The Treatment

by Mo Hayder

  “Uh?” She looked up and her eyes zigzagged across his face. “Jack?” Her breath was sour.

  “Come on.” He took the bottle from her hands and put it on the table. “Let's go.” He draped her hand over his shoulder and bent down to put his arm round her waist.

  “She going?” the journalist asked mildly.

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged and turned back to the women. “Now, Cornelius Kolig, for example, might take a different approach to the issue of sexual abuse.…”

  The women uncrossed and crossed their legs with the absolute symmetry of a dance troupe and leaned forward, ignoring Rebecca, eyes fixed on the journalist, ready to suck up his words.

  “You bunch of pricks,” Rebecca said suddenly, pushing herself away from Caffery. “Can't you see it's all bollocks?” She plucked the bottle of absinthe from the table and waved it around wildly. The liquid moved like melted emeralds in the lights, sloshing out onto the floor, and the girls looked up in surprise. “It's all a huge joke—don't you get it? The joke is on you.” She stopped for a moment, swaying slightly as if she was surprised to find herself standing up. “You—” She took a step back and almost lost her balance, putting out her hand to steady herself. “Oh—” She stopped suddenly, breathing hard, looking helplessly around herself. “Jack?”

  “Yeah, come on.”

  “I want to go …” She slumped slightly and began to cry. “I want to go home.”

  He managed to get her out of the club without attracting attention. Outside, when the night air hit her, she reacted slowly, raising dead-weight hands to rub her arm. She allowed him to bundle her into the passenger seat of the Jaguar and fasten the seat belt across her. “I want to go home.”

  “I know.” He propped her up and pushed her hands inside the car, where they remained, on her lap, her head slumped against the window as he drove in silence through Dulwich, glancing at her from time to time, wondering how she had let herself become a sideshow like this. Rebecca had a long, vibrant survival streak in her—it was the first thing he'd noticed about her, the thing that most repelled and most attracted him. It was incredible to see her so demoted, so helpless, so needful. Her face in the car headlights was a little gray, her mouth bluish. They stopped at lights in Dulwich, outside a white weatherboarded villa—they could have been in a Pennsylvania Amish village, not South London—and he put out a hand to touch her head, to stroke the sturdy little tufts of hair. “Rebecca? How you doing?”

  She opened her eyes and when she saw him she gave him a muzzy little smile. “Hi, Jack,” she murmured. “I love you.”

  He smiled. “You all right?” Her mouth was a dusty purple shade. “You OK?”

  “No.” She dropped her hands. She was shivering. “Not really.”

  “What's the matter?” She fumbled for the door, her feet rucking up the rubber mat on the floor. “Becky?” But before he could pull into the curb she stuck her head out the door and vomited onto the tarmac, her body shaking, tears coming up.

  “Oh, Jesus, Becky.” Caffery rubbed her back with one hand, his eye on the traffic in the rearview, looking for a space to pull over. She was shuddering and crying, wiping her mouth with one hand and trying to close the door with the other. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry—”

  “All right, just a moment, just a moment …”

  The lights changed and he cut across traffic to pull the car onto the curb. She dropped back into her seat, sobbing, her hand to her mouth, mascara running down her cheeks. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her cry.

  “Come here, come here—” He tried to pull her to him but she pushed him away.

  “No—don't touch me, I'm disgusting.”

  “Becky?”

  “I took some heroin—I took some smack.”

  “Some what?”

  “Some smack.”

  “Oh, for God's sake.” He sighed, dropped back in the seat, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “When?”

  “I don't know. I don't know—maybe a few hours ago.…”

  “Why?”

  “I …” She rolled her eyes to him and now he wondered why he hadn't recognized that glazed, smacked-up look before. “I wanted to try it.”

  “Do you have to try everything? Every fucking thing?”

  She wiped her mouth and didn't answer. The traffic was slowing down to see what was happening—to see if there was an argument. He leaned over and pulled her door closed so that the interior light didn't give the passersby a stage-lit show.

  “Is this the first time?”

  She nodded.

