Wolf

by Mo Hayder

  ‘Who?’

  ‘If you’re a warranted police officer, you’ll know that I’m not allowed to answer that question.’

  So his application is in the pipeline. It could be days. What he is left with is shreds – nothing to base anything on. The headache squeezes at his temples, threatening to come back. He closes his eyes and presses his fingers to his head.

  Keep revising, he tells himself. Just keep going back over it all. There’s an answer here somewhere …

  The Peppermint Room

  IN THE STRIPED green room above the disused scullery Matilda is staring at her hand. The skin is so papery thin that every vein and tendon is visible, as if age has come along and sucked out all the flesh. She’s started a bleed by scrabbling vigorously at the piece of skirting board. After two hours she admitted defeat, accepted that she was never going to prise it off with her bare fingers and even if she could there probably wouldn’t be anything of use in the hidey-hole. In desperation she’s used some of the blood to smear around her ankle where Molina cuffed her to the radiator on her return from the lavatory. She had some vain hope the blood would lubricate the skin enough for her to slide her foot out. None of it has worked. Her hand is a mess, her right knee is aching from maintaining the same position, and her shoulder is sore from pushing up on the kitchen table earlier.

  She saw a film once – an awful film that Kiran and his wife, Emma, were watching when they were staying last year. It was about a man who’d fallen down a crevasse and had to hack off his own arm to escape. She can’t stop thinking about that film now; the images won’t stop flooding into her head, convincing her that the only way to get out of here is to break herself somehow. To break the bones in her foot, or cut herself. On her ankle the blood has coagulated and coated the metal and is now drying in tight flakes. Oliver is on blood thinners after the operation. If he bled like this, he would die. His life would just seep right out of him.

  The house has calmed as the day has worn on. No noises from the other bedrooms, but the men downstairs are murmuring to each other, clattering around in the kitchen as if they’re making tea or something.

  Once upon a time Matilda considered herself tough. She did things the other girls wouldn’t dare. She was the first in her village to get a driving licence, and she toured America and the Far East on her own back in the days when it wasn’t the thing that every student did as a rite of passage during their gap year. Back in the days when it took hard work and courage and the only people you met on the way were the tough Australians and Israelis who had turned travelling into an art form. But somewhere along the way, perhaps because of the children, she’s lost the art of being courageous. It’s been leeched away from her, until taking a chance on anything is unthinkable and every move has to be choreographed and planned.

  She drops her head back against the wall and gazes at the window, still open a crack. At the sun on the tops of the trees. Last week she saw an item on the news about a man who’d had an industrial accident. His overalls had been snagged by a piece of moving machinery in the factory and he’d been dragged, inexorably, through a solid-iron gap of less than nine inches. His entire body had passed through before the managers could stop the machine. He suffered a broken back, pelvis and ribcage and a ruptured bowel. But he’d lived.

  That’s fine, she thinks, for a skinny eighteen-year-old apprentice. But for her?

  She turns and looks at the desk where Kiran used to do his homework. It’s only a few yards away from her; on top of it are some old children’s books that Matilda has put out in the hope the grandchildren will one day be interested. The cricketing mug Kiran won when he played in a prep school tournament. When she came into the room after the visit to the bathroom, she casually nudged the table. A few things rolled off, which she replaced. Molina came forward to help, but not before she’d managed to kick a pen out of sight under the curtain.

  She stretches her foot over, and using her toe she nudges the pen out. Then she pulls the folded cardboard tube from inside her bra, tears it in half and begins to write, slowly and deliberately. When she has finished she pulls the elastic band from her hair and turns to Bear.

  ‘Bear,’ she whispers. ‘Bear?’

  The little dog lifts her head. She wags her tail and the trust in her face makes Matilda want to cry.

  ‘Good girl. Come here.’

  Bear gets to her feet, stretches and yawns, then trots over to her and sits down with a loud huff of breath. Matilda strokes her, soothingly, scratches her behind her ears. ‘You’re a good girl, aren’t you?’

