by Mo Hayder
Matilda sighs. She reaches down and picks up Bear. She sinks into a chair, burying her face in the dog’s fur, just the way Lucia has been doing. A comfort. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not much interested in what you’ve seen in the past.’
‘I’ve seen a few things,’ Honey continues, still with his back to her. ‘But I’ve never seen anything like what I saw down in that yellow house. What he did to that woman … It doesn’t even begin to make sense.’ DI Honey drinks the water in one. He sets the glass down in the sink. He turns and smiles apologetically. ‘Not that I’d want to upset you, of course, Mrs Anchor-Ferrers, but I’ve never seen anything quite so ferocious. He’d cut her here.’ He places a finger on his stomach. ‘Pulled everything out. Makes me wonder what he was thinking – as if he wanted to empty her out.’
‘Please,’ she begins, but is interrupted by a loud noise overhead. She jumps, turns her eyes upwards.
‘It’s all right. It’s only my man and your daughter.’
Matilda stares in silence at the ceiling. Footsteps can be heard on the stairs – hurried footsteps. A moment later the door opens and Molina comes in. He’s taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves to reveal his long, almost ape-like arms, sprinkled in auburn hair.
‘Everything OK?’ asks Honey.
‘Driveway’s clear. And round the back of the house too.’
‘Good. That’s worth knowing.’ Honey’s voice is slower. He smiles. ‘I was just telling Mrs Anchor-Ferrers about what Kable did. To the woman.’
‘The woman?’
‘You know, the one in the house. I was telling her how he cut her. So it looked like he was trying to empty her out.’
Molina hesitates. He glances at Matilda, then back at his DI, as if he doesn’t know how to respond to this.
‘You know, the way he took the knife to her. Opened up her stomach and emptied it. Almost like he wanted to get inside it.’
‘Yes,’ Molina replies eventually. ‘Yes. That was bad.’
Honey shakes his head regretfully. ‘Bad. Really bad. If you ask me, he was thinking about cutting off her breasts too.’ Honey’s eyes rove briefly to Matilda’s chest. ‘He didn’t actually do it, but you could tell from the cuts he made it’s what he was thinking.’
Matilda looks from one man to the other. Her heart is thumping. Something has shifted, but it’s happened so rapidly, so smoothly that she can’t quite work out what. She says, ‘Where’s Lucia?’
Honey blinks. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Where’s Lucia? My daughter. Did she stay upstairs?’
‘Yes. Sorry – you confused me then. Your daughter. I mean, she must be someone’s daughter of course. I knew she must have been born from someone, on some level I knew it. It’s just she’s sort of …’
‘Sort of?’
‘She never strike you as a bit common, Mrs Anchor-Ferrers? Have you never looked at your daughter and thought, Whoa, now that’s not a pretty trait in a lady. That level of sluttiness?’
Matilda’s face goes slack. ‘Where is she?’
DI Honey turns to DS Molina, his eyebrows raised questioningly. Molina seems to be thinking about this, but in the end opens his hands, a pained expression on his face – as if to say You’ve caught me out! What do I say now?
Honey laughs. ‘Well, Molina old boy, are you sure she didn’t say something about helping Daddy find the car keys?’
Ewan Caffery
WHEN JACK CAFFERY was eight years old – an average boy growing up in the deprived and overrun southern boroughs of London – his older brother, Ewan, aged nine, vanished. One Saturday afternoon he walked out of the family’s back garden and simply disappeared into thin air. He hasn’t been seen since. A hundred and fifty yards from the family home, on the other side of a railway cutting that ran along the back gardens, was the house of Ivan Penderecki, an ageing paedophile. There was no doubt Penderecki played a part in Ewan’s disappearance, but he was never convicted. There was simply no evidence. Absolutely nothing to prove what happened. Least of all a body.
When Jacqui says Caffery has no idea what she’s suffered, she is wrong. So wrong. He’s been in her position most of his life. Except that whereas her daughter’s remains have been returned to her, Ewan’s haven’t been found. Not to this day.
