from Benedicte's family: an inheritance from her aunt in Norway had put them in this new house, just far enough out of the centre to keep them safe. There was lighting and security fencing, there was a bus ride separating them from the Fridge and life was, well, really rather cushiony.
'Hal!' From a window above him Benedicte was calling. He put the Coke bottle on the veranda. 'Josh stay there, OK?' He went inside, climbing the stairs two at a time. She was in the bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed.
'You OK?'
'Yeah.' She was wearing a T-shirt, pink knickers and sheepskin slippers, as if she'd been in the middle of changing. One side of her hair was set in rollers, the other loose. 'I'm OK, but look look at the bed.'
Hal could see that the whole length of her side of the bed was wet. As if Smurf had tottered up and down the bed peeing as she went. 'Christ.'
'Oh, God.' Ben rubbed her face. 'I'm sorry I yelled. I suppose it's not Smurf's fault. She's old.' She sighed and began to remove the saturated duvet cover. 'She gets on to the bed and she can't always get down quickly enough when she needs to.'
He shook his head. 'Should have seen her this morning. Dragging. Her back legs you know. She started peeing before she'd even stopped walking.
Walking along and peeing all down her legs. It's pathetic'
'She took her pills this morning but, oh, Hal, you know I still think we should get the name of a vet in Helston, just in case. Yeew-eee!' Ben puffed air from her mouth and slotted her hands under the pillow to pull back the sheets. 'I thought my days of changing pissy sheets were over.'
'It's probably all that excitement this morning.'
'Oh, yeah, getting your bits examined by a total stranger makes you pee with excitement. Only a man could say that.' She piled up the bed linen. 'We're going to have to stop her coming up the stairs, Hal, OK? Keep her shut in the kitchen.'
He sighed. 'I suppose when we get back we're going to have to face it.' He pressed two fingers to her temple and clicked a trigger with his thumb. 'Poor old girl.'
'Oh, for God's sake, please don't.' She wiped her face on the shoulder of her T-shirt. She didn't think she could face losing Smurf. Secretly they hadn't expected her to survive this far on her ID disc, after 'My name is Smurf. If you find me please call…' their old telephone number was still given. They hadn't thought it was worth changing. Even so, Ben hadn't really accepted that the end was near. 'Can't we think of something better to talk about?' She turned to the door, the bundle of sheets in her arms, and left the room.
It was a bite. An open red hole in the white flesh. As if Rory had been snapped at by a meat-eater. There were four or five less violent bites in the same area, but Krishnamurthi couldn't find any on the other places a male victim of rape is typically bitten: the axillae, the face and the scrotum. Only the shoulders.
Bites to the shoulders a method a rapist often uses to subdue his victim. And when Krishnamurthi did the anal swabs he found something else. 'Yes.' He cleared his throat and straightened up. 'There's a contaminant.'
No one spoke. Souness and Caffery exchanged a glance.
'Do you know what it is?'
'You can't tell just looking at it in this light not until you get it in the lab but I suppose we can hazard a guess.'
Souness nodded. 'I see.' She looked at Caffery. He nodded tightly at her, put his hands in his pockets and turned back to watch Krishnamurthi working. Until the contaminant was identified they couldn't make assumptions. It could be anything.
The photographer fitted film into a Kodak 1-to-1 fingerprint camera and fished a pale-blue right-angled ruler from his kit. When Krishnamurthi stepped away he placed the ruler next to the wound and began to focus the camera. Souness and Caffery watched in silence, shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the autopsy suite, as the photographer recorded every bite on Rory Peach's shoulders. He was finishing just as the odontologist arrived from King's.
Mr. Ndizeye, BDS, Ph.D. and Seventh Day Adventist, wore thick National Health glasses and a Hawaiian shirt under his white coat. His mouth was turned up at the corners like a clown's, as if he was permanently smiling. Sweat ran in rivulets down his polished mahogany forehead, as he inspected the wounds, made notes, and built up impression trays from dental boxing wax. The morticians exchanged glances behind his back.
'What do you think?' Souness asked. 'Have you got enough to work with?'
'Yes, yes, yes.' Ndizeye was waiting impatiently for his assistant to fill a gun with poly silicone 'They were slowly inflicted, some of these bites.' He bent over, looked inside the wax tray moulded on to Rory's shoulder and moved his finger above it in a little stirring motion. 'Radial abrasions, so the biter has had a bit of a suck while he's at it. Typical sadistic bites.' He pulled a tissue from a back pocket and mopped his forehead to stop sweat dropping on to Rory's body. 'I can see um upper left one, two, three, and upper right one, probably two.' He looked up, his eyes magnified like fish behind the glasses, his clown mouth smiling. 'Yes, I'm happy. I think we'll get a perfect cast from this.'
After the post-mortem there were the alternative light source, ALS, photos to be taken. The science unit brought in their mobile blackout blinds and Souness and Caffery left, Souness to a press conference, and Caffery back to Shrivemoor to submit the results of the day's actions to Kryotos's ever-growing pile of documents. When he finally decided to call it a day, late in the night, he realized he hadn't eaten and was shaking. He got a take away in Crystal Palace and that stopped the shaking but back at home he still had to pause in the doorway for a moment, promising himself not to let the case show in his face.
He needn't have worried. Rebecca wasn't in a mood to discuss his work.
the sofa, dressed in caramel short white sweater. She had a pink varnished nail in her mouth and was staring blankly at the TV screen. There was a pile of Time Outs on the table in front of her. She didn't look up when he came in he had to be the first to speak: 'How are you feeling?'
She suede was lying on trousers and a
She glanced up at him vaguely, like someone looking at a window that has been left open, someone who can't be bothered to get up and shut it.
'My head hurts.'
'Is that all?'
'Yes.'
He dropped down on the sofa next to her, his arm around her. 'I'm sorry about last night.'
She didn't shrink from him or lose her temper. Instead she just shrugged and said nothing, and went on staring at the TV screen. He suddenly felt immensely sorry for what he had done the night before, pushing her face-down into memories she didn't want to address. He knew he'd have to move gently with her that night.
'Let's go upstairs,' she said, much later. He followed her up the staircase, still baffled by her odd, silent aura and in the bedroom they hardly exchanged a word. It should have tipped him off he should have seen the signs.
Rebecca liked Jack to go down on her. They'd established that early on in their relationship. 'Actually it was the first night,' she'd told her friends, 'I didn't even have to ask him it was a miracle.' He would do it for hours if she wanted, her neatly turned legs hooked up and resting on his back. Sometimes she laughed because he insisted on keeping one foot off the bed or sofa, on the floor, as if he was ready to sprint off at a moment's notice. What do you think's going to happen? A raid or something? This evening she said nothing. She lifted her hips and let him roll down the suede trousers, resting her hands on his head, running her fingers through his hair, looking ruminatively at the ceiling. After she came he straightened, took off his shirt, wiped his face on it and was about to undo his trousers when Rebecca pushed herself past him and up off the bed. She picked up her clothes from the floor.
'Where you going?'
'To have a wash.'
'What?'
'To have a wash.'
She walked out of the room, pressing her heels into the boards, and he fell backwards on the bed, his hands over his face, his erection almost painful he had been so ready. What the fuck is she doing? He listened to the old water pipes creak, listened to her finish, leave the bathroom, go downstairs. She didn't return. The bedside clock
