by Mo Hayder
“Are you—are you bleeding?”
“No.”
“No?” She felt suddenly light-headed. “Then-oh—” She covered her mouth with her hand. Downstairs someone was ringing the doorbell. “Jack? God, no, Jack—what happened? What've you done?”
“It's OK. I stopped.”
“What do you mean you st—”
“I stopped. Before I could—”
“Before you could what?”
“Before I could—oh, fuck—” He dropped his face. The doorbell rang again, longer this time. “Get the door, will you?”
“I warned you.”
“Becky—”
“What?”
“The door.”
“The door?”
“The front door.”
“Oh—God—yes. OK.” She ran down the stairs, heart racing—I need that drink. I need that drink—and, Jack, I'm definitely not telling you about Tracey now—I'm going to lie— She opened the door and found DCI Danniella Souness standing on the doorstep, red in the face, huffing and puffing and stamping her feet.
“Danni—”
“Becky.” Souness stepped inside without waiting to be asked, dripping rain onto the floor. “Where is he?”
“What? Oh—” She put her hand to her head. “He's up there—in the bathroom. Danni, what's going on?”
Upstairs Caffery spat into the toilet again and wiped his mouth. He had wanted to kill Klare. When his foot met flesh and gristle it was Penderecki's kidneys he was connecting with. When Klare screamed and tried to protect himself, it was Penderecki's screams, the screams he had never had the pleasure of hearing. He was angry enough to kill and it wasn't going away—it was still there, stretched taut across his stomach like a new muscle.
“Are ye puking?” Souness came and stood next to him, her arms folded.
He shook his head.
“What, then?”
“Just feel like it.”
“Aye—I'm not surprised. I'd be puking me face up too if I'd just left my oppo in the lurch like this.”
“I need a drink.” Rebecca was in the doorway, her voice shaky. “Maybe I should get us all a drink?”
“No, Becky, not just now.” Souness put her hands on her thighs and bent over to look at the side of Caffery's face. “I've something to deal with here. This one. He walked out on me.”
“I had to.” He straightened up a bit, wiping his mouth and taking deep breaths. “You know I had to.”
“Not when I'm in the middle of it, Jack—Klare's down at Brixton factory and I need you down there. I can't do this on my tod.”
“No. Take me off the case.”
“What?”
“Take me off the case.”
“Ooof!” She looked around the bathroom with her hands open, as if she were asking the walls, the mirror, the basin, to join in her disbelief. “What shite is this you're spouting now?”
“You saw what I just did.” He pushed past her and went to the sink, turning on the tap and scooping water into his mouth. “You can't let me get away with what I just did.”
“What did he just do, Danni?”
“You saw what I did, Danni.”
“Aye. I saw a piece of lowlife shite—a child killer, ac-tually—I saw him resisting arrest. And ye know something funny, I double-checked with the TSG officers, asked them if that's what they saw, and you know what? I was right— I wasn't imagining it. It's exactly what they saw too.”
Caffery shook his head. “No, Danni.”
“Sometimes it happens when someone resists arrest— they're bound to get a few fucks thrown into them. It hap-pens—especially to the lowlifes like that.”
He looked at her steadily in the mirror above the sink. “You really think you can defend me?”
“I think so.”
“You said you wouldn't.”
“Aye—Paulina'll tell you all about me and my promises. It's a wee luxury I allow myself for all my hard graft.”
“Right.” He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. He needed to show her—he wanted to explain how much this case had pushed him, in visible and invisible ways. He wanted her to understand just how far his obsession could take him. “Wait there.”
He clattered down the steps, swinging into the hallway, and pulling away all the things in the cupboard under the stairs until he found the taped-up box at the back. It was all going to come out now. He was going to crash into it, face first, get it all over. He went back upstairs.
In the bathroom Rebecca was silent. Souness had put the lid down on the toilet and was sitting astride it, her feet pushed back as if she were in the saddle, drumming on the seat between her legs with her knuckles, drumming out the beat of a rock song in her head. He set the box on the floor, felt in his pocket for his Swiss Army knife, flicked it open and slit the tape.
