by Mo Hayder
Benedicte was in a room, the spare room on the first floor, her room—she recognized the curtains and the scalloped light shade and the smell of new carpet. Her heart was pounding so hard it seemed to be throwing her brain around her skull.
“Hal?”
Is there someone in here?
“Hal?”
No answer. She tried to sit up but the room jolted to one side, moving in a rolling, maritime gait, and she toppled forward onto her face, slamming her shoulder on the floor, grazing a sheet of skin from her cheek. For a moment she lay panting, her eyes rolling around in her head.
“HAA-A-L! Hal, for Christ's sake, Hal!”
There was blood on her tongue. “HAL!” She tried to crawl toward the door and realized something was stopping her. She whipped round, her heart hammering, and saw that her ankle was attached to the radiator by a silver cuff. Handcuffs? Someone's been in the house. It isn't a dream. Someone's been in the house. That dark thing I saw—And then, with a sick rush she understood. Oh, God; a frantic thump in her stomach, the Peach family, the police detective—No harm in being aware—Josh screaming that there was a troll in the garden—the Peach fam-ily—and that meant …
“Josh?” She jerked forward, clawing in the direction of the door, yanking at the handcuff. “JOSH! Oh, my God, Josh—Hal!” She wrenched her foot, shaking it, tugging it, jamming her free foot into the skirting board and pushing back. “Josh!” And then, when she couldn't move from the radiator, she lost all sense of logic and began to throw her weight against the floor, volleying off it, ramming her fists blindly into the floor. “JO-SH!!!”
In the silvery, brand-new millennium, where everything was freshly stamped and newly named, and no one went to sleep safe in the knowledge he'd have the same job title by morning, AMIT, which had once been known as the murder team, was under new management: now part of the Serious Crime Operations Group, their chain of command was direct from the deputy assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard and Souness had gone up to Victoria for a meeting with him—“Prayers” she called it, for the reverent expression she had to wear in his presence. She always had a lot to gripe about after a meeting with the DAC. Today she arrived only a few minutes after Caffery got back from Donegal Crescent. She came in carrying a pile of dockets, her mobile phone and a McDonald's coffee balanced on top. She put it all down on the desk and was starting on her gripe, when she noticed how Caffery was watching her—tipped back in his chair, arms crossed, waiting for her to finish so he could speak. “Oh,” she groaned, seeing his expression, “what now?”
“Doing anything tonight?”
“Uh …” She pulled off her jacket and plugged in the mobile to charge it. “Let me see, do you mean was I doing anything before I saw the look you've got on your face?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“I was taking Paulina to the fair on Blackheath.”
“Will you come over to Donegal Crescent with me? I don't want to screw up things at home for you, but I think it's important.”
“Uh …” She looked at him sideways, thinking about this, clicking her tongue and scratching her head. After a while she sighed and hitched up her trousers. “See me— ever the professional. Come on, then—let me go for a quick piss and call Paulina, then I'll be with you.”
Benedicte lay exhausted and shivering, unable to believe that she was still breathing in and out. Tears ran off her face, into her hair. She had flung herself so hard against the floor and the radiator that she'd cut her arm—there was blood on the radiator, the walls, the carpet.
“Josh.” She wept. “Hal.” Any number of awful eventualities she could brew up in a second—Josh already dead, Josh wedged into the branches of a tree, Josh ambushed by that creature of his imagination: the troll. “Stop it,” she muttered, dropping her hand over her eyes. “There is no such thing as a troll.… Just get yourself together.”
But how did he get in? Was the front door open? The front door must have been open—and Hal? What happened to you? But from the color of the light beyond the curtain, the sulfur-yellow of street lamps, and the silence, Benedicte knew it was night. Although it had seemed like only a few moments of unconsciousness she had, in fact, been here all day. And if it was night, and if Hal still hadn't come to get her, she knew it was because he couldn't come to get her.
