Wolf

by Mo Hayder

  ‘There is.’ From her place in the window seat, Lucia raises her head. ‘A terrible atmosphere.’

  Matilda studies Lucia. She’s always said she hates this place, even before the killings. She is more sensitive than anyone in the family, always has been. Kiran, on the other hand – well, Kiran is completely the opposite. Though Oliver is firmly in the nurture versus nature camp – that every child can be moulded by society to be a productive and happy citizen – Matilda couldn’t disagree more. Having brought up two children, she believes that children are born. Like planets they fall into their natural orbit no matter what you fire at them. You might hope to nudge them slightly off their route, but you’ll never turn them around. Kiran was born with a clear, straight, solid core. From the word go he’s known what he wants from the world. Lucia is the polar opposite. She gets pulled and reversed and cannot keep in line. Hugo’s death exacerbated the problem.

  ‘Boss?’ Everyone twists round. Molina has come into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. Sweat is beading on his forehead. ‘Problem.’

  What Angels Want

  ‘MY LITTLE GIRL would want me to be happy. She was an angel, my daughter, a complete angel. And I suppose she’s an angel still. She’s up there and watching me.’

  In the front seat Jacqui Kitson has her legs crossed, her right arm up over the back of the seat so she is turned in Caffery’s direction. She’s relaxed in his car. He keeps his eyes on the road, conscious of her proximity and the red lipstick blur as her mouth moves.

  ‘I know she wants this for me, Jack. She wants me to have happiness. What do you think? Do you think she’d want me to be happy?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Jacqui sighs. ‘I think she would.’ She uncrosses her leg, pulls down the visor and uses the mirror to check her reflection. She finds the lipstick on her teeth and rubs it away with a noise of irritation. Then she snaps the mirror back to its place and says, ‘I don’t know why, but a drink in the afternoon always cheers me up. Are you the same?’

  Caffery would like a drink, but not with her. He judges by the smell that she’s already managed one or two this morning, in spite of the green tea for the cameras.

  ‘Aren’t there any pubs around here?’ she asks. ‘Somewhere intimate? One of those thatched-roof thingies?’

  ‘Realistically, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to drink while I’m on duty.’

  Jacqui gives a long hiccupping laugh. ‘Oh my GOD! Realistically, that wouldn’t be appropriate? You’ve got your professional face on then?’

  ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘Maybe, but when you say it like that I can’t help wondering what is “appropriate”. A little drink with me? Wouldn’t kill you to be friendly, would it?’

  Caffery makes no comment. Jacqui has always flirted with him. Usually she’s drunk and he can slide out of her way without too much argument. He calculates it’s another hour’s drive to her hotel in Bristol. A long time to hold her at bay.

  ‘Come on, Jack. We’re old friends. Just a quick stop. Look at all these places we’re passing. One of them must do a nice Pinot.’

  ‘I said no, and that’s what I mean. Let’s drop the subject.’

  That deflates Jacqui. She sinks back in her seat, arms folded, her mouth twisting as if trying to come up with a witty retort. For a while there is silence. The roads are quiet so he can put on some speed, the fields and hedgerows zipping past the car. Clouds play rapid cat and mouse overhead, occasionally opening up to reveal huge, cathedral-like blue stretches of sky.

  Caffery pities Jacqui, but he’ll never go in the direction she wants. He has a lifelong dilemma with women and maybe that’s contributing to the sick way he feels. The blinding flashes of red, the headaches and the dreams of quicksand. He’s never been able to get it right. Never married or had kids. The only girlfriends he’s had have been screwed up in some way. There’s only one woman he has ever imagined he could get it right with. She’s a police sergeant. Not DS Paluzzi, but the head of a specialist search unit over at Almondsbury, and he’s been through a lot with her, both professionally and personally. Somehow, when he pictures the end of the story, he always imagines her in it. He’s never told her this or acted on it. He’s not sure why.

  And he’s not sure if that is the cause or the effect of this atom bomb sitting in his head.

