It didn’t take long for Caffery to recognize that Carmel Peach was on medication. During the night, Alek had been moved to an annexe room in a new ward, and Carmel sat at the end of his bed painstakingly picking the onions out of a bowl of minestrone soup and placing them in a napkin. She looked as if the pigment had been sucked out of her, as if what was left standing was just the dried-out hide. She had chipped her nail polish into flakes that lay across her T-shirt and jeans, and when Caffery and Souness came into the ward she looked up but didn’t recognize their faces. Her mind flicked past them easily and she went back to the soup.
“Alek.” Souness sat down next to him on the bed. Caffery closed the door and pulled down the blind. “Alek,” Souness said gently, “do ye know why we’re here, son?”
“To give me more grief?” He was wearing a black and silver Elvis T-shirt and two or three pillows supported his back. His sideburns had been trimmed, right up to the grey, and next to him, on the side of the bedside cabinet, a child’s crayon drawing had been taped. Kenny from South Park, “Rory” written in brown felt tip at the bottom. “You can’t hurt me now.” He stared at his big hands, his head drooping. “Not any more. Just do what you have to do.”
“We’re sorry.” Caffery mirrored Souness and sat down on the bed, conscious of the intimacy of sitting so close to Peach. “We’re here to say that we’re sorry—I’m sorry, but there’s still something you’re not telling us, Alek. Something happened in your house …” He cleared his throat. “Something happened before Rory was kidnapped. We’ve got an idea what but we’d like to hear it from you because—”
He stopped. Carmel had suddenly sat bolt upright. Without a word she slammed down the napkin, got to her feet, stuffed her feet into a ragged pair of trainers, the backs pressed down under her heels, and walked jerkily around the room, humming loudly to herself, a snatch of music from a car advert, picking things up and putting them down, opening the bedside cupboard and pulling objects out, noisily rearranging them. Seeing her expression Alek put his face in his hands and shook his head despairingly. Caffery leaned forward and spoke in a low voice, above the noise, “I’m sorry, Alek, if this seems insensitive, but it has to be done.”
“Da—da da da!” Carmel sang the tune out loud. Caffery looked up to find her glaring angrily at him. “Da-da—da-da!”
“Carmel, love,” Peach said, “go and wait outside.”
Furiously, silently, she grappled in her handbag for cigarettes and a lighter, not taking her eyes off Caffery, and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her. It took him a moment or two, staring at the closed door, to get rid of that angry, war-mask image. He shifted a little, and glanced over at Souness, who shrugged.
“Mr Peach …” He tried again, straightening up his voice. “Alek.”
Peach’s jaw moved, as if his tongue was a piece of obstinate gristle that he’d like to swallow or spit out. He pushed away the bowl of soup and didn’t answer.
“We do understand how you feel. We’ve got a specially trained officer—he’s done a course, a special course for, uh, this sort of thing.”
Peach pointedly turned his head to Souness. “Is that all he’s come here for? To tell me about your training schemes?”
Caffery sighed. “I understand why it’s difficult, Alek.”
“Oh, yeah?” He turned cold eyes back to Caffery. “You really think you understand, do you?”
“Yeah, I think I—”
“You really think you understand.” He bunched up his fists. “Fucking filth come here and tell me they can understand what happened to me. You haven’t got a clue what we went through …”
“What I mean is—”
“No!” He pointed a finger in Caffery’s face. “No, let me tell you about understanding.” His head was twitching, the sinews on his neck stood out. “Because I’ll tell you this for nothing, I hope one day you do understand. I hope one day the same thing happens to you. I hope you feel this way so someone can come mincing in and preaching to you about under-fucking-standing. You’ve never had a choice like I had—never.” He dropped back against the pillow, breathing hard. “You haven’t got children—I can see it in your eyes.”