She wriggled onto her back and pushed her hand inside her capri pants, creeping them inside her knickers to feel herself. Normal. Not sticky or wet. She squeezed her inner thighs. No bruises, no pain. She touched the soft flesh around her armpits and found it was bruised. Aching. Someone had dragged her up here—all the way up the stairs. Now she remembered her shoulders banging on the hard floor—and that's exactly what he did to Carmel Peach: she was taken upstairs and Rory and his dad were kept downstairs, that's what the papers all said.
“Hal?” She turned her face to the floor and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hal? Josh? Can you hear me?”
Silence.
She pressed her ear to the carpet, straining to hear a flicker of her child in the house below. The same way she had once held her breath and waited to feel his movement in her womb—just a small movement would be enough.
“JOSH?”
Silence.
Oh. God.—Nothing but silence. She wiped her eyes.
“JOSH!” Her voice was hollow, she yelled like an abandoned child. “JOSH? HAL?”
Caffery, pulling off the main road and into Donegal Crescent, suddenly braked. He unwound the window and looked up into the evening sky.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Didn't you hear something?”
Souness opened the window and put out her head. It was almost dark but kids were still out with their bikes, playing under the streetlights. “What was it?”
He shook his head. “I dunno.” He listened again. But now all he could hear was the thump-thump-thump of speed garage from an open window on the main road, the children with the bikes shouting to one another and the distant peep-peep-peep of crickets in the park.
Your imagination's on fire—
“Jack?”
“No. I'm imagining things.” He closed the window. “Nothing.” He parked the old Jaguar next to a Lambeth Council Dumpster, reached across Souness into the glove compartment, pulled out a flashlight and showed it to her. “In case the 'lectricity is on a key.”
“Aye, you should have been in the Special Service, son.”
The houses in Donegal Crescent were curiously som-nolent—curtains drawn, windows closed, as if even on this hot night the residents were trying to close out the truth, pretend the witness-appeal signs weren't lined up the road. Number thirty was different from the others. It wasn't the blue-and-white police tape, it wasn't the fact that there was a couple standing, arm in arm, looking at it like solemn tourists paying respect at a military grave. It was the simple, bald fact of what had happened here. The Property Services Department had cleaned up, put a new lock on the door—the Met would try to claim the expenses from the Peaches' insurance, if they had any—but the Peaches had not been back to the house, not even to pick up belongings, and now kids had graffitied the walls. On the left of the door, just above a purple hebe, two words were written in black spray: TROLL'S HOUSE.
When Souness, standing on the doorstep, saw the words she began to stamp her feet as if they were cold.
“What's the matter?”
“Uh—nothing.” She rubbed her nose. “Really, I'm fine.”
“You ready?”
“Of course. Of course I'm ready.”
He broke the seal and used DS Quinn's padlock key. Neither of them spoke. The hallway was dark. To their left, in the living room, the dull glow of streetlights came through a gap in the curtains and lay in a faint stripe across the sofa. Caffery felt for the light switch, but it clicked up and down emptily. The light was dead and somewhere in the darkness ahead the key meter bleeped.
“Told you.”
&nb
sp; “Aye, you did.”
He shone the torch into the hallway, playing the beam up the stairs and around the walls. This is where it happened. His neck prickled suddenly as if the air had moved and he had to resist the urge to shine the torch into the living room to check that they were alone in the house. The hallway was small, walls pale, decorated with two seascape prints, both knocked off center. He was aware of his face momentarily reflected in the glass as he moved down the hallway to the kitchen, the torch playing in front of him.
The meter was next to the cooker. He pulled out the key, pushed it back in, and with a sudden whump and whir the house came alive. The fridge started, the light in the hallway came on and Souness appeared in the doorway blinking, disoriented, looking around this normal, yellow-and-white kitchen with the toaster on the worktop and the opened packet of Coco Pops on the fridge. The SSCU's fingerprint dust was everywhere—on the fridge, the door, the window frame: purplish puffs of ninhydrin on the wallpaper, silver nitrate on the cupboards. The scent of pine from the board on the window partly masked the smell of old blood. Souness and Caffery stood silently in the kitchen, their faces odd, embarrassed to be here, thinking of what the Peach family had gone through in this house.
