by Mo Hayder
The pavement was warm, it had trapped the day's heat. He had been going for half an hour when he became aware of his surroundings. This was Penderecki's street he was running down. He'd come here without thinking about it— drawn by some internal compass. He slowed to a jog, looking at the houses.
It was one of those peculiarly neat roads that bring with them the odd aroma of a seaside town, as if you might see vacancy signs propped in front of the lace curtains. Pen-derecki's was halfway along it, flush with the others, but so luminous a landmark in Caffery's conscience that sometimes it seemed to him to protrude from the other houses, proud-bellied. He approached, feet curling down onto the pavement, and stopped outside, resting his hands on the gate, bending over for a moment, catching his breath, his sweat dripping in dark coins on the pavement. He rocked back on his heels and looked up at the house. How long would it be before one of the team came knocking on this door asking about the troll? How long before Danni's girlfriend, Paulina, with her agile little mind and her databases, would point out the similarities between what had happened to Rory and what had happened two and a half decades ago to Ewan? Again he got that image, that slow, spreading image of fingers reaching out under the soil. Of Penderecki touching fingers with the troll.
He straightened. Tonight something about Penderecki's house struck him as odd. The bathroom light was still on and the giant lantern, red and yellow and gray, was still hanging there. He thought it looked a little bigger. He stood for a moment, frowning, then slowly pushed open the gate.
He had never walked up Penderecki's path before—on the few occasions he had ventured to the house he had used the back route and traveled under darkness because Penderecki, being a criminal, knew his rights inside out and would have snapped restraining orders, quia timet orders, down on his head without blinking.
The front garden was a mass of candyfloss-pink mallow, like crystallized sweets, thin as paper, gone native and seeming to move as if there were a breeze here. Long grasses brushed at his aching calves. At the bottom step he paused. The front door still had its original leaded glass— a hill and a windmill, sun rays delineated in black. As he climbed the two steps he knew, he could hear what was inside, the hum of insects, the hum of wet bodies sucking and breeding, and then he could see them, individuals blackening the rays of the glass sunrise, and instantly he knew that whatever was hanging in Penderecki's bathroom, it wasn't a Chinese lantern.
What Rebecca did remember was this:
Night. She is in bed with Jack.
In the morning they wake up. It's raining.
After Jack has gone to work she has coffee and toast.
She notices Joni hasn't come home.
She phones around and discovers that Joni is at Bliss's flat.
She puts on old shorts and a T-shirt and begins the cycle journey to his flat.
Blank.
Blank.
Blank.
A flash of light and something—a knife? A hook?
Blank.
Blank.
Another light—a doctor shining it into her eyes.
Blank.
Just a little scratch—hold still, you won't feel a thing.
Blank.
Jack, in his hired mourning suit, bending over her hospital bed on his way to Essex's funeral.
Jack again. Taking her statement. When she passes her hand over her face, embarrassed to admit that she can't remember, he looks at her sympathetically and gives her a prompt—trying to make it easier on her.
Did you see Bliss take Joni?
Take her?
Into the hall where we found her.
Oh, yes, that. I—Yes, I saw that happen. He carried her.
From a distance Rebecca's most striking feature was her resilience: she wore it like a bright red winter coat—some-times naturally and sometimes self-consciously. Always unmissably. She knew it could make her appear brittle, but she also knew why it was there. She'd had to grow it, like a new pelt, early in life, when she realized that her father would never be pried away from his obscure metaphysical apologias, and her mother would never be tricked down from the place she floated, doped and fat on imipramine. “The daughter of an English professor and a clinically depressed beauty” was how one journalist had summed her up. It took Rebecca a while to recognize that this was why she couldn't admit to the blank section of her memory: it was an admission that her tough little character was a lie, that she'd been left out of control for a while—without a skin—open to infection. She didn't think she'd ever be able to talk calmly about it. How can you not remember?