  Her collar has her name stamped into the leather, but there’s no tag. It broke off in London and they haven’t got round to replacing it. Matilda carefully undoes the collar, winds the scrap of card around it and secures it with the band. ‘Good girl.’ She refits the collar then takes the dog’s face in her hands and presses her own forehead to Bear’s head. ‘Good girl,’ she murmurs. ‘Good luck. We love you.’

  She shuffles herself across the room until the leg attached to the radiator is stretched out and her bottom is on the hearth. Ungainly and wincing from the pain, she lies on her back so her head is in the fireplace and she’s looking up into the flue. The newspaper blocking the breach is brown and wet; one push and it disappears into the neighbouring flue and falls away, down into the fireplace in the scullery downstairs.

  Matilda grits her teeth. She tilts her head low and speaks to the dog. ‘Come on, Bear.’ She feels sick. Sicker than she ever has in her life. ‘Come over here now.’

  Honig and Molina

  IN THE KITCHEN ‘DI Honey’, whose name appears on his birth certificate as Theo Honig, age thirty-seven, a British national with German parents, breaks off from cleaning the table where the dog food has spilled and calmly tips his head back to look at the ceiling. The noise overhead is a whispery, scratchy sound. Snaky and secretive. He’s not at all surprised to hear the prey struggling. You expect these acts of rebellion. Idly he wonders what she’s planning.

  ‘DS Molina’, whose real surname is unpronounceable, but who usually goes by the Christian name ‘Ian’ (or as he’s known in the company, ‘Ian the Geek’), is cleaning the kitchen floor where the Anchor-Ferrers’ daughter, Lucia, has tipped an entire fridge-load of food.

  They both stand there for about a minute, heads tilted back, not speaking. Then Ian the Geek casts his eyes questioningly at Honig, who shrugs. Shakes his head. He’s not worried. They can deal with it.

  When there is no other sound they resume their work, mopping and disinfecting. The two men are quite different in the roles they fulfil for their company: Honig is the superior with years of experience in the field, while Ian the Geek is the technical whizz. They’ve never been paired together before and Honig isn’t sure how it’s going to work.

  He rinses the cloth under the tap and cleanses his hands with an antibacterial spray he takes everywhere with him. He can’t stand dirt and smells, especially the smell of dog food. This house, he thinks, is particularly unhygienic. The moment he came in he could smell the accumulation of months and years of badly wiped surfaces and the accretion of food particles in the cracks of the floorboards. He thinks, though he isn’t sure, that he can smell Ian the Geek too, as if there might be a few missed showers in his history. Honig dries his hands and inspects them, turning them over and over and checking each nail individually for any remnants of dog food.

  Another sound comes from overhead and again the men stop what they are doing and turn their eyes to the ceiling. This time the scratching increases to a panicked scrabbling. There is a pause then the noise hurtles down the inside of the chimney breast, as if Satan himself is running his claws down the flue. A small thud comes distinctly from the other side of the kitchen fireplace. Then there is silence.

  Honig gives a long weary sigh. He puts down the towel he is using and nods at Ian the Geek, who props the mop against the fridge. They both go quickly and quietly to the back door, unlocking it. Outside it is an oppressively
humid afternoon, as if thunder is on its way. Ian the Geek knows the house better. He came a day in advance to recce and set the scene and set everything up, so now he leads the way – around the side. Here a small stone scullery – its walls crumbling and beyond repair – is tacked to the kitchen wall.

  The door lolls on rusty hinges – Honig can tell it’s been like that for years and Ian the Geek doesn’t need to push it open wider to step into the room. Both men go in, ignoring the cobwebs that brush their faces. There’s a tiny amount of light coming from the window, just enough to see the fireplace and the huge pile of soot and pigeon droppings that has been dislodged. Honig uses a toe to move around the crunchy pigeon droppings. There is blood there. He puts his hand on the chimneybreast and bends to peer up into the flue.

  ‘It’s the mother’s room up there, isn’t it? Where we put the dog?’

