by Mo Hayder
The offices were empty. He switched on all the fluorescents, rinsed a mug in the kitchen, filled it with the malt and went into the SIOs' room, where he sat and watched the snake of car headlights down below.
Well, Jack, now look at your pretty little CV….
It had been rape. Hadn't it? Everything had been a green light until—No. He could turn it inside out, reinvent it, excuse it, but the hard fact remained—it had been rape. He had hurt Rebecca, her mouth had been bleeding. Maybe it meant she was right, and maybe that was what she wanted, to prove that he was out of control. He sighed and put his head in his hands. There were so many games to play. So many obstacles.
Caffery didn't know the answers anymore. He was exhausted. He sat at his desk into the early hours of the morning, facing out the window, letting himself get drunk on Laphroaig and London tap water while outside the city folded down for the night.
Hal Church got up early and dressed in blue jersey shorts and a T-shirt. “You look like a tourist,” he told the mirror. “A middle-aged tourist.” He went round the house locking all the windows, set up a lamp on a security timer on the first landing and put his AA card on the dashboard of the Daewoo. He stopped for a moment in the garage, the smell of new paint and varnish overlaid with petrol, the sunlight a crack of white under the roll-up garage doors, the backseat piled with the polystyrene ice box and Josh's old Pokemons. Here he was, an adult, his own child to take on holiday, a wife. He had the sudden aching sense that his life was whistling past him, stirring the hair on his arms, it was going so fast. Where did time go—where did life go?
By eight the sun was hot in the back garden, the sky a still, absorbent blue, and Josh's paddling pool had a thin scum of dead insects and grass floating on it. Hal turned it over to drain it. “Come on, Smurf.” He pulled the Labrador back by her collar, stopping her lapping the water from the grass. “Time for a walk, old girl.” When they got back Josh was in the kitchen eating Golden Grahams with a soup spoon. He was wearing his Obi-Wan Kenobi T-shirt, and Benedicte, dressed in a gray cord shirt of Hal's, capri pants and deck shoes, was opening a can of mandarins in syrup.
“ 'Morning.” He leaned over and kissed Josh on the head. His son grunted and went on eating. “ 'Morning, darling.” Hal kissed Benedicte's cheek. “Sleep well?”
“Yup.” She plopped the segments into a glass bowl, hooked one up into her mouth and shoved the bowl in front of Josh, who scowled at it. Hal hung Smurf's lead on the back of the door and watched Benedicte out of the corner of his eye. She was upset about something, he could see—he watched her take her coffee cup to the fridge, smell the milk, frown, hold it up to the light, tilt it one way then another, then dribble some in her coffee. She turned to face him. “Hal.”
Here it comes, he thought. “Yes?”
“Hal, did you let Smurf upstairs again?”
“What?”
Benedicte sighed. She wasn't in a good mood and there was so much to be done before they could leave and when she'd gone into the bathroom that morning she'd found something that had upset her.
“Smurf got up to the top floor and pissed on my laundry basket.” Hal and Josh looked at each other, Josh stifling a giggle, and that annoyed her. “It's not funny, you know. You can clean it up if she pisses on the bed again.”
“Hang on. She was locked down here when I got up this morning.” Hal was serious now. “Josh? You didn't let her out last night, did you?”
“Uh.” Josh clicked the spoon against his teeth, thinking about this. “No.” He shook his head. “I never. She must've got there herself.”
“And that.” Benedicte put the milk back in the fridge and went to the sink to rinse her fingers under the tap, “that is the smoking gun. Mr. Hal Church, you stand accused.”
Hal stuck his tongue out at her. “Well, I didn't do it, Miss Smart A-R-S-E.” He went into the hallway and took the keys from the telephone table.
“Where are you going?”
“To cancel the newspapers.” He turned and stuck out his tongue again. “And get away from you, you big girl.”
Benedicte thumbed her nose back at him. “See if I care.”
