Something hollow opened inside her. She felt colder and lonelier and more scared than she ever had in her life. She remembered what Mum had said in the quarry. Look after yourself. It hadn’t been a bland imprecation, a throwaway line telling her to be careful. It had been something starker than that. It had meant: you’re on your own, so put yourself first. In front of others. Now she saw clearly what she had to do: saw that the only important thing left was to protect herself. She had to fight for her life.
Caffery stayed there for a long time and gradually, watching his face, the moonlight glancing off his eyes, it dawned on her that maybe he couldn’t see her. She raised a hand in front of her face, moved it back and forward. He didn’t react. Tongue between her teeth she leant forward a little, scrutinizing his eyes. He wasn’t focused on her. She stayed there, weight resting on her knuckles, head lifted, trying to work out what the hell was going on.
When he sighed and straightened, she was sure of it: he didn’t know she was there. The words hadn’t been meant for her at alclass="underline" whoever he thought he was talking to it wasn’t her, and if the words had meant something it had been a coincidence. But that didn’t change her resolve. As he turned and walked to the front gate, as she let all her breath out and sank back on her haunches, she was resolute, focused and completely calm. At midnight tonight Mandy and Thom were going to get the surprise of their lives. They were going to get the photo, and they were going to get something more, much more. They were going to get Misty’s body. On their front lawn, if necessary. Flea wasn’t going to listen to any arguments or reasoning: from here on it was their mess to clear up.
By ten the CSI team had gone and the house was empty, just a copper on the gate, his back to her, waiting for the maintenance crew to arrive. After ten minutes he got bored of waiting, as she had known he would, and went to sit in his car, from which he could see the front of the cottage, not thinking there was someone round the back, sitting silently in the trees. Neither did he know that Caffery had left the back door open.
So cold her bones were aching, she straightened, the muscles in her legs stiff, gathered up the thermal lance and went painfully across the lawn to the house, then inched her way through the back door. The copper might be lazy but he’d notice light seeping out of the windows, so inside she fumbled the Maglite from her jacket pocket, pointed it at her feet and crept along the hallway in the half-darkness, her ankles brushing against cats as she went. The house was smeared with fingerprint dust from the CSI team, strange pocked light filtering from the broken window, sending shadows across the walls. At the foot of the stairs she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, dressed in the pale blue shirt and jeans she’d thrown on a million hours ago, the cylinder of the lance hiked up on her back, her eyes watering. Her face seemed strangely smooth and young, as if stress had airbrushed it.
The backpack was heavy and the tendons in her knees still hurt from jumping out of the kitchen window so she went slowly up the stairs, careful not to rub against the walls. She wasn’t thinking about fate or twists of destiny. She wasn’t thinking about what Caffery had been doing up here in the bedroom when her movements in the trees had distracted him. She was only thinking that she was cold. And there were less than two hours left to get the photograph over to Thom’s. Which was when everything would begin to change.
Then she shone the torch along the wall to the bed, up to the safe, and found it not closed, but open. Open and completely empty. Yawning, wide and cold. And saw that things might well change in the next two hours. But not in the way she’d expected.
69
Ten minutes to midnight. Ten minutes to go. Flea slammed on the brakes and came to a halt in the dark street. She switched off the engine and eyed Mandy and Thom’s house. It was dark. The curtains were closed. Just the porch light on.
She went fast up the path and banged on the door. Mandy was in her nightdress when she answered. Her naked calves were white and veined, her eyes puffy without makeup. Her hair stuck out in all directions. She stood in the doorway with her arms folded against her chest, shivering in the cold night, squinting at Flea.
‘I’ve got her in the car, Mandy. She’s in the boot.’
‘Who’s in the car? Who’ve you got?’
‘You can relax. No recording equipment.’
Mandy gave her a puzzled look. ‘What equipment?’
Flea sighed, went back to the car and opened the boot. The body was covered with a blanket, a few flattened cardboard boxes crammed around it. Already water was soaking into the cardboard. She raised her eyes to Mandy. ‘Have a look.’
Mandy came a few paces down the path in her bare feet and stared at the shape in the boot. In the orangy sodium street-light her expression was blank. Almost a minute passed. Then something vital in her face – something structural – seemed to slip. She glanced up at the neighbours’ windows. Swallowed. ‘Close it, please.’
Flea slammed the boot and came back to the gate. She took a breath and looked up at the sky. Clouds again. Always clouds. ‘I’ve come to tell you you’ve got what you wanted. You’ve won.’
‘Won what?’
‘I’m going to take care of the problem.’
There was a pause. Mandy glanced out at the street to make sure no one was there, then looked back at Flea. ‘Good. That’s good.’
‘Is Thom there?’
‘He’s asleep. It’s been hard on him. I don’t want to wake him up.’
Flea stared at Mandy. ‘Tell me something.’
‘Do I have to?’
‘The truth, please. The truth. It’s all I’m going to ask of you, and then I’ll be gone.’
‘What?’
‘Thom. Did he put you up to this? Or was it your idea?’
Mandy’s eyes glittered. She shot the car boot a glance. She was shivering now.
‘Well? Was it your idea or his?’
‘For everyone’s sake.’ Her voice was quiet. Almost inaudible. ‘It’s better you never know the answer to that question.’
And she went back up the path and closed the door, leaving Flea in the empty street, lonely and cold under the lamppost.
70
The countryside was deserted. The clouds had wrapped themselves across the fields, trapping everything, every leaf and branch, in an eerie, chalky light. Flea drove slowly, determinedly, taking the Focus down the small routes, the places she knew weren’t going to be monitored by the traffic guys at this time of night. Just a handful of other cars were out. She wondered what she’d look like to the oncoming drivers. Her face set and hard in their headlights. Gripping the wheel, eyes boring through the windscreen. Half possessed.
She pulled off the road. The Focus bumped along the rutted drive to quarry number eight. In the boot the body shifted against the cardboard. She found a weak place in the surrounding bushes, swung the steering-wheel, gunned the engine, and forced the car deep into the undergrowth. It came to a halt, the axle hard against a fallen tree-trunk. She got out, crunched her way back to the quarry edge. Stood on the deserted track, listening hard, peering back along the route she’d come. She hadn’t been followed. Elf’s Grotto was so remote, so isolated, no one ever came up here. Still, she watched the road for almost five minutes until she was satisfied.
About fifteen years ago, when she and Thom were still kids, a woman had gone missing from a nightclub in Bath. One minute she’d been there, the next she was gone. In the playground at school they used to scare each other: they’d say whoever had got the woman would go after kids next. It was only when Flea grew up and entered the police that she learnt the truth. The woman hadn’t been killed by a bogeyman but by the one-night-stand she’d left the club with. He’d reversed his car at her. Probably never meant to kill her, but did. He’d dumped her on a pig farm and Flea had spent three weeks one stifling summer pulling animal bones out of a pit there, steam-cleaning them, then passing them to an anthropologist. They never found the body and, without it, the CPS couldn’t bring the case. Even though everyone knew the truth.