'Oh, for heaven's sake, look at this!' She slammed the door closed and turned towards the family room. 'Josh!'
'What's he done?'
'He's been moving stuff around again. Josh!'
He looked up innocently. 'Wha'?'
'Come here!'
'I've never heard anything so screwy.' Hal tipped more pretzels into his mouth. 'Looking up Smurf's bum.'
Obediently Josh dropped off the sofa and came over into the kitchen. Benedicte bent to speak to him. 'Have you been moving everything around in here?'
'No.'
'Are you sure?'
'Ye-es.'
'If you put the milk on the wire bits it tips over, I've told you.' She looked inside the fridge again. 'Well, if you haven't been doing it then I don't know who has. The fridge goblins, I suppose.' She took the milk out and held it up to the light. 'Oh, for God's sake.'
'Eugh!' Hal made a face. 'That is disgusting. I can smell it from here.'
'God.' She looked faint. 'It smells like piss.'
'Here let me.' He took it from her and, holding it at arm's length, went to the sink. Shaking his head, he turned on the waste-disposal, rinsed the bottle, put it in the bin and let the tap run until the disposal unit was clear. 'Gurgh! When did you get it?'
'It's not past its sell-by date.'
'Maybe the fridge is buggered.' Hal opened it and looked dubiously at the dial. 'I'll get on to it when we get back from Cornwall.'
In the park Caffery took the young sergeant to one side. 'This is going to sound like a stupid question.'
'Try me.'
'Is there any way of getting the dogs to search up}'
'Up?'
He nodded up into the trees. 'In the branches.'
'Sure.'
'Surer
'Yeah well.' The PC rubbed his face, reddening slightly. 'You know how it goes, aircrafts, y'know, come down, don't they? Sometimes, um, things get caught in trees.' He looked upwards. 'But why?'
'I dunno.' Caffery turned to check that no one was listening. If he was wrong he didn't want to have to explain. 'Look, it's just an idea. There's no harm, is there?'
'OK.' The PC went to the van and found a light, galvanized-steel stick, about the size of a walking-stick with a green plastic handle. ' Texas?' The shepherd's head snapped up and he watched with small quizzical eyes as the handler tapped the trunk of a chestnut tree. He tapped up in the branches and the dog understood. His head jerked forward and he trotted after the officer, tail lowered, nose pointing straight up into the leaves. Caffery followed a few yards behind.
They circled the park. It was 1 p.m. when the dog stopped in front of a huge hornbeam dripping with caterpillars. He reared up on his hind legs, placed his paws against the tree-trunk, and there he stayed.
He was at the exact spot where Roland Klare had recovered the Pentax camera and pink gloves three days before.
Nine.
Caffery, the exhibits officer and DS Fiona Quinn had a brief plan-of-action meeting with the pathologist, Harsha Krishnamurthi, in the coroner's office reception. Over dusty silk flower displays on formica tables they discussed how to cut up Rory Peach. Afterwards Caffery went into the men's and splashed water across his face.
When he had looked into the branches and seen how Rory had been tied his impulse had been to drive back to Brockley, walk straight into Penderecki's house, take him by his thinning hair, slam his face into a wall and kick him. Kick him until he stopped moving. The eight-year-old had been curled into a ball, fastened with rope, knees up to his chin, arms covering his head from above he would have resembled something the size and shape of a car tyre. His fingernails had carved demilunes into his own cheek. If Rory had been any bigger they might have seen him earlier, if he'd been ten or eleven and not eight, maybe, Caffery thought, and then he thought that twenty-seven years ago no one had checked the trees along the railway track. No one had wondered about the trees. Even today he was stumbling over new ways Penderecki could have concealed Ewan during the police search of his house.
He wiped his face with a paper towel and went through, past the ante-room where bodies were stored in banks of lockers, ID tags slotted into holders on the doors, pink for a girl and blue for a boy We are colour coded by our sex, he thought, not only at birth but in death too and into the dissecting room. It was cool in here, as if it was winter. Mint-green tiles lined the walls, like an old-fashioned swimming-pool, and there it was that familiar butcher's smell of old, mopped-around blood. Hoses lay under the tables, releasing small puddles of water on to the tiled floor. Two bodies, names written in black marker on each calf, had been pushed to one end of the room to make space, their belongings and toe-tags sitting on a separate gurney in yellow plastic hospital waste-bags. The bodies were split open: a heap of colours, blue paper towels crammed in the neck cavities, and a mortician in a green plastic apron and black Wellingtons stood over one, lifting out a pile of intestines. He shook them, as if he was shaking washing coming from a bowl.
Rory Peach, once a boy who played football and stuck go-faster stripes on his bike, was now a circle wrapped in a white plastic sheet on the table in the centre of the tiled room. Around him stood three morticians arranged in an odd tableau. They didn't look up when Caffery appeared in the doorway. Morticians are a strange, silent group. Sometimes secretive, often cliquey, always down to earth: the real muscle behind the pathologist, they do most of the hard labour in an autopsy without raising an eyebrow. Caffery had never seen them behave the way they did that summer afternoon. It took him a moment, after they had broken off and gone in separate directions, collecting bowls, turning on hoses, to realize that he had just witnessed them paying respect. Oh, God, he thought, this isn't going to be easy.
Harsha Krishnamurthi came in. Tall, greying. All business. Fiddling with his new toy, a hands-free dictaphone with headset, he got it into position then briskly pulled away Rory Peach's sheet. Everyone in the mortuary stiffened slightly, as if they'd drawn a collective breath.
He was crunched into a croissant shape, almost like a sleeping cat, his hands wrapped over his head. He looked as if he was examining something on his chest. Brown parcel tape had been wrapped around his head, covering his mouth and eyes. He didn't smell, as if his flesh was too clean and young to smell, and his skin was smooth as if he'd just got out of a bath. Krishnamurthi cleared his throat, asked Caffery if this was the same body found in the tree in Brockwell Park. Caffery nodded: 'It is.' The formalities were over.
They removed the knots first. Krishnamurthi severed the rope with painstaking attention, more than two inches from the knot: the ligatures could be tested not only for DNA, but also by forensic knot analysts and he was careful to preserve their shape as he put them into an exhibits bag. The photographer moved around the table, working from every angle as the exhibits officer sealed and initialled the bag and put it on his trolley.
The process was repeated until all the ropes were removed and Rory looked quite different. He lay curled up, like a young spider in defence mode, deep swollen furrows made by the ropes on his arms, knees and ankles. Krishnamurthi gently tested the thin legs. When they uncurled obediently he hesitated, an odd look on his face. For a moment no one dared breathe. Krishnamurthi looked quickly up at the clock on the wall and carefully flexed Rory Peach's feet, then examined the boy's hands and face.
'There's uh, yes.' He flipped up his plastic visor and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. 'There's rigor mortis present only in the face and upper torso. I'm… going to…' His pause was almost imperceptible. Only those with their antennae quivering, like Caffery, would have noticed the brief blush of emotion. Those flexible feet had
