Then he called someone at Control to check on James Pooley but the guy was clean. An electoral search brought up three James Pooleys – two in Wiltshire and one in Somerset. All three were at least an hour and a half’s drive away. And then, as he was making up his mind which to hit first, he noticed he was passing the ring-road exit to Brislington. He indicated left and swerved off the motorway, swinging the car up over the bridge and pulling hard on the steering-wheel so the car headed south on the empty road.
The little industrial estate had a security guard in a booth at the entrance. He was fast asleep, a copy of the Mirror spread over his stomach, a yellow milk skin floating on his cold coffee. Caffery had to hammer on the booth to wake him up. He couldn’t have been gagging to keep his job because he let Caffery in without a murmur, and even though he’d seen the warrant card and knew it was police business, once Caffery had driven through the barrier he didn’t bother to watch, just went back to sleep.
At the back of the lot the first thing Caffery noticed was that the big twin sliding hangar doors of the Emporium stood open. Odd at this time of night – even with the guard on site. He killed the engine and wound down the window. There was no artificial illumination, only the milky light of the Bristol cityscape spilling down from the clouds, dimly bathing everything a uniform smoky grey. He could just make out the spectral outlines of the bric-à-brac stacked against the walls inside the hangar. There were two cars parked about twenty feet away, their noses facing him. He was wondering about calling Control again and checking their indexes when a sound came out of the hangar. A sound that made the hairs go up on his skin.
He leant across and opened the glove compartment. The bling gun was in there, tucked behind a map and two packets of tobacco. Not to be used. He looked at them for a moment or two, then closed the glove compartment and checked his suit pocket for the ASP baton and the pepper spray. He got out of the car, closed the door silently, and walked quickly and quietly to the doors, stopping a little to the side so he couldn’t be seen from within. The noise was louder here, and although he screwed up his face in concentration, he couldn’t identify it. It might have been an animal, an injured fox panting. Or a child whimpering.
He opened his mouth to speak, because that was how it was supposed to be. You were supposed to warn people you were police and you were coming in. Give them a chance. A chance to do what? A chance not to panic? Not to shoot? Or just give them a chance to run? He flipped his jacket away from the radio clipped into his breast pocket so he could hit the red emergency button if he had to, then slipped inside the hangar.
The space was taller than he remembered, and higher. In the semi-darkness he sensed huge cavities arching above his head. The faint illumination from the city came behind him, and from ahead the dusty blue light of a computer or a fax machine filtered through the windows of the glass office cubicle. At the point he remembered seeing the customer pulling at the chandelier crystals he stopped. Standing next to a low oak bench, one hand on the CS gas, the other resting on the bench to steady himself, he put his head back to concentrate on the sound. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere: as if it was ricocheting across the roof girders. What was it? It made his skin crawl because he was sure of one thing. It was made by something living.
There was a smell too. Old and unnameable, but familiar. He waited a beat, trying to place it, then realized it was coming from the bench he was leaning on. He turned, slowly, half of him not wanting to see what he had leant against. He raised his fingers. Rubbed them together. They were coated with something. He put them to his nose and sniffed. The smell made a cold line of suspicion move down his back. This was fat. Animal fat.
He remembered the bench from yesterday. A worn breaking bench with a vertical blade, about four foot high, gimballed at the head. Tanners would have used it to ‘break’ animal skin. To soften it. They would sit on it, working the skin against the blade. The skin would be from something as big as a deer or an elk. Or something as small as a dog.
The noise stopped.
He turned, his fingers lightly brushing the ASP, to face into the darkness. Let’s go outside, he wanted to say. Let’s go out where there’s a bit more light and where my car’s waiting and I know I can get a signal on this piece of shit radio. But instead he kept his voice low and level. ‘I think we should talk,’ he murmured. ‘I suggest we switch the light on and talk.’
Silence. A group of bats wheeled through the overhead struts, the fragile crack crack crack of their lower-frequency chatter circling down to him.
‘Are you there?’
He thought of the mad customer, endlessly sorting her chandelier crystals. He recalled the blunt, defeated expression in her eyes. He thought of the gun, sitting in the glove compartment.
‘I said, are you there?’
A click behind him and a loud boom. He wheeled around as the huge double doors slid closed, cutting out the night, leaving him in the darkness with just the blue light of the computer and his thudding heart for company.
He pulled out the CS gas. Held it in front of him, arm rigid. Good job the gun was in the glove compartment because it could easily have been that. ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ he said. ‘I mean it. Don’t fuck with me.’
The darkness lay hard up against his eyes as he moved the spray in an arc, ready to unlatch the safety button if something came hurtling at him. Every inch of his skin crackled, and his ears yawned open to pick up the smallest sound, the tiniest shift of air.
‘I’m moving now,’ he said. ‘I’m coming towards the door.’
He took a few short steps, then stopped. His foot had connected with an object at knee height. As he pulled his leg back, he became aware that something was standing a few feet to his left. Something pale, spectral – something at head height, watching him. He didn’t turn to it. He kept facing forward, the hairs all over his face and neck standing up stiff, trying to study the shape out of the corner of his eye.
A face, a pale, oval face, stared at him steadily from the darkness. About three feet away. Tall. Tall and big.
‘I can hurt you,’ he murmured. ‘I’m trained and you’re not. I can make you very uncomfortable. So step away from me.’
The face didn’t move. Just went on looking at him.
‘Step away from me, I said.’
Still no movement. Heart hammering, Caffery went through the move in his head, thinking of reaction distances and the effect of the spray – not just on the creep staring at him but on his own respiratory system.
One, two, three, he counted to himself. One, two, three – and good to go.
‘Step back!’ He held his left hand against his face, right hand forward. Protect your own eyes first. ‘I said, step back, dickhead. Step the fuck back.’
Three seconds of spray, then he released the nozzle and dropped his hand, taking a clumsy pace back, knocking something over, the other arm across his face, squinting through the cloud of chemical. The shape hadn’t moved. He lifted his hand slightly, his eyes watering from the chemical’s kickback, his heart thrumming low and deep in his chest. It was still there. A motionless, smooth face, the gas running slowly down it, forming at the chin into a rivulet and dripping away into nothing. Eyes open and glassy, none of the coughing or vomiting he’d expected.
‘Shit.’ He dropped his head. Spat on the ground. ‘Shit.’
It was a fairground effigy, its brittle doll’s face impassive. He turned, breathing hard, to the doors. So where the hell was Pooley? Which avenue had he slid down? Which pile of furniture was he hiding behind? The doors, he thought. Start for the doors. He took a step forward. Felt his chest collide with something. Felt an arm lock around his neck, and a hand come up into his groin, immobilizing him and pulling him down.