  ‘It is.’

  Honig straightens and dusts off his hands. He scans the scullery – no dog. The stretch of floor between here and the door has been disturbed. It’s obvious what’s happened. The dog has taken a hit falling, but it’s got up and gone. He nods at the door. Ian the Geek doesn’t need to be told. He heads off, moving purposefully into the garden.

  Honig is left on his own. He bends down and puts his head into the fireplace again. ‘Hey, Mrs Robinson,’ he whispers up the chimney. ‘You’re not as stupid as you look. And proper impressive in the tit department, incidentally. Proper impressive.’

  Silence from upstairs. No more, no less than he’d expect. He straightens and picks his way back across the room. Goes into the garden, across the lawn and down the steps that link the parterres. He can hear Ian the Geek crashing around hundreds of yards ahead in the undergrowth. Whistling softly to the dog.

  Honig goes down the steps and into the coppice – stopping at the place the intestines are. He half hoped some animal would have come by now and eaten them, but they haven’t been touched. They’ll have to be moved. They are from a deer Ian the Geek killed yesterday, but they’ve had the desired effect on the family. Fifteen years ago Kable left the intestines for the police to find. He took all that time to arrange them in the trees, in spite of the fact that someone could easily have walked into the woods and caught him. Incredible.

  Honig returns to the kitchen and hunts around a bit until he finds a bucket and some rubber gloves. As he goes back outside, Ian the Geek is walking towards him across the lawn from the trees. His face is red and he’s breathing hard.

  ‘Well?’ Honig says, though he already knows the answer. He can see it in Ian’s face. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Chased it into the trees – it’s gone.’

  ‘Is it going to die? It was bleeding.’

  ‘Probably. If we’re lucky.’ He holds his hand out to Honig. In it is a ripped scrap of cardboard from the inside of a toilet roll. ‘It was on the lawn.’

  Honig bends and places the bucket and the gloves on the ground. He straightens and takes the scrap, turns it to the light. It has been torn across the top but the remainder reads: We are at The Turrets, Litton. Please call the police, please take this seriously.

  ‘Ahhh,’ he says softly. He yawns and crunches up the note, puts it in his pocket. ‘Bless.’

  ‘Dog’s got no ID,’ Ian the Geek points out. ‘And it’s not microchipped – I checked.’

  Honig knows this already. The dog’s not a big threat, running around out there in the woods. Nevertheless, he’d like it back. Just to keep things tidy.

  ‘It’s sloppy,’ he says. ‘Very sloppy. Come on.’

  He picks up the bucket and continues in the direction of the coppice. Ian the Geek follows.

  They stand for a moment or two, surveying the loops of innards. ‘Fucking awful mess, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fucking awful,’ Ian the Geek agrees.

  Honig hands him the gloves and the bucket. ‘Put it all in here – we’ll take it up to the house. Use it as bait – see if we can’t get the dog back.’

  Ian the Geek pulls on the gloves and begins unlooping the intestines from the bushes – pausing once or twice when they snag on a thorn and tear, allowing the semi-fluid contents to leak out. Honig watches for a while. Then he gives a long languorous stretch and glances around – at the trees, at the gardens and terraces and the stone summerhouse. Some people just don’t deserve what they have, they really don’t. They don’t work for it, and when it comes to paying their taxes – well, everyone knows that people like the Anchor-Ferrers are the first to wheedle their way out of their obligations, the last to put their hands in their pockets and help their fellow man. The house rises majestically above the trees, its turrets and mullioned windows all lush in the late sunshine. As if it’s haughty and contemptuous of its surroundings.

  One of the windows is open a crack on its latch. He’s pretty sure that’s the room where Mrs Anchor-Ferrers is. He looks at it for a while, thoughtfully.

  When Ian the Geek has got all the remains into the bucket the two men go up to the house. They hunt around in the outbuildings until Ian the Geek comes out from a little shack, covered in cobwebs and holding up a rusting metal animal trap. Probably intended for rabbits, it’s the perfect size for the family dog. Honey gets a handful of Pedigree Chum treats from the utility room and the two men go back to the scullery where they get to work arranging the trap, using the intestines and the biscuits as bait.