“What's this?” Souness stopped drumming. “What have we got here?”
He didn't answer. In the corner he saw Rebecca cross her arms and frown. He opened the top flaps of the box and upended it. Penderecki's child-porn collection tumbled out onto the floor, rolling out and tiding up against the edge of the bath. One magazine fell at Rebecca's feet, open to the black-and-white image of a prepubescent girl. She was holding a vibrator to her cheek as if it was a teddy or a flower. Rebecca looked at the photograph silently for a moment, and then, not looking up or speaking, she used her toe to close the magazine and sat down on the edge of the bath, her face in her hands.
“This.” Caffery straightened up and looked at Souness. “This—”
No one spoke. Rebecca massaged her scalp compulsively, staring at her bare knees. Souness crossed one boxy leg over the other, drew her jacket closed and crossed her arms.
“See? See all this?” He kicked the pile of magazines and videos. “That's why Paulina's been so interested in me. I kept it all to myself. It's Penderecki's. I should have surrendered it to the unit but I kept it to myself because I thought it might tell me something about Ewan—”
“Jack,” Souness interrupted.
“What?”
“I know.”
“What?”
“I said I know. I know all about Tracey Lamb. I've known since yesterday.”
“Then why didn't you—” He broke off. “Paulina did tell you. You do know the pedo unit's on to me.”
“Ahh—no. That's where you're wrong. Paulina's on to you. But not the unit.” She sighed and crossed her arms. “She gave the unit Lamb's name but she never said where she got it from—told her DCI she got it as a tip-off on the hotline. She's a good girl, Paulina. She knows how I feel about ye. And she knows what ye went through with that piece of shite Penderecki.” Souness stood and leaned over to the small window above the toilet. She opened it and let a flash of dripping green light into the bathroom. “One of those, was it?” She nodded to the railway. “One of those over there?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“And that,” Souness rested her pillowy breasts on the sill and leaned out a little farther, seeing it all for the first time, “that's the railway line. The last place wee Ewan was seen?”
“Yes.” He leaned past her and closed the window. “Danni.”
“What?”
He looked at her closely. “Let me off the case.”
“Oh, for Christ's sake …” She dropped her chin and rubbed her scalp with the palm of both hands. She did it rapidly, harshly. When she lowered her hands and looked up there were bright red patches on her scalp and face. “Right—OK, OK. Let's leave it for tonight. Give us all some time to calm down. I can handle Klare.” She put a hand on his arm. “Have some leave, OK? When you've cooled off come in and we'll go through your arrest statement and get that squared. I don't want the rubber heelers looking at you—they look at you and pretty soon they're looking at the whole unit. And this”—she kicked the pile of magazines on the floor—“this, I don't want to hear any more about this. I know you'll do the right thing.” She sighed and hitched up her trouser waistband
. “Now, that drink, Becky, hen …”
Rebecca took her hands from her face and looked up. “Changed your mind?”
“What do you think?”
Souness didn't speak much while she drank the scotch and Coke from Caffery's best crystal tumbler, standing in the living room at the French windows. She looked like a squire surveying his land, one hand in her trouser pocket, tipping her weight up onto her toes from time to time, looking out past the dripping garden to Penderecki's house. “Thank you, Becky.” She handed back the glass when she'd finished. “Thank you.”
Afterward, when she was alone, Rebecca poured a glass of wine and took it to stand in the same place, standing and staring at the garden, at the beech tree where the tree house had been. The rain pattered down outside: the fresh smells of earth and the green juice of the garden came in through the windows. Her stomach was tight. He's got to do something—he can't go on like this—
“Becky?” He was standing in the doorway, looking more exhausted than she'd ever seen him. So exhausted that the skin around his eyes almost seemed inflamed—as if he was holding back an enormous pressure. “Are you all right?”
She didn't answer. Just keep quiet—you don't have to say anything.
“Becky?”
