by Mo Hayder
Fucking hell—you clever bastard.
Nine or ten breeze blocks had been removed. Bracing his feet on two joists Caffery rolled up his sleeve, and slowly, slowly, as if he was feeling for something sharp, he put his hand into the hole. In the silent, unblinking darkness of the neighboring attic his disembodied hand clenched and unclenched, patted blindly up the walls. He retreated and pulled the torch from his waistband, leaning forward a little to shine it into the darkness, and found he was staring into an identical attic. This one was unused— there was no bric-a-brac piled up and the only chink in the geometry was the access hatch outlined in light from the hall below and the sound of a television playing downstairs. He shone the torch against the far wall and saw what he was expecting: another piece of fiberboard propped against the far wall.
Someone had burrowed along the top of the houses until they could get to Rory Peach.
Quickly he switched off the torch, climbed down the ladder and went into the street, walking backward into the middle of the road, hands in his pockets, head back, looking at the roofs. These were terraced houses, low-pitched roofs: none of the attic spaces was big enough to convert, and if someone had a mind to and an understanding of the flesh and bone of a building, he could probably make his way from one end of the street to the other. If he could find a way into one of the other houses from the street—
He stopped.
Two doors down from the Peaches was the boarded-up shell he and the TSG officer had searched on the first day. Shit—yes. He reached in his pocket for his mobile, trying to find DS Fiona Quinn's number in the memory.
28
AHYENA, DS QUINN KNEW, leaves its footprints— she had always known its tail had brushed the walls somewhere inside number thirty: she just hadn't known exactly where to look. This was a familiar problem for forensic investigators: without good witness statements to direct them, they were walking blind—they couldn't cover an entire house with fingerprint dust, they had to be told where to focus. But now, with this strange aerie, all sorts of possibilities had opened up. She knew she could get mitochondrial DNA from the pile of feces: she also believed there might be other body fluids up here—saliva, blood or semen—that could give her a full profile.
Now she moved carefully around the attic, dressed in the ghostly protective suit that shielded her from the UV light she was using. The equipment she'd brought was her bazooka—the “Scenescope”: a combined long-wave UV source and camera on a jointed wand, it could detect the smallest amount of body fluid. Caffery remembered a time when these alternative light sources needed four men to carry them, remembered hearing how the technicians at the Brighton bombing sat in the corridor and used their feet to push the Scenescope's baby brother, the Crimescope, into the lift. Now the equipment arrived coolly in a tiny portable black box. But safety restrictions were still tight. The rest of the SSCU team had set up in the front bedroom, as far as possible from the light source, and sat with Caffery and Souness, crowded around the monitor, watching the screen, the only sound the big Scenescope fan whirring and the creak of joists as Quinn moved around overhead. The camera transmitted a distinctive blue circle to the monitor, a spotlight sliding along textured surfaces that looked like nothing more than skin under a microscope, until it slipped over a dab of something organic and a cold white flare raced down the wand to the screen and Quinn knew where to scrape for a sample.
“See that?” Caffery tapped the screen. “That's the hole in the floor—for him to watch Rory.”
“What the hell is going on?” Souness said softly. She had been called away from a charity gala in Victoria and was still dressed in a black silk suit and bow tie. She'd grumbled about having to leave the event, but if Caffery had expected proof that she knew about Paulina and Lamb, if he'd expected tension in her voice, it wasn't there. She had driven over immediately, stopping on the way at Brixton station to pick up PC Palser—the first attending officer who'd made the initial search of the attic. Now he was sitting awkwardly in the corner, staring at his hands, embarrassment written all over him. Souness was showing him her back, allowing him to stew a bit.
“And what's all this about our dentist friend?” she asked Caffery, unhooking her bow tie and undoing the wing collar, letting it sit gaping around her neck. “And Champ?”
“Peach's cast doesn't match either bite. Champ doesn't recognize him. He's absolutely one hundred percent certain it's not him.”
“So what's going on with the DNA? Is there a mistake?”
“Quinny says they'll run it again, but …”
“But what?”
