‘Suicide.’
‘Past its sell-by? That’s why they’ve got you, is it?’
‘No, it’s recent. Still warm. Like I said, we only took it cos we were in the area.’
The roof of the car was sun-bleached and covered with bird droppings. Seeing it now made something cold walk across her heart. ‘That’s the car I can see, is it?’
‘That’s the car.’
‘A VW?’
Wellard blinked. ‘A VW? Yeah – I mean, yeah, it is. You can tell from here?’
She pressed her fingers into her temples.
‘Sarge – you OK?’
‘I’m… fine.’
She got out of the car, leaving her keys in the ignition, and began to walk, back straight, legs stiff. Flashing her card automatically at the loggist on the cordon, she ducked under it and passed the van. The two coroner’s men stood in their grey suits outside the inner cordon, just as they always did, smoking and chatting in low voices. She went past, not speaking.
The first thing she saw was the body-bag on the road, the orange stretcher next to it in the sunshine. Then she saw her own men gathered around the opened car door, bending to look inside. They glanced up when she approached. Smiled. Called something in greeting. A joke, maybe. She didn’t hear it. She was looking at the place between their legs where she could see a woman’s calf. The foot crammed into a green stiletto. A graze on the ankle. She could see the hem of the short black dress above it. To the right she could see the offside window, moss growing in the seals.
She turned away and stood with her hands pressed into the small of her back. Lifted her face to the sky and breathed in. Out. The sun had broken through the clouds for one last try at warming the world, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see the way it was picking out the different greens of the newly budded trees in the distance, the way it was lighting the distant hills.
What she could see, on that pretty May morning, was the way the sky could suffocate her. The way the sky and the world and all the people in it could push her down so low that eventually they simply stopped her breathing.
62
Must’ve let it slip a bit on the Scotch last night, Caffery thought. His head was banging like a bastard and any movement sent pressure waves galloping from one ear to the other. He passed a hand across his face, thinking something must be draped over it because the light was so dim. But there was nothing. He reached out in front of him, expecting to feel sheets. Instead he hit something hard and rough. He pushed his hands backwards and behind him met the same hard, immovable barrier.
He lay there, breathing fast. He wasn’t in bed. This was an enclosed space, a vault or a box, about eight foot by eight. Somewhere echoey with a stale, foul smell. About ten feet above him there was a single hazy blob of light.
Think now. Push it.
Vague images came back: a tanner’s awl, blood draped across fabric. He fingered his face. Blood was crusted over his top lip, his nose was tender and a lump had swollen on his gum. He ran his hands over his body. He was dressed, in his suit, but it was crusted and hard on the legs. Behind his knee the flesh was tender, swollen and hot to the touch. He reached a little further down and found a ripped, pulpy area, meat and fabric mixed.
Shit shit shit. He pulled his hands away and dropped his head back, panting hard. The awl. Gerber looking at him calmly. The plate of biscuits. The crack of the handle to his temple. Blood on the sofa.
He fumbled down his torso. The radio was gone. No phone either. No phone, no ASP, no wallet, no CS gas, no Swiss Army knife, no quick-cuffs. All that was left him was his watch. He squinted at it in the gloom. Two thirty p.m. He’d been out for three hours. With his erratic appearances at the office probably no one would even wonder where he was until the end of the day.
His head stopped spinning and the blurred light began to take form and perspective. He tried to listen to what was happening outside. At first he couldn’t pick up anything, just silence and the echo of his own breathing. Then he heard a bird singing and the distant grumble of a tractor. He sniffed again. A pungent, old scent, almost sweet above the tang of blood and his sweat.
And then he knew where he was.
He was in Gerber’s cesspit.
Wincing, he raised himself on to his elbows and squinted around. The pit was empty and probably hadn’t been used for years, but the evidence of its function was still here. He could smell it. The hazy light above him was daylight filtering through the cracks in the access cover – a ladder ran up the side of the wall to it. To its right was a large pipe hung at right angles to the ceiling, the baffles to carry the waste up to the sandbank drainfield. At head height a yellowish layer of grease about a foot deep coated the walls. Caffery lay for a few minutes, ignoring his thumping head, eyeing the cover the way he’d eye up an opponent.
He counted to three, then pushed himself up on to his good leg. Shakily, not putting weight on his right foot, he limped to the ladder and climbed up a few steps. He looped the good leg into the ladder rung, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and, gritting his teeth, reached up and jammed both hands against the manhole cover. It made a small creaking noise. And stopped. He gave it another shove. Rigid. Another. Nothing.
He clung to the ladder, breathing hard. Most inspection-chamber covers like this rusted up and needed a sledgehammer to open them, but this was the only way into the cesspit. It was the only way Gerber could have got him down here so it must have been opened recently. He ran his hands around it, trying to work out the secret. He found a lump – a triangular piece of metal, the apex of the triangle at the dead centre of the lock. This was the sort of cover that locked with a slip bolt. Ordinarily the mechanism would be underneath, but Gerber had inverted the cover and locked it from above. The bastard. There was no way anyone down here could release the lock without tools.
He disentangled his leg, came down the ladder and felt around underfoot. The floor was an uneven mix of unfinished sharpstone and ballast, covered with a hardened layer of grease and toilet paper. Moss and a few weeds were growing in it, making it smooth to the touch. He let his fingers skim the surface and found a couple of rusting old bolts, a food wrapper of some sort, blown in here maybe when the pit was decommissioned. And a long slim tube. Hard plastic or Perspex. It was wider than a needle but slimmer than a rose stem.
A Perspex tube?
He found another one. And another. They were gathered in the place he’d been lying. Clinking together like wind chimes. He sat down and held his wrist canted over so the dim fluorescent green of his watch face illuminated them. The ends were dark and sticky with blood. He turned them over and over, trying to guess their function. The blood was fresh. Still tacky. His blood. Had to be. But why?
He rested the tubes against the wall in the corner, where he’d be able to find them again, stood and gave the baffle pipe at the edge of the pit a sharp thump with the heel of his hand. There was a faint sound of rust flakes falling to the floor, a creak of old metal, but the pipe was solid. It had been set into the mortar of the bricks and nothing short of a sledgehammer would move it. He turned to the ladder and tugged at that. Again, solid. It was designed to hold the weight of a man and there was no way he’d be able to pull it off. He gave in to a moment’s anger and booted it. Something soft gave in the back of his leg. He felt the wound reopen, begin to leak.
He bent over and locked his hand around his calf. The pain was so bad his teeth felt metallic, but he kept his head up and back. Couldn’t afford to faint.
When he’d got hold of himself he examined his leg. He took his hand away, and as he did, a strip of flesh about the width of a piece of tape flopped from the top of his calf almost to his ankle. It was still attached at the bottom where it hung like a piece of stripped bark, twisted inside out so the fleshy underneath was open to the air. Bits of brick dust, wood and things he didn’t want to give much thought to clung to the flesh. Blood came out new and warm, soaking into his socks.