Poppet

by Mo Hayder

  No – there’s no way he’d be able to walk into a hotel and book a room.

  He is holding several carrier bags. Bulging. In fact he has to put them on the floor as he pays for the docking station. As he does, the assistant glances anxiously past him a few times. Probably trying to catch the eye of the security guard in case something kicks off. But Handel just picks up his bags and then walks out of the shop. The waiting customers exchange relieved glances.

  Caffery skips back through the footage – the hurried blurs of customers, staff zipping in and out, stopping for milliseconds to talk to cashiers, customers, then equally quickly vanishing. Then, just ten minutes ahead of his iPod-dock purchase, Handel appears in the cash queue. This time he has no carrier bags but a trolley loaded with goods.

  Caffery freezes the picture. The boxes and reels and tins in the trolley are unidentifiable from the image. He unpauses the video and lets it run real time.

  Handel is as unsettling this time as he is in the later footage. Small though he is, something in his face makes people around him uncomfortable. One or two other customers push trolleys to the end of the queue, but within seconds of being in Handel’s vicinity they change their minds and steer their trolleys to another counter. One begins to unload goods on to the conveyor belt then changes her mind. She actually packs things back into her trolley and heads off, trying to appear casual, as if she’s forgotten something.

  Caffery watches closely as the cashier runs Handel’s items through the till. Again he freezes the picture. He has nothing to write on so he rolls up his shirtsleeve and jots down the time code on his arm. He gets up, goes to Kieran Bolt’s office door, and knocks.

  An Angel

  SOMETIMES THINGS ARE so beautiful you can tie yourself in knots trying to explain them or capture them. Maybe it’s Mum’s death, and the way he remembers her, or maybe it’s simply that AJ is a grown-up now – whatever, he’s learned to accept beauty when it comes his way, appreciate it, and believe it will come to him again. He doesn’t care that it’s a bit new-age, wisdom-of-the-universe stuff. It’s the way he’s learned to view the world.

  Except there’s one problem with it. Because – while it’s easy to look out of his window at the acres of green, at the boundless cloudy horizon – and accept and believe in it all and its continuity – he finds he can’t accept the fact that Melanie Arrow is sitting here at the old kitchen table, eating Patience’s nine p.m. breakfast. He simply can’t believe it and he can’t help wanting to own it and contain it. Wishing he’d done it earlier yet at the same time being glad he waited until it was right. It’s as if Mum is sitting in the corner smiling contentedly at Melanie – proud and glad that at last he’s done the right thing. Because an angel may as well have plopped down in their cottage. Someone to transform him – make him a better person.

  ‘More?’ Patience stands with her hand on her hip, the skillet in her hand, looking down her nose at Melanie, who has just, generously, consumed a pile of sausages, eggs, coconut ‘bammy’ cakes and fried pumpkin. Apparently the pumpkin patch is going crazy and Patience seems determined to feed every last one to Melanie. Not to mention the lovage brandy she keeps slopping into her glass. ‘Don’t you want to eat more?’

  AJ digs his teeth into the mug he’s sipping coffee from, vowing not to speak or interfere. If Mum was still alive she’d say that Patience has really got her sass out tonight. Melanie is the biggest challenge Patience has had in years. Probably since the 50–1 she backed at Kempton Park. She is all scrutiny, subjecting the first girlfriend her nephew has brought home in years to a stewards’ inquiry. The giveaway fail for Melanie will be any food cowardice. For AJ, Patience wants big, child-bearing women with huge breasts and hips. The slightest hint of a food hater will turn her into a mean-eyed bitch from hell.

  ‘Some dumpling? Haddock? I’ve got haddock poached in milk – I can do you a bowl with a dumpling and a bit of toast to soak it up? Some more of my lovage brandy?’

  The breakfast Patience has provided is the most elaborate to have graced this table in living memory. Melanie has been appreciative to a fault, but there has to be a tipping point.

  ‘I was supposed to be on a diet,’ she tells Patience. ‘But honestly, you’ve got diet saboteur written across your forehead.’