  ‘Of course,’ Honey says, as he primes the trap. ‘One good thing has come out of this. At least we don’t have to draw straws any more for who gets the first turn.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, dickhead.’ He turns and smiles at Ian the Geek. ‘Mrs Robinson has just volunteered herself. Nice lady.’

  The Rose Room

  THERE HAVE BEEN noises in the house that Lucia doesn’t recognize. A strange scuffling – a scratching as if from inside the walls. She watches the door expectantly, trying to decode what’s happening. The noise is coming from Kiran’s room where Mum is. The place Kiran’s daughter christened ‘the peppermint room’.

  It’s the ugliest room in the house. But it could also prove to be the most important. There is a camera in there – mounted in the number twelve in the clock face. It surveys most of the room. It will see everything that happens between those walls. Dad couldn’t have chosen to put it in a better place.

  Even Mum doesn’t know the camera is there – Dad has been so secretive about protecting the house. Ever since Hugo and Sophie’s murders, he’s changed. He changed at work, and he changed at home. It didn’t matter that Minnet Kable was locked up in a secure unit – Dad was doubly vigilant after the killings.

  She hears a door slam, then the house falls into silence. Absently she rubs the side of her breast where it aches. It’s uncomfortable, sitting here in this position, and her bra is painful and lumpy. She wants to unhook it, get comfortable, but she won’t – not with ‘DI Honey’ in the house. Just thinking about her bra brings on a sudden overwhelming memory of Hugo. Hugo undressing her on the tennis court at his grandparents’ house. Hugo, his body tanned from days on the cricket pitch, days swimming in the rivers. He was at Radley, where they all played so much sport, and it showed in his physique. He had a place lined up at Durham University. Even now, all these years later, the pain of it is like being eaten from the inside out.

  Another noise: one of the men in the garden whistling loudly, as if calling a dog. She sits up, blinking at the window, things slotting into place. Then she hears the men’s voices – they are in the old disused scullery. The scullery is under the peppermint room. There’s a chimney there which has been open for years – she’s often worried about Bear crawling into it. Suddenly everything falls into place. She’s promised herself to stay silent, but this is all so wrong, all so wrong.

  She sits up on her knees. ‘Hey!’ She hammers her fists on the floor, yells through the floorboards. ‘Hey, you – what have you done with my dog? I want my dog! I want my dog!’

  There’s a pause. The men downstairs
have stopped talking. She pictures them staring up at the ceiling.

  ‘I want my dog,’ she yells. ‘Let me see my dog.’

  The kitchen door opens and she hears footsteps on the stairs. A moment later the bedroom door is unlocked. The two men stand in the doorway. She stares at them wildly. A savage.

  ‘Lucia, Lucia?’ Honey says, all mock horror. ‘What’s all the noise about?’

  ‘My dog. Bear. What’s happened to my dog?’

  ‘The dog,’ Honey says lightly. ‘Oh that. I’m so sorry – the way that worked out.’

  ‘What’s happened? What’s happened to her?’

  ‘Your mother put the dog down the chimney.’

  She stares at Honey. She doesn’t like him, she doesn’t like him one bit. In a wooden voice she says, ‘I told you you should have left him with me. You fuckers.’

  A small, barely contained squeak erupts from Honey. He rubs his hands nervously. Shoots a tiny gleeful look at Molina, as if he’s a schoolchild who can’t bear how exciting this has all become.

  ‘You fuckers!’ he says in an excited voice. ‘She said “You fuckers”! She made me feel ever so small. Did she make you feel small?’

  Molina is glaring at the floor. He mumbles something that neither of them hears.

  Honey’s smile fades abruptly. He gives a long, heartfelt sigh. ‘Yeah. She helped the dog escape. What that means to me is that your mother regards the family dog very highly. Is that right?’