For a year now she'd kept a lid on it—until: Think about what it was like for me to find you hanging, Rebecca, hanging from a hook in the fucking ceiling. It was the first time she'd got a glimpse of what had happened that day in Kent and now she found she couldn't look at Jack's face above hers without the fear that Malcolm Bliss's would appear superimposed over it. Something was on the move in her—something that wouldn't let her lie flat on her back without squirming, something that wouldn't let her sleep a night through. She rolled onto her front and lit the spliff, hoping it would stop her mind from rambling. It was important to Rebecca, very important, that she didn't let anyone know the truth.
At home Rebecca was asleep. Or pretending to be. Two lipstick-stained cigarillo butts sat in an ashtray next to the bed on top of an article about the Turner prize. Caffery didn't wake her. He changed into joggers, a sweatshirt and lightweight walking boots, got some tools from under the stairs and went into the back garden. He waded out through the undergrowth, past the green Express Dairies crate that Penderecki had used to stand on, through the nettles and submerged branches. The cutting was quiet, the last train gone, and down here, below the level of the city, there were cooler, clearer isotherms. Along the empty tracks the signals glowed green. Caffery crossed quickly, hearing the startled movements of an animal in the undergrowth. On the opposite side he found a fox path—or maybe it's Penderecki's path—leading straight to the garden.
The back of the house was silent and dark, the fence rotten with water. He moved quickly through the garden, his chest tightening as he got nearer. And now—why hadn't he watched more carefully?—he saw that along the metal frame of the broken old annex, flies gathered like clusters of hanging black fruit, rippling lazily. He used his Swiss Army knife to gouge away the ancient putty of the kitchen window, flaking wood and paint onto his sweatshirt. Levering out the panel pins he eased the pane from the frame, and the stale, trapped air inside the house came at him like a train. He could smell what was in the bath-room—the stench that stimulates the rarely stimulated root of humanness—the smell of opened human bowels, the smell of the dead sitting up in their graves and exhaling into the night. He could hear the flies—No way, no fucking way, this can't be happening—as he reached in, turned the key and opened the back door.
Quiet.
“Ivan?”
He stood there, counting to a hundred, waiting for a response.
“Ivan?”
He'd never addressed Penderecki by his Christian name before.
“Are you here?”
Still no reply. Only the pounding of his own blood in his ears. He stepped into the annex.
Once—twenty years ago, before Penderecki had got wise to him and started locking the doors—Caffery had sneaked in here, and the surprise had been how ordinary the house was. Damp and fraying, but ordinary for that. Just an old man's house. Patterned carpets, a gas fire, a folded copy of the Radio Times next to the sofa. Milk in the fridge and a paper bag of sugar on the worktop. The home of a twice-convicted pedophile, and there was milk in the fridge, sugar on the worktop and a Radio Times in the lounge. Now as he moved through the rooms, he was struck by how little it had changed. The house was smaller, the wallpaper yellower than he remembered; a strip of it hung from the ceiling above the stairwell and the carpet was shiny with dirt. A Local Shopper newspaper lay on the doormat with a pile of flyers from local restaurants, but apart
from the flies it was all so unchanged it was like having his memory shaken out in front of his eyes. On the small windowsill at the bottom of the stairs was the digital readout that he knew Penderecki used to monitor phone calls. On top of it sat a ripped-open brown envelope. No letter inside but the return address was the Oncology Unit, Lewisham Hospital. The first clue—he stuffed it into his pocket. Oh, Jesus, he thought, oh, Jesus, let this not be happening. He turned to the stairs, moving slowly, dead fly husks crunching underfoot. Above him the living insects thrashed their wings in a single low note, in and out—as if the house were breathing with them.
All the doors on the landing were open, save the one into the bathroom. He could see the light coming from the crack under the door. The smell was denser here, and he had to lift the hem of the sweatshirt, exposing his stomach, to cover his face as he reached for the light switch at the top of the stairs. The bulb pinged, died. Shit. Reaching inside one of the open doors he found a switch and this time the light came on, throwing a rectangle of yellow out into the small landing. Quickly, breathing shallowly, he checked inside the doors. In two of the rooms there was nothing—just an empty Coke can and a few squares of carpet on the bare floorboards. In the third he discovered where Penderecki had been living.