Caffery stared at Rory’s drawing of Kenny. He knew he was supposed to be feeling sympathy for Alek Peach, knew he was supposed to be terribly, terribly sorry for what had happened to him, but there it was again, that maddening, bright anger moving down his limbs—as if it had been injected like adrenaline from a gland into his heart. All he’d expected from his extended hand of sympathy was a straightforward, honest acceptance. He tried again. “Mr Peach, all I—”
“Don’t tell me.”
“I just want to—”
“I don’t want your understanding.”
Shit. Caffery jumped to his feet, furious, pacing around the bed, opening his hands to appeal to Souness. “I’m only trying to help,” he mouthed at her.
She turned her face away from Peach and reached over to touch Caffery on the wrist: “Let me deal with this, OK?”
“Go on, then.” Caffery dropped into a chair in the corner. He’d given up with Alek Peach. He sat, his legs pushed out in front of him, his head dropped on one hand, and watched.
“Right …” Souness rubbed her forehead, trying to think how to put it. “Alek, we think the intruder made ye do something to Rory …” She paused. Peach was breathing hard, staring angrily at his hands. “Now, we’ve never come up against something like this, so we need you to work with us, and what I think we need to start with is an allegation.”
Silence. Caffery watched sullenly from the edge of the room. She won’t get through to him—he’s a dickhead.
“We’re sorry, young man.” She put her hand on his and squeezed it. “But we need to hear it in your own words.”
Peach suddenly put his head back and tears lit up in the corners of his eyes, running down his face. He heaved in a breath. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve died now,” he muttered. “I’ve died now, so it doesn’t matter what I tell you. I’m dead. I know you can see me.” He lifted one bruised hand and touched the fingertips to his chest. “You can see me, sitting here, inside my skin, but really I’m not here, see? I’m not really here.” He used the heel of his hand to press the tears back into his eyes. “Oh, God, oh, God—”
When it was over Caffery and Souness paused outside the ward to check their watches. They were both pale. When Peach had finally begun to talk he had given them the whole ugly thing at once: dragged it out by its tail and slapped it down in front of them, teeth, blood and claws. He’d admitted it all—admitted that somewhere there were photographs of what had happened, that he’d lied about not hearing or seeing Rory, said that he hadn’t been dehydrated because he and Rory had both been given a little water in those three days, because the intruder had a reason to keep them strong. And finally, his head drooping, tears falling on to his pyjamas, like a child, he admitted he’d been forced to do the worst, most unspeakable thing. The troll had told Alek he’d throw Rory out of a first-floor window on to the concrete patio if he didn’t.
By the time the interview was over all three of them were shaking. Caffery realized now how little he’d thought through what it had been like in number thirty. To hear it come out of Peach’s mouth awed and silenced him. Maybe that was why Peach had given him the bullshit about his eyes—maybe he’d been afraid that Caffery would look right into him and see all the lies he’d had to tell about Rory.
They walked down the stairs in silence. Souness bought them both coffee from a vending machine and they went out into the shocking sunshine. The car was too hot to drive, so they opened the doors and sat on the seats with their feet on the tarmac, sipping their drinks.
“So,” Souness said, after a while, pulling the rear-view over to check her face, removing a little fleck of dirt from the corner of her eye, “where does that put us now?”
Caffery was silent. He sat with his feet apart, elbows resting on his knees, staring into the coffee. Peach had told them how panicky the troll had got when the doorbell rang, how he’d whimpered and barged around the kitchen trying to get out. But Peach had still been blindfolded and was unable to give them a better description of him. Still, one thing he had said was jammed in Caffery’s head.
“Jack? I asked you a question.”
“Yeah—sorry.” He drank his coffee down and crumpled the plastic cup. “How are we doing for tick-tocks?” He checked his watch. “Right, my lad’s’ll be back from door-to-door by now—you feel like going through their statements for me?”
“And where are ye going to be?”
“I’m going home.”
“Ye’re just going tae dump me here—in the middle of shagging Camberwell?”