  She’s trying to humour Patience, but instead of a smile she’s rewarded with more food ladled on her plate. Patience turns away, unimpressed – still challenging. Melanie eats dutifully, her eyes on Patience’s back. She casts AJ the occasional brave glance and he nods encouragingly. He wants to explain in more detail – this is your initiation ceremony, Melanie. You’re doing well, it won’t always be like this … But maybe she’s already worked that out, because she applies herself to the task with a ferocity he’s only seen her use in the clinic.

  She finishes the plate. Delicately dabs her mouth, then hands it to Patience, who takes it without a murmur. She doesn’t offer Melanie any more food.

  It means the test has been passed.

  The Inventory

  THE TRANSACTION AT Wickes was in cash and itemized by the superstore. It took Kieran Bolt just two minutes to find it. He and Caffery stood in silence and read through the record of what Handel bought fifteen minutes before he paid for the docking station. To anyone else the list might have seemed innocuous. To Caffery, knowing what he did about Handel, it read like a bullet-point inventory of warning signs:

  Copper wiring

  Crocodile clips (seven different colours)

  Hacksaw blade

  Stanley knife

  Pliers

  Mercifully, back at the MCIT offices, the superintendent has gone home – so no big self-justification exercises needed. The building is almost empty. Caffery closes the blinds and clears the desk. In the corner are six green transport crates: Isaac’s paperwork up from Archives. Caffery lifts the first on to the desk. He opens a folder and begins to read.

  Handel lived at Upton Farm from the day he was born. At twelve he was already coming to the attention of the school for his increasingly withdrawn behaviour and bizarre outbursts. He was moved to a school for the learning disabled. Everyone knew Isaac was troubled, but evidently neither his teachers, social services nor his parents realized how dangerous he was. Not until it was too late.

  Next to Caffery’s mouse mat is the copy of the Wickes receipt. It connects so blatantly to what happened next it’s almost surreal. Like a joke. He takes a pen and begins underlining some of the items on the list. The first is:

  Stanley knife

  On 2 November, when Isaac was fourteen, he took a Stanley knife to his parents’ throats in the master bedroom of their house. Isaac’s father fought back, but he had the beginnings of heart disease and was no match for his adolescent son. Isaac incapacitated him by running the blade under his chin, opening up his windpipe and damaging the oesophagus. He did the same to his mother. For a while both victims were still breathing through the holes in their necks. It was blood loss that would eventually kill them.

  Pliers

  After cutting their throats, Isaac really went to town on them. He stayed with them for hours. While they died he carved their faces and cut off their ears. He cut out their tongues and removed several of their teeth, using, the pathologist speculates, a wrench. Like the one on the Wickes receipt.

  Nothing Handel removed from the bodies was found at the scene. And to this day none of the body parts has been traced. Some of the investigating officers speculated that he threw them out of the window and they were eaten by wildlife. Others insist the only way Isaac could have feasibly removed the things from the scene was to have ingested them. There is, however, no record of Isaac being examined or X-rayed. Teeth at least would have shown up in his stomach on an X-ray, Caffery thinks. But with a CSI’s dream of a crime scene – with a defence of insanity – no police force in the country opens its piggy bank to dig deeper in an investigation. That only happens when a Misty Kitson goes missing.

  Wire and crocodile
clips

  Graham and Louise Handel were discovered positioned on their backs, their mouths wide open. That may have been the result of the muscles spasming when their son wrenched their teeth out. The remaining sockets are black and blood-streaked in the photographs. In the report the pathologist notes time and time again he was unable to make an accurate examination due to the delays encountered because of ‘circumstances’ at the crime scene. Without immediate access to the bodies a lot of his conclusions were leaps of faith. He could only estimate that it took Mrs Handel in excess of thirty minutes to die, Mr Handel a little less – maybe eighteen to twenty minutes. Nor could he say whether their open mouths were a result of rigor mortis – or whether Isaac managed to position them like that in death.

