Buried

The 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift could be good news or bad news, depending on how hard you fancied working; and, more importantly, what night of the week it was. Early in the week, it could be fairly quiet. But round Shepherd’s Bush, Acton, Hammersmith – anywhere come to that – things tended to get a bit livelier once people smelled the weekend coming.

PC Dean Fothergill knew that now and again, when there were just the two of you, out and about in a panda, you could hide if you felt like it. For a while, anyway. You could try to stretch your hour’s meal break into a couple if you’d not got enough sleep during the day. It was getting harder with the Airwaves, of course, but even if the powers that be knew where you were, they couldn’t see you. Not yet, at least. So some of the lads had already figured out that as long as you kept moving, you’d look busy enough. Cafe to kebab shop to side street; half an hour with the paper in one place and a fag break somewhere else. Only on a slow night, obviously.

On a Saturday night, there was always something happening.

At a quarter past one in the morning, Fothergill and WPC Pauline Caulfield were up near TV Centre when they took the call.

‘Some bloke’s phoned through from Glasgow, says his sister was meant to have come up this afternoon and she never got there. She’s sixty-odd, she lives alone, he can’t get hold of her on the phone, didn’t ring until now because he didn’t want to worry us, blah, blah, blah. Go and check on her when you’ve got a minute, will you, Dean? I know you and Pauline are sitting around reading the paper.’

‘We were dealing with that ruck outside White City tube, actually, Skip.’

‘I believe you; thousands wouldn’t. I’ll send everything through on the MDT.’

As soon as the details started to come up on the screen of the car’s mobile data terminal, Caulfield swung the Astra round.

They took it steady towards Shepherd’s Bush.

Fothergill shook his head. ‘I bet you a fiver she forgot she was even meant to go to Glasgow,’ he said.

‘You’re a good listener,’ he said.

He raised the torch and trained the beam across the cellar, then lowered it when the boy squinted and turned his face away. ‘I know that you’re scared, so you’d probably listen to anything, but I can tell when people are really hearing what you’ve got to say and when they’re not. I get a lot of that at work, and it can really wear you down. People just sitting there and letting what you say wash over them and not taking anything in. And it’s harder for you, I can see that. Of course it is. It can’t be easy listening to what I’m telling you. Just sitting there and hearing these hideous things and saying nothing.

‘Do you want to say something? You can, you know…

‘I know you maybe need time to take some of this stuff in, that’s only natural. I’ll leave you for a while to do that, but I want you to understand something first. I wouldn’t be telling you any of this if I didn’t think you could take it in. OK? If I didn’t think you were old enough and bright enough. I know all about how clever you are, all about it. So I thought about everything carefully, and decided that you would definitely be able to process this information. Make sense of it. Not that you can make sense of all of it, because there are parts – I know you know which parts I’m talking about – that are so beyond what you and I, what ordinary people, perceive as normal that sense doesn’t really come into it.

‘Is that fair? Just nod if you agree with what I’m saying… Good.

‘As long as you don’t think I’m getting any pleasure out of this, that’s all. You know I’m not trying to torture you with it, right? I mean, what possible reason could I have to do that? I’ve hurt you enough already; I’m well aware of that. Everything you went through before, in the flat, I mean. I suppose I just want you to understand that the motivation for telling you all this is… decent.

‘Because you should know these things. Because not knowing would be so much worse. Because at some point you’ll come to terms with it and be far better off in the long run. Do you see?

‘Knowing what the ones you love are capable of is a terrible burden sometimes. But ignorance is a damn sight worse.’

He raised himself on his haunches when he heard the sniffing and crept a little closer to the corner in which the boy was curled. ‘Don’t cry, please. I really wasn’t trying to make you cry. I’m sorry. I’ll wait until you’re a bit calmer. I’ll go now, shall I?’

He moved back again. Waited. ‘You’ll forgive some of it, I’m sure. Not me, probably, and certainly not for all this. But some of it: those things, the less terrible things, we did for the right reasons. I know you won’t be able to see that now, that right now you just want to lash out and scream or whatever. But they were the best reasons, I swear to you.

‘Would you like to scream? Go on, it’s fine, if you want to. Nobody’s going to hear. That’s why I took the tape off. Honestly, I can understand if you want to. Do you want to smash something? Do you want to kick my head in? Do you just want me to fuck off?’

He said nothing for a few minutes, then he raised the torch again and held its beam on the boy. ‘You should really think about screaming, you know. It might be healthy if you did. Get it out.’

He turned the torch on himself, rested his chin on the lens and thought for a while. ‘OK, maybe I’ve overestimated how much of it you’ve actually taken in. It’s a heck of a lot, I know. A lot to… absorb. Before I go, maybe I’ll just run through some of it again. I’ll try to make it simpler for you this time. Is that a good idea, do you think?

‘Luke…?’

The joking had stopped the moment Caulfield had spotted the broken window. They’d already spent ten minutes knocking before Fothergill had scaled the side gate and they’d walked round to the rear of the house.

He’d called it in while Caulfield had gone back to the car for gloves, torch and their telescopic batons.

‘Maybe we should just wait,’ Fothergill said.

‘For fuck’s sake, Dean.’

Caulfield pushed her hand through and reached round until she could release the catch on the lock. Before she had a chance to open the door, a cat bolted past her and flung itself through a cat-flap and inside.

‘Jesus…’

She stepped into a darkened kitchen and shouted into the house. Fothergill shouted louder. Then they stood still and waited. If there was anyone in the house who shouldn’t have been there, chances were that they’d hear some kind of movement, even if it was someone trying to conceal themself. Caulfield felt for a light switch, found it, and the two of them moved further into the room. There were dishes stacked neatly on a draining board. The cat roamed around near an empty bowl on the floor and rubbed its head against cupboard doors.

Caulfield bent down. ‘Shush, it’s OK.’

‘You talking to me or the cat?’ Fothergill managed the smile, but his voice was higher than normal.

They walked out of the kitchen and into a narrow hallway with the front door at the far end. Streetlight filtered through small stained-glass panels, and stairs rose up from one side. There were two doors off to the right. They opened one each, turned on the lights in a small sitting room and a dining room.

‘Dean?’

Fothergill put his head round the door and followed Caulfield’s gaze. The dining table had been set for breakfast: an empty glass, spoon and napkin; a bowl already filled with cereal and covered in cling film.

‘Come on…’

There were watercolours on the wall running up the stairs, and framed certificates, and photographs on a small table at the top, arranged around a large basket filled with pot pourri. Somewhere among the scents of vanilla and orange, though, there was a faint odour of something else. Something sharp and sad.

They turned on more lights, looked into a bathroom and a spare bedroom, then walked slowly towards the closed door of the only room that was left.

‘Have you ever seen a body, Dean?’ Caulfield asked.

‘Come on, she might be anywhere. She might have gone away without telling anyone-’

‘Dean?’