'It's Dad farting, that smell,' Josh said after dinner. He stood in his slippers and opened the fridge on a late- night chocolate hunt. 'He's always farting. He can fart at will.'
'Don't be jealous.'
'Ha-al Jo- osh, for heaven's sake, some manners, please.'
Hal put both hands on the work top bent over slightly, scrunched up his face and farted. Josh giggled, hand over his mouth.
'Oh sorry,' Hal apologized. 'I didn't mean to do that.'
Benedicte shook her head. 'Yes, you did.'
'No, really, I didn't.'
'What did you mean, then?'
'I meant it to be much louder I meant it to sound like… this.'
Josh raced around the kitchen squealing with laughter and Ben turned away disgusted. lNul points for presentation, Norway.' She wrapped the remaining squares of chocolate and put them back in the fridge. 'And nul for originality. And stop making faces behind my back.'
Hal smiled. He could still make his wife laugh. As she took Josh to clean his teeth he poured coffee from the cafetiere and went to stand at the back door. The kitchen opened on to a red-cedar patio, open runner steps leading into the square garden, which had been laid with heavy-duty grass, and a dog-ear picket fence seven feet high, so in their meagre, hard-won ten square metres of South London the Churches had total privacy. Maybe that would change when the neighbours moved in maybe they'd lean out of the windows and watch him cutting the grass, watch Josh in the paddling-pool.
He looked up at the windows next door, still darkened, taped Xs still on the panes, his gaze drifting past them to where the giant megaliths Arkaig and Herne Hill Towers rose on the distant edge of the park a sweet reminder that, for all their security fencing and magic-eye lighting, they still lived in Brixton. Hal shivered, suddenly conscious of the park's wolflike gaze coming from beyond the back fence and, as if the night had suddenly got cold, he went back inside, closing the door and locking it. He'd stopped liking the park after what had happened this week.
Caffery and Durham sat in the deserted office well into the night. From outside floated the otherworldly scream of sirens, the pulse of car stereos in dark alleys. The two men heard none of it. They were wrapped in a little pool of focus over the statements and reports in the Keoduangdy file. They studied the photo fit of the attacker, they sent off requests for information about Champ's whereabouts, checked if he had a criminal record and searched for him on the electoral register. There were three Keoduangdys in Birmingham and a further two in East London but none with that first name. Still, they faxed Plaistow and Solihull and kept calling around. The night drew in around the building, but their light burned on.
Champ's attacker had never been found. Champ, who had been living on Coldharbour Lane at the time, hadn't got a good look at him and his explanation of what he had been doing in Brockwell Park was less than convincing. His statement was full of contradictions and half-facts.
'But one thing he was sure about,' said Durham. 'His attacker took photos of him, even after he fainted he remembers a flash going off as he was coming round… oh, and something else.' He scratched under his chin. 'He kept asking him a weird question.'
'What?'
'Do you like your daddy?'
'Do you like your daddy}'
'Uh-huh. Do you like your daddy? It's gay speak. Mind you, that's about all he was certain of. Not a good witness.' Durham thought that the investigation had never got a good head of steam for the very reason that Champ was reluctant to talk. And that when he did talk he rambled, contradicted himself. That and the fact that he was Laotian. 'Nobody really pulled their fingers out on it half of them couldn't even pronounce his name. And it never happened again so it just sort of slipped. You know how it goes.'
'Maybe he got put away for something else.' Caffery took off his glasses and rubbed the lenses on his shirt sleeve. 'Our Peach man's been inside.'
Durham frowned, raised questioning eyebrows.
'The child had belt marks around his neck.'
'Ah.' Durham nodded. He knew what Caffery was talking about. A prison habit. For Durham, whose fourteen- year-old daughter lived horses and horsemanship, the practice that inmates had of subduing their rape victims with a belt around the neck always put him in mind of a halter an unwilling horse snaffled into submission, muscular piston thighs squeezing its flanks. It was the first conclusion an investigating officer would come to, seeing telltale marks like that.
'You know, it's funny that you like the troll for the Peach case…' Durham tugged at his chin and watched Caffery put his glasses back on and go back to his notebook. '… because the first thing I thought about when I heard the whole Donegal Crescent thing was the Half Moon Lane photo hoax.'
Caffery looked up. 'The Half Moon…?'
'Never heard of it?' Durham gave his wattle a reassuring squeeze. 'No, why would you? It was twelve years ago. More. Nothing to do with Champ, just happened at the same time. Two Polaroids found in a council bin on Half Moon Lane.'
'And?'
'Oh, it all blew over it was just a prank. But at the time it really griefed us some, I can tell you. Got the locals running appeals all over the place. A poster outside all the stations do you know this child? could be in danger, etc'
'I don't remember it.'
'Well, the father we called him the father, we don't know for sure the father and the kid, a little lad, were both tied up, naked. The posters were a shot in the dark the boy's own mother wouldn't have recognized him from the photograph, they were so blurred and if you ask me the quality was even worse after the secret squirrels had been at it. Image enhancement my arse. Not that I'd like that to go any further, you understand.'
'You think it was a hoax?'
He shrugged. 'I don't know for sure, but in the end we decided it had to've been a prank because no one ever came forward no one was found, no one reported missing. The paedo unit at the Yard's got it on their books but here in Brixton we never heard anything more about it.'
'Where did the photos go?'
'After the Denmark Hill lab, I suppose back here, but we clear our Book 66 out every year so they've probably gone for retention at Charlton or Cricklewood. I'll check the property vouchers if you want.' Durham stood, pulling at his chin, looking at Caffery. Then he paused and, placing both hands on the table, leaned forward. 'The reason it's funny is because it happened at the same time the Champ case was still active and when those photos came in I got a little itch on them. Know what I mean? I always wondered if it had anything to do with this troll character with the guy who did Champ. You know, here.' He tapped his chest with a biro. 'In my giblets. Nothing to go on, of course, just that little itch.'
Twelve.
At midnight, when Caffery finally got home, Rebecca did it again. This time it was in the kitchen. She had been sitting on the table, drinking vodka from a champagne glass, hardly speaking as he poured himself a drink but when he drew the blind behind her, put his hands either side of her, when his jacket dropped open and he kissed her, she sweetly opened her legs and it happened all over again: she let him make her come, twice, and when he pushed himself up and undid his flies she sat up straight and turned her head away. 'I'm sorry,' she said, and slipped off the work top straightened her dress and left the room.
Caffery dropped forward, hands on the table. He took long, deep breaths and stared blankly down at the wet print she'd left on the table. Don't lose your temper. Don't prove her right. He waited until his pulse had slowed, then zipped up and followed her through to the living room where she sat silently watching the TV without the sound on.
'Rebecca.'