“No. I’ll drive you back first.” He took the keys out of the door and put them in the ignition. “You deserve a lift after what you just did.”
Souness, who was holding her collar out and blowing air down it to try to cool down, stopped when she heard that. She turned to him, a suspicious look in her eyes. “Jack? That wasn’t a wee compliment slipped through there, was it now?”
“Don’t let it go to your head. Now, come on, shut the door.”
It was the first time Caffery had been home this early for a long time. The sunlight illuminated unused dusty corners of the house, and the windows needed cleaning. The answerphone was blinking—he put his briefcase on the sofa, opened the french windows and listened to the message while he sat at the top of the garden steps pulling off his shoes and socks.
“It’s me, Tracey. I got remanded.”
“I’m not interested, Tracey.” He padded into the kitchen. “You’re a fucking liar and I’ve stopped playing.”
“They never give me bail and I got custody instead and I’m in Holloway, if you want to see me.” She hesitated as if she was about to say something and Caffery, in the kitchen, reaching into the back of the fridge to retrieve a solitary old can of Heineken, paused and looked round into the hall. “And, anyway, that’s where I am. You could bring me some fags,” she added pathetically, “if you wanted. And a phone card.”
Yes, you slag. He slammed the fridge. Yes, you’re still a wind-up merchant. He padded into the hallway to wipe the message and found Rebecca waiting for him on the stairs.
“Who’s Tracey?”
He stood, surprised and open-mouthed, guilty to be standing here in his own hallway. “I didn’t see your car.”
“I had to park round the corner. It’s jammed outside.” She came down two steps so she was eye to eye with him. “Who’s Tracey?”
He sighed, avoiding her eyes.
“Well?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He turned away, starting towards the kitchen. He knew that if he told her it would start an argument—what Rebecca wanted to hear was that he was doing something in return for her gesture, that he was giving up Ewan. She certainly didn’t want to know the sort of bait he was still taking. “She’s no one.”
“Jack, tell me.” She came down two more steps. “Jack—”
“No—you don’t want to hear.”
“Please.”
“What?” He turned back to face her. “I’ve just said you don’t want to know, so leave it at that.”
She didn’t flinch. “Just tell me who she is.”
“Someone who’s got me here.” He grabbed his balls. “If you really want to know she’s someone who’s got me here and’s enjoying jerking me around.”
“Why?”
He took a breath to reply, but changed his mind. “No, leave it—it’s all about Ewan.”
“Oh.” She was silent. She tucked her bottom lip under her teeth and dug a little hole in the wooden banister with her thumbnail. He turned to go but she stopped him. “Jack.”
“What?”
“It’s OK, you know.”
“What?”
“About Ewan—it’s OK. You can’t change your life just because your dumb, neurotic girlfriend wants you to.”
He was humbled. They sat at the kitchen table and talked and he was honest with her: he told her about finding the videos—”They’ve been in the hall cupboard all along”—about going to see Tracey, about the arrest, about the way he’d gone to the Soho bank with the cash, paid it in and promised himself to forget it all. She sat opposite him, smoking thoughtfully, occasionally stopping him to ask a question. From time to time he had to remind himself that this was really happening, that they were sitting talking about it, and Rebecca wasn’t just dismissing it, or sliding in cutting comments here and there.
“Jack,” she said, looking at the tip of her cigarillo, “you know, it’s true, it all really winds me up.” She wiped her face and pressed the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “But,” she dropped her hand and looked up, “it’s only because I get scared. Only because I get scared of how tense you get. I get scared you’ll hurt someone—or yourself.”
“Me too.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I get scared too.” He covered her hand with his. “Rebecca …”
“What?”
“We’ll have to talk about it later.”
She held up her hands. “That’s OK—that’s fine, really.”
“I’ve got to get on—I’m in the middle of something.”
“Yes.” She put out the cigarillo and started to get up. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“I think you should go out.”
“Why?”
“Trust me—I think you should go out.”