  Jacqui begins to fidget. She opens her bag, takes out a packet of cigarettes. She pulls out a gold lighter, appears to think better of lighting up and puts everything back. She closes her bag and sits with it clutched on her lap, her manicured fingers tapping lightly. Eventually she can’t resist speaking.

  ‘I don’t get it. There’s no ring on your finger, you’re not spoken for, so what is it? The age gap? You’re what? Forty? I’m only late forties. It’s not like I’m some cougar. And even if I was, would it be a sin? Or is it that you don’t think I’m allowed to be happy now? Is that what it is? Hmm?’

  Caffery says nothing.

  ‘Yeah!’ Jacqui says. ‘That’s what it is. You think instead of enjoying myself I ought to be wearing black and crying all the time. Believe me, I’ve done my share of that. And you – people like you, you’ll never know what it feels like, so don’t judge.’

  ‘Is that right, Jacqui?’

  ‘Of course it’s right. You do all this sympathy stuff, but you don’t know. Not really. Nobody does. They might have had people die on them – in a hospital bed or at home. A body to bury, a funeral service, time to grieve, etc etc. But no one really knows what it’s like to have someone you love go missing. Not knowing. Day after day after day – it’s hell on earth. You never sleep. Did you know that?’

  Caffery’s pulse beats slow and hard. He grips the steering wheel until his hands are white. ‘Jacqui, I’d like you to stop now. I do know what it’s like, so please don’t tell me I don’t.’

  ‘But you don’t. You have absolutely no idea what it’s like. Nobody knows. Every day you try to sleep, you close your eyes, but it’s not real sleep. You dream about them all the time. You get all these images – horrible things happening. You think there must be one stone that hasn’t been turned, one person that hasn’t been questioned. You wonder, Is she alive? Is she hurt? Is she dead? That just goes round and round your head all the time, till you wonder whether you’re mad and—’

  A sudden sensation in the side of Caffery’s neck. An almost audible pop, as if a blood vessel has burst. He slams on the brakes and swerves the car to a halt in a lay-by. He unclips his belt and leans across her to open the passenger door.

  ‘What?’ She looks down at the kerb, then back at Caffery, then around the car. Baffled by the reason they’ve come to such an abrupt halt. They are on a suburban street in Keynsham. There’s nothing. No bus stop, no buildings. Just a row of houses and a newsagents. ‘What? What the fuck’re we doing here?’

  Knives

  DS MOLINA LOCKS the side door, goes straight to the kitchen sink, turns on the tap and bends, his mouth to the opening, letting the water gush directly into his mouth. No one speaks while he does this. They stand and stare at him. Oliver plucks at the sleeves of his shirt to get some air in there, to stop the sweat pricking his underarms.

  ‘Well?’ DI Honey comes and stands next to his colleague, one hand on the work surface, half bent to scrutinize his face. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘I saw something.’

  ‘Something? What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘I do mind.’

  Molina pauses and looks up, his eyes magnified behind his glasses. Water streams off him. Oliver thinks something dark crosses his face, but Molina quickly contains it. He straightens, finds a tea-towel and dries himself off.

  ‘What did you see?’ Honey insists. ‘What?’

  Lucia suddenly puts her hands over her ears. ‘Oh, please don’t. I don’t want to hear it.’

/>   ‘I do.’ Honey is adamant. ‘I want to hear it.’

  ‘You’re upsetting her. Can’t you see that?’ Molina takes the radio out of his pocket and throws it on the table. ‘Useless. I can’t get anyone to answer me.’

  Everyone stares at the radio. Oliver in particular finds this impossible to believe. He knows a lot about communications and this just shouldn’t be happening. ‘I beg your pardon? You’ve got a whole new radio system. How can you not get an answer? There isn’t supposed to be a place in the British Isles you can’t get a signal.’

  ‘I know – go figure. But then all of this is—’ Molina gives a helpless gesture in the direction of the coppice. ‘It’s gone beyond a joke. This is like a bloody movie.’ He licks his lips and looks at Oliver. ‘Where’s your phone?’