Hal checked Josh couldn't see and quickly dropped his trousers, giving her a glimpse of his buttocks, then straightened and slammed the door behind him. Benedicte snorted loudly through her nose and Josh looked up.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She smiled to herself and put the cafetiere in the sink. You know how to get round me, Hal, you bastard. She banged around the kitchen a bit, emptying coffee grounds, putting ties on the cereal packs. Josh finished his mandarins and took Smurf into the family room to watch TV: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Benedicte scooped a little water into her mouth from the tap—her tongue was burred this morning, heavy in her mouth. Then she looked up at the clock and suddenly realized it was even later than she thought.
“Oh, fuckety-fuck.” She pushed hair out of her eyes. “Only an hour. Josh, go and clean your teeth, tadpole.” She closed the back door and locked it. Over the fence the trees bristled with noise, a breeze rustling through the leaves, hissing like rain. God, but she hated that park. She pulled the curtain across the back door and turned to put the plates away, moving quickly. “Josh, come on.” He was still on the floor in the family room, black currant juice round his mouth, his usual cushion on his chest—why does he need a cushion clutched to his chest just to concentrate on the TV? Watching Ren & Stimpy … Funny, I thought he was watching Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
I'm going mad, she thought, it must be the stress. The moment Hal got back they'd have to get moving. “O-o-oh, Ha-al,” she said aloud, to the closed front door. “Hurry up. We're going to be late, Hal.”
“ ‘We're going to be late, Hal, ’ ” Josh imitated from the sofa.
“Yeah, very funny.” She put her hand to her head. “Josh, I thought I told you to …” But she couldn't remember what she'd told him to do—the colors on the TV were distracting her. They looked like they'd been blocked in by someone on PCP: the purples were the most saturated, like the juice of irises, the yellows the heartbreakingly pure yellow of pollen.
“The purplest purple,” she murmured, leaning against the sink. “The blossomest blossom.” Outside, in the glaring sun, the grass seemed to be swaying in slow motion. For a moment she thought she might be sick, and there was that awful thickness in her mouth again. And, now she thought about it, hadn't the coffee tasted odd? “Josh”—Come on, Ben, get yourself together—“Josh, Mummy's going to lie down, OK? Tell Daddy when he comes in.”
“ 'Kay.”
Maybe I'll just lie down here, on the floor; it looks soft enough.
She let a cup slide into the sink, a slow, silent explosion of brown over the stainless steel, and went into the toilet, banging her hip on the washbasin, holding out her hands to steady herself. The tiles seemed to lift up and melt into the wall and her mouth was so dry she had to scoop more water into it. What's the matter with you? Outside the bathroom something dark and huge scuttled across the hallway. She looked up.
“Smurf?”
No answer.
“Josh?”
But he wouldn't be able to hear. He was in the other room with the TV on. Instead of worrying she sat down on the floor, her head between her hands, wondering why her mouth was so furred. Something touched her shoulder.
Hal?
“I thought you said you wanted that room.”
Hal?
“Can't you go to the room?”
The room? What room? Why's he asking about a room?
“Come on.” A bright light and now her armpits felt as if a vise had locked onto them.
“Just leave me for a moment—I'll be all right.” The backs of her shoulders were hurting, and her spine too, as if she was being bounced on a hard wooden floor. The light was blinding and when she tried to speak her voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away. “Hal?” She couldn't speak—her tongue was so thick that it seemed to have blocked her mouth. “Wh
ud uh—” She wanted to call to Josh but no sound came out and now she thought she could hear his pale, frightened sobs above the silly banging of her head. Bang bang bang. And her armpits were so sore.
“Don't let the troll get me, Mummy. Mummmeeee! Please!”
The troll? What—?
Then something was hanging over her. A face. The eyes glassy and folded.
“NNNNOOOOOOOO!!” she heard herself yell, and in that instant she was awake, somewhere with no sound or light, sitting upright, her voice ringing off empty walls.