Roland Klare took the camera from the tin, bundled everything into a bag and left the flat, fumbling with his keys and nearly dropping them. He was anxious, he was sweating, but he had made up his mind. It was time.
The lift took him all the way to the ground floor without stopping once. He walked calmly out of Arkaig Tower, pausing in the street, his mouth moving, uncertain which was the best way. One or two passers-by looked at him suspiciously, but he was used to these odd stares and he just flapped his tongue out at them—leave me alone, I am doing the right thing, doing what ought to be done—and turned right, away from them, clasping the bundle to his chest, heading off down Dulwich Road.
The passers-by paused to look at the eccentric figure in ill-fitting, dirty clothes, hurrying in the direction of central Brixton. But they soon continued on their way and didn’t think much more about it. That was the thing about Brixton—always expect the unexpected.
It was 5 p.m. when he found it. As soon as Rebecca had gone to the bottom of the garden, with a cup of tea and a magazine and a promise to knock on the french windows if she wanted to come in, he got the videotapes from the cupboard and found the notes he’d made. Somewhere in his tearful, dreadful rambling, Peach had said something that had stuck and wouldn’t go away. “He kept saying that everything smelt of milk. He went around sniffing everything and complaining about it. Everything smelt of milk.” Caffery knew it had been among the tapes somewhere, but he couldn’t automatically link that snatched piece of vocabulary to a specific scene. He consulted the notes he’d scribbled in the incident room and eliminated most of the tapes—several had no soundtrack, or only a solitary, directorial voice whispering instructions to a small child blinking at the camera. That’s really beautiful, that is … But three of the videos had muffled conversations off-camera, and these were the ones that Caffery sat and watched. It was a snippet, a tiny, inconsequential sliver of conversation he was looking for and when he found it his heart sank.
It would be in this one.
He disliked this video in particular because the child in question—a boy who seemed to be about nine—was so patently trying to be brave, so patently trying to please the camera and, worst of all, was so clearly ashamed of his body. He was overweight for his age and it wasn’t the abuse he seemed most unhappy about: he seemed more afraid that he wouldn’t be good enough, that he might be too fat to please.
The video was set in a bathroom—it was a surprisingly clean room. In fact, it was a typical suburban bathroom from some time in the eighties. The walls were a pale, ragwashed pink, and there was a pink and grey floral border around the door, fluffy pink and white towels on the rail. The sink was in the shape of a shell, and the taps were gold-coloured. It might have been shot in winter because at times the child appeared to be shivering with cold. The other people in the video, two adult men, wore rubber masks.
“What an oinker,” someone whispered off-screen. Then something Caffery couldn’t understand which ended clearly with the word “flabby.”
“Squeal like a pig,” someone else giggled. “Ah sayed squayeel lahk ah payig.”
“What do you think, Rollo?” Another male voice.
Caffery inched forward a little on the sofa.
“He smells.” It was a dull and uninterested voice. “He smells like milk.” A shuffling sound and something off-screen fell over. The tape was paused, and when the picture came back the bath was full and the boy was lying on his back in the water, propping himself up so that his immature genitals were exposed above the water-line.
“OK, that looks good—now let’s have you just touch yourself …”
Caffery stopped the tape and rewound a few frames, started the tape again.
“What an oinker ******* flabby.”
“Squeal like a pig, I said, squeal like a pig.”
“What do you think, Rollo …”
“He smells. He smells like milk.”
“OK, that looks good…”
He rewound again.
“… pig.”
“What do you think, Rollo?”
“He smells. He smells like milk.”
“OK, that—”
Rewind. Play.
“He smells. He smells like milk.”
“OK—”
Rewind. Play.
He smells, he smells like … smells like milk … smells, smells like milk, smells … Rollo? He smells. He smells like milk. OK, that looks good …
What do you think, Rollo? He smells, smells like milk, what do you think, Rollo, Rollo, Rollo.