She bit her lip and turned away. She was aching now. She went into the hallway and pressed the answerphone button. Caffery came to stand behind her and Tracey Lamb's voice filled the little house:
“It's me. Tracey, right? Uh—with what we was talking about, yeah? I'm getting bailed on Monday, so if you want to know some more about, y'know—I'll be back at my place at one o'clock—you know where it is.”
Before she could stop him, Jack had stepped past her and, in one movement swept the answerphone onto the floor. It lay cracked and tangled in wires, blinking and frantically winding itself back and forward. He kicked it once against the skirting board, turned and went into the kitchen, threw open the fridge, filled a tumbler with wine and sat down at the table.
She hurried after him, sitting down opposite and trying to cover his hand with hers but he shrugged her away. He looked—God, he looks terrible. “You were right,” he said. “You were right about me. About Bliss.”
She sat back a little. “Right,” she said cautiously. “You mean what I think happened, happened?”
He drank his wine down in one swallow, refilled his glass and looked out the window at the dripping garden. He seemed to forget she was there for a moment. His hands, she noticed, were trembling.
“Jack? Did you hear what I—”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what? Yes, you heard me? Or yes, what I thought happened, happened?”
“Yes, I killed him. And you're right—I'll probably do it again. And yes, it's because of Ewan.” He stared at his thumb. The black thumbnail. His stigmata. His blood stuck in the place it got stuck in twenty-eight years ago and refusing to flow. “You're right.”
She put her hand to her head. She had to stay calm. “Jack—look.” She took a deep breath and leaned forward to him, taking his hand from where it sat curled lightly around the tumbler. “Look, you've done the right thing, OK? Danni's going to take you off the case.”
“And what about her?” He nodded into the hallway, to the answerphone. “What am I going to do about her?”
“I don't know. That's for you to decide.”
He pulled his hand away and sat in silence for a long time.
“Jack?”
He didn't answer. He was imagining Tracey Lamb walking out of the court on Monday, coming toward him over the daisy-spotted abbey lawn with her rabbit's smile, holding out her hand for the money, and as he thought it, he knew that he'd want to hurt her, do to her what he'd just done to Klare. He couldn't tolerate any more of what Penderecki had already put him through. “That stuff upstairs,” he said suddenly, staring down at his thumb. “It'd be enough to stop her getting bail on Monday if I gave it all up.”
“To Paulina?”
“She can't cover for me anymore.”
“Then?”
“The CPS. I'll send it anonymously. It might keep her in prison at least until—”
“Until you cool down?”
He nodded.
“Odysseus,” Rebecca said, smiling gently.
“What?”
“Odysseus—it's your grand Odyssean gesture. It's you tying yourself to the mast. Resisting the sirens.” “I don't care what it is—I just care that it works.”
34
August 3
THE FOLLOWING WEEK THE POLICE brought the Churches back to the house. The workman caught sight of the marked area car pulling up in the driveway. Everyone knew they'd almost starved to death, everyone was talking about it, speculating about how it might have been in there, “right under our noses—how could we not have guessed?” The workman felt a little guilty. He'd seen Roland Klare coming and going, just once or twice, and hadn't given it a second thought. Not that he was going to mention that to anyone. Now he laid his tools down and crept a little farther along the steel girder to watch the Churches. He was surprised—they had lost weight. The fat family had lost weight.
A PC got out and spread his arms wide as if to protect the family from prying eyes, looking over his shoulder as they climbed out. There was no one watching, no press, no neighbors—in fact, no one paid much attention at all, except for the workman, but the officer seemed to feel it was part of his job. He stood protectively while the wife got out—she was wearing a plaster on her nose, a T-shaped plaster, but apart from that she looked, the workman thought, amazing. And slim in her little blue sundress. Christ, she looks really hot.
She opened the car door and stretched her arms inside for the boy. He was too old to be carried, really, and she had some difficulty lifting him, but he clung to her like a toy monkey, not speaking, staring at her neck. Hal Church had already got out and stood in the driveway, a little apart from them, watching with an odd look on his face, as if he didn't want to meet their eyes. He closed the car door and followed his wife and the PC up the driveway, a few paces behind, his head bent. When they reached the door he allowed the officer to accompany his wife and son into the house ahead of him.