The mattress was covered with stained nylon sheets, worn almost to transparency; a pile of newspapers lay next to the bed, a cup and an empty baked-beans can with a fork sticking out of it resting on top of the pile. There was only one decoration in the room, on the far wall: an Athena poster of two boys wearing straw hats, sitting on a wooden jetty, one with his arm draped around the other's shoulder. It was a photograph from the seventies— the sun had been a different color three decades ago, softer and more yellow than a third-millennium sun. The two boys looked about the same age that Jack and Ewan had been when … shit.
He had to stop.
“Shit, shit, shit—let's get this over with.”
He pressed the sweatshirt into his nostrils, went back onto the landing, took a deep breath and tried the bathroom door.
It opened smoothly and there, in front of him, in the center of the pale green bathroom, covered and moving with flies, hung Ivan Penderecki.
Somewhere someone was screaming. Benedicte fought up toward it, through hot layers of sleep, and sat up in the cool darkness of the bedroom, her pulse elevated, her skin damp.
“Muuuuuum!”
“Josh?” Sleepily she dropped out of bed and padded along the corridor. “Coming, tadpole.” In his bedroom she flicked on the switch and stood in the doorway blinking in the light. Josh was sitting against the headboard, a pillow clutched to his chest. His feet were stretched rigid in front of him, his hair sticking up from his head as if electricity had passed through him. He was staring at a crack in the curtains.
“Mum—the troll—”
“It's all right, tadpole.” Benedicte went straight over and pulled back the curtain. The garden was dark and silent, the window closed. Over the fence the outline of Brockwell Park was purple against the stars and, in the distance, Crystal Palace transmitter lit up the sky. “Troll's not there, darling. Nothing there at all.” She dropped the curtain and sat down on the edge of his bed, putting a hand on his hot little forehead. “It's Mummy's fault. I shouldn't have put you in these pajamas, they're too warm.” She tried to pull the flannel pajama top up over his head. “You're wet through. I'll put you in a T-shirt—”
“No!” Josh jerked away from her, moving his head so that he could see past her to the window.
“Now, come on, darling, it's the middle of the night and Mummy just wants to get you out of these wet jammies so you can go back to sleep.”
“Nooo!” He pulled his hands away. “He's watching me. He was there.”
“Josh, I think you dreamed it—the troll couldn't get this high. You're all the way up in the air here, you're quite safe.”
“You all right, peanut?” Hal was standing in the doorway blinking like a sleepy cat.
Benedicte turned. “Oh, Hal, I didn't mean to wake you up.…”
“That's OK.” He looked at his son, bolt upright in bed, bracing the pillow against his chest. “What's up, peanut?”
“He thinks maybe he saw the troll—”
“Not maybe.”
“He saw the troll at the window, you know, the one from the park.”
“OK, ssh, ssh.” Hal came to the bed and kissed his son's head. “Want me to go and check he's gone?”
Josh nodded.
“Ooooh.” Hal went to the window, whistled softly and pressed his nose to the pane, looking down into the back garden. He pretended to squint and jiggle around, trying for a better view. After a while he stood back and smiled. “OK, all over. He's gone now.”
“NOO-OOO!!” Josh began to cry. “You can't see him like that, he's hiding under the window. You can't see him if you don't open the window.”
Hal sighed, pulled back the curtains and unscrewed the window lock. He put his hands on the ledge and leaned out. The air was balmy, a delicious, palm-frondy night, and he could smell the rank green water of the four ponds in the park. The crackle of electricity came like cicadas from the building-site spotlights. He pantomimed looking carefully down at the garden. “Hmmm …Well, he's run away now—absolutely not here. Do you want to see?”
Josh wiped his nose on the sleeve of his pajamas and blinked at the window.
