‘Come on, Ruth. What the hell did you do with it? What were you thinking?’
She turned. Ruth had got the photos from here – she remembered her taking them from the computer table. She opened the top drawer, pulling things out, rummaging through the contents. All that was in here was magazine cuttings and old clothes brochures. She pushed aside the sofa, swept a whole shelf of haphazardly piled chick-lit and romance stories off the bookshelves on to the floor and squatted next to the pile, scrabbling through the books, shaking the big ones, throwing them aside. She moved on to the next shelf, scattering everything. Within five minutes all the bookcases were clear and she was standing calf deep in books.
No photo.
She widened the search, going fast. The house was small – the only thing she found on the ground floor was a tea chest filled with framed photographs: wedding shots of Mr and Mrs Lindermilk, black-and-white shots of a baby. Not the photo she was looking for. She went up the stairs two at a time, hauling herself along on the banister to the small landing. There was a chest pushed up against the wall. She threw it open and pulled out everything inside: clothes, hats scarves. Nothing. Sweating now, she went into each bedroom and rummaged through divan drawers, under pillows, even in the pockets of coats hanging in wardrobes. She had got to the fourth one – had just emptied four shopping bags out on to the bed – when it caught her eye.
It was on the wall above the bed and it was what she should have been looking for all along. Sepia-coloured, about the size of a vinyl LP. A small wall-mounted safe.
‘Oh, Ruth,’ she murmured. ‘You couldn’t have, could you?’
The answer came back instantly: Of course she did, of course she would have put it here. She knew how precious it was to you, knew you might try something like this.
She straightened, went to the safe and gave it a tug. It was locked tight. Nothing in the Bag of Bollocks would open this number. Only the thermal lance would help her here. And it was still in the car down on the road. She threw the dial from side to side, hit it with the crowbar in her frustration. Hit it again. Then stopped and stood still, listening hard. There was a noise. Coming from the front of the house.
Someone outside had just opened Ruth’s front gate.
She went silently to the top of the stairs and peered over.
A second passed. Another.
Footsteps came around the side of the house, heading for the back. Suddenly panicked, Flea went quickly down the stairs and into the kitchen where the curtains were still drawn. The footsteps had stopped.
Whoever it was must be on the patio. She collected all the gear off the counter, counting it quickly: one, two, three, four, five. After cramming it into the bag, she zipped it up, threw it over her shoulder and headed for the hallway.
Someone put a key in the front door. There was a brief metallic clink as it turned, then the shush-shush of the draft excluder moving on the mat.
She turned back into the kitchen and stood for a second or two sizing it up. Opposite, behind curtains, the broken window stood open. No. It would take too much time to climb up there and drop through. In the hallway the door closed. She opened the oven and pushed the bag inside. Went to the tall fridge. Turned her face sideways, raised her hands and squeezed herself into the gap between it and the wall. She bent her arms at the elbows so her hands wouldn’t be visible and stood there trembling, breathing in shallow pants through her mouth because her ribs were constrained.
Someone came in. A man – she could hear him breathing as he surveyed the mess. He moved around, his feet crunching the glass underfoot, then stopped about a yard away. She could see his foot now, in a clean white trainer, ‘Nike’ written on it. There was a long silence while she listened to his breathing. It was fast, heavy, as if he was excited by what he saw. Or distressed.
He left the kitchen. In the living room she heard him kick his way through the mess. He went back into the hallway and the moment she knew he was at the front of the house she eased her way out from beside the fridge, got the bag from the oven and closed it without a sound. She skirted the broken glass, lifted the bag on to the work surface and hauled herself up.
The footsteps stopped. He’d heard her moving.
‘Hello?’
She pulled the curtain wide and dropped the bag through the window.
‘Hello? Who’s there?’
She looked at the drop. Looked back at the hall. Took a breath. And jumped.
64
Caffery shifted where he sat. His bones were cold, aching. He’d given up searching for a way to get out. How long would it take Turnbull or Powers to notice he was missing and not just AWOL again? How long would it be before the trail led to Beatrice Foxton – the only professional apart from a telephone operator at Control who knew he’d been to the Rothersfield clinic that morning? A day? Maybe more because they didn’t have his phone to go by. And when they arrived, his car wouldn’t be anywhere to be seen. Gerber had taken his keys and would have moved it. Which meant he had probably found the gun too.
But he didn’t intend to use it. Caffery knew Gerber was too clever for that, knew he wanted Caffery to die in the slowest possible way. Maybe for the sake of self-preservation: he could argue that Caffery had fallen into the cesspit and bled to death. Or sadism: the need to imagine a drawn-out death in the cold and dark of the pit. He was a skilled doctor and knew the arteries of the leg would spring back on themselves where they’d been severed, that the blood would clot and Caffery’s leg would heal itself. So he’d inserted those Perspex tubes into the arteries to keep it flowing. He’d wanted to bleed him to death.
Caffery was lucky – the tubes had fallen out – but Gerber would be back eventually. Just to check.
There was a noise overhead. A footstep. The sound of weight on the roof of the tank. Caffery stiffened. Bit down on the instinct to scream at the fucker. He knew what he had to do: he had to let Gerber think he was dead. He got to his feet and moved to the edge of the tank where the ladder was, keeping his breathing shallow and quiet.
There was a pause, a long silence when nothing happened. Maybe he’d imagined that sound. He was about to sit down again, when he heard another footfall. A clunk. Followed by a metallic bang. The sound of the lock on the manhole being tested.
He grabbed the ladder and climbed one or two steps until his neck and shoulders were pressed against the ceiling, his head inches from the cover. Wedging his bad leg back he held himself there, teeth gritted. One hand out and ready. He couldn’t wait at the bottom of the tank for the bastard to come in – it would be shooting fish in a barrel for Gerber: there was one chance and one chance only. Caffery had to go out and take it on the nose. Then, if he caught Gerber in time, he could throw the manhole cover at him. Catch him off balance.
The lock on the cover opened. He waited, trembling in his bat position, hands up hard in front of his face. Adrenalin bolted around his body. He was ready. Come and get it. Come and get it.
But nothing happened. Nobody came. The manhole cover didn’t open.
There were a few moments of silence, then another footfall. This time Gerber was retreating. He had unlocked the cover but not opened it. Caffery let his jaw stay slack, tried to keep his breathing slow and steady as he tracked Gerber’s movements in his head. What was he planning?
Silence again. He counted to a hundred, listening. The stillness stretched on and on, out of the cesspit, down past the swimming-pool, out into the lane. He counted to a hundred again then relaxed his ribcage, breathed normally.
He dropped off the ladder on to his good leg. Checked his watch. Looked back up at the cover.