by Mo Hayder
Photographs—
Gummer, standing now on the pool edge in his T-shirt and bathing cap, was thinking about the photos he had in his flat—a nine-year-old boy, beautiful, so beautiful. He had them displayed in a back bedroom, pasted on the walls. No one would ask questions about them—there was no one to see them, no one ever came into his flat, nor would they ever. He let his mind wander off and tinker with the subject, and the first image he got was of Rory Peach. A boy, naked, arms crossed over his chest. Tied to a radiator. That bit, the bit about the radiator, hadn't actually been in the newspapers, but he knew it was reality. Then Gummer thought about another set of photos. Where were they? In someone's house? Maybe displayed somewhere? He wondered for the hundredth time if the police would find them.…
“Look at me—I'm a mermaid!”
Gummer stiffened. The Barracudas, especially the girls, were always getting too close for comfort. If one of them brushed against him it made his flesh crawl.
“Can we do that thing now?” They were jumping up and down in the shallows, one or two climbing out of the water, pushing themselves onto their bellies on the pool edge and kicking their legs out. “Want to do that trick now.”
“No, I don't think so.”
“Yes!” In the pool a little girl spiked out her arms and legs into a star. “I stand like this and then you have to swim through my legs.”
“No, we don't do that in this class.” The children coming out of the pool were making him nervous, too many of them and too fast, like penguins flinging themselves at a rock. And when he got nervous his head got red all the way across the top to the bony bit at the base of his skull, and down his neck and into the tops of his arms. “I think you should all get back into the pool.”
“And we swim through your legs.” They knew his weak spot and were prodding at it now—standing on the poolside, squirming around his legs like fat tadpoles, tugging at his hands, trying to get him into the water, teasing him, brushing him. “And after that you swim through ours.”
“No—definitely not—”
“We're all mermaids. Look—”
“Let go!” Gummer was starting to shake. He'd taken his pills that morning, but there was still that bloating tension in him, waiting to burst out. He wanted to cry. The girls were swarming around him now, stirring the hairs on his skin. He couldn't bear them to touch him—it was so important that they didn't touch him. It was no good it was no good—he was going to—
“STOP!”
His voice echoed around the pool. The lifeguards and the spectators in the gallery all looked up. “Just stop it now.” A blast on his whistle and one or two heads, slick heads like young seals', popped up in the water, shocked and sobered. “When I say no I mean no.” The children next to him backed away, surprised. He was trembling, bright red, his whole face the color of his rubber bathing cap. This time none of the children laughed. “Right.” He gestured to the changing rooms. “Lesson's canceled for today. You've proved you can't follow the rules so the les-son's canceled.”
It was getting late but there was nowhere to park in King's car park, and Caffery had to take the Jaguar almost halfway to Brixton before he found a side road to leave it in. Souness still hadn't paged him. Walking to the hospital, twice he broke into a jog—as if he might silence his mind. Hyper hyper hyper—a hothouse of images and voices, making connections where none should be. Peach, Alek Peach, it wasn't you twelve years ago, but it was you with Rory. What's happening? Are you copying someone? It didn't make sense. He felt like striking his forehead. Exasperated and tired, he stopped in the main corridor to get a cup of vending machine coffee.
“Mr. Caffery.”
He looked up. Ndizeye stood a few yards along the hallway, body turned slightly away as if he had been crossing the corridor and stopped when he'd noticed Caffery. He was holding a stack of X rays under his arm and his glasses had slipped down his sweaty nose.
“Mr. Ndizeye.” Shit—I haven't returned his calls. He straightened up. “I'm sorry—I've been meaning to—uh— I just …” He tailed off, looking down at the empty Styrofoam cup in his hand, embarrassed. “How's the family?”
“Yes. Very well. My family's my blessing.” He pushed the glasses up his nose and crossed the corridor to watch Caffery adjust the cup under the nozzle. When he didn't say anything and didn't move, and when Caffery could feel the clown face smiling at him, he let go of the cup and straightened. “Did you want me to—did you want to talk about the case? You can just submit your expenses to our office manager.”
“That's OK. I've done it.”
“Good, good.”
“Well,” Ndizeye leaned back slightly, clutching the X rays to his round stomach, “it's not going too well for you, I suppose.”
“You can say that again.”
“Is there anyone else you're interested in? Anyone else you'd like me to have a look at?”
“Maybe if something comes up on another case, then yes, but we've got the corroborative evidence with the DNA. I mean, I'm sure prosecution will be wanting to see you in court, of course, but that won't be for some time.”
Ndizeye frowned and leaned up against the coffee machine. “Corroborative evidence?”
“DNA. We got DNA proving that Peach was the motherfucker who did his own son—sorry if that's offensive.”
“Mr. Peach?” Ndizeye blinked behind his thick spectacles. “Then who on earth bit him?”
“I'm sorry?”
“I said who on earth bit Rory? It was the same person who bit that young lad in the park, but it wasn't Alek Peach.”
“What?”
“I'm sorry, I thought that's what you meant. His cast. Doesn't match the bite.”
