The Treatment

by Mo Hayder

  “Brixton.”

  “Brixton? I thought this was Brixton.”

  “I mean the center—Coldharbour Lane. I don't know what we wanted to escape from most—the drugs or the trendies. But I don't really know Donegal Crescent and that side of the park.” She stopped herself and looked back to the kitchen, where Josh was using a knife to lever the chocolates from the baking tray. “Tadpole, bring that little saucer through and then you can go in the paddling pool.”

  “ 'Snot a paddling pool. It's a—”

  “I know, I know. It's a secret location in the Pacific Ocean.” She shot Caffery an amused look. “OK,” she told Josh. “Bring the saucer through and you can go to Tracey Island.”

  “ 'Kay.” Pleased, Josh slipped off the stool and padded through carrying a saucer with four newly dipped chocolate truffles, as shiny as if they were still wet. “That's it.” She settled down with her coffee. “Pass them round. Then you can go out.”

  “Thank you.” Caffery took a chocolate.

  “That's OK.” Josh still had a smudge of brown on his chin and a crumbly fingerprint of drying chocolate on his thigh. He leaned forward a little, his face serious, his brows drawn together in adult concern. “You do know it's the troll, don't you?”

  Caffery paused, the truffle halfway to his mouth. “Sorry?”

  “Come on, brat.” Benedicte pulled Josh by the T-shirt to where she sat. “Let me have a chocolate.”

  Josh dropped his head. “It's the troll,” he murmured.

  “Of course, darling.” She took a chocolate and put it into her mouth, rolling her eyes in amusement at Caffery.

  But Josh was suddenly determined. “The troll climbed in the window and stole that kid out of his bed.” He put the saucer on the floor and stood, crunched up like a gnome, his face contorted, hands in front of his face like claws. Make-believe climbing. “Up the drainpipe, probably.” He dropped his hands and looked seriously at his mother. “He eats kids, Mum, honest.”

  “Josh, really.” Benedicte met Caffery's eyes, her face coloring with embarrassment. She leaned forward and slapped her son lightly on the legs. “Now, come on, enough of that. We don't want Mr. Caffery to think you're a baby, do we? Go and put the saucer in the sink.”

  The troll.

  The more Caffery tried to question Josh about it, the more outlandish and garbled the ideas got until they were back to one central fact: the troll lived in the woods and had a habit of eating kids. Benedicte Church was embarrassed that her son was taking a local kid's story as fact. “They just like to scare each other,” she said. “They're so impressionable at this age.”

  At what age? he wanted to say. At thirty-five, like me? Because a picture of the troll had already begun to impress itself on the underside of his mind, spreading like a stain. At the end of the day, when he left Clock Tower Grove, he had an overpowering urge to get away from the park, with the sun running all over the horizon, the silhouettes of a tired and disillusioned search team dotted against it. A feeling was creeping up on him. He didn't know where it was coming from, and he didn't know how to put it into words. But that would come, he was sure of it. It would come.

  “Troll?” he asked Souness later, in the SIOs' office. “Does that mean anything to you? A troll?”

  “Eh?” Souness ran the palm of her hand over her bristly buzz cut and frowned. She was back from the press interviews, a line of makeup on the collar of her blouse, and was sitting at her desk staring down at the screen of her new mobile, pressing buttons with her thumb, trying to make sense of it. “Eh?” She looked up at him. “What're you talking about?”

  “The kids in Brixton kept going on about a troll— everywhere I went.”

  “The only troll I know is San Francisco slang—an old queen who likes his chickens. His babies. A tree jumper. A dirty, ugly old gay guy who only wants to have sex with cute young thangs.”

  “So it just means a nonce?”

  “In my world, aye.”

  “You got the message about the photos?” he said. “Carmel thought he took photos while he was there.”

  “Yeah.” She looked up. “I've got some of the lads on to it already.”

  “If there are photos somewhere out there—shit.” He shook his head.

  “I know. Wouldn't you love to see them?”