  The ‘circumstances’ preventing the crew getting to the bodies are logged by several parties: the forensics investigators, the first attending officer, the SIO. And they make Caffery even more uneasy.

  At a place exactly equidistant to the door and to the bodies, Handel had placed a length of wire. The first attending was canny enough to spot it and instantly called in military bomb-disposal experts. It took them ninety minutes to travel from Salisbury and make the scene safe. They explained that anyone entering the scene unwittingly would have triggered a chemical explosion that would have ignited the entire room. A booby-trapped crime scene. It’s so clever.

  When Caffery’s finished reading he turns the last page of the CSI report face down in the box, closes the lid and contemplates it. There’s something awry here – an inconsistency or anomaly, something he can’t quite put a finger on … He sits with his thumbs digging into his temples, trying to concentrate. But he can’t quite nail it.

  He drags across the photograph of Isaac Handel. Many people claim that they can see evil in a person’s eyes, and Caffery sometimes wonders if he’s missing a vital component, because in all his years in this job, with all the killers and rapists and child murderers he’s met, he’s never ever been able to look into the eyes of a killer and see evil. In Isaac Handel’s eyes he sees nothing. Nothing at all. It’s as if there’s an impenetrable barrier slotted down there behind the irises.

  Again he wonders what was missing from the report. And when he can’t come up with an answer he leans back in his chair, hands folded across his stomach, and lines up his thoughts in a row.

  Assume, he tells himself, because all the signs are there, that Handel is not rehabilitated and that he is a danger to himself and to the public.

  Assume that what happened in Beechway High Secure Unit is secondary.

  Assume finding Isaac Handel is primary.

  Assume that the superintendent won’t raise the budget on this to a homicide until Zelda’s post-mortem is re-done, and that he certainly won’t be interested in a ghost in a psychiatric unit.

  All of which means Caffery has to do things the hard way – finding Handel on his own.

  And, as with most things in life, assume the best place to start is at the beginning.

  Stewart and the Wandering Star

  MELANIE IS STILL loaded down with food and slow moving. The sex she and AJ have that night is the sort that belongs on a desert island, lazy and leisurely and un-showoffy. It takes for ever; it’s speechless. Afterwards she amazes him by curling up next to him, holding him tightly, as if she’s clinging on to a life raft. He drifts off to sleep in the middle of studying her – mapping every detail of her face. He’s in the same position, on his back, arm pushed out to the side, when he wakes.

  She’s still lying on his arm but she’s wide awake, prodding him.

  ‘AJ? AJ?’

  ‘Yeah? What?’ He rubs his eyes, props himself up on his elbows and looks around groggily. His first thought is Isaac Handel, but the curtains are closed. ‘What’s up?’

  Mel kisses his ear. She smells of warm orange and shampoo. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, sweetheart. Don’t think I’m being rude, but would you ask Stewart to go out on to the landing?’

  Stewart is in his usual place next to the door, lying down. He’s wide awake too – eyes fixed on AJ and Melanie. ‘Stewart? Why? What’s he done?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She gives a little shiver. Dabs her nose with a tissue. Sniffs. ‘Maybe he’s been out in the grass – I don’t know – it’s just my allergy’s kicking in.’

  Even through the pall of sleep AJ knows her sniffs are fake. He sits up now, peers seriously at her. ‘Melanie? Allergy? Are you sure? It’s autumn.’

  ‘Yes – I’m sorry, I think it’s dear old Stewart and I …’

  AJ looks from Stewart to Melanie and back again, perplexed. But he gets up anyway and takes Stewart out on to the landing, closes the door and returns to bed.

  ‘Thank you.’ She cuddles into him. She’s cold and covered in goosebumps. From her breathing he knows her nose isn’t bunged up at all. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What’s really the matter?’ he asks. ‘You haven’t got an allergy.’

  She stops her wriggling and goes still like an animal caught in a trap. He can feel her ribcage rising and falling very gently.

  ‘Melanie? What is it? Did you see something?’

  ‘No – I promise. It’s an allergy.’

  ‘Please. I’m honest with you.’

