'Yeah…' She scrunched up her face and wrestled with the champagne cork. 'But most people'd believe me.'
'Most people are soft.' Ayo leaned further out of the window, smiling in the soft evening air. She was seven months pregnant and she carried it well: from behind she looked as slender as a teenager with her long limbs. Like a carving in a print dress, thought Benedicte, she would never get fat.
'There's something wrong in those towers,' Ayo said. She was craning her neck to the left, to Arkaig Tower and Herne Hill Tower, the doomy twins at the bottom of the park. 'They're evil.'
'I know great guardians of Brixton.' The cork came away with a dull pop and she began to fill two crystal flutes. ' Champagne?'
'Oh, Ben,' Ayo pulled the window closed and turned to settle on the sofa, 'I'm sure even thinking about champagne is bad for the baby.'
'Come on. I took acid and Es when I was pregnant with Josh.'
'See? See? I rest my case.'
'It can't be as bad as all the crap at the hospital.'
'Yeah I got a lecture about it. No chemotherapy, no X-rays, no ribavirin.' She stretched her feet out on the floor, dropping her chin on her chest. 'God, I can't remember what my feet look like. Have you seen the size of these knockers? Darren thinks he's died and gone to heaven. Ah…' She took the drink from Benedicte and rested the glass on her bump, slyly watching Josh from half-closed eyes. 'Ben?' she said innocently.
'Mmm?'
'You know with Josh?'
'Yeah?'
'Did he press on your bladder? Make you wee twenty times a night?'
'Mu-um.' Josh half sat up. 'Can you two stop}' He held his hand up and snapped it open and closed. 'Yak yak yak yak yak.'
Ayo nudged him with her foot. 'Smarty-pants.'
Josh giggled and rolled on to his back, play-kicking at her. 'Yak yak yakety-yak.'
'Help!' She struggled to get up, spilling champagne. 'Help me, Ben, your sprog is attacking me.'
'Hyperactive child. He should probably be on medication.' Benedicte helped Ayo to her feet, out of the way of Josh. 'Come and let me show my house off to you come and see the room that's going to save my life.'
The two women went up the stairs, clutching their champagne, giggling, Josh yelling insults after them. Smurf lolloped along behind, and this time Ben didn't send her back downstairs. 'Be-en,' Ayo hissed, the moment they got out of Josh's earshot. 'Ben, what do you think about this business? You know, the little boy in the park.'
'Oh God.' Ben switched on the light on the landing. 'Screwy. I'm sort of glad we're traipsing out to shagging Cornwall.' She'd been following it on TV.
Two members of SERPASU, the South East Regional Police Air Support Unit, had resigned over the incident and the BBC had devoted five minutes to it at the head of the news. The worst thing, for Ben, was a piece of video taken from a helicopter. A news crew, filming the search in the park the day after the kidnap, had analysed the footage and discovered what they claimed was Rory Peach. A tiny patch of light curled in a tree. They broadcast it with a circle imposed over the top so the viewer knew where to look. Benedicte had found it disgusting. 'I don't want to think about it, to be honest. I've thought about it enough.' She pushed her hair behind her ear and smiled at Ayo. 'Come on, let's change the subject, OK? Now,' she paused with her hand on the door and made a solemn face, 'this is the room that is going to save my life.' She opened the door. 'Da-da!'
Ayo peered inside. The bedroom was no more than a box painted cream with blue curtains and a scalloped blue light shade in the centre of the ceiling. It smelt of paint and new carpets. 'Ummm,' she smiled, 'nice.'
'I know it's not nice exactly.' Benedicte made a face and poked Ayo in the arm. 'But it's the first time I've had somewhere I can go for some peace and quiet. Now,' she closed the door and opened the next one, putting her hand inside the door to turn on the light, 'the bathroom.'
They both peered inside. Josh's trainers, which were covered in mud from the woods, had been hosed off and were upside down on the edge of the bath. But there was something else out of kilter in here. Benedicte stepped inside and saw that the floor, the little white pedestal mat under the toilet, and even a corner of the bath mat draped over the bath edge, were wet. She could smell it instantly they'd been urinated on. 'Jesus,' she muttered, switching off the light and slamming the door. 'Wait there, Ayo.' She hurried down the stairs. 'Josh! josh! '
In the TV room Josh looked up. He knew immediately from his mother's voice that he was in trouble. He moved an almost imperceptible fraction along the sofa away from her and Benedicte paused, momentarily ashamed that she could have that effect on her nine-year-old son. 'Jo-osh?'
'Yeah?' He was cautious.
'That mess upstairs.'
He didn't answer.
'Josh! I'm speaking to you.'
'What mess?'
'You know what mess. The one in the bathroom.'
Josh's mouth dropped open and he half stood. 'I never I never went in there.'
'Well, someone did. It wasn't Smurf she's been with me all day and the door was closed.'
'I never, Mum, honest. Honest.'
'Oh, for heaven's sake.' She got bleach, rubber gloves and a bowl from under the kitchen sink and slammed the cupboard door. 'You'll have to learn, Josh, not to lie. It's important.' She went upstairs to where Ayo was cleaning the mess up with a roll of Andrex. 'He's turned into an absolute liar since we got here. It's like everything's gone haywire since we moved in.'
'Maybe the house is cursed.'
'Probably.' Benedicte unhooked the carrier-bag from the bin under the sink and held it out for Ayo to dump the used tissue. 'Probably built on ancient Navajo burial ground.' She didn't smile when she said it.
The mosquitoes had landed a live one. They banked and throttled next to Caffery's ears, flying in formation between the thistle and ragwort, alighting on his hands and sucking eye-popping tubes of blood up into their proboscises. He slapped at them, flicked them, but they clung, drunken and bloated, in his sweat and wouldn't move as he crouched, scraping at the earth and root matter with the claw hammer. The sun had dropped sulkily into the roofs, throwing its last rays into the bitter green cutting.
Should have brought a torch, you dickhead.
Every step, every rock he turned, he recorded, straightening up to photograph his work, flooding the little cloister with artificial blue light, making himself blind briefly. Then, at 9.15 p.m.' after two hours of scraping and digging, he pushed the hammer once more into the soil and hit something unfamiliar. Something that didn't give like soil but slid and whispered. Oh, shit, here we go. Heart thumping, he threw aside the hammer and dropped forward on to his knees, scraping at the earth with his bare hands. In the dim twilight he saw a flash of plastic.
He stopped digging, rocking back a little on his heels, his chest tight for a moment he thought he might vomit. He had to close his eyes and breathe carefully through his nose until the sensation went away.
Sixteen.
It was a cheque red blue laundry bag with plastic handles and it didn't contain Ewan Caffery's remains. Caffery carried it slung over his shoulder, back down the tracks, like a weary sailor carrying his kit on shore leave it bumped on his back and left a grimy patch on his T-shirt. Night had come, the moon was out and he had to move slowly, feeling his way through the nettles with his feet. At his garden he fished inside his saturated T-shirt for the key on the tape. He was dragging, disappointed, but he wasn't going to give up. He knew that Penderecki had sent him to find this bag for a reason.
The house was cool: the french windows stood open, and he could smell cigarillo smoke, so he knew Rebecca was here. He didn't shout up to her or go upstairs to check the bedroom. He didn't want to speak to her at this moment.
