Humphry: 'Ice will stop the air in the polythene bag becoming hot and stuffy…'
On the floor was an empty ice tray, over Penderecki's head a plastic bag. In death his face had swollen to fill the bag, pressing moist against the polythene. A bottle of vodka lay next to the door and a plate of something that looked like chocolate Angel Delight: 'Powder your chosen drugs and put them in your favourite pudding…'
There were no flies on the pudding. They were enjoying dabbling and squelching in Penderecki too much. Caffery checked he had left no footprints then closed the door and went to search the rest of the house.
Penderecki had come to England in the forties 'Probably something to do with the Yalta conference,' Rebecca said sagely. She seemed to understand the demographic waves that had brought Penderecki to the plot of land on the other side of the railway tracks to the Cafferys. Penderecki had never married and seemed to have become fanatical about a religion to which he had been unable to cling at the end. His body had hung here for what? Three, maybe four days, without anyone noticing. Perhaps there was someone still in Poland framed paper cuttings hung on the wall, the sort of folk art distant relatives might send, but apart from this Ivan Penderecki had almost no personal possessions. Nearly seventy and the only children in his life had belonged to other people.
Caffery was prepared to pull the walls down if he thought that he'd find the smallest hint of Ewan, but the house gave up nothing. He got into the loft where the air was warm and circled with dust, but apart from an abandoned wasps' nest hanging from the rafters there was nothing. In one of the bedrooms there was a pile of Hennes children's clothing catalogues innocuous enough. Penderecki wasn't stupid he'd known that with his police record a search warrant would be granted on the slimmest grounds. But apart from that small haul, Caffery found nothing.
In the hallway he pressed redial on the phone. The answer phone at the Lewisham Hospital Oncology Unit picked up. He dialled the number on the last caller ID digital display. Also the Oncology Unit. Someone at the hospital had rung three days ago. Since then no one had tried to contact Ivan Penderecki. And that was all.
Wherever Penderecki had hidden the little scrap of flesh and bone that had been Ewan, it wasn't in this house. The catalogues were only the tip Caffery knew that. There was more. Somewhere. But then, of course, this was part of Penderecki's genius his ability to hide things. Hide magazines and videos and photos and the body of a small boy.
Thirteen.
(22 July)
At home he took off his clothes and put them straight in the washing-machine. He knew a lot about getting the smell of death out of clothes. Rebecca was still asleep. When she woke up she knew immediately that something was wrong. 'Jack? What is it? Where've you been?'
He didn't answer. He sat on the bed in his boxer shorts and lit a roll-up. The sun was filtering through the curtains, making shapes on the ceiling.
'Oh, God.' Rebecca rolled over on to her back and dropped her hands on her forehead. Overnight her eye makeup had smeared into panda rings. 'It's about last night? Isn't it?'
He didn't answer. He didn't know what to say.
'Jack?' She sat up and put her hand on his arm. 'I'm sorry I can explain, I just…'
He smiled at her and cupped her face in a way that he knew must seem ridiculous. He didn't care. He was tired. 'He's dead.'
'Who's dead?'
'Penderecki.'
'Dead?'
'He killed himself. He had cancer, I think. Hanged himself in the bathroom.'
'Is that where you were all night?'
'Yes.'
'Shit!' She dropped back against the pillow, blinking. For a moment his spirits rose for a moment he thought she was as shocked as he was, he even wondered if she understood. But then she put her hand on her forehead, rolled her eyes down to meet his, and said: 'So you've nothing to stay here for. You could just walk away from it all. Couldn't you?'
'No.' He shook his head, understanding immediately that he was wrong, that he was still on his own. 'I couldn't do that. I've got He looked out of the window. 'I've got everything.'
She sat up, took the cigarette from between his fingers and took a long drag from it. 'You mean Ewan?'
He wasn't going to answer that.
'Oh,' she sighed. 'Yes, you do, you mean Ewan.' He felt her tapping his shoulder and when he turned round she was holding out the cigarette to him. Not looking at him. 'Penderecki's dead now but you're still not going to give up, are you?'
He didn't answer. He took the cigarette, dropped his head and looked down at his black thumbnail. She was right. It should be over. Penderecki was dead. Ewan wasn't in the house. There was nowhere else to turn. He should be able to give it all up. But he knew there was more. There has to be. Maybe another place somewhere… A shed or a garage maybe he rented a garage…
Wearily he got to his feet, went into the bathroom and started to run a bath.
Now Roland Klare knew what he was doing. He had gone through the book and worked out the solution to the jammed camera. What he needed was a 'changing bag' – a dark bag in which film could be worked on without being exposed to light. It had taken a while to gather the things he needed, but Klare was nothing if not resourceful: the basis of the bag was no more than a dirty black bomber jacket found in the clothing bank on Tulse Hill. He had cleaned it and painstakingly stapled it closed along the front, a double seam of staples so that no light would come through. It didn't look much, but he thought it would work.
Now he pulled the blind and sat on the sofa, the 'bag' on his lap, and pushed the camera down one of the sleeves until it was in the main body of the jacket. Then he withdrew his hands, placed two broad rubber bands over the sleeves and pushed his hands back down them, making sure the bands rode up his wrists to seal the sleeves from light leaks. He found the camera, cradled it in his palms, and began to work.
Klare's hands were rather large and clumsy for this he had to take it slowly, biting the inside of his lip his concentration was so intense, trying to keep his eyes focused on a spot on the blind so they didn't wander around as he worked. The release catch he found quite quickly. The back of the camera sprang away and he opened it, brushing his fingers tentatively over the interior. The film was in there: he could feel it, half finished, stalled in its cage. Careful not to touch the image, he patted around until his fingers found the cartridge. 'Good.' He sat forward a little in anticipation. It was a tiny gap into which he had to push his fingers just to get a grip on the top of the canister, and when he did get hold of it he found he could only turn it a quarter of a rotation at once. Today he was feeling unusually patient. He took a breath, closed his eyes and let his fingers work in the dark like a Braille reader's, his left hand feathering over the mechanism to check that the sprockets were turning, his right tirelessly winching on the canister.
It took Roland Klare, with his big hands like spades, over an hour to get the film wound on. By the time he had finished and could flip out the canister with his thumbnail, his fingers were throbbing. He pulled the camera out of the bag, testing the winder mechanism before he put it aside and this time, to his surprise, it jammed once then suddenly gave. He stared at it, amazed. He flicked it back and forward a few times in disbelief. Without the film inside, the camera was working perfectly smoothly. Maybe it wasn't as badly damaged as he had thought; maybe the way the film had been loaded was the culprit. Pleased that he wouldn't have to discard the Pentax after all, he put it back in the biscuit tin and turned his attention to the changing bag, giving it a little shake.
The film canister was safe in there, but now Klare saw he had come to a wall. He didn't know the next step in the process he'd have to go back to the book. He sighed. He was tired, he needed a break, so he took the bag into the bedroom where it was dark, dropped it on the floor, went back into the living room and released the blind. The sun had climbed high in the sky over the park. He stood for a while, gazing out of the window at the sun-parched trees.
Caffery stood in a phone box in a side-street near the Shrivemoor offices, Souness and Paulina's red BMW