Benedicte was shaking, exhausted from screaming, blinking at her cuffed foot in the navy canvas deck shoe. Now that she had stopped struggling, now that the room and the house were silent, she was aware of a new sound. A strained, rasping sound that she hadn't noticed in her panic. It was coming from the wardrobe.
Oh, Jesus, she shivered, what the …?
She crawled as far as the cuff would allow then dropped onto her stomach and snaked her body forward, like a landed eel, moving in silence, just the hush and shush of the carpet against her trousers, until she could reach the bottom of the wardrobe door with her fingertips. She scrabbled at the door with her fingernails, straining forward until the door swung open.
“Oh—” Something was propped inside the cupboard. One crabbed shape against the far wall. Benedicte recoiled, pushing herself back against the radiator. “Smurf ?” In the cupboard the dark thing moved a little.
“Smurf ?”
The old Labrador struggled feebly to her feet, the air in her lungs whistling noisily, her claws tapping at the floor of the wardrobe. She came hobbling out, wheezing and whimpering, careful not to put weight on the right front paw. Benedicte saw instantly that the leg was swinging, like a pendulum, from a point above the knee. The Labrador limped across the room and dropped with a sigh into the curled crook of Ben's body. Oh, my God, Smurf, what's he done to you? She raced her hands across the dog's coat, down the knobbly legs with their tired old tendons, the little horny dewclaw at the back of the ankle, until she found the reflective glimmer of wet fur—a soft, hot area. The bone must have cracked, pierced the skin and re-tracted—when she touched it Smurf whimpered and tried to pull away.
Broken. The bastard broke her leg.
Whoever had done this to an ancient animal like Smurf wouldn't be afraid of hurting Josh. “Oh, Smurf.” She buried her face in the dear fur, the sweet doggy smell of leaves and forest mulch. “What's happening to us, Smurf, what's happening?” Smurf craned her head round, trying to lick the tears from Benedicte's face, and that small demonstration of faith, of dependency, gave her sudden courage.
“OK.” Taking a deep breath, teeth chattering uncontrollably, she levered herself into a sitting position. “OK, Smurf. I'm going to get this fucker.” She stroked the dog's head. “You see if I don't.”
She jerked up her knee, tugging experimentally, wondering if she could pull hard enough to break the copper radiator pipe. But her ankle was already bloodied from pulling, and shiny, like inflamed gums, so she sat up in a crouch and inspected the handcuff. Four delicate blind head screws—tiny, hardly bigger than match heads. Decisive now, she straightened up and pulled off Hal's cord shirt. She undid her bra, held it to her mouth and nibbled at the fabric on the inside until the underwiring poked through and she could get a grip on it.
Strong enough to kill him, the shit. I don't care how big he is.
She drew out the slender curve of wire and used her teeth to strip the protective plastic ends away. Then, with the sharp ends, she dug at the handcuff screws. But the wire buckled and mashed the screw heads. “Shit, shit, shit.” She turned her attention to the radiator, pulled off the plastic knob and was exploring the copper pipe when Smurf, although she had been deaf for months, sat up abruptly and growled softly at the door. A low, shaky growl.
Benedicte froze—crunched where she was in a runner's crouch, veins protruding on her hands. What the—? Fear took a long, calm lick at her spine, and all her fine plans dissolved. Something was sniffing along the bottom of the door.
18
WHERE DO WE START?” “OK—let's go through it.” Caffery put his briefcase on the kitchen counter, pulled out his glasses and the crime scene photographs. The room had been stripped by Quinn's team: Large chunks of the lino had been excised, rectangular sections of the curtains had been removed and the skirting board where Rory's blood had been found was still covered in amido black and stick-on number tags. Glasses on the draining board had been dusted and a sandwich maker that had been taken away to the lab had been returned, the cord coiled and taped to the lid. They thought that it was here, in this room, that the bite had been inflicted on Rory Peach—the damage had been enough for the eight-year-old to drop blood on the floor. The paper towel had soaked up the rest. Caffery put on his glasses, looked briefly at the photos of the kitchen and handed them to Souness. He tried to imagine the scene—Rory struggling, Alek Peach, chained and exhausted, unable to move, or simply unconscious. Alek was not in the photographs but the impression and the stain he had left on the floor was.