“Want to see?”
He shook his head.
“OK.” Hal pulled the window closed and was about to lock it, when Benedicte noticed him hesitate. He opened the window again and stretched his arm round, rubbing his fingers on the outside of the pane.
“Hal?”
He didn't answer. He frowned momentarily, then pulled the window closed, locking it carefully, drawing the curtains.
“There you are, tadpole—all gone. No trolls out there.”
But Benedicte didn't like Hal's expression. Something was wrong. She leaned over quickly, pushing her face toward Josh. “Come on, tadpole. Kiss on the nose for Mummy?” But Josh turned onto his side, harrumphing like a girl, his little face knotted and angry. “OK—night-night, then, darling.”
At the door she waited for Hal to blow Josh a kiss, then switched off the light, closed the door and beckoned Hal to follow her downstairs. In the kitchen she slipped bare feet into Hal's muddy trainers and took the torch into the garden. Hal followed in his slippers. “What?” he hissed. “What's up?”
She shone the torch around the garden, looking at the grass for any sign that someone had walked across it. “What did you see, Hal?”
“Eh?”
“Up there.” She turned and shone the torch up the side of the house to Josh's window. “On the window?”
“Oh, nothing. Just a handprint.”
Benedicte turned to him, her face white. “A handprint?”
“Sssh. I don't want to frighten him even more.”
“Well, just a bloody moment,” she hissed, “you're frightening me now.” She went to the bottom of the wall and shone the torch into the flower bed. “Josh thinks he saw something and now you tell me there was a handprint. I mean—”
“Ben,” he looked up at the window, “it's twenty feet above the ground—someone would have to float up there.”
She looked up and down the wall. Hal was right—someone would need a ladder and she couldn't see anything in the flower beds. No footprints. Nothing disturbed down here.
“Come on, Ben.” Hal was starting to feel cold in his pajamas. “One of the workmen left it on the pane when he put it in.”
She stood in the grass biting her lip, feeling stupid.
“It was one of the workmen, Ben; we haven't cleaned the windows on the outside. And anyway—”
“Anyway what?”
“It was upside down.”
“What?”
“It was upside down so it must have been there before the pane went in.”
Benedicte sighed. She hated these night fears of hers.
She hated the park for being where it was, just over the fence. Christ, she even hated poor little Rory Peach for getting himself kidnapped and killed. She couldn't wait to get to Cornwall. She shone the torch around the little fenced garden. Josh's paddling pool reflected back the torch and the moonlight but nothing else stirred. OK—fair enough, but don't blame me for being nervous. Reluctantly she clicked off the torch and followed Hal back up the steps, locking the door behind her and pulling the little curtain. Hal was awake now so he got a beer from the fridge and leaned on the kitchen worktop, looking at her.
“I do understand,” he said suddenly. “I saw Alek Peach. In the park.”
“Jesus.” Benedicte rubbed her face and sat down on the sofa, blinking. “When?”
“When me and Josh walked Smurf this evening. I didn't tell you—didn't want to upset you.”
“What does he look like?”
“Terrible. I've seen him up there before, when I was walking Smurf.” As if she'd heard her name, Smurf, who had been asleep in the TV room, got up and came through, yawning, her claws clicking on the tile. Hal bent down to stroke her and rub her old, deaf ears. “Haven't we, Smurfy, we've seen him before, haven't we? I just didn't recognize him from the newspapers.”
“What was he doing?”
“I don't know. Wandering around where—” He straightened and drank half of his beer, an odd look on his face. “He was wandering around where his little boy was.”
“I've seen it,” she murmured, slightly embarrassed that she'd actually gone up there to look. Walking through the forest it had been a shock suddenly to come upon a carpet of dying flowers. Purple paper ribbons, cellophane, cards, teddy bears saturated with dew. Rory had been nearly nine, she remembered thinking; he'd have been horrified by the teddies. “I don't know what they'll do with all those flowers.”