Eleven years ago the paedophile Ivan Penderecki hanged himself. Not because he was ashamed of the countless children’s lives he’d destroyed with his habits, but because he’d been diagnosed with cancer and was too much of a coward to face the treatment. At first it seemed the trail to finding Ewan had died with Penderecki, but then Caffery discovered the old guy’s stash of child pornography. It had been well hidden, and well disguised, but once Caffery had cracked the code it turned out to be a lever into the paedophile ring Penderecki had belonged to.
Somehow Jack always knew there had been something cleverer at play in disappearing Ewan so easily. A level of sophistication that surpassed the knowledge of a sixty-year-old laundry worker. Penderecki had to have had help and Caffery was sure the answer lay somewhere within that ring. However by the time he found out about them many of the members were already dead or locked up. There remained only one person he could trace: Tracey Lamb – a satellite member of the ring. He homed in on her, certain she knew Ewan’s final resting place.
It took weeks to decide she was jerking his chain, messing him around and wasn’t ever going to give up what she knew. His revenge on her was swift and merciless. He delivered her to Scotland Yard’s paedophile unit – she spent the rest of her life locked in Holloway Prison in North London.
Now Caffery sees where his headaches and dreams are coming from. It’s taken Jacqui’s haranguing to make it clear.
‘Get out,’ he says. ‘Get out of my car.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. I don’t want to have to repeat it.’
‘What the hell is the matter with you?’
‘Just get out.’
Fingers trembling, Jacqui undoes her belt. She grabs her coat from the back seat and climbs out. ‘How’m I supposed to get to my hotel? Your superintendent isn’t going to be happy about this.’ She fumbles her phone from her bag and holds it up to Caffery’s face. ‘I’m going to call him. I fucking am. And then I’m calling the papers. It’s a fucking disgrace, what you’ve done, a fucking—’
He slams the door on her and, without indicating, floors the accelerator. The car shoots into the road. Horns blast, tyres scream. In his mirror he can see Jacqui Kitson yelling after him. He ignores her. He knows where life is taking him now and it’s nowhere she can follow.
A Party
THERE’S A MOMENT when it could have gone differently – a moment when fate might have been tricked into letting Matilda grab the fire poker from the hearth to defend herself. Or letting her run to the back door and out into the garden, where maybe she could have raced into the woods and down eventually into the village to raise the alarm. But that moment passes so smoothly it’s like silk slipping through a ring, and before she knows what is happening she is handcuffed, on the floor with her arms around the table leg. She hasn’t even resisted. In fact she’s so numb and confused that when DI Honey said, ‘Hold out your hands,’ she did. She let him fasten the cuffs and obligingly sat on the floor while the two men lifted the heavy oak table and dropped the leg down inside her arms.
DI Honey is wearing really nice shoes. Expensive shoes. It’s a stupid thing but she fixates on those shoes, thinking that a policeman who wears nice shoes like that can’t mean them any harm. There must be a mistake, an explanation.
The men leave the room. Matilda immediately tries to wedge her back under the table and lift it, so she can pull her hands out, but there’s a wooden cross-member linking this leg to the other, effectively holding her hands at ground level. Her arms just aren’t long enough to get the right position.
In the corner, Bear barks for all she’s worth. She’s alarmed and protective, but she’s not quite sure of herself. She looks as
if she’ll turn tail at any moment and disappear. Matilda twists round as far as she can so she can see the doorway to the hallway. Whenever Bear stops to take a breath she can hear whispering and shuffling out there. Lucia? What did they mean, she was helping Oliver find keys?
The door opens then, and Oliver is pushed in ahead of Molina. He has his hands tied behind his back and he comes silently, giving the kitchen a quick, hopeful scan. He sees Matilda, and, immediately deflated to see her cuffed to the table, lowers his gaze to the floor. Shakes his head.
‘Ollie? Ollie? What’s happening?’
Molina pushes Oliver against the cooker and forces his hands roughly around the handle. He uses another pair of cuffs to fasten Oliver there. While he’s doing it, DI Honey heads back to the door. ‘Wait,’ Molina says. His glasses are slightly askew and there are sweat stains on his shirt. ‘Don’t go without me.’
