Gone (26 page)

Richard wiped his nose. His eyes were so swollen they were barely visible in his face.

‘Not a friend of yours you’ve helped out? Someone you’ve loaned your squeaky-clean record to?’

‘No,’ he said dully. ‘Never seen him before in my life.’

‘Mr Moon?’ He flipped the ID card round.

‘No.’

‘You sure? He’s a dangerous, dangerous bastard, and he’s using your son’s name and identity. Have another think.’

‘I dunno who he is. Never seen him in my life.’

‘This guy is seriously warped – more so than anyone I’ve ever dealt with before. People like him, in my experience, don’t respect anyone, not their victims, not their friends – and certainly not the ones who help them. You help someone like that and nine times out of ten it comes back to bite you on the arse. ‘He looked from father to son and back again. Neither man met his eye. ‘So, have another think. Are you sure one of you hasn’t got some idea of who he is?’

‘No.’

‘So how did
this
,’ he put the passport photocopy on the table,
‘come to be presented as ID documentation for a Criminal Records Bureau search?’

Peter Moon picked up his mug and sat back on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other. ‘
I
haven’t seen that passport for years. Have you, son?’

Richard sniffed. ‘Don’t think so, Dad.’

‘In fact, have you seen it since that break-in?’

‘Eh?’

‘Not that you’ve needed it, you being the way you are. Don’t need a passport to get to the television set and back, do you, son? But have you seen it since the break-in?’

‘No, Dad.’ Richard shook his head very slowly, as if the effort might wear him out.

‘What break-in?’ said Caffery.

‘Some lowlife did the window at the back. Had away that much stuff I didn’t know if I was coming or going.’

‘Did you report it?’

‘With the way you’d have dealt with it? No disrespect, but it never crossed my mind. You lot’ve got a fine line in ignoring people. A diploma in looking the other way. Then, of course, the fire happened and that put things out of our heads for while. You know – the way a fire that destroys your life will.’

Caffery was studying Richard. His face was too loaded with flesh to give much away but his father had a con’s face, pure and simple, the look of someone with serious form. Yet there was nothing on the CRB check that flagged them up. ‘This fire – it’ll be in our records, I take it?’

‘Too effing right it will. Arsonist. Not nice. Council paid to have the place redone, but a bit of paint? That was never going to undo what happened.’

‘Finished Mother,’ Richard whispered breathlessly, ‘didn’t it, Da? Finished her.’

‘She survived the fire, but couldn’t take what it did to us as a family. Finished you too, son, didn’t it, in a way?’

Richard tipped his weight on to his left buttock, breathing hard at the effort. ‘S’pose it did.’

‘Smoke inhalation.’ Peter Moon’s knee was suddenly twitching, jumping up and down as if he had a motor running in his body. ‘Lung damage, asthma, plus, of course, the –’ he made inverted commas with his fingers ‘– cognitive and behavioural problems. They came from the carbon monoxide. Makes him moody – depressed. Makes him sit around day after day watching the telly and eating. Crisps and Twix bars. Pot Noodle if he’s on a health kick.’

‘I do not sit around all day.’

‘You do, son. You do nothing. And that’s what’s got you to the state you’re in.’

Caffery put his hand up. ‘We’re going to stop now.’ He put his mug down and got to his feet. ‘Under the circumstances I’m going to give you a choice. You can either accompany me to the station or—’

‘You’ll take us there over my dead body. My son hasn’t been out of the flat in over a year and he’s not going now. It’ll kill him.’

‘Or I’ll leave one of my men here. Just in case that burglar suddenly gets Christian on us and decides to return the passport to its rightful owner, eh?’

‘We’ve got nothing to hide. And my son needs to go to bed now.’ Peter Moon got to his feet and went to stand in front of his son. He hoisted his braces up on to his shoulders and bent at the waist, his arms out. ‘Come on, son. You stay out here for too long and it’ll be the death of you. Come on.’

Caffery watched Richard, sweating in his vest and jogging trousers, put his arms up to meet his father’s. He watched the sinews in the older man’s arms stretch and harden as he hauled the weight off the sofa, heard the soft exhalation of effort.

‘Need some help?’

‘No. Been doing it years. Come on now, lad. Let’s get you to bed.’