  “What do you think?” He sat, chin resting on his hand, and stared at his reflection superimposed over the long strings of London lights. It was nearly midnight—they'd had to call in the teams. They'd found nothing. There was no sign of Rory in the park so Souness had extended the parameters to include every street that backed onto it. Toolsheds were searched, garages, empty property. Still no Rory. Every resident was questioned carefully but no one had seen anything. Rory Peach, it seemed, had disap peared in one of the most densely populated areas of the country and no one had seen a thing. Not a soul in Donegal Crescent had heard the glass shattering on the Friday evening, nor had anyone heard the intruder leaving the house. The media spent the day pestering AMIT for news but there was none. They knew about as much as they had this time last night. What kept drilling through Caffery's tired mind was a sentence an officer had said to his mother twenty-eight years ago: “You'll have to accept that you may never know.” Nor were any of the team taking it eas-ily—an eight-year-old child had been separated from his family for the second night in a row: he'd already had to talk two of the younger ones out of a nosedive depression.

  “And funnily enough,” Souness switched off the mobile and put it into her pocket, “I think I know exactly what's worrying ye.”

  Caffery—who had pushed back his chair and was considering unzipping the Nike holdall in which they kept their scotch—straightened. He put his hands on the desk and paused, almost as if he hadn't heard. Then he looked at her sideways. “What?”

  “What I mean is …” She leaned back in her chair and unpopped the top button of her trousers, getting her stomach comfortable for the first time that day. “What I meant is that I think it all sounds a little bit too much like what happened to Ewan.” She raised her eyebrows. It wasn't a statement and she was neither smirking nor reproaching him. She was asking him to talk about it. “That's what I meant.”

  “OK.” He held up his hand. “You can stop there.” Any reference to Ewan always felt like something moving slyly around in the folds of his brain, digging fingers into the most private clefts. He rarely even said his brother's name—and to hear someone else borrow it calmly like this, like it's a name no different from Brian, say, or Dave, or Alan or Gary, it's—Jesus, it's like finding a strange hair in your mouth. “I suppose at this point I'm supposed to ask you how you know about it.”

  “Everyone knows.”

  “Great.”

  “Half of B team were at your party when Ivan Pen-derecki—when he—well, let's not go into that now, eh? But Paulina still gets little bits of intelligence on him coming through the pedo unit from time to time. Between getting her nails done and putting another zero on my Barclaycard statement, she did a bit of digging and, oooh, an interesting little fact pops up. Penderecki is linked to a twenty-eight-year-old missing-persons case. And the name? Ewan Caffery. Just so happens that the name DI Jack Caffery is in every newspaper at the time and, well, it don't take much for a suspicious dyke to jump to conclusions.” She bent over and scooped the bottle of Bell's from the holdall, opened it and dropped large doubles into each of two mugs. “Here.” She pushed one across the desk and settled back. “I've known since before I started in AMIT. Before I even met ye.”

  “Well.” Caffery slumped into the chair, pulling the scotch toward him. “Welcome to my nightmare, DCI Souness. It's nice to know you've been enjoying it for so long.”

  “Ah, now, ye see, you're being a bit of a wee girly about it, aren't ye? There ain't no law says you can't see this as genuine friendly concern, Deeetective Caffery.”

  “Yeah.” He stared into the mug. There was a driedcoffee rim halfway down.

  “Och, come on, J
ack, I'm trying to help. In my clumsy way.”

  “I know. Look, I'm sorry. I get a bit …” He put a fist to his chest.

  “A bit tight here about it, eh?” She downed her whisky and refilled her mug. “I know, I do know. But if you made an allegation against Penderecki, Jack, the case'd be reviewed and someone else could stay up all night and worry about it.”

  He shook his head wearily. “Nah. That's OK.”

  “Been suggested before?”

  “I've lost count of how many times. He's too clever. He'd turn it around and before you know it I'd be the one in the frame—malicious allegations, harassment, yaddayadda.”

  “And not because you know you'd never be allowed near the case?”

  “There is that, yes. That detail hasn't escaped my attention.”

  “You're a wee bampot, if you don't mind me saying.”

  “Thank you. I'm going to assume that's a compliment.”

  Souness smiled a small smile. “I just don't want this Peach thing bollixing with ye more than it has to. Don't want it touching your personal life. That's my small concern.”

  Caffery tried to smile back. This was the time he should say it—that he probably shouldn't be on the case at all, that she was right, that already it was spilling over and getting out of control. Instead he wiped his forehead, finished his drink and said, “Ewan was nine, Rory is eight— I hadn't even made the connection.” He stood, went to the door and called DC Logan into the SIOs' room. Logan came in, raising an eyebrow when he saw them sitting together.