“I don't know.” He chewed the cuticle on his black thumb. “I just don't know.”
They wanted to take PC Palser into the attic to get his version of events, so when Fiona Quinn had finished they all went onto the landing. She met them at the bottom of the ladder looking pleased with herself.
“We've got a lot. A lot.” She pulled off the lightweight TV-screen goggles and blinked: for the first time in forty minutes her view of the world wasn't via the cathode ray tube. “Jack, I promise you, I'll have got something out of this.”
“Can you get me anything in twelve hours?”
“Why? What's going on?” She unzipped the front of her suit—the “Area 51 radiation suit,” she called it—and shrugged it down off her T-shirt. “Someone's not telling me something—the goalposts have moved.”
“You can say that again.” He drew his hand down over his chin, feeling the incipient stubble there. “If I told you what we're thinking, you wouldn't believe me.”
“You want the lab to rerun the DNA test?”
“Yes.”
“Will do.” She turned to PC Palser and gave him a sympathetic look. “All right, son?”
“Yes,” he mumbled, not meeting her eye.
“Good. It's clear up there, so go ahead.”
Palser was silent as the three of them climbed up to the loft. It was only as he began to show them how he'd done the original search of the attic that he got his blood back. “No one said it was food I was looking for,” he protested. “I was looking for a kid. No one said nothing about food.”
“But this was all here when you searched the attic—all of this?”
“Yes. But I was in a hurry, I mean, I don't remember the …” He pointed, embarrassed. “It didn't smell like this then.”
“How about this? Did you see this when you came up?”
Caffery was crouched at the very edge of the roof, where it sloped down to the joists, resting his weight forward on his knuckles and staring down at the soffit—the section under the joists on the roof overhang. Someone had removed the weatherboarding and he could see directly down into the back garden. There were two unwashed milk bottles on the patio twenty feet below. Someone had cut himself a hunting hole—if he had lain flat here and hung a small way through that hole, his face would have been directly in front of Rory's window.
Outside, the night was unusually cool. As if all the heat had risen into the sky. Caffery and Souness stood for a while looking up at the clear stars, letting the wind ruffle them a little and take the smells away. The SSCU van's doors were open, and they could see the technicians busily chopping up samples, freezing what they could in the onboard freezers. These days, they routinely froze most sam-ples—no one quite understood why, but DNA just popped right out of the frozen stuff in a way that it didn't when it was at room temperature. Caffery rolled a cigarette and stared up at the sky, at the sickle-shaped moon—so luminous and solid, it appeared cut out and pasted on the sky. He imagined Tracey Lamb looking at the same moon. Not now—not that now— he looked sideways at Souness. “Danni?”
“Aye?”
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
She looked at him, surprised. “No. Should there be?”
“No.”
“What's this? What's with all these glaekit questions? What's going on?”
“Oh, nothing.” He lit the cigarette. “Really, nothing.” He believed her�
�she didn't know. If there was a connection between Paulina and what had happened to Lamb that morning, Souness knew nothing about it.
Rebecca knew that today her life had changed utterly. Like a time-lapse film she had actually been able to feel the process, sense a new color creeping over her. A thaw, maybe. The heroin must have worn off by now, but she felt unnaturally calm—as if she was at last going the right way. In one phone call to her agent she had canceled the Clerkenwell exhibition and arranged to accept all the offers outstanding on work she'd chosen not to sell. As the day wore on the rumor seeped out, tagging some passing interest, and slowly, slowly it built until her agent had whipped them up: “I speak to you, Rebecca, looking out of my office window at the streets of Soho, and all I can see is the thrash of fins and tails—it's a feeding frenzy down there. Blood running down their chins. I could have sold your fucking lavvy seat, darling.”
She spent the day at Caffery's, lying on her back in the garden, smoking cigarillos, mobile to her ear, astonished that the fairy-tale figures being fed down the phone line could really be attached to her. Are you sure there isn't a mistake? She watched the smoke curl up to the blue and pondered this odd shift in her life. She wondered how he would see it—how he'd feel about her now. I wouldn't blame you if you just told me to fuck off, Jack. I wouldn't blame you.
