'Aye, I can.'
'Well?'
Souness tipped her chair forward and was silent for a moment, squinting at the photos with her head on one side. Her eyes moved rapidly across the odd marks, trying to shape them into something recognizable. When it came to her she dropped the chair back with a thud. 'Jesus of course, of course.'
Roland Klare, who, like most Brixton residents, had been following the Donegal Crescent case on the television, now very much wanted to see the photographs that were stuck inside the Pentax. There was no question of taking the film to a chemist, even if he could get it out of the camera. But there was an alternative. When he got home that afternoon he consulted his notebook.
Yes! He'd been right. He'd been sure it was somewhere in the flat. He went into the bedroom and began pulling things aside.
Within an hour he had found it. It had been stored in a box of old Ladybird books: a large, slightly battered paperback, Build Your Own Darkroom AT HOME! On the cover there was a picture of a man in a white coat holding a piece of photographic paper by the corner, swilling it in a tank. Klare had discovered the book years ago on the platform at Loughborough Junction. Pleased with himself, he took it into the kitchen and wiped it clean, then made himself a drink and went into the living room. Outside it was dark and light at once: big clouds curled up from the distant horizon and shuffled across the sky, shooting sunlight down one moment, tipping out rain the next, but Roland Klare didn't notice. He got a pen and paper and settled on the sofa, his back to the window, and began to read.
Eleven.
It was evening when Caffery found the time to visit DI Durham. He pointed the car against the rush, up over Beulah Hill where the drives were gravelled the roads were wide as French boulevards, and horse chestnuts dropped red sap on to the pavements. In Norwood the buildings were a pace nearer the road, and by Brixton Water Lane the city had thoroughly meshed itself around him.
In central Brixton the traffic was already heavy. He parked in a turning off Acre Lane and wove through the cars, the thump-thump-thump of sub-woofers resonating against his stomach muscles. Amazing to think that this was less than a mile from Brockwell Park. Rory Peach, had he been able to sit up, would have been able to look down from his tree His tree? His tree? You make it sound as if he chose it and see these darkened stretches of decaying municipal pride. The person who had put Rory up that tree had form. Which meant that he had almost certainly made and developed connections in prison segregated prison units were key cogs in paedophile networks, seeding beds for ideas and plans, where contacts and lifelong friendships were made. AMIT were going to concentrate one of their pods on moving through the nonce register and Kryotos's Quest Search results, speaking to convicted paedophiles in the Brixton area, trying to tap into that vast underground switchboard. He thought about those invisible connections, the creeping circuitry that linked every sick thing to every other sick thing. And inevitably, as it always did these days, his mind circled back to Penderecki.
Penderecki. He thought about him as he crossed to the police station. How long would it be before Penderecki was grilled? How many degrees of separation? And what if? What if…?
DI Durham was welcoming. He remembered the 1989 attack well. 'Yeah little Champ. Nasty.' The office window was level to a street-light that came on red as they talked. Durham, in navy blue shirt and tartan tie, had been in Brixton fifteen years. He played with his double chin as he spoke, squeezing it and massaging it as if it had appeared overnight. 'Dug that out for you.' He slammed the filing cabinet and put the file in front of Caffery. 'Is it the Peach thing, then? Is that what you're thinking?'
'I don't know yet.' He opened the file. November 1989 and eleven-year-old Champaluang Keoduangdy had been attacked in Brockwell Park and so badly injured he had spent several days in hospital. 'I was searching for a nonce called the troll and this case came up.'
'That's right it's all in there.' Durham leaned over and picked out Champ's statement between thumb and forefinger. 'That's what Champ called the guy who did him. A troll. Don't know why.' He paused. Caffery had sat forward, hands flat on the desk and was staring at something in the file. 'You all right there, son?'
He didn't answer. He felt as if something had landed claws first on his shoulders. This was the forensic medical examiner's report. The assault on Champ had indeed been violent: the attacker had almost ripped a chunk of flesh from the boy's shoulder. Caffery closed the file and looked up at Durham. He knew the colour had left his face. 'He was bitten}'
'Didn't you know?'
'No he said faintly.
'Oh, yeah took a great chunk out of his shoulder. Sometimes do see that with rape. Nasty.'
'No other assault?'
'Just the piece of electric conduit rammed up him so hard he was in intensive care for a week, poor little sod.'
Caffery rubbed his temples. He could feel the beginnings of a lead. He took off his glasses and stared at a point just below Durham 's chin. 'Tell me something, have you heard about Rory Peach?'
'Heard what about him?'
'Same injury. Exactly the same. Shoulders bitten, a chunk almost taken out. Rape rectal bleeding.'
Durham didn't speak for a moment. His mouth, which was slightly twisted anyway, as if he doubted everything he saw, tightened further as he took in this new information. He coughed loudly, tapped his fingers on the desk for a few seconds and sat down opposite Caffery. 'Right, then.' He pinched his double chin so hard it began to go red. 'Right I'll give the wife a call, tell her to put aside a plate for the microwave.'
When Hal got home that night Smurf came into the hallway and rolled on to her back to please him, her belly pink and balding, the same colour as when she was a puppy. 'Hello, old girl.' He bent over and scratched the dog's chest, threw his wallet on to the window-sill and went into the TV room. He kissed Josh on the head, then got a beer from the fridge and stood watching Ben cook. Her eyes, an unusual almost metallic grey, seemed even brighter than usual tonight. The first present Hal ever bought her was a moonstone the same colour as her eyes.
'Hal, are you sure you can't smell something?'
'Smell what?'
'I don't know, I can still smell something.'
'Where?'
'In here.' She walked into the hallway.
'What is it?' Hal followed her with his beer. 'Is it a farty smell?'
'No. It's like really dirty clothes, you know, or like rubbish.' She stood in the hallway, the dripping wooden spoon in her hand, and sniffed. Since they'd moved in she could smell everything much more intensely. At first she'd had an alarm bell that she might be pregnant again, but she was on the pill and she didn't have any other symptoms. Maybe she just wasn't used to the new environment.
'You sure there's not something we've forgotten to unpack?'
Benedicte shook her head. All the food had gone straight into the kitchen she'd unpacked it herself. And, anyway, it had all been dry food, or tinned.
'Then you're imagining it.' He put his arms round her waist. 'You're going bonkers, old woman.' He tried to push his hands up the old blue shirt she wore but she laughed.
'Stop it, you raddled old fool.' She pulled away from him. 'Come on make me a glass of something while I do the dinner. Talk to me, tell me dirty stories while I'm washing the potatoes.'
He made her a G and T and sat in the family room with Josh, watching her cutting up leeks. Upholstered like a mother almost from the start, sometimes Benedicte fretted about her weight but he adored every inch of her, and the big, funny secret was that she loved sex as much as he did. They'd taken to it in their teens like kids to candy and had never gone elsewhere for it. Look at us. No one would guess we're goers. As a couple they were as un trendy as carpet slippers and yet Hal believed that if there was a love story to be told it was theirs. He still got a faint sick feeling when he considered the possibility of losing her.