He finishes with Oliver, then hurriedly follows his colleague back into the hallway. The door closes.
‘Ollie?’ Matilda hisses. ‘For heaven’s sake, what’s happening?’
He doesn’t answer. His head is hanging low, sunk in despair.
‘Speak to me,’ she hisses. ‘Speak to me.’
He turns his head slowly and peers at her over his shoulder, revealing a saggy and bloodshot eye.
‘What’s going on? What are they doing?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shakes his head and turns away.
‘Oliver – they can’t be the police. Why would the police do something like this?’
‘They’re not police.’
‘Then who?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you see Lucia?’
‘No.’
‘But she’s OK? Isn’t she? OK?’
‘I just said – I don’t know.’
Matilda stares at him. All their lives Oliver has been the one with the answers. Whatever the question, he always has an answer. Except now.
She looks around herself, completely bewildered. The kitchen – the place she feels most at home – is a different landscape. Yes, she hung those candy-stripe curtains. She chose the pink range kettle to match. She stocked the painted shelves. There’s a jar at the back no one would ever notice, its lid open to release the smell of cinnamon. All of this is familiar. Yet somehow they’ve crossed into a different reality.
A door bangs overhead and there’s the noise of scuffling on the staircase. Again Matilda strains to lift the table with her back. It goes a tiny way but the effort is too much. She squats, panting. ‘Oliver? What do we do?’
He glances at the door. The men are in the hallway now. Talking in low voices. ‘Just do what they tell you,’ he murmurs. He folds his arms under his ribcage, as if the place he was cut by the surgeons is hurting. ‘That’s all.’
‘Oliver?’ Her voice becomes a whisper because she doesn’t want to know the answer. ‘Are you feeling all right?’
There’s a pause, then he nods.
‘The scar?’
‘Fine.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not light-headed, are you?’
‘No.’
‘They haven’t hurt you, have they?’
‘No. Do what they say and this will be over quickly.’
‘I will.’ And then, after a deep breath, ‘I love you, Oliver.’
The two men come into the room. In front of them they are pushing Lucia. The gauge of hope in Matilda’s head moves down another notch.
Lucia too wears handcuffs and her left eye is half closed, her cheek red and swollen. One of her boots has come off to reveal a black and purple sock. She has a downtrodden, lopsided lurch. She’s talking to the man, but it’s a confused and rambling string of words. Matilda realizes that the sound overhead was the noise of DS Molina, hitting Lucia.
Oliver suddenly comes to life – outraged to see his daughter like this. He tugs at his cuffs. ‘Don’t even think about hurting her. Who are you? What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘No,’ laughs Honey. ‘That’s not the question. The question is what the hell do you think we’re doing?’
‘You’re not the police.’ Strengthened by Oliver arguing, Matilda starts to talk. ‘You lied to us. You won’t get away with this. Do you know who my husband is?’
Honey laughs again. ‘God, I just love it when people say that.’
Molina pulls Lucia across the kitchen and handcuffs her to the handle of the fridge. The moment he lets go of her, she flings herself away from it, wrenching the door wide open. Bottles fly out and smash on the tiles, the fridge lurches forward drunkenly as if it’s going to topple. But it’s a solid, American thing and no matter how violently Lucia fights, it just rocks back on to its heavy base, dribbling out food and drink and salad dressing.
Bear yaps at the top of her voice, and Honey grabs her. Half bent, he pulls the little dog across the floor by the collar.
‘No!’ Lucia yells. ‘No.’
Bear snaps and whips her body back and forth, trying to sink her teeth into the man’s wrist, but she’s no match for Honey. He pulls her to the sink then, using a leash Molina passes, tethers her – the lead looped over the tap so that the tension almost lifts her off the floor by her neck.
‘No!!’ Lucia begs. ‘No. Don’t hurt her.’ She redoubles her efforts – twisting and slamming at the fridge door. She succeeds only in throwing more of the food out. A carton of milk explodes in a white star on the floor. ‘Don’t hurt her, you fuckers!’
‘Lucia,’ Oliver says. ‘Don’t fight.’