When he came home late that night, his face was gray. He seemed exhausted. “There are some clever bastards in the world,” he said, getting a beer from the fridge and emptying the change out of his pockets, stuffing his jacket in the dry cleaner's bag. “Some clever, clever bastards.” But when she pressed him he wouldn't say any more. He took off his trousers, put them in the bag too, and went up to the bathroom in his socks and shirt.
While he showered she opened some wine. It was a tall blue bottle, and because she liked the way it looked in the light, she brought it upstairs. She filled both glasses, put his on top of the toilet cistern with the bottle, and sipped at hers, wondering where to start.
“I've canceled the show,” she said eventually, leaning against the sink, looking at his silhouette in the shower.
“What's that?”
“I said I've canceled the show at Zinc.”
He pulled back the shower curtain, trying to rub the soap from his eyes. “What?”
“I'm selling the pieces that I'd got offers on—the ones I thought I wanted to hold on to. Actually, I've already done it—I've sold them.”
“Becky …” He turned off the shower, groped for a towel, wiping the soap and water off his face so that he could see her properly. “You can't. You can't do that.”
“I can, you know.” She leaned over, took his glass from the cistern and handed it to him. Soap dripped from his arms and legs and stomach. A few days ago she would have stared, made a comment, told him what a total turnon his body was, but she wasn't going to be flippant tonight. “I can and I have. And guess what.” She turned her glass around, looking down into it, a little embarrassed. “I'm going to go and see a therapist too.” She stuck out her tongue and smiled. “I know, yuck, promise you won't tell a soul.”
He didn't answer. He sat down on the edge of the bath, his back to her, staring down into the wineglass. She couldn't tell what he was thinking. After a while he turned, swung his legs out of the bath, put the glass on the floor and held out his hand to her.
“Come here.”
She took his hand and he pulled her on to his lap, wrapping soapy arms around her. “That's good,” he said. “That's really good.”
She bent her head and smiled against his neck, getting soap on her face. The water was soaking into her T-shirt.
“My T-shirt's wet,” she said. “Look at me.”
“OK. Let's go to bed? See if it works this time.”
She smiled. “Except you're covered in soap.”
“I don't care. Come on.”
And they crawled between the sheets, wet and soapy, and he pulled her T-shirt over her head and used it to wipe the soap off his chest, his stomach, his legs, then threw it on the floor and fell forward, groping at her bra. “If this is what a little smack does for you …”
“Oh, stop it.” She kicked him in the shin. “Don't tease me. You know it's not that.”
“I know.” He was smiling as he pulled at her shorts, as he pressed his hard, damp body against hers, and she had to stop herself turning to him and saying it out loud like an idiot: I am so sure, so, so sure it's going to be OK.
29
July 27
TRACEY LAMB HAD TO GO TO THE NAREY hearing that morning—but she didn't want to come back and find Steven had made another mess in the trailer. “Come on.” She put down some bits and pieces on the bunk, some Cokes, some Caramel bars, some biscuits. “Come and sit down here and we'll play a game.”
The chocolate and the idea of a game cheered him up. He sat down on the bed, on top of his tangled sleeping bag, and started to rock back and forward, grinning, showing the gaps in his teeth where they'd rotted from too many sweets. “Gaaayhb. Gaaayb.”
“That's it. Now give me your hands.”
He held them out, delighted that Tracey was paying him attention.
“Good. Now keep still, while I …” She used the electric flex to fasten his hands together. “Good.” She reached around his back to pass it behind him and slowly wound it around his body. She kept things light, laughing and poking him in the ribs to keep him smiling. “Come on— this is fun. See, what the game is, is that Tracey ain't all that good at tying Steven up—see? Steven can always get out, can't he?”