  “OK.” He shoved the Jag into gear. “I'm not going to lecture you. Let's get you home.”

  In Brockley he got her cleaned up and made her drink tea. She sat like a child in bed wearing one of his shirts, her hands wrapped round the mug, a pale, numb look on her face.

  “I'm getting a doctor.”

  “No. I'm OK.” She stared into the bottom of the mug. “I feel better now. Will you …” she didn't look up at him “… will you come to bed?”

  He stood in the doorway, his hands on the doorposts, and shook his head.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “I see.” She was silent for a while, as if moving this new resolve of his around in her head. Then suddenly she let go of the mug and put her face in her hands. The mug rolled off the bed and shattered on the wooden floor. “Oh, Jack,” she sobbed, “I'm lost—”

  “OK, OK.” He sat on the bed and rubbed her back.

  “I'm lost. I used to know where I was, but I just—I just don't know anymore.” She cried so hard she seemed to be crying for everything—for every small disappointment, for everything she had ever lost. Tears boiled down her cheeks.

  “Becky …” he put his arms around her and kissed her head “… you can't go on like this.”

  “I know.” Her shoulders were shaking and her neck had grown hot. She shook her head. “I know.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don't know—I—” She rubbed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to control herself.

  “Rebecca?” He dipped his head to look at her face. “What are you going to do?”

  She wiped the tears off her cheeks. Her breathing steadied.

  “Well?”

  “Uh.” She turned her head away. “I'm going to—I don't know, I'm going to tell the truth, I suppose.”

  “OK.”

  “No, I mean really tell the truth.” She raised her hands, then dropped them again. “Jack.”

  “What?”

  “I've been—I've been lying. A bit,” she stumbled. “No—not a bit, a lot. Jack. I've been lying to you—all the way along I've lied and now I'm so sorry and it's because I lied that we've got like this and it's all my fault and I'm—”

  “Hey—ssh, come on, calm down, what have you been lying about?”

  “You'll hate me—”

  “What have you been lying about?”

  “About Malcolm.”

  “What about him?”

  She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes closed, speaking into the air as if reciting a hard-remembered poem. “I don't remember what happened, Jack. The last thing I remember is getting on my bike to go to Mal-colm's—and that's all until you were going to Paul's funeral.” Silence. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Jack—I know I've fucked up—I just thought—oh, I don't know—I thought there was something wrong with me if I didn't remember—or—or—”

  He dropped his hand from around her shoulder and sat for a long time in silence. So this was what it had all been about. He thought about the statement in the hospital, he thought about the inquest, about her dead flatmate's body lying in the hallway, about Rebecca, hanging in the kitchen. And then he realized that what she had just done was to take a step toward him.

  “Is that what it's all been about? The sex?”

  “I got scared. I must've thought I might suddenly remember while we were—oh fuck.” She jammed k
nuckles into her eyes. “I know it's stupid.…”

  “Because I've been trying to make you think about it?”

  She nodded, her bottom lip twisted under her teeth. All her eye makeup was down on her face, the eyelashes quite soft and naked.

  “You didn't report it, did you?”

  “Of course not—you didn't really think …?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Becky, Rebecca.” He pulled her closer, pressing his face into her lopped-off hair. “Oh, Jesus.”

  26

  July 26

  YES, HELLO?” A WOMAN'S VOICE on the answerphone in the hallway, the sound echoing through the house. Upstairs, stretched out on the floor next to the radiator, Benedicte jerked awake, pawing blindly toward the sound.

  “Hello, this is a message for Mr. and Mrs. Church. I hope I've got the right number. My name is Lea and I'm calling from the Helston cottage agency, and, um, we were expecting you at Lupin Cottage in Constantine and I've just been told the cottage is still empty, so I'm calling because we haven't heard from you and we're just checking that everything's OK. And, um, what it is, Mr. Church, what it is, is because we haven't had a, you know, an official cancellation, we're going to have to, I'm sorry to say, we might have to charge you for Lupin Cottage if we don't hear from you and you might lose your deposit—so, well, maybe you've been delayed, but do give me a call and let me know. Right.” She paused for a moment. “Right. That's all. So good-bye now.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, and it's about nine A.M. on Wednesday. I might try to give you another call at the weekend just to make sure everything's OK. Thank you.”