“His cast? But I thought …”
“Oh—it's not perfect, he moved too soon. But I got enough. Oh yes. Whoever it was bit Rory it certainly wasn't Alek Peach.”
It was an odd sunset—as if the earth were tilting sideways, or the solar wind had lost track and were mixing pink light from another galaxy. Caffery cruised slowly round Brixton, as conscientious as a curb crawler, looking at the lights in the houses, wondering, just wondering. He parked on Dulwich Road and walked across the park, listening to the wind howl and chase things through the trees.
Number thirty had been released as a crime scene and technically he should get Carmel Peach's permission to enter, but she was still at the Nersessians' and, anyway, he'd kept a copy of the padlock key. Donegal Crescent was quiet—no cars passed. The only sounds were a TV in a lit-up living room next door and a dog barking in one of the back gardens. He carried the torch in his pocket. He liked its heaviness.
Inside the hallway was dark, the air bitter and salty, sealed up, heated and reheated. He reached for the light and even as he did he remembered—shit. The electricity key: Souness had removed it when they left and placed it on top of the meter. He switched on the torch, followed the beam quickly to the kitchen and pushed the key back in. The lights came on, the fridge started up noisily. He stood for a moment, blinking in the light, his senses quivering. The walk down the hallway—the silent living room on his right, the door to the basement—had set the hair on his neck straight up. Not like you—not like you— it took a moment for his heart to stop racing.
He flipped open the fridge—it was covered in DS Quinn's fingerprint dust and a black and gray crust of microbes. The smell was of riverbeds and mushroom fields, but there was another smell in the house. The smell that Souness had been troubled by the last time they were here. This time it was stronger, still faint but distinctive. He switched off the fridge at the plug, anxious to preserve whatever electricity was left, and went back to the kitchen doorway, finding the light switch for the hallway. It was just as he'd remembered it—the framed prints on the wall, the plastic runner to protect the carpet. Rory's turbo water gun on the stairs. And the smell. Stronger now.
He sniffed, trying to imagine the receptor that very particular smell stroked. It was almost, almost but not quite, th
e sweetly familiar smell in Penderecki's house. Almost the smell of death. Is it something the science unit missed? Something else in the house no one's seen?
Something else in the house. Someone else had been in the house with the Peaches.
He put the torch in his trouser pocket and went to the bottom of the stairs. The last thing Peach said he remembered was standing here, looking up the staircase. Caffery hung his jacket on the newel post and went slowly up the stairs. The higher he got, the stronger the smell. He stood on the landing, resting his hands on the cupboard door. The message was still there, smudged and scraped where DS Fiona Quinn had cut samples from the paint: “Female Hazard.” This little cupboard had been Carmel Peach's home for more than three days. Here she had lain, crunched up and in pain, listening to her son crying below, her wrists bleeding.
If she was to be believed.
Come on, then.
He pushed open the door. There was a lagged tank at the back of the cupboard and slatted shelves above. On the top shelves a stack of towels. Caffery sniffed. He crouched down, sniffing the carpet. Here, even outside the cupboard, it had been soaked in Carmel's urine and the sharp alleyway smell of it came up to him now, almost making him cover his nose. But that isn't the smell you're after— it's something else … He straightened and turned, looking up and down the landing. The master bedroom was at the front of the house, the bathroom facing it. The boards creaked as he walked to the end of the landing, flicking on the lights and looking in both rooms. Silence. The streetlight shone orange on the bedroom curtains. A copy of Hello! magazine lay on the dresser. Carmel's cosmetics stood in a silent little line, a cardigan and a pair of socks were on the floor. In the bathroom Rory's bath toys were piled in a plastic laundry basket under the sink. Caffery turned off the lights and went back onto the landing. He watches them—he watches them in bed. Past the cupboard, Carmel's cupboard, down to the back of the house. This was Rory's room. He pushed open the door and stood for a moment.
It was a neat square stuck on the house over the kitchen, a big casement window in the center of the wall. DS Quinn had pulled the curtains to stop curious eyes, but there was enough of a gap to see the trees in the park moving in the wind. The smell was stronger in here.
Caffery had the sudden sensation that something was standing in the hallway behind him. He turned quickly. The corridor was silent, just the streetlights glowing from the bedroom. You're imagining things now. Making things up … He moved quietly into the room, bending to pick up toys, turn things over, trying to imagine someone in the park looking through the window and watching Rory play. Wolverine stared silently down at him from an X-Men poster next to the bed, Gundam and WWF models lay scattered on the floor—try to imagine Rory crouched here playing with his toys and being watched. He turned. In the little sliver of windowpane between the curtains the bare bulb glared back. He snapped the light off and opened the curtains. The trees on the other side of the broken fence were less than fifty yards away.
He said he liked watching me in bed.…
It was one of those odd cloudless nights in which the wind keeps the stars clean and the sky never seems to get properly black. In the park the trees moved as one, shivering where the wind licked at them. Caffery stood quite still, letting his attention move around the room behind him, up the walls, around the doorway then up, across the ceiling, over his head and out through the window, touching the sides of the house, down the garden path, over the fence and out, out into the night—into the woods. Could someone sitting in one of those trees see into this room? Someone who liked climbing?