Caffery groped in his jacket pocket for his mobile. He just had time to register his visit and drive through the traffic to North London before Holloway visiting hours started.
He registered under Essex’s name, Mr Paul Essex, and used Essex’s driving licence as ID. He didn’t want anyone seeing the name Jack Caffery on the roster of visitors, and he didn’t want anyone knowing he was job. He switched off his mobile and put it with his other belongings in the glass-fronted locker in the visitors’ centre and let the officer stamp him—an invisible visitor’s pass tattooed on the back of his hand—like a teenager going to a nightclub.
He’d been here dozens of times before, but something odd happened on this visit. He realized it as he walked along the line of tape that led visitors through the system, passing them under the cold, programmed attention of the screws, past the drugs amnesty boxes, past the mouth search—”Lift your tongue, please, sir, and now just turn your head, this way, good, and now this way.” He realized that this afternoon he was seeing it with new eyes—because you’re on the other side now, like it or not you are on the other side. This was what it was like to be on the outside, to see clearly the towering, bureaucratic engine, to feel its threat. The female officer didn’t meet his eye as she ran her hand around the waistband and shook the front of his trousers. “Thank you, sir.” She held out a hand to show him the way through.
Waiting outside the visitors’ room an officer walked a passive drugs dog down the queue—the animal must have smelt Caffery’s discomfort because it paused next to him, turned its head slightly, eyeing him coldly—just as if it knows which side you’re really on. Discomfited by the dog’s naked stare he loosened his collar and turned away his eyes, conscious of the officer’s attention on the side of his face. For God’s sake, move on, move on … Eventually the dog did turn away. It continued down the line, finally coming to sit at the end of the queue, next to a woman with a baby in a car seat. “Madam.” The baby might have been what had made the dog stop. Sometimes drugs came in in babies’ nappies. “If you’d like to come with me.”
“Mr—uh—Essex.” The officer at the door ticked off the bogus name on the clipboard and unlocked the door, nodding towards the nearest table. “You’re on reception one.”
The first “reception” desk, on the row reserved for new inmates still in reception week, was the closest to the senior officer. Caffery sat on the red plastic visitor’s chair, his back to the officer, and looked around the room. Polystyrene tiles hung from the ceiling, the carpet was shiny with tea stains—in an emotional encounter the first thing to go on the floor was the tea, he’d seen it happen time and time again. The officer unlocked the holding cell and the quiet, bass murmur of conversation crescendoed as the inmates came out, a cloud of trapped cigarette smoke coming with them. Caffery rested his hands on the little wooden table and didn’t look up. He sat and stared at his hands and waited, and soon here she came, out from the back of the group, in a pale blue T-shirt, her jogging trousers rolled up to mid-calf, bare ankles, trainers and an ankle chain. Her hair was held back severely from her face, her earrings were in place. She took a polystyrene cup from the tea bar and dropped into the blue inmate’s chair opposite him, her glittering little eyes taking in his clothes, his face, his eyes.
“You come in under a different name,” she said. “I asked the kangas who it was, they said Essex.”
“An old friend of mine.” He felt in his pocket for change. “What do you want, Tracey? Tea? Coffee?”
“Nah—did you bring my fags?”
“You know I can’t bring them in here—you know that.”
“OK,” she said lightly. Caffery could tell she was glinting with satisfaction at getting him here with just one phone call. But she wasn’t going to be the first to show her hand. “What’re you here for, then?”
He leaned forward, his hands clasped on the little child’s table between them. “Who’s Rollo?”
“Eh?”
“Rollo. From Carl’s videos.”
“Not him again? You don’t want to get anywhere near him—he blades your sort.”
“He lives by the park in Brixton, doesn’t he?”
“So?” She frowned, scratching nervously at the inside of her arm. “So what?”
“What’s his real name?”
“What am I? A cunt? I’m not telling you anything.”
“You’ll tell me, Tracey—or that trouble we talked about is going to come back to haunt you.”
