The light on the photographs faded and the room fell into shadow. He looked up. A cloud canopy had draped itself over Shrivemoor and before long rain was peppering the building. He turned: everyone in the incident room had stopped work and was staring up at the windows, awed by the weather's giant fist gripping the building. Kryotos was there, and Logan, sitting on their desks, clutching their mugs and gazing at the rain. Caffery took off his glasses, went to the doorway and nodded at Kryotos.
She put down her coffee and came over. 'What's up?'
'Marilyn,' he murmured, 'you got any aspirin?' 'You look like you need it stay there.' She went back to her desk and began rummaging in the drawers. An unnoticed window in the corner had been left open and the desk beneath was being sprinkled with the rain. He turned to go back into the SIO's room, scratching his neck with a ballpoint, when suddenly, as if someone had called his name from behind, he stopped. He turned slowly to stare at the opened window. When Kryotos found the aspirin and straightened up she saw that he had come back into the incident room and was standing in the corner, staring at the water-damaged paper.
'Ooops,' she said, closing the window and looking through the papers. 'Nothing serious no lives lost. Here.' She held out the pain-killers.
He took them from her, then put his hand on her arm and led her into the SIO's room, sitting her down opposite him. 'Marilyn.'
'What?'
'How many cloudbursts do you think we've had this week?'
'God knows. About a hundred.'
'When was the really bad one? The one with the thunder?'
'The day before yesterday, you mean?'
'No before that.'
'Last weekend it rained all weekend. And Monday.'
'Monday too. Yeah, I remember.' It had been an almost tropical storm. Afterwards London smelt of the sea. 'The day we found Rory.'
'That's right. Why?'
'Oh…' He chucked the tablets into his mouth and swallowed, rubbing his forehead, not certain himself. 'Oh, nothing. Nothing.'
Caffery went to Donegal Crescent to speak to the Gujarati shopkeeper who had raised the alarm. He asked for tobacco, then showed his card, 'Remember me?' and started to ask questions. He wanted to know what had made the dog start barking.
'I told you, the dog saw something running away. From the back of the house.'
'But you were walking in the opposite direction and you were more than a hundred yards away. That's good hearing by anyone's standard.'
The man blinked a couple of times then turned and fumbled for the tobacco and even from the back
Caffery could see he was trying to think what to say.
He tried again. 'Maybe something made the dog turn round.'
The shopkeeper turned back. He put the tobacco down and straightened the pile of Evening Standards on the counter, shaking his head. 'You won't confuse me. You won't. I was walking away and the dog looked round.'
'Why?'
'Maybe there was a noise.'
'It must have been a loud noise. You were a good distance from the Peaches' house so it must have been louder than just the sound of someone running.'
The shopkeeper nodded. 'Something louder than that.'
'Maybe it was glass breaking?'
'Maybe,' he agreed. 'Maybe something like that. I didn't hear it, but the dog did. And then he started barking. That's all.'
'That…' Caffery found change in his pocket and paid for the tobacco. He might have smiled but the aspirin wasn't working yet. 'That's what I thought.' Now he knew what was bothering him.
Benedicte was in a room, the spare room on the first floor, her room she recognized the curtains and the scalloped light shade and the smell of new carpet. Her heart was pounding so hard it seemed to be throwing her brain around her skull.
'Hal?'
Is there someone in here?
'Hal?'
No answer. She tried to sit up but the room jolted to one side, moving in a rolling, maritime gait and she toppled forward on to her face, slamming her shoulder on the floor, grazing a sheet of skin from her cheek. For a moment she lay panting, her eyes rolling around in her head.
lHAA-A-L! Hal, for Christ's sake, Hal.' There was blood on her tongue. 'HAL!' She tried to crawl towards the door, and realized something was stopping her. She whipped round, her heart hammering, and saw that her ankle was attached to the radiator by a silvery cuff. Handcuffs? Someone's been in the house. It wasn't a dream. Someone's been in the house. That dark scuttling thing I saw And then, with a sick, sick rush she understood. Oh, God, a frantic thump in her stomach, the Peach family; the police detective No harm in being aware Josh screaming that there was a troll in the garden the Peach family and that means…
'Josh?' She jerked forward, clawing in the direction of the door, yanking at the handcuff. 'JOSH! Oh, my God, Josh Hal!' She wrenched her foot, shaking it, tugging it, jamming her free foot into the skirting-board and pushing back. 'Josh!' And then, when she couldn't move from the radiator, she lost all sense of logic and began to throw her weight against the floor, volleying off it, ramming her fists blindly into the floor. 'JO-SHM'
In the silvery brand-new millennium, where everything was freshly stamped and newly named, and no one went to sleep safe in the knowledge they'd have the same job title by morning, AMIT, which had once been known as the murder team, was under new management: now part of the Serious Crime Operations Group, their chain of command was direct from the Deputy Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard and every week Souness went up to Victoria for a meeting with him 'Prayers', she called it, for the reverent expressions the team leaders wore in the
DAC's presence. And every week she had a lot to gripe about when she got back to Shrivemoor. Today she arrived only a few minutes after Caffery got back from Donegal Crescent. She came in carrying a pile of dockets, her mobile phone and a McDonald's coffee balanced on top. She put it all down on the desk and was starting on her gripe when she noticed how Caffery was watching her tipped back in his chair, arms crossed, waiting for her to finish so he could speak. 'Oh,' she groaned, seeing his expression, 'what now?'
'Doing anything tonight?'
'Uh…' She pulled off her jacket and plugged in the mobile to charge. 'Let me see, do you mean was I doing anything before I saw the look you've got on your face?'
'Yeah.' He nodded. 'Uh-huh.'
'I was taking Paulina to the fair on Blackheath.'
'Will you come over to Donegal Crescent with me? I don't want to screw up things at home for you, but I think it's important.'
'Uh…' She looked at him sideways, thinking about this, clicking her tongue and scratching her head. After a while she sighed and hitched up her waistband. 'See me ever the professional. Come on, then let me go for a quick slash and call Paulina, then I'll be with you.'
Benedicte lay exhausted and shivering, unable to believe that she was still breathing in and out. Tears ran off her face, into her hair, she had flung herself so hard against the floor and the radiator that she'd cut her arm there was blood on the radiator, the walls, the carpet.
'Josh,' she wept. 'Hal?' Any number of awful eventualities she could brew up in a second Josh already dead, Josh wedged into the branches of a tree, Josh ambushed by that creature of his imagination: the troll. 'Stop it,' she muttered, dropping her hand over her eyes. 'There is no such thing as a troll… Just get yourself together.'
But how did he get in? Is the front door open? The front door must be open and Hal? What happened to you? But from the colour of the light beyond the curtain, the sulphured yellow of street-lamps, and the silence, Benedicte knew it was night. Although it had seemed like only a few moments of unconsciousness she had, in fact, been here all day. And if it was night, and if Hal still hadn't come to get her, she knew it was because he couldn't
