Gone Read Online Free PDF Page A

her till fob out, hung it round her neck on a pink rubber spring, and motioned Caffery to follow her. They went past the lottery-ticket station, past two post-office booths, blinds down, and into a stock room at the back of the shop. They stood among the Walkers crisps boxes and unsold magazines that had been bundled up ready for return.
    ‘Someone came in last week and pulled out a knife. A couple of boys, you know, hoodies. I wasn’t here. They only got about forty pounds.’
    ‘Boys, though. Not men?’
    ‘No. I think I’ve got a good idea who they are. It’s just a question of making the police believe me. They’re still looking at the footage.’
    In the corner a black-and-white TV monitor showed the back of the sales assistant’s head as he cashed up a lottery ticket, beyond him the rows of sweets, and beyond that the street outside, litter blowing around in the dark. Caffery scrutinized the screen. In the bottom left-hand corner, past all the posters and magazines and parked cars, was the space where the woman had said the blue Vauxhall had been parked. ‘There was a carjacking this morning.’
    ‘I know.’ The manageress shook her head. ‘In town. That little girl. It’s terrible. Just terrible. Everyone’s talking about it. Is that why you’re here?’
    ‘Someone we’d like to speak to about it might have parked here.’ He tapped the screen. ‘The car was there all day. Can you pull up the footage?’
    The woman unlocked a unit sunk into the wall using another key on the pink springy necklace. A door swung open to reveal a video recorder. She dropped the key and pressed a button. She frowned, pressed another button. A message appeared on screen:
Insert media card
. Swearing under her breath she hit another button. The screen cleared, for a second or two, then the message popped back up again.
Insert media card
. She was silent. She stood with her back to Caffery, not moving for several seconds. When she turned to him her face had changed.
    ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘It’s not running.’
    ‘What do you mean it’s not running?’
    ‘It’s not switched on.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I don’t know. No.’ She waved a hand, dismissing the words. ‘That’s a lie. I
do
know. When the police took the chip?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘They said they’d put another card in it and switched it back on. I didn’t check. This card’s completely empty. I’m the only one’s got the keys so there’s nothing on it since Monday when the police came for the pictures of the robbery.’
    Caffery opened the door and stood looking through the shop, past the customers with their magazines and bottles of cheap wine to the road, to the cars parked in the pools of light dropped by the streetlamps.
    ‘I can tell you one thing.’ The manageress came and stood beside him, looking at the road. ‘If he parked up there to walk into town he’d have been coming from Buckland.’
    ‘Buckland? I’m new here. What direction’s Buckland?’
    ‘It’s Radstock way. Midsomer Norton? You know?’
    ‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’
    ‘Well, that’s where he’d have been coming from. Radstock, Midsomer Norton.’ She fiddled with the key fob on the spring around her neck. She smelt of a floral perfume – light and summery but cheap. The sort of thing you’d get from a corner chemist. Caffery’s father had been a racist, in the sort of casual, everyday-pub-conversation way a lot of people had been back in those days. Lackadaisical and thoughtless. He’d told his sons that ‘the Pakis’ were OK and hard-working, but smelt of curry. Simple as that. Curry and onions. Now, in the back of his head, Caffery realized part of him still expected it to be true. And part of him was still surprised when it wasn’t. That, he thought, showed how deep parenting could burrow. Showed how raw and skinless a child’s mind was.
    ‘Can I ask you something?’ Her face pursed. It seemed toclose in at the mouth and the