Yeah,' he goes, 'but I'm skint.'
And what's weird is that instead of the whack to the head he expects the skinny guy looks Mossy in the eyes and says, 'No worries about the money. No worries. I know someone who can help you.'
And that, of course, is how it all starts.
4
13 May
The late sun had come out from behind the clouds, red and a bit swollen, but in the Station restaurant the table lights were already on. The place was filling up, people coming in, taking off coats, ordering drinks. It was too cool to sit outside and the deck was deserted, so Caffery went out to make his phone calls. There was the super to push a bit, talk him into taking seriously what the dive unit and the CSM were saying, assign a level to the case before the post-mortem — because there was going to be a post-mortem for the hand, all on its own — and there were the two DSs over at Kingswood to move around a bit. They'd been given to him to work on an armed-robbery case so now he threw in a little extra: hospital casualty and mortuary duty. Any male corpses turned up missing a right hand?
When he'd rattled a couple of Bristol's cages he put his phone into his pocket and went to the point on the deck where he could see round the police screens to the dive crew readying themselves on the deck of the neighbouring restaurant. The Moat, it was called. He liked that — the Moat — as if it was something medieval and not just a spivved-up boathouse with a bit of fake taxidermy on the walls. Someone had talked the manager into not opening for the evening, and the team had dumped their gear on the deck. It lay around in pools of water. Picking her way among it, bending to hook up a dive mask, stopping to talk to her surface attendant and check the harness, was Sergeant Marley.
He leaned on the balustrade, rolled a ciggy — a habit he still hadn't been able to break, in spite of the way the government sat on his head about it whenever he switched on the TV — and lit it, watching her carefully. 'Flea' — stupid nickname, except that he sort of understood where it had come from. Even in the force-issue dry suit she had something kind of kinetic about her, something in her face that suggested her thoughts didn't stay still for long. He hated the way he'd noticed these things about her. He hated the way, when he'd gone into the staff room and she'd been sitting there with her dry suit crumpled down and her thin brown arms bare, and her wayward stack of blonde hair all tough as if she'd washed it in sea water, he hated the way he'd wanted to leave, because suddenly all he could feel was his body. The way it made contact with his clothes, the way his trousers scratched against his thighs, the brush of his waistband against his stomach and the places his shirt touched his neck. He had to stop himself. That was for someone else. Another person in a different place, a long time ago.
' 'Scuse me?'
He looked over his shoulder. A small woman was standing behind him. She had bright red hair tied with multicoloured rags into lots of little bunches all over her head. A waitress from the Station, by the apron round her waist.
'Yes?'
'Uh-' She wiped her nose and glanced over her shoulder into the restaurant to make sure she wasn't being watched. 'Am I allowed to ask what's happening?'
'You're allowed.'
She crossed her arms and shivered, even though it wasn't that cold out here, really not cold enough to make you shiver. 'Well, then… have they found anything?'
Something about her voice made him turn and look at her a little more carefully. She was small and thin, wearing under the apron black combats and a T-shirt that said, I love you more when you're more like me.
'Yes,' he said. 'They have.'
'Under the pontoon?'
'Yes.'
She pulled a chair off the table and sat down on it, putting her hands on the table. Caffery watched her. There were two rings in her nose and from the way the holes were inflamed he guessed she fiddled with them when she was anxious. 'You all right?' he said. He stubbed out the roll-up, pulled up a chair and sat opposite her, his back to the Moat. 'Something on your mind?'
'You wouldn't believe me if I told you,' she said. 'I mean, I can see by your face you wouldn't believe me.'
'Try me?'
She twisted her mouth and regarded him thoughtfully.
She had very pale eyes, anaemic lashes. A cluster of spots round her nose had been covered with make-up. 'God.' She put her hands to her face, suddenly embarrassed. 'I mean, even I know it sounds mental.'
'But you want to tell me. Don't you?'
There was a pause. Then, as he'd expected, she put her hand up and started twiddling one of the rings in her nose, round and round and round, until he thought she was going to make it bleed. The only sounds were the water lapping at the quay, the dive crew clinking harnesses and cylinders. After a long time she dropped her hand and lifted her chin in the direction of the pontoon outside the Moat.
'I saw something. Really late one night. Standing over in front of the Moat. Just where those divers are now.'
'Something?'
'OK. Someone. I suppose you'd say someone, although I really don't know for sure.' She shivered again. 'I mean, it was really dark. Not like it is now. Late. And I mean really late. We'd closed and someone'd puked all over the ladies' floor and who d'you suppose gets to clean up when that happens? I was walking through the restaurant with a bucket, on the way to the broom cupboard, and I was just crossing inside there, near the window…' She pointed into the Station restaurant to where a few diners had noticed the police screens and were craning their necks to work out what was happening. The sun was nearly touching the horizon now and he could see his and the girl's reflections on top of them, silhouetted in a blaze of red. 'And as I get to that table something makes me stop. And that's when I see him.'
Caffery could hear the thickened clicking of the girl's breathing in her throat.
'He was naked — I saw that straight away.'