  “Sorry.” He coughed pointedly, as if he'd interrupted something.

  “I want to add something to the intelligence search— you know how to use CRIS, don't you?”

  “Sir.”

  “And tomorrow get the locals to go back into the col-lator's records for ten years with the same key word: ‘troll. ’ Find out if anyone knows anything about a nonce in Brockwell Park called the troll.” He stopped. He'd only just seen it. Logan was trying to hide a smile. “Hey?” He put his face closer to Logan's. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, sir.” But before he dropped his eyes Caffery saw him glance briefly at Souness—at the top buttons of her shirt undone, at the opened bottle of scotch. Caffery's tie was off and Souness's boots were on the floor. “Nothing,” Logan said again, coloring, and turned away. “CRIS and the collators. A fifty/twenty on its way.”

  When Caffery closed the door and turned round, Souness had her elbows on her knees, her face dropped in her hands, and was laughing so hard her shoulders were shaking. “Can ye believe it?” She looked up, her face shiny. “Och, I love it—I looove it! I'm getting laid by the Met's pinup boy.” She wiped her face. “Look at me! Diesel dyke stamped all over me, but they still need a compass and map. It's like a giant panda walked into the room— they'd go, ‘Yeah, looks like a giant panda, smells like a giant panda, but it can't be a giant panda. I mean, what the fuck would a giant panda be doing here? ’ ”

  In spite of himself Caffery caught himself smiling. Later, he stopped her before she left the office. “Danni, I know I've made you late for Paulina, so thank you for talking to me.”

  Caffery's little Victorian cottage was quiet. He parked his battered old Jaguar carefully next to Rebecca's black VW Beetle and went inside, unknotting his tie. She was still awake in spite of the hour—there was warmth and noise coming from the living room at the back of the house and in the hall a pair of green metallic slingbacks, heels scuffed, lay toppled over, the words “Miu Miu” fading and worn on the inside. He paused before he opened the door, as he always did these days, wondering what mood she would be in.

  She was doing a shoulder stand on the sofa, giggling and watching her bare toes wriggle. She wore khaki shorts and one of his gray T-shirts; a bottle of Blavod leaned drunkenly against the cushion and a cigarillo smoldered in the ashtray.

  “Happy?”

  “Oooops!” She dropped her legs with a bang and twisted round, grinning up at him.

  He saw with relief that she was calm. Flushed and tipsy but mellow.

  “You look happy.”

  “Uh-huh.” A CD played in the background—some-thing smooth, Air or someone like it. “Drunk.”

  “You lush.” He bent over and kissed her. “I've been calling you all day.” He went into the kitchen, hung his jacket on the back of the door and got his Glenmorangie and a glass.

  “I've been in Brixton with some Slade finalists. They think I'm God or something.”

  “Shameless.” He pulled off his shoes and collapsed on the sofa, uncorking the whisky. “Egotistic little tart.”

  “I know.” She coiled her hank of spice-colored hair into a long snake, laid it over one shoulder, and clambered across to him. Good gymnast's legs she had—always lightly tanned, the color of sesame oil. “Ouch,” Souness once admitted, after half a bottle of scotch. “She's the sort of woman you feel right here. In your groin.”

  “I saw someone I knew on the news.” Rebecca rested her arms on his shoulders and kissed his neck. “Just from behind. I knew it was you from your backside. And because you looked pissed off, even from a distance.”

  He downed a glass, refilled it and linked his fingers through hers. In the last three days they hadn't had time together—he'd realized it that morning when the sound of one of the indexers crossing her legs in her fawn Pretty Pollys had popped a sweat on his forehead.

  “You must be knackered.”

  “I've got a four-hour turnaround. Back to the office by five.”

  “It's a little kid, isn't it?”

  “Mmmm. Yes.” He held up her hand and studied her fingers. Her pearly clean nails against his. The thumb on his left hand was black; it was a bruise that wouldn't grow out. His own stigmata. Injured the day Ewan went missing, never changing in twenty-eight years. “Let's not talk about it, eh?”

  “Why not?”