  ‘Over there on the worktop. But it’s not working.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘My wife did tell you. Earlier. She mentioned it to you because it was odd. The house phone not working. No wi-fi. And there’s never been a mobile signal here.’

  Honey pulls his mobile from his pocket and studies it, frowning. ‘What network are you?’

  ‘Orange. But no company has a signal up here. It hasn’t worried us before.’

  ‘Shit.’ Honey puts the phone back in his pocket. ‘Haven’t you got an alarm fitted?’

  ‘The phone line is down and usually that would provoke a callout. I can only assume the alarm’s been tampered with – otherwise we’d have been visited a long time ago.’

  Honey appears lost for words. Oliver can’t help but give a satisfied smile at the way the inspector is slowly waking up to the seriousness of the situation.

  ‘There isn’t an SOS signal either. The only place is at the bottom of the drive. Even there it’s weak.’

  Honey pushes the radio back across the table at his sergeant. ‘That’s where the car is, at the end of the drive. Go down there. You can radio from the car.’

  Molina doesn’t respond. He blinks rapidly behind his thick glasses.

  ‘Mate?’ Honey tips his head on one side, puzzled. ‘You’re still here.’

  Molina’s jaw moves slightly, as if he’s chewing. As if he’s trying to find the right words. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not sure I want to.’

  ‘It’s come to this, has it?’ DI Honey pushes the chair back and stands. All eyes are on him. Oliver can’t decide if this tall man with the shiny head is someone he can place his confidence in or not. The inspector claws back the radio, puts it in his top pocket, then reaches inside his jacket. A gun, Oliver thinks, but tells himself, No, of course not. This is the UK. Detectives in the UK aren’t armed. Sure enough Honey pulls out handcuffs and a small canister of something that looks like mace. Oliver’s spirit sinks. If Kable is out there in the grounds of The Turrets, mace and handcuffs aren’t going to stop him. He is a psychopath. He will stop at nothing.

  ‘Where’s your car?’ Honey asks Oliver.

  ‘We leave it on the next level down – too many trees around the house. Why?’

  ‘I’m going to drive down to the gates.’ Inspector Honey goes to the window and stands for a moment, measuring the distance between the door and the next level of the driveway where the family’s Land Rover is parked.

  ‘There’s another car in the garage – my wife’s runaround.’

  ‘The garage is …?’

  Oliver indicates the sunny courtyard. Beyond it is the garage. ‘Not so far.’

  Honey puts his hands on the windowsill, leans forward and presses his face to the window. He peers out to the right and to the left. Then his attention is caught by the knife block sitting on the windowsill, the black handles facing up. He crosses to them.

  ‘One serrated, one smooth.’

  Honey glances at Oliver. ‘I beg your pardon? What did you say?’

  ‘I said take a smooth knife for the initial target, and a serrated knife for when he’s down.’ Oliver nods very slowly. ‘The smooth knife goes in faster and will set him back, but it might just go straight into muscle, which won’t finish him. A serrated knife gives you the best return for your money if you’re thinking blood loss. If you’re clever, the best damage can be done with a serrated blade.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  Oliver doesn’t answer. No one looks at him and believes even for a moment that he can look after himself, because after all he has a frail body and a middle-class accent, neither of which fits with being capable. He’s lived with the middle-class thing for years, that’s a given, but the frailness, the creeping atrophy of his muscle, skeleton and fibre, is something new. He wonders what he looks like to this healthy man, who may have a receding hairline and a shiny forehead, but is muscular and not bowed or running to fat. He wonders if he, Oliver, gives away any of the secrets of his life. Old and sick though he appears, he has seen more horror, more reality in one hour at work than this boy Honey has seen in his entire life.

  ‘You’ll have to trust me. Take two types of knife. You won’t regret it.’

  Honey pauses. He looks at the knives then back at Oliver then at the knives again. He chooses two. A serrated and a smooth, just as Oliver suggested. He puts one into the right-hand pocket of his trousers and the other in the left. The correct place, Oliver thinks approvingly. It’s the best option, given all the constraints. The least likely place for him to be injured by the blades if he falls, and the easiest place to retrieve them in a hurry.