Souness had a guilty secret when it came to the press: sometimes she practiced. At night Paulina would sit crosslegged on the kitchen table in her nightie, a cup of Horlicks in one hand, and yell out the questions: “Superintendent Souness—” She enjoyed the role. Sometimes she held the handle of a tennis racquet to Souness's mouth. “What do you say to people who feel that Brockwell Park should have been better searched?”
Souness, in her pajamas, hands on hips, would obediently rehearse her answers.
Paulina was a disciplinarian: “No! You need to show more emotion. Convince me you mean it.”
“What? You'll be wanting tears next. I'm nae crying in front of eight million viewers—”
This morning the rehearsals had paid off: she'd put on a fine performance, no one knocked her off balance, and when she told the press she was optimistic about finding Rory's killer soon, she meant it. She almost felt like humming a tune as she came into the office at eleven. She was surprised, and a little pissed off, to find the SIOs' room locked from the inside.
“Jack?”
She peered through the window and saw him in her seat, glasses on, his feet up on the desk, holding the remote control at the TV, which had been turned to face him. Caffery was very pale. His hair looked as if it hadn't been combed in weeks. She rapped at the window.
He looked up. Quickly he turned off the TV, took off his glasses and came to the door, unlocking it.
“Ye all right?”
“Yeah—no sleep again.”
“Aye, and ye stink of booze. What're ye watching?”
“Nothing. East Enders.”
“East Enders.” She unhooked her pager from her belt, threw it on the desk and opened the window. “Will you be a wee sweetheart and not tell the team that?”
“Sure, sure.” He sat down at the desk and started popping Altoid mints into his mouth.
Souness felt a sudden pang of worry for him—he looked utterly beaten. She bent over and ruffled his hair. “Sure you're still with us, Jack?”
“I'm sure.”
“Anything to report?”
“Yeah—got some prints …” He rubbed his eyes, moved his jaw around, loosening himself up, and handed her a folder.
“Prints—Jesus.” She took the folder and shook out the photos. “How come no one told me?”
“Relax, they're glove prints. The ninhydrin found them.”
“Ninhydrin? Isn't that for latents?”
“Yeah, but he's got something on the tips of the gloves and the ninhydrin pulled up the amino acid in it so it could have been sweat—or he could've got food on them, meat or something. We were lucky—the unit were trying for the wallpaper but some of the aerosol got on the floor and that's where we got the print.”
“If it was sweat—”
“Sorry.” He shook his head. “Already been there. First thing I said. No DNA. 'Course, they're trying—like they're trying with the sample from Rory.”
“So you don't hold out much hope?”
“On prints and DNA? No.” He stretched and rested his elbow on the desk, positioning himself between Souness and the VCR. “But we do know the make of gloves—the pattern was hatched, crisscross.”
“Marigold?”
“Exactly.”
“Carmel Peach?”
“Doesn't wear rubber gloves. Except for cleaning the toilet upstairs. Never brings them downstairs—and, anyway, she only buys Asda's own brand.”
“So we know what to spin for if we find him.”
“That's right.”
The gloves responsible for the peculiar and distinctive crosshatch pattern on the floor of the Peaches' kitchen had traveled a long way since they had been removed from the leaves in Brockwell Park then dumped by Roland Klare into a skip on the Railton Road. The skip had been picked up the following day—just before the team had extended the search parameters—and driven to a dump site in Gravesend, within sight of the river, where the rubber gloves lay under two blue plastic bags of building rubble, unremarkable and unnoticed, save by the rats.
Caffery was pleased when Souness went out for a coffee and he could be alone. He didn't want company—he was still aching from the scotch—and he felt as if there was nothing but air and electricity between his rib cage and pelvis. He flipped the tape out of the video and locked it with the others in his filing cabinet. It had been blank, of course, like all the others. He knew he'd have to turn them in now. Penderecki's body had been removed from the house and Environmental Health had come in to clean up: Ewan's history was being wiped.
He sat down and dialed Rebecca's mobile. We need to talk, he thought, we can go through what happened, talk our way back to each other. But something stopped him. He lost his nerve and hung up before she could answer. He sat for a few moments, breathing slowly in and out. He picked up the phone, changed his mind again, put the receiver back in the cradle and stood, angry with himself. He was supposed to be at work.
