come to get her.
She wriggled on to her back and pushed her hand inside her capri pants, creeping them inside her knickers to feel herself. Normal. Not sticky or wet. She squeezed her inner thighs. No bruises, no pain. She touched the soft flesh around her armpits and found it was bruised. Aching. Someone had dragged her up here all the way up the stairs. Now she remembered her shoulders banging on the hard floor is that what he did to Carmel Peach?
'Hal?' She turned her face to the floor and cupped her hands around her mouth. 'Hal? josh? Can you hear me?'
Silence.
She pressed her ear to the carpet, straining to hear a flicker of her child in the house below. The same way she had once held her breath and waited to feel his movement in her womb just a small movement would be enough.
'JOSH?'
Silence.
Oh, God nothing but silence. She wiped her eyes.
'Josh!' Her voice was hollow. She wailed like an abandoned child.
'JOSH? HAL?'
Caffery, pulling off the main road and into Donegal Crescent, suddenly braked. He unwound the window and looked up into the evening sky.
'What was that?'
'What was what}'
'Didn't you hear something?'
Souness opened the window and put out her head. It was almost dark but kids were still out with their bikes, playing under the street-lights. 'What was it?'
He shook his head. 'I dunno.' He listened again. But now all he could hear was the thump-thump-thump of speed garage from an open window on the main road, the children with the bikes shouting to each other and the distant peep-peep-peep of crickets in the park.
Your imagination's on fire
'Jack?'
'No. I'm imagining things.' He closed the window. 'Nothing.' He parked the old Jaguar next to a Lambeth Council dumpster, reached across Souness into the glove compartment, pulled out a flashlight and showed it to her. 'In case the leccy's on a key.'
'Aye, you should have been in the SAS, son.'
The houses in Donegal Crescent were curiously somnolent curtains drawn, windows closed, as if even on this hot night the residents were trying to close out the truth, pretend the witness-appeal signs weren't lined up the road. Number thirty was different from the others. It wasn't the blue-and-white police tape, it wasn't the fact that there was a couple standing, arm in arm, looking at it like solemn tourists paying respect at a military grave. It was the simple, baid fact of what had happened here. The Property Services Department had cleaned up, put a new lock on the door the Met would try to claim the expenses from the Peaches' insurance if they had any -but the Peaches had not been back to the house, not even to pick up belongings, and now kids had graffitied the walls. On the left of the door, just above a purple hebe, two words were written in black spray: troll's house.
When Souness, standing on the doorstep, saw the words she began to stamp her feet as if they were cold.
'What's the matter?'
'Uh nothing.' She rubbed her nose. 'Really, I'm fine.'
'You ready?'
'Of course. Of course I'm ready.'
He broke the seal and used DS Quinn's padlock key. Neither of them spoke. The hallway was dark. To their left, in the living room, the dull glow of streetlights came through a gap in the curtains and lay in a faint stripe across the sofa. Caffery felt for the light switch, but it clicked up and down emptily. The light was dead and somewhere in the darkness ahead the key meter bleeped.
'Told you.'
'Aye, you did.'
He shone the torch into the hallway, playing the beam up the stairs and around the walls. This is where it happened. His neck prickled suddenly as if the air had moved and he had to resist the urge to shine the torch into the living room to check that they were alone in the house. The hallway was small, walls pale, decorated with two seascape prints, both knocked off centre. He was aware of his face momentarily reflected in the glass as he moved down the hallway to the kitchen, the torch playing in front of him.
The meter was next to the cooker. He pulled out the key, pushed it back in, and with a sudden whump and whir the house came alive. The fridge started, the light in the hallway came on and Souness appeared in the doorway blinking, disorientated, looking around this normal yellow-and-white kitchen with the toaster on the work top and the opened packet of Coco-Pops on the fridge. The SSCU's fingerprint dust was everywhere on the fridge, the door, the window frame; purplish puffs of ninhydrin on the wallpaper, silver nitrate on the cupboards. The scent of pine from the board on the window partly masked the smell of old blood. Souness and Caffery stood silently in the kitchen, their faces odd, embarrassed to be here, thinking of what the Peach family had gone through in this house.
Benedicte was shaking, exhausted from screaming, blinking at her cuffed foot in the navy canvas deck shoe. Now that she had stopped struggling, now that the room and the house were silent, she was aware of a new sound. A strained, rasping sound that she hadn't noticed in her panic. It was coming from the wardrobe…
Oh, Jesus, she shivered, what the…?
She crawled forward as far as the cuff would allow, then dropped on to her stomach and snaked her body forward, like a landed eel, moving in silence, just the hush and shush of the carpet against her trousers, until she could reach the bottom of the wardrobe door with her fingertips. She scrabbled at the door with her nails, straining forward until it swung open.
'Oh Something was propped inside the cupboard. One crabbed shape against the far wall. Benedicte recoiled, pushing herself back against the radiator. 'Smurf?'
In the cupboard the dark thing moved a little.
'Smurf?'
The old Labrador struggled feebly to her feet, the air in her lungs whistling noisily, her claws tapping at the floor of the wardrobe. She came hobbling out, wheezing and whimpering, careful not to put weight on the right front paw. Benedicte saw instantly that the leg was swinging, like a pendulum, from a point above the knee. The Labrador limped across the room and dropped with a sigh into the curled crook of her body. Oh, my God, Smurf, what's he done to you? She raced her hands across the dog's coat, down the knobbly legs with their tired old tendons, the little horny dew claw at the back of the ankle, until she found the reflective glimmer of wet fur a soft, hot area. The bone must have cracked, pierced the skin, and retracted when she touched it Smurf whimpered and tried to pull away.
Broken. The bastard broke her leg.
Whoever had done this to an ancient animal like Smurf wouldn't be afraid of hurting Josh. 'Oh, Smurf.' She buried her face in the dear fur, the sweet doggy smell of leaves and forest mulch. 'What's happening to us, Smurf, what's happening?' Smurf craned her head round, trying to lick the tears from Benedicte's face, and that small demonstration of faith, of dependency, gave her sudden courage.
'OK.' Taking a deep breath, teeth chattering uncontrollably, she levered herself into a sitting position. 'OK, Smurf. I'm going to get this fucker.' She stroked the dog's head. 'You see if I don't.'
She jerked up her knee, tugging experimentally, wondering if she could pull hard enough to break the copper radiator pipe. But her ankle was already bloodied from pulling and shiny, like inflamed gums so she sat up in a crouch and inspected the handcuffs. Four delicate blind head screws tiny, hardly bigger than match heads. Decisive now, she straightened up and pulled off Hal's cord shirt. She undid her bra, held it to her mouth and nibbled at the fabric on the inside until the under wiring poked through and she could get a grip on it.
Strong enough to kill him, the shit. I don't care how big he is.
She drew out the slender curve of wire and used her teeth to strip the protective plastic ends away. Then,