Amazing how losing a little weight can make you look so healthy, the workman thought. That is one healthy, healthy family. He turned away and picked up his tool belt. Lucky bastards.
Souness had relented and given Caffery an extra two weeks leave to think things through—he and Rebecca decided to spend some time in Norfolk. They had good reason. Before they left he drove over to Shrivemoor to go through the arrest statement. He went early, while Rebecca was still showering and packing, and he and Souness sat in the SIOs' room and talked over coffee. It was a hot August morning, so hot that out the window the air seemed to have been burned white by the sun, and the distant Croydon skyline had hardened to a steady silver glitter. Roland Klare, Souness said, was on the mental-health wing at Brixton Prison. They'd forced him into clothes that didn't stink of piss. Yes, he was ill, she said, but he was still an evil radge, and Caffery should stop beating himself up over what he'd done. “He's a sick piece of shite so take that guilty look off your face.”
But hashing through the statement, coordinating their lie, felt wrong. He felt sure that whatever they did, the fallout would come eventually; a God finger would appear above him in the thunderclouds. He wondered how many more Klares there would be, how many more Blisses. He wondered where it would end.
“Right.” He picked up his keys and stood. “I'll be off, then.”
“You away for your holidays, are ye? You and Becky?”
“That's it.”
“Going anywhere special?”
“No,” he lied. “Nowhere special.”
In the incident room Kryotos was leaning against her desk, her arms folded, watching him come out of the SIOs' room. She wore a well-starched blue dress with a sweetheart neckline, had kicked off her shoes, and now she extended a foot to halt him in his tracks. He stopped
and looked at the bare foot, slightly embarrassed. She was smiling at him and he thought he knew what was coming.
“Marilyn—”
“You're brilliant, Jack.” Although there was no one in earshot, she leaned in to him and whispered, “You are absolutely brilliant. You got him, that bastard, you got him.”
Caffery stood awkwardly, one hand in his pocket, one on the back of his neck, not looking at her. He wasn't going to hold up his hand and say, “No, you don't understand. You don't understand the first thing about me.”
“Thank you, Marilyn, I appreciate it.”
“You're welcome.” She pushed herself off the desk and rummaged in a carrier bag. “Orange cake.”
“No, I—”
“Come on, Jack.” She straightened and held out a Tupperware container. “You and Rebecca can eat it. Go on, make me happy.” She pushed it at him. “Come on, you know you want it.”
He shook his head and sighed, smiling sideways at her. “Marilyn, when will you ever give up?” He took the container from her. “Go on, then. We can eat it in the car. Thank you.”
It was a fine high blue day, a day for tennis—or picnicking on long lawns next to lakes—and Caffery drove up the A12, glad to be leaving London behind. Rebecca had packed walking shoes, all her paints, an easel and Kry-otos's orange cake in the boot. She wore a green seersucker dress, new Ray-Bans, and she sat in the passenger seat not speaking, gazing out the window at lines of pollarded willows on distant ridges, at sunlight flashing on tractors. All week long she had kept up her determined cheerfulness. Sometimes it made her feel a little tight inside, keeping it going like this, but she wasn't going to drop it. Caffery took a turning off the main road and soon they were on poor, weed-cracked lanes, with concrete posts and wire fencing on either side. It was as if they were crossing a deserted army base. “Look.” He slowed the car. “Her house is down there.”
They were passing a small turning. Rebecca opened the window and leaned out, peering down the little track. A rusting sign hung on the gate and beyond it the track disappeared into the trees. Then it was gone, the Jaguar had passed the turning, and Rebecca found herself looking at a disused chalk quarry, long rusty stains down the edges, an abandoned trailer in the trees at the top, four pheasants taking off in formation over it. She wound up the window and Jack put his foot on the accelerator and they continued on to Bury, Rebecca saying a silent prayer that, whatever happened today, Jack would be OK, Jack would be calm and smooth at the end of it.