  The receiver clunked down, the tape whirred, a series of clicks, and the aging answerphone rewound the tape.

  “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.” Benedicte sprang forward, roaring at the door. “I'll kill you.” She hammered on the floor with her broken-up hands. “You fucking bitch! You and your fucking deposit, you shitty bitch. Hal! Josh! Can you hear me? Can you hear me? I love you so much, I love you so much.…”

  Tracey Lamb's mood was good. Cooking, she told herself, you're cooking now. She put her hair in rollers, big pink rollers that glistened like sponge cake. When it was set she didn't brush it out. She sprayed a little mist in it, pulled on Wellington boots and, carrying a cup of tea, a bucketful of bits and pieces, keys, and with her sputum cup in the pocket of her cardigan, she left the house by the back door, thinking about sangría and cheap, strong cigarettes. She was singing to herself.

  She took the Datsun up to the quarry and parked it facing into the trees. An anorectic brindled dog was sitting in the undergrowth staring up at the trailer.

  “Go on!” She kicked at the dog and it slipped back into the hedgerow, its legs so bent that its stomach almost dragged the ground. “That's it, go on. Git.” She put the mug of tea on the bonnet of a rusting old Ford Sierra and fished in her pockets for the keys. Carl had always told her to lie about what she was keeping in the trailer, but Carl was dead now and she no longer had a reason to obey him.

  Caffery and Rebecca slept together in an exhausted knot on his bed, her face resting on his hand so that he could feel it twitch and move as she dreamed. She had kept on her underwear and T-shirt, and although he had his arm around her he tried to keep it unsexual, tried to keep a segment of air between their bodies. In the morning he pulled out his arm carefully and got up without waking her. He showered, shaved carefully, dressed in a well-cut Italian suit, the legacy of an ex-girlfriend, put on a gray Versace tie and began to move his mood round to bargaining with the bank manager.

  When he went downstairs Rebecca had woken and was walking around the kitchen in jeans, making coffee, diminutive as a young boy with her new haircut. When she saw him in the suit she whistled. “My God, you're so gorgeous.”

  He smiled.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just the office.” He straightened the tie and poured some coffee. She looked rested. In fact, considering last night, she looked incredibly well. For a moment he felt hopeful for them, as he sat at the table with his coffee and watched her moving around, opening the fridge; for a moment he thought it could all be easy, but then he thought, Maybe it's just the heroin—don't they say that about heroin? At first it makes you look just great … and then he thought about where he was going today and how by rights he should cancel it, how by rights he should make an effort in return for what she'd done, and the whole thing made his mood crash so quickly that he got an instant headache. He downed his coffee, stood and kissed her quickly on the forehead. “I'm just going to the office.”

  When he'd gone Rebecca went into the garden and lay on her back in the grass. It was a perfect day—so blue, just a few clouds running Grand Nationals across the sky. She lay in silence, waiting to find out how she felt about it all. She'd done it. She'd taken steps, big, big steps. She'd stuck her finger up at one of London's biggest art critics and now she supposed she should start unpicking it, wondering about making amends. But she couldn't convince herself she'd done the wrong thing: every time she tried to be strict with herself and give it serious consideration, her thoughts floated away, like a bubble from one of those silly children's games. Maybe it was the heroin—maybe that's why the junkies put up with puking for the first few rounds just to get this numbness for a while. Shouldn't it have worn off by now? She had the sense that something very important had happened, that she'd been spun round to face in the right direction, and that she should be feeling very scared and very exhilarated. But then she thought about Jack, nuzzling a kiss in her new-cut hair—Jack, you didn't get angry, you didn't tell me to leave—and she knew that it was OK and that, after all, she could be quite calm. When she dropped her hands over her face she found, oddly, that she was smiling.

