She let a cup slide into the sink, the slow, silent explosion of brown over the stainless steel, and went into the toilet, banging her hip on the washbasin, holding out her hands to steady herself. The floor tiles seemed to lift up and melt into the wall and her mouth was so dry she had to scoop more water into it. What's the matter with you? Outside the bathroom something dark and huge scuttled across the hallway. She looked up.
'Smurf?'
No answer.
'Josh?'
But he wouldn't be able to hear. He was in the other room with the TV on. Instead of worrying she sat down on the floor, her head between her hands, wondering why her mouth was so furred. Something touched her shoulder.
Hal?
'I thought you said you wanted that room?'
Hal?
'Can't you go to the room?'
The room? What room? Why's he asking about a room?
'Come on.' A bright light and now her armpits felt as if a vice had locked on to them. 'Just leave me for a moment, Hal I'll be all right.' The back of her shoulders was hurting, and her spine too, as if she was being bounced on a hard wooden floor. The light was blinding and when she tried to speak her voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away. 'Hal?' She couldn't speak her tongue was so thick that it seemed to have blocked her mouth. 'Whud uh She wanted to call to Josh but no sound came out and now she thought she could hear his pale, frightened sobs above the silly banging of her head. Bang bang bang. And her armpits were so sore.
'Don't let the troll get me, Mummy. Mummmeeee! Please!'
The troll? What?
Then something was hanging over her. A face. The eyes glassy and folded.
'NNNNOOOOOOOO!!' she heard herself yell, and in that instant she was awake, somewhere with no sound or light, sitting upright, her voice ringing off empty walls.
Souness had a guilty secret when it came to the press: sometimes she practised. At night Paulina would sit cross-legged on the kitchen table in her nightie, a cup of Horlicks in one hand, and yell out the questions: 'Superintendent Souness She enjoyed the role. Sometimes she held the handle of a tennis racquet to Souness's mouth. 'What do you say to people who feel that Brockwell Park should have been better searched?'
Souness, in her pyjamas, hands on hips, would obediently rehearse her answers. Paulina was a disciplinarian: 'No! You need to show more emotion. Convince me you mean it.'
'What? You'll be wanting tears next. I'm nae crying in front of eight million viewers I'm not a shagging Yank, you know…'
This morning the rehearsals had paid off: she'd put in a fine performance, no one knocked her off balance, and when she told the press she was optimistic about finding Rory's killer soon, she meant it. She almost felt like humming a tune as she came into the office at eleven. She was surprised, and a little pissed off, to find the SIO's room locked from the inside.
'Jack?'
She peered through the window and saw him in her seat, glasses on, his feet up on the desk, holding the remote control at the TV, which had been turned to face him. Caffery was very pale, his hair looked as if it hadn't been combed in weeks. Souness rapped at the window.
He looked up. Quickly he turned off the TV, took off his glasses and came to the door, unlocking it.
'Ye all right?'
'Yeah no sleep again.'
'Aye, and ye stink of booze. What're ye watching?'
'Nothing. Daytime soap.'
'Daytime soap.' She unhooked her pager from her belt, threw it on the desk and opened the window. 'Will you be a wee sweetheart and not tell the team that?'
'Sure, sure.' He sat down at the desk and started popping Altoid mints into his mouth.
Souness felt a sudden pang of worry for him he looked utterly beaten. She bent over and ruffled his hair. 'Sure you're still with us, Jack?'
'I'm sure.'
'Anything to report?'
'Yeah got some prints…' He rubbed his eyes, moved his jaw around, loosening himself up, and handed her a folder.
'Prints Jesus.' She took the folder and shook out the photos. 'How come no one told me?'
'Relax, they're glove prints. The ninhydrin found them.'
'Ninhydrin? Isn't that for latents?'
'Yeah, but he's got something on the tips of the gloves and the ninhydrin pulled up the amino acid in it so it could have been sweat or he could've got food on them, meat or something. We were lucky the unit were trying for the wallpaper but some of the aerosol got on the floor and that's where we got the print.'
'If it was sweat '
'Sorry.' He shook his head. 'Already been there. First thing I said. No DNA. Course, they're trying -like they're trying with the semen.'
'So you don't hold out much hope?'
'On prints and DNA? No.' He stretched and rested his elbow on the desk, positioning himself between Souness and the VCR. 'But we do know the make of gloves the pattern was hatched, crisscross.'
'Marigold?'
'Exactly.'
' Carmel Peach?'
'Doesn't wear rubber gloves. Except for cleaning the toilet upstairs. Never brings them downstairs and, anyway, she only buys Asda's own brand.'
'So we know what to spin for if we find him.'
'That's right.'
The gloves responsible for the peculiar and distinctive cross-hatch pattern on the floor of the Peaches' kitchen had travelled a long way since they had been removed from the leaves in Brockwell Park then dumped by Roland Klare into a skip on the Railton Road. The skip had been picked up the following day just before the POLSA team had extended the search parameters and driven to a dump site in Gravesend, within sight of the river, where the rubber gloves lay under two blue plastic bags of building rubble, unremarkable and unnoticed, save by the rats.
Caffery was pleased when Souness went out for a coffee and he could be alone. He didn't want company he was still aching from the Scotch and he felt as if there was nothing but air and electricity between his ribcage and pelvis. He flipped the tape out of the video and locked it with the others in his filing cabinet. It had been blank, of course, like all the others. He knew he'd have to turn them in now. Penderecki's body had been removed from the house and Environmental Health had come in to clean up: Ewan's history was being wiped.
He sat down and dialled Rebecca's mobile. We need to talk, he thought, we can go through what happened, talk our way back to each other. But something stopped him. He lost his nerve and hung up before she could answer. He sat for a few moments, breathing slowly in and out, then picked up the phone again, changed his mind again, put the receiver back in the cradle and stood, angry with himself. He was supposed to be at work.
'Right.' He went into the exhibits room to get the crime-scene photos of the Peaches' house, took them back to the SIO's room and sat for a long time staring at them. He placed them alongside the Half Moon Lane photographs, then got the photographs of the developed glove prints that Quinn had given him. The
Peaches' kitchen floor, the place the prints had been developed, was of cushioned linoleum. Ordinarily the unit wouldn't have used ninhydrin on this surface it was sheer fluke and luck that the chemical, sprayed from an aerosol, had drifted and developed a print in the last place they'd have looked. The lino was decorated with rose- covered trellises. Caffery stared at the grid those trellises made, trying to catch the tail of an idea, trying to remember what had bothered him when he'd looked at these photos, his mind locking and jerking and trying to circle back to Rebecca.
