that had fluoresced under the Crimescope light in Rory's wounds had been identified. They had come from the T- shirt Peach had been wearing during the supposed attack on his family. Although he had claimed not to have seen or heard his son the entire time they were kept in the house, somehow fibres from his T-shirt had got underneath the ropes binding his son. And now that the team was starting to ask questions about him they had weeded out a couple of people who had always wondered just a suspicion, mind whether Mr. Peach hadn't been in the habit of clouting Rory once in a while.
'The clanging of things falling into place is deafening.' Souness was at her computer, firing off e-mails, sucking on a can of Dr. Pepper. She looked up at Caffery standing in the doorway of the SIO's room. 'What? You got nothing better to do than stand around wi' a gob on?'
'Danni.' He closed the door and came in. 'Look '
'Oh, God,' she sighed, 'I know you so well you want something, don't you?'
'I want you to speak to that knob shine down at King's for me. Friendship. He won't give me the time of day, won't let me speak to Peach.'
'Don't worry about that, Jack. Give Alek time to get better, then we'll come down on him.' But she saw that wasn't going to be enough for him, so she pushed away the keyboard, leaned back in her chair, her hands folded across her stomach. 'Jack? You've not arrested him, have you? Before he went into hospital?'
'No.'
'So the detention clock's not on? None of this counts towards our thirty-six?'
'None of it.'
'He's under guard and not going anywhere?'
'That's right.'
She opened her hands. 'Then what's up? Why the urgency? Let the consultant take his own sweet time.'
'Oh, God…' He fell into his seat and rubbed his eyes. 'Look I don't know how I know, but I promise you it's not that simple.' He sat forward, steepling his hands and pointing them at her. 'I am so sure he's got someone else, Danni. Once he's safe inside a house, got everyone safe and gagged, he can come and go as he likes'
'Jack '
'and if he's got someone else then how long do you think they'd survive? Four days? In this weather, without any injuries, five days if they were very fucking lucky? He got up and put his hand on the door.
'Now please, please speak to that arse hole at King's.'
Benedicte worked, sawing with the grip rod, growing sicker and shakier by the minute. She didn't care how much sound she made now that she knew the troll had gone. Hair-fine pieces of wood peeled away, then larger, curly pieces. Every few minutes she had to stop and get her breath back, sitting with her legs splayed on either side of the area she was working at. Then she'd topple on to her side and fasten her mouth to the radiator pipe, sucking as much water as she could into her parched mouth. She was getting weak, but she wasn't going to give up.
It took almost three hours for her to scour a line about half a centimetre deep. A fragment of wood had come away it was only the size of a sugar cube, but it had left a two-finger hole in the plank. She dropped the tack strip and inched the bra wiring into the hole, pushing it so it poked back up through the knot hole and created a handle. She sat on the floor, her feet planted against the wall, giving her something to strain against, gripped both ends of the wire and pulled. The blood vessels in her head ballooned with the effort: Can your veins pop? she thought. Can they just burst?
London was melting. The earth in Brockwell Park was cracking, long open sores in the ground, and in Brixton market girls sashayed down the street dressed only in denim shorts and seersucker bikini tops, hair tied into bunches with pink ribbon. On the edge of the steaming swimming-pool Fish Gummer was tired. Ever since he'd had the encounter with DI Caffery he'd been irritable. That's the last time I'll ever speak to the police. Today's class was the 'otters', the eight-to nine-year-olds. He stopped and narrowed his eyes at them lined up on the water's edge, standing with arms at their sides like penguins in multicoloured arm-floats. 'Well? Who's missing?'
The children all bent forward to look up and down the row.
'Josh.' One of the boys gave him a toothless grin.
Josh Church was new to the class. He'd come only twice, dropped at the door from a big yellow car. 'Well? Have any of you seen him? Any of you live near him?'
The children all looked at each other and shrugged. Josh was so new that no one had got to know him that well. None of them cared whether he was there or not.
'All right.' He blew his whistle. 'Get yourselves a float if you need it, and get into the water.'
DC Logan stood in the incident-room doorway, coffee cup in his hand, examining his tie as if he suspected he'd spilled something on it. When Caffery stopped next to him, he dropped it and looked up guiltily: 'All right?'
'How many houses did you do on the house-to-house?'
'Uh I well, y'know, I tried to do them thoroughly.'
'Right Caffery put his hands in his pockets and stood a little closer, murmuring into Logan's ear. 'I've just had your overtime sheets in, and checked them next to the number of statements you took this week and there's a problem…' He dropped his chin and raised his eyebrows.
Logan knew what he was saying. He lowered his eyes.
'It's OK, you can make up for it,' Caffery murmured. 'I've got a little job for you.' He checked over his shoulder. Danni had her feet on the desk and was speaking into the phone. 'There's a Mapinfo sheet and instructions in my pigeon-hole. You will knock on twenty doors before the sun goes down. Just so you know.'
Logan stood, hands limp at his side, until Caffery had gone. Then he straightened his tie and looked over at Kryotos: 'What the fuck's got into him?' he mouthed.
Kryotos shrugged and turned away.
'Here we go.' It had taken almost five hours but at last Ben felt the wood crack between her hands. She scrabbled at it, her fingers bleeding now, and slowly enough of the board splintered for her to see into the space under the floor. She put her head down and peered in. The cavity was about ten inches deep, warm with incubated air. Pipes and wires zoomed in from the side of the house and snaked away from her into the darkness. It didn't smell musty or spidery, instead it smelt of new wood and mastic. She sat up and pulled away the remainder of the plank then pushed her face back into the hole.
Now what? Close to her eyes was a round electrical junction box screwed to a joist, tentacles of white cable exiting north, south, east, west, like a tiny octopus. One of the leads docked with the top of a black cylinder standing proud of the plasterboard. It took Ben a few moments to recognize that she was looking at the metal sheath of a light fitting the recessed lighting in the kitchen somewhat bigger than a beaker, inverted and pushed up through a circular hole.
My God this type of fitting, she was sure, was simply pushed up from below into the plasterboard, nothing holding it up, no screws or nails. She recalled Darren, Ayo's husband, pulling one out to work on it in their kitchen in Kennington she remembered seeing it dangling from its cord.
She lay on her belly and cupped her hand over the top of the lamp, pressing it down. It moved with a long, soft, sucking sound like jelly from a mould -and dropped out of sight, the wires catching the weight, daylight flooding into the space from below. Ben sucked in a breath. The light swung under the ceiling like a pendulum, the wires banging against the sides of the hole, and when nothing happened, when no one charged up the stairs and slammed into the door, she felt brave enough to get her face into the hole and see what was going on down there.
She lay down on her front, her arms out in front of her like an obedient schoolgirl in a diving lesson, fingers pressed together, children, and thought of Josh running out of the swimming-pool from his new lessons and jumping into the car: 'Mum, what's a aqua dynamic?' The plasterboard ceiling cracked suddenly under her weight. She recoiled, horrified, pulling her head out, her hair catching on nails so that she came out backwards with a snarled crown. 'Oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus '
She crouched there for a moment, panting, expecting the ceiling to collapse. But when it didn't her heart slowed a little. She pushed her hair from her eyes and slowly, carefully, bent down again. This time she was more cautious. She spread her hands across the floor like a gecko, and slowly wormed her face into the airless space, stealthy as a hunting cat, until she could see into the circle vacated by the light fitting.
It was bright down there, bright and open. And ten feet below her, in the kitchen beneath, Hal lay on the floor.