  The brain is something like a blancmange on a stem, floating perilously around in the skull in a protective whey. Its tissue cannot be compressed without damage, nor can it survive even short periods without oxygen. Thus there are many ways to damage this sensitive, unfathomable organ: it can be pushed against the skull by a leak of blood or a tumor; it can be starved of blood by trauma or stroke; it can be twisted and whipped around inside the skull so quickly that its connective tissues are sheared; it can be forced downward through swelling and bleeding until it is almost pressed out through the hole at the base of the skull; or it can be shaken up like a plastic snowstorm and hurled against the skull. If a young child were to be thrown backward onto a concrete floor, for example, there is a chance that his brain, responding to suction forces and the laws of acceleration and deceleration, would be thrown backward and then forward from the impact site, where it would be grazed and ripped on the jagged interior of the skull diametrically opposite. This peculiar phenomenon is a “contrecoup” injury, and it is exactly the injury that Ivan Penderecki inflicted on the small boy he had imprisoned in a chilly Nissen hut on the Romney marshes.

  Carl Lamb, by a peculiar quirk of fate, saw the whole thing. It was a cold October night in the 1970s and he was standing at the window of the hut, smoking a cigarette, waiting for the big Polish man to finish with the child so that he could have his turn. A struggle started, and when the child fell Lamb knew immediately that something was wrong—there was no blood, but there was something sinister about the way the boy's eyes dilated, the way he became suddenly limp.

  “Oh, fuck,” he said, chucking the cigarette out the window and starting to panic. “Fuck—what're we going to do?”

  But in Penderecki's eyes it wasn't what they were going to do, it was what Carl was going to do. He was going to be the one to deal with it. Carl was young, still in his early twenties, and still a little in awe of Ivan Penderecki, who in those days was the mogul of the ring. So he obeyed without argument, gathering up the broken, still pulsing thing from the floor, expecting that within minutes he'd be holding a dead body. A body he'd have to find a hole for. On the long drive home, with the child on the backseat twitching under a blanket, he passed reservoirs and lakes and even drove u
nder the big river Thames, which snaked under the moonlight out to the estuary. He should have stopped and launched him there and then, but somehow he didn't have the juice for it. He'd done a lot in his short life—but he'd never got rid of a body before. Something, maybe cowardice, maybe an overpowering sense of the significance of what had happened, made him keep driving.

  Back in Norfolk he put the boy on the sofa, got a beer, put some music on and sat down in the armchair, wondering how he was going to dispose of him when he died, wondering if he could cut up a body without puking. Minutes turned to hours, the boy's face swelled monstrously, hours turned to days and he breathed on, a glittering string of saliva connecting him to the pillow. His right arm and leg drew up on themselves like bird's claws, but by the third day, when Carl put a hand on his shoulder and shook him, he sat bolt upright and vomited down his mustardyellow T-shirt.

  “Fucking animal.” Tracey Lamb, still a teenager in those days, was furious with this intrusion. She stomped out of the house and went to stand next to the hangar, lighting a Marlboro and turning her back angrily on the house. Carl ignored her. He paced the room looking at the boy, wondering if he could kill him here and now. He should just drive him out to the motorway, he decided, and dump him on the hard shoulder—but he didn't know how much he remembered of the night in the Nissen hut, who he could finger. Maybe he should just drive him down to London and dump him on Penderecki, but Penderecki was still an intimidating prospect. So he was stuck. He examined the child, trying to decide if he would be worth something to someone. The right side of his face was ruined, swollen and drawn downward as if melted. He dribbled constantly. Basically he was useless. Over the next few days Carl made up his mind countless times that he was going to do it—he was going to kill him. But countless times he found he didn't have the courage. And then, suddenly, something put an end to all his indecision. Suddenly Carl noticed that the boy was changing.

  It was a slow process, but gradually, miraculously, the paralysis in his face began to correct itself and the dribbling stopped. He still grimaced and jerked, his head zagging back and forward like a baby trying to get out of a high chair, and when, a month or so later, he got up and tried to walk, his right foot pointed down like a horse hoof, but somehow Carl found all that easy to overlook. New possibilities were opening up to him.