Caffery, Turner and the agency manager watched in silence as the son was lifted to his feet. It shouldn’t have been possible for this small guy, with his bald head and stooped back, to do it. But
he lifted Richard to his feet and half carried him, step by painful step, to the corridor.

‘Follow them,’ Caffery murmured to Turner. ‘Make sure they haven’t got a mobile on them. I’ll send a support officer up to take over. Then I want you back at the office. Do a complete search on them. Criminal records on the dad – every logged incident relating to this address. And find out about that fire – if there really was one. I want them cross-referenced on HOLMES and a list of every known associate. Wring them dry.’

‘Will do.’

Turner headed for the door to follow the Moons, leaving Caffery and the manager together. Caffery felt in his pocket for his keys. He ignored the tobacco pouch sitting there like a bomb. For the first time in ages he was thinking about his own parents, wondering where they were and what they were doing. He hadn’t kept track of them for years and now he wondered if they were old enough for infirmity to have set in. And if they were, who was helping whom when it came time at the end of the day to struggle to bed?

He decided his father would be helping his mother. She had never got over losing Ewan and she never would. She’d always need help.

That was just the way it was.

It was gone seven. Cory hadn’t made an appearance, but Janice didn’t care. She’d had a great afternoon. Truly great – under the circumstances. Prody had been as good as his word and had stayed on. He hadn’t watched television or made phone calls but had spent most of the time sitting on the floor with Emily, playing snakes and ladders and ‘Tell me’. Emily thought Prody was hysterical: she’d used him as a climbing frame, charging into him, hanging on to his shoulders and pulling herself up by his hair in a way that would have infuriated Cory. Now Nick had gone, Emily was in the bath, supervised by her grandmother, and Janice was in the kitchen with Prody. The salmon was in the oven.

‘I think you’ve got kids.’ Janice was using her thumbs to push the cork out of the bottle of prosecco they’d bought in Marks & Spencer. ‘You’re, you know, sort of natural.’

‘Yeah, well . . .’ He shrugged.

‘
Yeah, well?
’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I think you need to explain that to me.’ She popped the cork, poured the wine into two of the tumblers she’d discovered in the back of a cupboard and handed one to him. ‘Come on. The salmon’s got a bit longer to go, so we’re going into the living room and you’re going to tell me all about “Yeah, well”.’

‘Am I?’

She smiled. ‘Oh, yes. Indeed you are.’

In the living room, Prody pulled the mobile out of his pocket, switched it off and sat down. The room was strewn with Emily’s
toys. Ordinarily Janice would have raced around tidying up so that the place wasn’t a mess when Cory got home. Today she sat with her shoes off, her feet curled under her and her arm on a cushion. To start with, Prody needed prompting. These were things he didn’t like talking about, he said, and, anyway, didn’t she have enough problems of her own?

‘No. Don’t worry about it. It helps keep my mind off my own situation.’

‘It’s not a pretty picture.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Well . . .’ He gave an awkward smile. ‘It goes like this. My ex got full custody of the kids. It never went to court because I pulled out of the case, gave way to what she wanted. She was going to tell the court I’d been beating her and my sons ever since they were born.’

‘Had you?’

‘I smacked the eldest once.’

‘What do you mean, “smacked”?’

‘On the back of his legs.’

‘That’s not beating him.’

‘My wife was desperate to get out. She’d met someone else and wanted the boys. She got friends and family to lie for her. What could I do?’

‘The kids would have said if it wasn’t true, wouldn’t they?’

Prody gave a small, harsh laugh. ‘She got them to lie too. They went to a solicitor and told him I was hitting them. As soon as they did that everyone was on her side – the social workers, even the teachers.’

‘But why would the children lie?’

‘It wasn’t their fault. She told them
she
’d hate them, take away their pocket money, if they didn’t. And if they did there’d be a trip to Toys R Us. That sort of thing. I know because my oldest told me. He sent me a letter two weeks ago.’ Prody pulled a piece of folded blue paper out of his pocket. ‘He said he was sorry what he’d told people but Mum had promised him a Wii.’

‘She sounds – and I’m sorry to say it because she is your ex-wife – like a right bitch.’