“Yeeeeth.” He nodded, grinning. “Yeth.” He stared in rapt attention as she tightened the electric flex so that one arm was fastened at his side. She stood and fed the remaining lead first around the handles of the cupboards, then around the window catches and the base of the table. Now he could move around in a circle of only about two or three feet. He could reach the sink but he couldn't reach the windows or the door or do any harm.
“There.” She stood back, wiping her hands on her leggings. “Now, I bet Steven can get out of that—I bet Steven's too clever for Tracey, ain't he?”
“Ye-ehth!”
“Let's see, then. Let's see him get out of that.”
“ 'Kay, 'kay.” He grinned, rocking back and forward, his eyes rolling in his head. He struggled and writhed, the flex becoming tighter around his hands until the flesh bulged and the veins in his neck stood up. Tracey folded her arms and watched, her head on one side. Yeah—get out of that, you little shit.
Then suddenly he was free. He jerked forward, arms flailing like a baby trying to get out of his high chair, a big rotten-toothed grin. “Dud id!”
Oh, you fucking piece of shit. She kicked the bottom of the table. “Yeah—you done it, didn't you?”
“ 'Gain, 'gain.”
“OK—again. We'll try again.”
“ 'Kay—'kay.” He jolted forward, excited. “Gaaaybb!”
“But this time,” she pushed his hands back in his lap, “this time Tracey's going to try harder.”
This time she used a second piece of flex and an oily tow rope from the boot of the Datsun. She left one of Steven's hands free but this time, although he struggled for ten minutes, while she stood at the door and watched with a cool smile, he couldn't get out. Eventually, trussed up on the bunk like a Christmas turkey, he looked up at her and grinned. He was out of breath but he was thrilled that the game was going so well.
“Well done.” Tracey nudged the slop bucket toward him with her toe. “Right. I ain't going to be long. I'll be back this afternoon. And then, if you've been good,” she put her face near his and grinned, “if you've been good, maybe you'll meet someone special.”
“On your list number 103, number seven, sir.” The list caller allowed the district judge to find the case on his list. “This is Ms. Tracey Jayne Lamb. Kelly Alvarez is representing.”
Bury St. Edmunds' combined crown and magistrates' courts were housed in a high-vaulted red-brick build
ing tucked away behind the grounds of the ruined abbey. The interior was full of wood veneer and wall-to-wall carpeting. Kelly Alvarez, dressed in a slightly scruffy off-white suit and a red silk blouse, sat on the defense side of the big bench, directly under the huge central atrium. To her right, in the dock, Tracey Lamb stood patiently, clutching her sputum cup and chewing a ball of strawberry bubble gum.
The clerk read out the charges. “Tracey Jayne Lamb, you are charged with conspiracy to commit an act of indecent assault, with others unknown, contrary to common law.”
The district judge frowned at Lamb as if he hadn't noticed her in the dock and now was slightly offended to see her—as if she had just walked in unannounced. “Miss Lamb.” He took off his glasses, pressed his hands flat on the desk and sat forward in the high-backed leather chair. “You understand that this is a very serious offense and it can't be tried here? We're here today only to set a date for a transfer hearing and talk about bail.”
Lamb gave him a sarcastic smile, as if he were asking her whether she knew the alphabet. “Ye-es.” She pushed the gum into the corner of her mouth, spat a gobbet of phlegm into the cup and straightened up, allowing herself a small smile. “I know.”
“Right.” He closed his eyes in disgust and turned to the Crown Prosecution Service solicitor. “You've said you won't oppose bail?”
“That's right.”
“Are you sure you don't want to oppose?”
“Yes. I'm quite sure.”
“You know I have the right to overrule that decision.”
“Yes—I—”
“Good.” He tapped his pen loudly. “Because I think that's what I might well do.”
“Sir.” Alvarez half stood, accidentally knocking a pen off the table. “Sir, it's important to recognize that this offense is very old; there's no evidence that the defendant is still in contact with any of the victims.”
Lamb chewed a little harder, narrowing her attention on the district judge. No one had said she might not get bail. She hadn't even thought about it. Now the CPS solicitor was standing, nodding at the judge. “That's common ground, sir, we agree with the defense.”