He went to Rory's bed and lay down, taking the torch out of his pocket and resting it on his stomach, conscious of the cold, bare window on his right. He put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling, wondering if he was expecting something to happen—something to hurtle through the window and land on him on the bed. Secret places. There is always somewhere to hide things. Not the place you expect. His movement in the room had set up a small rotation of the lightbulb above the bed. He watched it dreamily, circling, circling, thinking of Ewan—does everything circle back? Rory's South Park duvet smelled of fabric softener and faintly of leaves, and Caffery half closed his eyes, enjoying that smell, remembering the tree house. Tracey Lamb … was she really lying … did she know?
He sat up, the torch rolling off and banging loudly on the floor. A fly had crawled out of the plastic base of the light fitting.
Jesus.
He jumped up on the bed, reaching inquisitive fingers to it, turning the base on its axis to face him. There was a small square hole in the plastic—he poked his fingers in, feeling the roughness of the edge. The square had been excised as if with a Stanley knife.
Fiona? His pulse was racing now, pounding in his ears. Fiona, this isn't you, is it? What would the science unit want with a sample of the light fitting?
“Hal, I hope you're having fun in Cornwall, it's Darren, mate. Look, I'll see you when you get back but Ayo wanted me to call and say that she never got round to coming over to your house, see, and she's sorry—but the fing is our baby got here last night.” He paused for a moment and Benedicte had a picture of him, embarrassed, trying to be cool, shifting from foot to foot, being the big man. “He's a bit early, our baby, right, a month early, 'cause she, you know, someone went and got her all stressed up at work over somefink, some filth, Josh, you're right about them, Josh man, and anyway little Errol, that's gonna be his name, little Errol, he's in one of them premie things—he's OK, like, but …” He paused and seemed to be wondering what to say. “Oh, man, don't get worried, he's OK, it's just we couldn't water no plants, and I'm sorry. We're going to open something together, the four of us, when you get back and celebrate.” He coughed. “Anyway, that's all, homeys. See you.”
Benedicte lay against the radiator with her face in her hands. She had a headache, cramps in her limbs, and even with the dribble of water her mouth was still so filled with a gluelike substance that closing it was uncomfortable. The papers said that Carmel Peach would have been dead within twenty-four hours in that heat if she hadn't been found. Smurf's breathing was labored and Benedicte knew that she was deteriorating fast. She was such an old dog, a poor old dog, and so confused—her eyes were dull and crusted and in the last few hours she had stopped moving, except to pant or whimper. Ben dropped her hands and took deep breaths, trying to stop herself from crying. Ayo had a new baby, and she and Josh and Hal and Smurf were all going to die.
Caffery found a mop in the kitchen cupboard and took it upstairs. He switched on all the lights on the first floor and stood on the landing, looking up at the hatch in the ceiling. Secret places. The attic was one of the most common places for “missing” children to hide—always check behind the water tank. The first attending team had searched the attic at number thirty looking for Rory. Had they missed something?
He switched on the light and prodded the hatch. It swung open smoothly, and when he stood on tiptoe and pushed up his hand, he found a light switch and the rubberized feet of a stainless-steel fold-down ladder suspended in the opening. The light came on and the ribbed vault of the roof lit up like a church. Tucking the flashlight in the back of his waistband he pulled down the ladder and began to climb.
Caffery was six feet on the nose and the roof was too low for him: he had to bend his head slightly to stand. The attic was neat—tea chests from some long-ago move, “Rory/clothes” written on one, “Kitchen” on another, rolls of orange insulating material and, in the corner, where the shadows ran down from the walls, leaned a plastic Christmas tree and a Woolworth's bag full of red tinsel. Cobwebs strung across the ceiling clung to the lightbulb like a fairground ghost-train prop. He could feel the prickle of insulating material on his skin—and that high, warm smell in his nostrils. Something was up here—something that all the people who had come through the house had missed. He made a slow 360-degree turn, taking in every incongruity, and immediately he saw what he was looking for. It was at th
e other end of the attic, right above Rory's bedroom: a small, indistinct pile of something, smeared like mud into the shadows, flies buzzing above it.
He picked his way across the joists, hand covering his mouth—afraid of what you might find? He stopped half a yard away from the pile, waving away the flies. He was looking at a long, wet deposit of food—half-eaten food slumped over polystyrene fast food boxes, slimy hamburgers, a small pile of McDonald's cups, a pile of scrunched tissues. Off to one side a fecal mound, a tissue on top of it. And in the middle of it all a circle had been cleared in the insulating material, from the center of which a single spiral of yellow electric light poked up into the room. When he went and stood above it he found he was looking through a hole straight down at a South Park duvet.
Someone had made a camp here—someone had relaxed here, lived here, shat here, watched Rory from here, probably masturbated here. You fucker. He straightened up and looked around. Two yards away, leaning against next door's shared wall was a piece of fiberboard. When he tried to move it he found it was light—it came away easily and he pushed it to one side. He put one hand on the bare wall and leaned over to inspect what had been behind it.