She stared furiously across at him. “Nah …” she said. “Nah—you’re more scared of the dirty squad than I am. You’re not going to let them have the rest of those vids because you don’t have them any more—you’ve traded them already.” She spat into her polystyrene cup, wiped her mouth and looked up. “I know your game. I know your connections.”
He didn’t speak. He pressed both hands palm down on the table. Behind her, in the crèche, children screamed and ran in circles. A baby lay on its back, kicking its legs and arms, having its nappy changed. Lamb might think she had him straddled, but she’d already given him more than she knew.
“Right.” He stood up to leave. “Always nice to see you, Tracey.”
“Wait!” She half stood, her eyes bright and desperate.
“What?”
She glanced nervously at the guard and lowered her voice to a hiss: “You never asked me about the boy, you never asked me about Penderecki’s boy.” Lowering herself back into the chair, she pushed her hair behind her ear, and dropped her eyes to the table. “I thought we was going to talk,” she murmured, out of the side of her mouth.
“No.” He bent over and put his hands on the table, his face close to hers. “No, Tracey. I’m tired of being dicked by your sort.”
“I know something.”
“I don’t think so. You’re lying to me, but it’s not the first time and, believe me, it’s no novelty to me.”
“1975,” she said, “in the autumn.”
Caffery, who was taking a breath to reply, stopped. He stared at her, his eyes moving across her face. He shouldn’t let himself be pulled in again—she was just putting up another smokescreen and if Penderecki had told Carl about Ewan then there’d be no mystery about when it happened. But, of course, you can’t let it go, can you. He sat down again, subdued, crumpling into the chair and putting his head in his hands. He sat like this for over a minute, resenting her, hating her, and wanting to hit her. “Go on then.” He looked up, wearily drawing his hands down his face, knowing. “Roll out the spiel.”
“Nah.” Lamb looked sullenly at him. She scratched under her armpit and sniffed loudly, looking around the room with her nose tipped up. “Nah,” she said, looking at the ceiling. “You need to try a little harder than that. ‘S not that easy, is it?” She summoned up phlegm, spat into the polystyrene cup, wiped her mouth and raised her eyebrows at him. “You’ve got to convince me. You’ve got to prove you ain’t nothing to do with the dirty squad. Because it’s funny how they come sniffing around right after you did, isn’t it?”
He nodded, and sat looking at her, stroking his chin, a therapist assessing a patient. Had Tracey Lamb known more about him she would have stopped there. She wouldn’t have blatantly fed his mood pure oxygen. “Well?” she asked, cocking her head and smiling. “Come on. It’s your turn to be nice to me.”
And with that she’d crossed the line. It was too late. He sat forward and spoke very quietly: “Don’t dick with me, Tracey.” He said it into her face. “Because if I ever see you on the street I’ll kill you.”
“Oh,” she said archly, her lips white. “Well, fuck you, then, cos maybe I don’t know anything after all.”
“Well, what a surprise.” He got to his feet. “The only difference is I mean what I say.”
He walked to the door, pulling up his sleeve to reveal the little security stamp. An officer appeared at his side, jangling keys on a long chain and guided him to a small black box, pushing his hand under the UV. “Under the light. That’s it.” The stamp on his hand lit up and she looped the keys, unlocked the door and held it open for him. He paused, half turning to look back to where Lamb stood, her hands on the table, glaring at him. She mouthed something and raised her eyebrows, but Caffery turned away, thanked the officer and carried on out of the door. He was trembling.
Fuck. Lamb fell back into the chair, kicking angrily at the table legs. She couldn’t believe he’d gone. She had been so close. So fucking close. She looked around her, at all the mothers and the daughters and the babies, and knew she was alone. Totally alone.
She was sullenly sticking her fingernails in the side of the styrofoam cup when she saw the senior officer watching her. “Yeah?” she said, raising her eyebrows sarcastically at her. “What you staring at?”