“Right.” He went into the exhibits room to get the crime scene photos of the Peaches' house, took them back to the SIOs' room and sat for a long time staring at them. He placed them alongside the Half Moon Lane photographs, then got the photographs of the developed glove prints that Quinn had given him. The Peaches' kitchen floor, the place the prints had been developed, was of cushioned linoleum. Ordinarily the unit wouldn't have used ninhydrin on this surface—it was sheer fluke and luck that the chemical, sprayed from an aerosol, had drifted and developed a print in the last place they'd have looked. The lino was decorated with rose-covered trellises. Caffery stared at the grid those trellises made, trying to catch the tail of an idea, trying to remember what had bothered him when he'd looked at the Half Moon Lane photos, his mind locking and jerking and trying to circle back to Rebecca.
Suddenly, the light on the photographs faded and the room fell into shadow. He looked up. A cloud canopy had draped itself over Shrivemoor and before long rain was peppering the building. He turned: everyone in the incident room had stopped work and was staring up at the windows, awed by the weather's giant fist gripping the building. Kryotos was there, and Logan, sitting on their desks, clutching their mugs and gazing at the rain. Caffery took off his glasses, went to the doorway and nodded at Kryotos.
She put down her coffee and came over. “What's up?”
“Marilyn,” he murmured, “you got any Advil?”
“You look like you need it—stay there.”
She went back to her desk and began rummaging in the drawers. An unnoticed window in the corner had been left open and the desk beneath was being sprinkled with the rain. He turned to go back into the SIOs' room, scratching his neck with a ballpoint, when suddenly, as if someone had called his name from behind, he stopped. He turned slowly to stare at the opened window. When Kryotos found the Advil and straightened up she saw that he had come back into the incident room and was standing in the corner, staring at the water-damaged paper.
“Ooops,” she said, hurrying over to close the window and look through the papers. “Nothing serious—no lives lost. Here.” She held out the painkillers.
He took them from her, then put his hand on her arm and led her into the SIOs' room, sitting her down opposite him. “Marilyn.”
“What?”
“How many cloudbursts do you think we've had this week?”
“God knows. About a hundred.”
“When was the really bad one? The one with the thunder?”
“The day before ye
sterday, you mean?”
“No—before that.”
“Last weekend—it rained all weekend. And Monday.”
“Monday too. Yeah. I remember.” It had been an almost tropical storm. Afterward London smelled of the sea. “The day we found the Peaches.”
“That's right. Why?”
“Oh …” He chucked the tablets into his mouth and swallowed, rubbing his forehead, not certain himself. “Oh, nothing. Nothing.”
Caffery went to Donegal Crescent to speak to the Gujarati shopkeeper who had raised the alarm. He asked for tobacco, then showed his card—“Remember me?”—and started to ask questions. He wanted to know what had made the dog start barking.
“I told you, the dog saw something running away. From the back of the house.”
“But you were walking in the opposite direction and you were more than a hundred yards away. That's good hearing by anyone's standard.”
The man blinked a couple of times then turned and fumbled for the tobacco. Even from the back Caffery could see he was trying to think what to say.
He tried again. “Maybe something made the dog turn round.”
The shopkeeper turned back. He put the tobacco down and straightened the pile of Evening Standards on the counter, shaking his head. “You won't confuse me. You won't. I was walking away and the dog looked round.”
“Why?”
“Maybe there was a noise.”
“It must have been a loud noise. You were a good distance from the Peaches' house so it must have been louder than just the sound of someone running.”
The shopkeeper nodded. “Something louder than that.”
“Maybe it was glass breaking?”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “Maybe something like that. I didn't hear it, but the dog did. And then he started barking. That's all.”
“That …” Caffery found change in his pocket and paid for the tobacco. He might have smiled but the Advil wasn't working yet. “That's what I thought.” Now he knew what was bothering him.