The headlights swept the new leaves on to the crowded gorse bushes. Obeying an instinct that told him to be stealthy, he parked the car just off the slip-road behind some skips and limped the last hundred yards to the edge of quarry number eight.
It was a milky night, the moonlight scattering in an oppressive glow. Low clouds pressed down, holding the light close to the land. Nothing moved in the shadows, no wildlife or wind. He stood for a moment at the edge of the water, his hands on the back of his leg, checking he hadn’t opened the wound in the walk here, that it wasn’t going to start bleeding again.
The quarry was quiet. Nothing moved. Where does he live? he wondered. Where does he hide?
He went fifty yards round the edge to the place where Ben Jakes had been found, stopped and looked at the undergrowth. Nothing had changed. He went on, anticlockwise around the quarry, pausing every few minutes to listen to the night sounds, pushing through brambles and dead branches in the places the footpath gave out. He was almost back to where he’d found the scooter when something stopped him in his tracks.
Ten feet away, parked in the undergrowth and covered with branches, was a car. A silver Ford Focus. It looked as if it had been there for a long time. Days, from the way it was covered. But he knew it couldn’t have been. He took a step nearer and held his hand above the bonnet. Still warm. Someone had parked it here to hide it. He turned and surveyed the quarry. The water and surrounding trees were absolutely motionless. Was someone else here? Were they watching him now? From the trees? From the other side of the quarry?
The tramadol still wasn’t working and his pulse was moving fast as he picked his way through the undergrowth to the back of the car. He looked at the registration thoughtfully. Y reg. A Y-registration Ford Focus.
It came to him slowly. It came like a slow wave.
He knew whose car it was.
Sergeant Marley was bored with the Focus, she’d said. Bored with it? He pulled his sleeve down again and tried the boot. Locked. At the quarry the day she’d found the dog, it had been the moment he’d asked her about this car that something had changed in her.
A half-remembered thought edged at him. He stepped back from the car into the undergrowth and stared at the number plate again. He’d seen this car a few times – once was on the day they’d made the arrests for Operation Norway: it had been parked outside a remote house in the Mendips and he’d had time to study it. He narrowed his eyes, remembering: there’d been a PSU-issue kit on the back shelf and something else… Something important. A piece of fabric hanging from the boot. A swatch of purplish blue velvet jammed into the lock.
In his pocket the phone began to ring. Startled him. He backed into the trees. Fishing it out of his pocket, he killed the noise as soon as he could.
‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘What?’
‘Jack?’ It was Powers. His voice soft and oiled from a night’s drinking. ‘Got your message. I only just heard what happened. I’m sorry, mate, really sorry.’
‘Yeah.’ Caffery didn’t take his eyes off the car. Purple velvet. Purple velvet jammed in the boot of the fucking car. ‘Sure.’
‘Where are you? In the hospital? I had someone from the CSI team trying to track you down. They said you promised them your clothes when you got out of the hospital.’
Purple velvet. Car, coat. Car, coat. Misty Kitson’s coat. Flea hadn’t wanted to search a lake for her.
‘And me – have you got something for me? You sounded excited. Was it about Kitson?’
‘Kitson.’ Caffery repeated it distantly as if he’d never heard the name before. ‘Misty Kitson.’
‘You said you’d have something by now. Remember?’ Powers paused. ‘Can you hear me, Jack? Look, just give me the intel you had, what your snout had to say, and we can take it from there. I’ll come to you, if you want. Now. Wherever you are.’
Caffery didn’t answer. Still staring at the car, he took the phone away from his ear and held it at arm’s length. He let Powers speak to the air for a few seconds. Then, using his thumb, he switched the phone off. He stood like that, motionless in the darkness, his arm outstretched, heart hammering in his chest.
There is no God, he thought. There is no such thing as God.
72
Looking at it now, it had been clear all along. There was so much to pin on Flea. The tics, the lapses of logic in her behaviour. He remembered Stuart Pearce at Lucy Mahoney’s body-recovery site. The traffic cop at the quarry saying that the night Kitson went missing there’d been something wrong with Flea. That she’d been distressed.
From the quarry to his right there came a low, distinctive glooping noise – as if an animal had broken the surface. He dropped the phone into his pocket and backed away from the car, moving silently into the trees, stopping about twenty yards away where he was hidden. He waited, watching the car and the black water reflecting the clouds.
Tiny ripples raced out across the water, as if someone had thrown a stone about three yards from the shore. The surface bulged and broke again. More ripples disturbed the cloud reflections. Someone was in the water. He moved himself further inside the shadows of the trees. More bubbles boiled up, then a head appeared: black and shiny. It was Flea, the hazy light bouncing off her diving hood.
He wedged himself against a tree so he didn’t lose balance while he watched. She climbed up a few ladder rungs, then pulled off the mask and sat on the edge of the quarry, unsnapping the front of the harness, leaning back and lowering the cylinders to the ground. She pulled off her fins and gloves, took a moment or two to turn off the air regulator on the cylinders and got shakily to her feet. She paused for a moment, surveying the quarry, turning around and around. Her wet hair clung to her head and her small face was strained and pinched. When she was sure she was alone, she reached into a pocket in the drysuit leg, pulled out keys and headed for the car. She didn’t open the driver’s door, but went straight to the boot and opened it.
Bending down, she wrapped her arms around a large white package. Caffery knew what it contained: he could see the yellowish smudge of bleached hair pressed to the plastic sheeting. He shuffled forward a few paces, pinching his nose hard as if that might make him come to his senses and realize this was just a dream.
Moving slowly, clumsily, Flea dropped the body. It hit the ground with a dull thud. She slammed the boot and bent, catching up the package by two corners of the plastic sheeting. Gritting her teeth in concentration, she leant her weight back and began to drag it along the ground, pulling it out of the trees, out into the hazy, reflected moonlight, out in the direction of the water. It bumped and snagged. Once or twice he thought she wasn’t going to be able to get it out of the trees. But she was used to the lumpen weight of a dead body and she fought it. It took her ten minutes to do it, but she dragged it all the way to the edge of the quarry.
She lowered the package close to the ladder, and straightened, digging her hands into the small of her back, circling her head to release the tension. Then something made her stiffen. She turned and looked into the trees.
‘Who’s there?’ She stared in his direction.
Caffery squeezed his nostrils tighter, fighting back the urge to speak. A weight pressed up against his ribcage.
She listened for a moment or two longer. Then, frowning, she began to reassemble her kit, pulling on the fins, leaning back to hitch up the twin tanks, snapping on the jacket.
When she was fully kitted she climbed halfway into the water. Standing on the ladder, one arm wrapped on the rungs, she bumped the body down after her. As it tilted up Caffery could see skin, exposed through the shredded plastic. Torn skin, and muscle, and white-blonde hair.
When Flea’d got the corpse most of the way into the water she paused. She was facing it, one arm around it.