'No, Rebecca,' he said, pinching out the cigarette and dropping it out of the tree. His hands were shaking. 'The real question is why you won't talk about it.'
'Oh, no.' She held up her hand. 'We were talking about you.'
'No. If we're going down this road then we talk about everything that happened. Those are the rules.' He began to climb down out of the tree.
'Where are you going?'
'Inside. To have a run. To get away from you.'
'Hey,' she called, watching him walk back up the lawn in the moonlight, 'one day you'll see I'm right.'
Six.
(19 July)
In the morning, the note from Penderecki was skewered on his gate, wet with dew. Penderecki had taken the time to write more than was his habit and Caffery, who would ordinarily have crumpled it and binned it, stood in the street, attache case in hand, and read.
Hello Jack.
Eerie reminders of the Yorkshire Ripper tape. It made Caffery shiver only feet from his own home on a leafy summer day with joggers, the postman and the milk float creeping along the road towards him as if someone had breathed on the back of his neck.
And now I truly know your name. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. The LORD and not YOU will call me, when it is His will and not YOURS and grant HIS healing, that the soul of His servent, at the hour of its departure from the body, may by the hands of His holy Angels be presented without spot unto Him. The sheep belong on gods right, Jack. The goat's go to the
LEFT. The sheep will receive heaven the goat's will receive hell. And from your ignorance YOU look into MY eyes and you think you see a goat. Dont you? You think I am a goat. But, GOD says the stripe of the goat is to look into the eyes of other's – (the good and the pure) and see itself looking back, think about it jack.
Caffery got into the Jag and sat breathing in the smell of leather already warm even this early in the morning. The stripe of the goat? A little something growing in him that would one day explode? Rebecca had shaken him up last night with her gloomy prognosis. He wondered if everyone could see it in his face. Could everyone see the word 'killer' scrawled in his eyes? Was he so transparent? He rubbed his temples and started the car, adjusted the mirror and put it into gear.
In Brixton the day dragged. By late afternoon he was standing outside the Lido at the edge of Brockwell Park, drinking McDonald's coffee and smoking a roll-up. He was tired and immensely depressed. The blood on the trainer matched the DNA from Rory Peach's underwear, but there was still no sign of Rory. The search team had exhausted the possibilities in and around the park; they kept going but everyone knew that the current parameters were redundant. Rumours swept among the search teams every hour or so: 'They're sending us to Battersea, someone saw a lad like Rory down there, next to the river.' Or 'There's a nonce over at Clapham who lives right above an empty factory, half of us are going to be sent over there.' The operation was now costing twenty thousand pounds a day, but the reality was that none of the hundred or so calls that had come into the incident room had given Caffery and Souness any new leads. They were walking blind, and everyone knew it.
And then, at 5.30 p.m.' Souness had news. 'Peach is going to make it.' She came chugging along the road towards Caffery, waving her mobile in the air. 'He's off the ventilator and they're letting us talk to him.'
'I thought he was dying.'
'I know. We're getting twenty minutes, so let's make it count.'
Caffery let Souness drive his Jaguar. She did it with a wry, self-conscious smile on her sunburnt face. It wasn't a show car, nothing like the red two-seater BMW she had bought for Paulina ('She drives it like a typical bird, Jack, just like a bird. The rear-view mirror it's not for checking the traffic behind, oh, no, no, no, no! It's for having a wee deek at your lippy. Bet you never knew that.') The upholstery in the back of the Jaguar was mended with Sellotape and both front wings were retouched fibreglass filler. It wasn't something he'd aspired to owning, it was just the only car he'd been able to afford ten years ago, but Souness treated it with a touching reverence all the way to Denmark Hill.
King's Hospital's face-lift was well under way: every conversation, every exchange was overlaid with the noise of construction. Inside the hospital it was a city a law unto itself with a Forbuoy's outlet, a travel agent, a bank and a post office. The corridors were polished to a squeak, and people moved with a Fritz Lang robotic ease, smooth and determined. The consultant, Mr. Friendship, tall, in a blue shirt and patterned red tie, met them outside the Jack Steinberg Intensive Care Unit.
'He's off the Hickman line and the Gambro. I've kept him on a little pain relief but I'm surprised, and very encouraged, by his response. He was hardly even dehydrated after three days without water. As a matter of fact, since we took him off ventilation,' he paused at the door and swiped his card, 'he's done so well we've moved him to this progressive care section.' He led them into the front of the unit, where five empty beds were ranged along the walls. 'We're getting him set for a move to another ward or even discharge. Amazingly resilient. There you are.' Alek Peach sat in profile near the window. 'Strong as an ox, that one. Strong as an ox.'
An ox indeed. If a bull had ever sat back on its haunches in a chair with a blue hospital blanket tucked over its lap it would have looked a little like Alek Peach. In spite of his defeated posture the real sense of Peach was of his size: his bones must have been massive, as dense as iron bars, to support that height and muscle. His dyed black hair was worn slightly long, he was dressed in checked green pyjamas, and under his chair was hooked a black re breath rubber balloon and a catheter bag. He didn't respond when the two detectives approached.
Souness moved a chair to sit down and Caffery drew the pastel-green curtains around the bed. He cleared his throat. 'Mr. Peach. Are you sure you feel up to this?'
Peach turned slowly to them. His black Elvis sideburns were growing out and needed redyeing. When he tried to nod, his head seemed to droop, as if he was having problems holding up its enormous weight and it might flop forward on to his chest.
'Right.' Caffery sat next to Souness, looking carefully at him. 'First of all we're sorry about Rory, Mr. Peach, very sorry. We're doing everything. Keeping positive.'
Hearing Rory's name Peach squeezed his eyes closed and wiped his huge hand across his face, the thumb on the bridge of the nose, the palm covering his mouth. He sat like this for long seconds, not breathing. Then he dropped his hand and moved it in a convulsive circle on his chest, opening his eyes to stare at the ceiling.
Caffery glanced at Souness and said, 'Alek, look, we won't take long, I promise. I know it's difficult for you but it would help if you could tell us anything you can remember what he did while he was in the house, where he kept you, whether he left the house at any point.'
Peach's hand stopped circling. His face tightened a little. He dropped his eyes and stared fixedly at the pulse- oximeter clip on his thumb, as if he was trying to focus his strength and will. Caffery and Souness waited expectantly, but Peach didn't speak for some time. They weren't going to get much for their twenty minutes. Shit. Caffery sat back and pressed a knuckle to his forehead. 'Look, can't you even tell us how old he was? If he was white or black? Anything?'
Alek Peach turned to look at him. His eyes drooped, showing tired inner rims. He lifted his hand, shaky, bruised and swollen from IV needles, and pointed a finger at Caffery. His expression was ferocious, as if the I.C.U ward was his living room and Caffery was a stranger who had just swung in casually off the street and sat down on the sofa, feet on the coffee table.
'You.' His chest shook, straining against the cotton pyjamas. 'You.'
Caffery put a finger on his chest. 'Me?'
'Yes, you.'
'What about me?'
'Your eyes. I don't like your eyes.'
In the men's, Caffery stood on the toilet and stuffed a paper towel inside the ceiling smoke alarm. He locked the cubicle, rolled a cigarette, leaned his head against the wall and smoked slowly, only relaxing when he felt the