  Why not? Because already Ewan was willfully superimposing himself over a picture of Rory Peach—and you've spotted that, Becky, I know you've already spotted the resemblance and if we start, if I let you, we'll be talking about Ewan before I can put the brakes on, and then the mood will change and I'll say something about you, maybe, and Bliss, and …

  “Because I'm tired. I've had it all day.”

  “OK.” She bit her lip and thought about this. “Well,” she tried, working her fingers inside his shirt and smiling. “How about this? Are you horny?”

  He sighed and put down his glass. “Of course.”

  She giggled. “Yeah, stupid question. I mean, when are you not?”

  “I thought I was constantly pissed off.”

  “No. You're constantly randy is what you are. Pissed off is what you do between having hard-ons.”

  “Come here.” He pulled her astride his lap and worked his hands up her T-shirt. “Did you see Time Out?”

  “I know.” She began to unbutton his shirt, closing her eyes when he found her nipples and worked them between his thumb and forefinger. “How ace am I, then, eh?” she murmured dreamily, her head back. “Oh, God, that's nice. Did you read it, then?”

  “Yes. I'm proud of you.”

  But he was lying. He shuffled down the sofa a few inches and moved his hands across her skin, like oil against his hard fingers, down the whole width of her pelvis, and the long fierce muscles of her stomach. Rebecca had told him that her body had changed since her artwork had taken off—she said her skin was smoother, her waist thinner; that she didn't get calluses on her feet anymore and that these days she walked more slowly. But what Caffery saw was the opposite: a hardening, a quickening. And he knew it dated back to the assault. To Bliss. Reflecting this switch came the new artwork, the sculptures. Before the assault Rebecca's work had been something quite different. Now the colors had disappeared and with them a softness of style. Something in her had shifted, but she still wanted Jack and so here he was, still hopelessly and helplessly attracted to her, in love with her in spite of how she had changed—she was the sweet weight i
n his heart and in his cock. Just the smell of one of her cigarillos in an ashtray could give him a hard-on.

  He opened his eyes and looked up at her face above him, eyes closed, a calm, distant smile on her face. I should close the curtains, he thought vaguely, looked at the dark window and saw the white smudge of a face, a snoutlike impression and the telltale frosting of excited breath on the panes—

  “Shit!” He pulled Rebecca's T-shirt down.

  “What?”

  “Move it. Quick.”

  Rolling her away, he sprang to his feet and slammed open the French windows. Penderecki had reached the foot of the garden, running for the back fence. Caffery sprinted the forty feet in seconds, but Penderecki was prepared: he had brought a green plastic milk crate which he used to hike himself over the back fence, and scurried away into the undergrowth of the railway cutting, leaving behind just the crate and the sound of his wheezing trailing in the air behind. Caffery, shoeless, shirt undone, picked up the crate and threw it after him. “Do that again and I will kill you.” He stood in the garden his mother had planted, watching the larval shape of the old man scuttling away through the undergrowth. “I mean it—I've got your blood in my mouth, Penderecki.” He dropped his hands on the wire fence, letting his breathing slow, trying not to be drawn, trying to pull his anger back in. “I've got your blood.”

  It's just a new way of him disturbing the silt. Ignore it. Ignore it—

  He dropped his head. Ignoring Penderecki was the hardest work he'd known. Sometimes his mere presence across the track felt like a telephone ringing in a neighbor's house on a quiet afternoon. The body reacted instinctually, made to respond, but the mind tugged it back—Don't answer it, don't answer, not for you. Penderecki, with his piercing gift for evil, was dishing out this kind of bait on a weekly basis: the odd phone call here, the odd scribbled note or letter, feeding Caffery a repertoire of theories about what had happened to Ewan. They were imaginative, they were varied, and he had learned to believe none of them. Ewan had died instantly, hit by a train, the sheer velocity carrying his small body far away from the area the police searched; Ewan had survived but later starved to death in a caravan on an isolated farm where Penderecki had hidden him during the search of his house; Ewan was alive and well and, having been so acclimatized, was now a predator himself, operating from Amsterdam … Any of the letters might have been the one to crack Caffery's will. It was his work to ignore them all. Someone touched his shoulders. He started. “Rebecca.” He shook his head. “I'm sorry.” He was still shaking with anger.