Lucia stops struggling and faces him, her hair plastered to her face, her chest heaving. She seems about to say something, but Honey crosses to her and looks her in the eye. The words die in her mouth.
‘Put your head forward.’ DI Honey has taken off his jacket and undone the top couple of buttons on his shirt. Matilda can see he is muscled under that shirt. It isn’t the body of a detective with a desk job. She didn’t notice all this before, she can’t imagine why. ‘Just put it forward. Like this.’
He pushes Lucia’s head down and parts her hair at the back. For a moment Matilda thinks he might slide his hands around her neck, or into her bra, but he’s unfastening her necklace. He untangles it from her hair, turns and drops it on the table. Then he unsnaps her watch and adds that to the necklace.
Molina goes to Oliver and rummages in his pockets, pulling out his phone, the garage keys and his wallet. He removes his watch and glasses and drops everything on the table.
Then DI Honey comes to Matilda. ‘Put your head down,’ he says, and pushes it down. He unfastens her necklace. While his fingers are busy at the back of her neck she stares at the buttons of her blouse, the soft flesh spilling against it. A frozen part of her brain is chugging into life. This is a robbery. Bizarre and cruelly elaborate, but a robbery nonetheless. It will be over soon.
Honey finishes undoing her necklace. The cold slip of the chain touching the side of her neck, then it’s gone. He crouches and starts removing her rings, his hands warm and damp on hers. He doesn’t wrench the jewellery off, but eases her wedding ring slowly over her knuckle, giving the skin time to fold itself under the metal so it doesn’t hurt. She stares mutely at what he’s doing – her hands seem to belong to someone else. Beyond them there’s the weave of his suit trousers, and once again it flashes into her head that with a suit so well made this man can’t possibly be a real criminal.
He straightens and drops her rings into the growing pile on the table. Molina is thumbing through Oliver’s wallet, unhurriedly, counting the banknotes.
Eventually, when all the family’s phones and jewellery and money have been thrown into a pile in the centre of the table, Honey hooks his jacket from the back of the chair and pulls from it a crumpled carrier bag. He begins loading the belongings into the bag.
‘Right.’ He holds up his hand in a friendly fashion. Turns and smiles at each member of the family, as if he’s thanking them in turn
for a particularly good party. ‘That’ll be us then. Thank you for your time, you were rewarding. In a freaky sort of way we almost enjoyed ourselves. Didn’t we, Mr Molina?’
‘Yes,’ says Molina. ‘We certainly enjoyed ourselves in a strange way, Mr Honey.’
Molina goes to the door and opens it. Honey pauses and, hand lightly on his stomach – with the poise of an Edwardian man who keeps a precious timepiece in his waistcoat – gives a mock bow, circling the air with his hand. He straightens and follows Molina out.
The door closes.
There is a long, long silence. Bear is twisting and whimpering and opening her jaw convulsively as if to get more air in, but none of the family members speaks. No one knows what to say.
Then Lucia lets out all her breath. ‘Oh my God,’ she mutters. ‘Oh my God, my God, my God.’
‘Are you both OK?’ Oliver’s voice is shaky. ‘Lucia? Tillie?’
‘I’m fine, Dad.’
‘Tillie?’
But Matilda is not fine. She doesn’t want the men to leave. She’s staring at the back door. ‘They can’t go!’
‘It’s OK, they have – they’ve gone.’
‘But they can’t!’ She whips her head round. ‘They can’t leave us here. They’ve left the door unlocked – he could come in and do anything. They can’t leave us here, he’ll see them go and then he’ll…’
Her voice subsides. Oliver is looking at her sadly. She closes her mouth with a wooden snap.
‘Minnet Kable?’ she says querulously. Oliver sighs. He averts his gaze. She stares at him, absolutely incredulous. ‘What?’
‘I don’t think Minnet Kable is out there at all, darling. I think they did it all to scare us.’
‘You mean they …?’ Her eyes dart from the door to the window that overlooks the courtyard, then to the window that overlooks the copse. Her brain leaps over images. The intestines in the tree. The woman who was murdered. Minnet Kable out of jail, roaming the woods. ‘All those … those things? They made them up?’