  There’s a long silence. Then she shakes her head. ‘No. You’ll think I’m crazy.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep—’

  ‘Not surprising. And with everything you ate last night too.’

  ‘No – every time I opened my eyes Stewart was awake. I just kept thinking what you said about how something happened – how he …’ She swallows. ‘How he disappeared. AJ? What do you think he saw?’

  AJ frowns, looks down at her to see if she’s serious. Melanie Arrow, the hard-headed, no-nonsense workaholic. It’s actually getting to her.

  ‘Hey.’ He kisses her on her forehead. ‘You’re safe here. I promise.’

  She gives a weak smile. ‘Promise, promise, pinkie promise?’

  ‘Pinkie promise, cross my heart. Now go to sleep.’

  Eventually she does go back to sleep. AJ does too. It’s a dreamless, deep sleep – and they are both so tired that they snooze on through the alarm. It’s only Stewart scratching at the door and whimpering that wakes them. They jump up hurriedly, and race around trying to organize themselves. Patience is still asleep but she’s been up in the night and has left coffee brewing for them on the stove. AJ pours a cup for Melanie and drinks his mug standing in the doorway watching Stewart doing his thing in the fields.

  He wonders what on earth is going on with the dog. Mel’s right, something is really askew. When Stewart’s had a pee, instead of trotting back to the cottage for his breakfast, he turns and looks in the direction of the woods.

  ‘No.’ AJ shakes his head. ‘No, Stewart, not again. Come on, come here. Now.’

  Stewart can’t make up his mind whether to obey. He gives the woods a longing look, then glances back at AJ.

  ‘I said now, Stewart.’

  Finally Stewart’s stomach gets the better of him and he trots obligingly back inside. If he resents being thrown out of the bedroom last night it doesn’t show as he tucks into his breakfast. AJ watches him thoughtfully for a few moments, then he washes his coffee mug and heads back upstairs.

  Melanie has showered and is already dressed and sitting in the chair next to his bedroom window, delving into her handbag. She’s wearing a white blouse with a sailor collar and little black bow and silver earrings dangling around her jawline. When he comes in she hurriedly takes her hands out of the handbag. But not so quickly that he hasn’t seen what she was doing.

  He looks at the bag. ‘Still haven’t found your bracelet?’

  ‘Oh,’ she shrugs. ‘No – no, I … Never mind, it’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘It’s hard, when you lose something that precious to you.’

  Melanie blinks and continues smiling at him. But he can tell it’s an effort. She’s fighting to
stop something under the surface cracking open.

  ‘Melanie?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says brightly. She jumps up and turns her back on him, begins shovelling things into her bag. ‘Gotta get going, AJ, we’ve gotta get going – people to see, hospitals to run. Come on.’ She holds up her hand and clicks her fingers, still not looking at him. ‘Vamos, vamos, vamos, babbbeeeee!’

  The Bath

  AJ’S HEAD IS misbehaving – leaping all over the places he doesn’t want it to leap. If he’s not thinking about whether Melanie’s still got feelings for Jonathan Keay, he’s wondering why DI Caffery hasn’t called. Not that AJ expects him to, but he’d like some sort of contact. And an update. That conversation they had keeps plaguing him: Do you really not know what happened at Upton Farm …

  The moment he and Melanie get to work, AJ makes an excuse and goes straight to Handel’s room. It still hasn’t been turned round for the next admission off the acute ward. He unlocks the door, goes in, and locks the door behind him before anyone sees. The rooms in the pre-discharge ward are designed for low-risk patients ready to move either out into the community or to be referred on to medium-secure units. The patients have furniture and can put up posters. Some risk-evaluated patients even have baths in their en suites. Handel was allowed a tub and coat hangers and a spotlight above his bed for reading.

  A start has been made on preparing the room for the next occupant. The cleaning equipment has been brought up here and left in the corner. There are two bin liners full of rubbish sitting under the window. AJ squats and starts going through the contents. Nothing too odd: the usual assortment of sweet-wrappers, a mouldy apple, magazines and old underwear.