‘There was a time I’d have agreed with you – I thought she was just plain evil. But now I think she was probably doing what she felt she had to.’ He put the letter back in his pocket. ‘I could have been a better dad, could have stopped work taking over like it did – the hours, the shift work. And call me old-fashioned but I always wanted to be the best at my job. No point doing something if you don’t do it perfectly.’ He kneaded his hands, pressing his knuckles into the palms. ‘I suppose I just never saw what it would take from my home life. I was missing school plays, Easteregg hunts . . . Privately I think that was why the kids said what they did – it was their way of teaching me a lesson.’ He paused. ‘I could have been a better husband too.’

Janice raised her eyebrows. ‘Girlfriends?’

‘God, no. Not that. Does that make me a mug?’

‘No. It makes you . . .’ she watched the bubbles breaking in her glass ‘. . . faithful. That’s all. It makes you faithful.’ There was a long silence. Then Janice pushed her hair off her forehead. She felt flushed and warm from the prosecco. ‘Can I . . . can I tell you something?’

‘After you’ve let me bump my gums like that? I s’pose I could give you a moment or two.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’ve got ten seconds.’

She didn’t laugh. ‘Cory’s having an affair. Has been for months.’

Prody’s smile faded. He lowered his hand slowly. ‘Christ. I mean . . . I’m sorry.’

‘And do you know the worst thing?’

‘What?’

‘That I don’t love him any more. I’m not even jealous he’s seeing someone. I’ve gone way past that. It’s just the injustice of it that gets to me.’

‘Good word, injustice. You put everything into something and get nothing out.’

They were silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts. The curtains were still open even though it was dark, and on a scrappy stretch of common opposite the flat the wind had piled fallen
leaves into a long drift. In the streetlamp they were like tiny skeletons. Janice gazed at them blankly. They reminded her of the leaves that used to pile up in the garden at Russell Road. Back when she was a child. Back when everything was possible and there was still hope. Still so much hope in the world.

It was raining again, a light drizzle. Even though it was dark the clouds had a brooding quality, low and damp – as if they were pressing the night air down on to the ground. Flea was at home, in her all-weather Berghaus jacket, the hood up. She was lugging her father’s caving gear out of the garage to the car.

She had no idea how she’d overlooked the air shafts. It was as if there’d been a block in her head. The tunnel was supplied by twenty-three shafts dropping directly from the surface. Four dropped into the landslide, leaving nineteen in the open sections. She and Wellard had passed under eighteen: two coming from near the pub on the easterly entry and sixteen on the longer, westerly entry. So where was the nineteenth? Maybe she’d assumed that the last shaft entered the tunnel somewhere in the quartermile rockfall. But the detailed paperwork the trustees had given her made it clear: the stretch of canal under all but the four air shafts was free of debris for at least twenty yards in each direction. So, the last shaft was somewhere outside the rockfall.

Which meant only one thing: that the last wall she’d come to after squeezing through the tiny gap, the fall that had almost covered the old barge, wasn’t the end of the long blockage. It was an intermediary fall. Beyond it there must be another, hidden, section with another air shaft. And, as far as she was concerned, the USU couldn’t claim to have cleared the tunnel out until that lost area had been searched. They couldn’t say with certainty that the jacker hadn’t put Martha – or her body – into the tunnel.

She was going alone, which sounded insane, but after all the derision and criticism that’d been heaped on her over the tunnel affair, the self-preservation route was to keep it to herself until she had a result. She pushed her rucksack into the boot of the car, threw in a pair of caver’s wellies, then took down the immersion suit that hung from the garage rafters. She paused. On top of an old refrigerator was a sagging cardboard box full of oddments. She went to it and peered inside. Old diving masks, a pair of fins, a regulator with the rubber perished by salt water. A glass jar of sun-bleached shells. A dead sea anemone. And an oldfashioned caver’s lamp, brass carbide with a battered glass reflector.

She pulled it out and unscrewed it. Inside was a small compartment: the generator, the place explosive acetylene gas was produced and fed to a small reflector, where it was ignited to produce a powerful light. She screwed it back together and rummaged inside in the box again until she found a grey-white lump about the size of her fist, wrapped inside an old Co-op carrier bag. Calcium carbide. The crucial ingredient.

Be careful, Flea
. Her father’s voice came to her across the years.
Be careful with that. It’s not a sweetie. Don’t touch it now. And, whatever you do, don’t get it wet. That’s what releases the gas
.