“So he was lying like this.” He stood at the intersection of the rooms, on the floor divider, and swung his hand along the mark. “Across the floor between the kitchen and the living room—chained here.” He indicated the living room radiator. “And here to this radiator.”
Souness wrinkled her nose. “Is there food left in the fridge?”
“Eh?” He looked round and sniffed. “Oh, that, no—I think it's just …” Carmel, Rory and Alek Peach had all defecated on themselves at some point in the three days. They hadn't had a choice. DS Quinn had been surprised by the amount of urine Carmel produced—it had seeped out onto the landing carpet. “I think that's just—them.”
Souness made a face and opened the fridge to check. Inside were a few flowers of mold, fingerprint dust on a plastic carton of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and a jar of pickles in the door compartment. Otherwise it was empty. She closed the fridge and looked around the room, her mouth pulled down at the sides. “Is that really what the smell is? Those poor wee fuckers.”
“Come here.” Caffery went into the hallway and stood at the bottom of the stairs. Rory Peach's water gun, covered in fingerprint dust, lay on the first step. “Right. This is where Alek Peach says he was attacked—so what do we think?” They both looked back down the hallway at the kitchen, then Souness turned to the living room.
“Here. Probably came from in here.”
“I think so too—so let's say he's come from in there, from the living room, and attacked Peach from behind. No blood, but that might not be important—he might not have started bleeding straight off.”
“What're ye getting at?”
“I don't know—just bear with me.” He stood with his arms out at ninety degrees, one hand pointing down the hall to the kitchen, one pointing into the living room. “Now, before he attacked Alek, he had broken in through the back door and then he must have overpowered Carmel—must have done that first, and taken her all the way up here.” He took the stairs two at a time, coins jangling in his pocket. Outside the airing cupboard he stopped. “Hospital says she was dragged up the stairs—so he did that and somehow or other got her tied up in here—”
“Christ—smells even worse up here.”
“—and
then he went back downstairs like this.” They both went back down, Souness with her fingers under her nose. “And waited—we're guessing—here.” He stood in the doorway of the living room and raised his eyebrows at Souness.
“Right?”
“Aye. I'll go along with that.”
Caffery raised his eyebrows. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“He did all of this in total silence?”
“Uh.” Souness shook her head. “I'm not with you.”
“OK, listen. Carmel's no help, right? She has no idea where she was attacked; the last thing she remembers is making supper. But as for Alek …” He went to the closed door next to the kitchen and rested his hand on it. The basement. “Now Alek remembers.” He opened the door and went down two or three steps. “He was here with Rory. They were playing on the PlayStation—that's when he wondered where Carmel was.” Souness followed him down the stairs, peering at the room. The walls were decorated with Deep South memorabilia, crossed pistols, longhorn belt buckles, a framed picture of Elvis. The carpet was deep pile, white, and in one corner was a mirrored bar, a photograph of a young Alek Peach next to a Las Vegas-style fruit machine, wearing a cowboy hat, smiling at the camera. Caffery went down the last few stairs and beckoned to Souness. “Come down—I want to try something. Here.” He switched on the TV and the PlayStation and handed Souness the controls. “Quake any good to you?”
“You'd be surprised. I'm an expert.”
“I'm not surprised. Put it on loud as you want—turn up the volume.”
She sat down with the controller, shuffling to get comfortable in the velour chair.
“And where are you away to, then?”
“Just keep at it.”
He went upstairs, into the kitchen, the rumbling sound of the PlayStation with him all the way. He stood outside on the doorstep and did what he'd been planning to do all afternoon. Within seconds Souness appeared at the top of the stairs. “Ye all right?”