  The keys to the garage and the runaround are kept where all the other keys are – in the study at the end of the corridor under the western turret. Oliver gets up and heads out of the kitchen. He feels stronger, as if the anger and the fear have given breadth to his shoulders, energy to his pig-heart. He’s in the hallway when Molina catches up with him.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Oliver looks down at Molina’s hand, which is extended, ready to steady his elbow. ‘I’m OK. I can get there on my own.’

  ‘I’m sure you can. But I want to know how much of the woods you can see from the windows back there. We don’t know which side of the house he might be.’

  The Woman in the Yellow House

  OLLIE GOES WITH Molina to get the garage key and Matilda is even less able to keep still than she was earlier. She busies herself clearing the cups, pretending to be calm. A few moments later DS Molina comes back – he’s left Oliver hunting for the key – and stands with his inspector in a huddle at the side window. They seem to be discussing how far it is to the garage and who is going to be the one to get the car, muttering to each other under their breath. Molina keeps tapping on the pane, to draw attention to something outside – just out of view.

  DI Honey nods. He turns and, bending slightly at the waist, cranes his neck to see out of the front window where the driveway makes two serpentine loops just below the parking area at the front, then drops out of sight to travel down the hill to the road. He glances at the ceiling, then asks Matilda, ‘There are turrets on the top of the house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you see the driveway from them?’

  ‘Yes. You can see all the way to the gates.’

  ‘Can you take me up there?’ DS Molina says. ‘I need to see.’

  ‘I’ll take you.’ Lucia lets Bear down and stands, pulling the sleeves of her cardigan around her hands as if that’s going to protect her somehow. ‘Come on. This way.’

  They go, leaving Matilda and Honey alone together. She watches him for a while, hoping he’ll say something reassuring. But his eyes are dancing from side to side, monitoring everything out of the window. She dries and puts the cups away, folds up the dishtowel.

  ‘Inspector Honey, I didn’t want to say it with my daughter in the room, but here are some spots of something on the floor – over there. I’m sure they’re nothing, but perhaps you should have a look.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘On the floor – there. Just please don’t mention it when Lucia comes back.’

  He fo
llows her eyes. Crosses the room. Crouches and dabs his fingers on the drops, looks at them.

  ‘I don’t know. It could be anything.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not blood?’

  ‘I’m fairly sure.’

  ‘Fairly?’

  He raises his eyes to her, solemn. ‘Everything’s going to be OK, Mrs Anchor-Ferrers. You can calm down. I promise you there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Isn’t there?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  But she doesn’t relax her scrutiny of him. She pulls off her gardening apron and throws it on the table with a clatter. It’s more to do with the adrenalin than an act of irritation but it startles him. He gets up and begins to pace around the kitchen, trying to prove how relaxed he is by pretending to show an interest in objects. He runs a hand admiringly across the back of a tapestry-covered chair. He inspects an oil portrait of the children which is propped on the mantelpiece and nods approvingly at the collection of Sèvres porcelain on the Welsh dresser.

  Then, as if to impress her with his nonchalance, he goes to the table and inches a piece of the cake on to a plate. He sits and begins to eat, swallowing each mouthful with evident difficulty.

  ‘Very good,’ he says eventually, putting the empty plate down. ‘Molasses. I’m a keen cook myself.’

  ‘Do you think he’s somehow been in the house?’

  ‘Did you get that here? Or in London? Tastes like a London cake to me.’

  ‘You think he’s been in the house, Mr Honey, don’t you? Right here in this kitchen. Which means he’s probably somewhere near the house now. Very near. So what are you going to do if you don’t get to the car? I mean – he’s obviously disabled the phone and the alarm. And God only knows why your radios aren’t working. Maybe that’s down to him too.’

  DI Honey goes to the sink and runs the tap. Without asking her permission he takes a glass from the draining board and begins to fill it.

  ‘I’ve been a cop for a long time,’ he says while the glass fills. ‘Since I was twenty. I can’t even guess any more what it’s like to be civvy. I’ve seen a few things, believe me.’