his voice to you and look at the state you're in you're all set to go into premature labour over it. This poor, poor child, she thought for the thousandth time, a neurotic for a mother how will it cope?
'I'm sorry if I jumped the gun.' The armed guard stood a little outside the I.C.U, embarrassed, shuffling from foot to foot. 'All we heard were the alarms, and the nurses getting aerated thought you should be here.'
'It's OK.' Caffery's mobile was ringing. 'Really -call me any time. Especially call me' he fished in his pocket for the phone, hit the OK button, and used his thumb to cover the speaker 'especially call me when the lovely Mr. Friendship gives us a clear, OK?' He nodded briefly, and turned away, speaking into the phone. 'Yeah? DI?'
'It's me. I've heard something.'
He hesitated, trying to place the voice. When he had it he raised his hand to the armed officer and headed off down the corridor. 'Tracey,' he said, as soon as he was out of earshot. 'Say that again.'
'I heard something that might be useful to you. Something about what we talked about.'
'Nah that's OK, we managed on our own, after all.'
At the other end Tracey paused for a moment. 'I'm not talking about Brixton,' she said. 'I'm talking about that boy of Penderecki's.'
Benedicte remained where she had shrunk, eyes pricking and bright with fear. She had meant to be a warrior, meant to save her family. Instead she had scuttled back and lain on the floor, panting, weeping in the sour darkness, a hopeless lump bubbling away. A shitty little curled-up coward on the floor. If she was rolled on to her back she would remain locked in this position, like a brittle bluebottle, dead from terror. Pathetic.
And all she could think was: He is a monster. Josh was right a monster.
Thick red lips, white hairless skin. Like Snow White, his dark hair was so luxuriant and shiny it almost didn't look real like a shampoo advert. His trainers were scuffed and dirty and the red nylon Adidas sweatpants were stained. She could imagine cloven hoofs and thick-haired legs under those trousers. And he was wearing pink rubber gloves.
Benedicte knew exactly when she'd seen him before. It had been one morning in the camping shop on Brixton Hill. He had been behind her one minute, back turned to them as if he didn't want to be seen, hood pulled smartly over his face the next she knew he was outside, holding up Smurf's tail to examine her. Now she thought about it she could convince herself that it had been Josh he was trying not to be seen by. Did Josh know him? Or was it just that Josh was the main focus of his interest? Suddenly her blood ran cold. The Peaches, they were supposed to be going on holiday too. Had he heard her talking to the assistant about the holiday in Cornwall? She tried to remember what she had said in the shop. Something about a long car journey, and Oh, Jesus, yes he would have overheard her talking about it she'd even told the shopkeeper when they were leaving for Cornwall. Maybe he'd followed them home, been watching ever since, and in that case it was all her fault.
Suddenly Smurf, who was lying next to her, lifted her head and began to howl, a high-pitched pained squeal, the sound that comes when the pain is deeper than skin and muscle.
'Sssh…' Benedicte tried to hush her, stroked her, tried to coax her to the copper pipe to drink, but Smurf turned away and dropped her head on the floor. Ben sat back and began to pray. Oh, Ayo, Ayo -please, God, come early realize something's wrong please.
Caffery drove through the afternoon lanes. It had been raining in Suffolk, but now the sun was out, shining through the pollarded willows and making a patchwork of the road. Through tree tunnels he went, past horse farms, pleached maple corridors and low spreading ornamental junipers on perfect lawns. His hands were damp. Rebecca is right you are so desperate to get fucked around that you just jump to it. Leave your backbone at the door, Jack, why don't you? Tracey Lamb, that bundle of selfish impulse wrapped in a human skin, had only to put her hand behind her back, look him in the eye and say, 'Guess what I've got in my hand,' and she'd got him by the nose. The smallest crumb, the smallest possibility that she could tell him something about Ewan, and he was prepared to risk everything.
For a moment, just outside Bury St. Edmunds, he got the sudden impression he'd picked up a tail. The flash of sunlight on a windscreen, a grille glinting in the rear-view, a red car, low, like a sports car. It had been with him for miles. He adjusted the mirror, wondering if he was being touched. What would the rubber heelers want with you? And before he even finished the thought the answer came to him: Of course.
Rebecca had talked.
Jesus fucking Christ, Rebecca, you did it, you've talked she'd given them chapter and verse on what he'd done to her and what he'd done to Malcolm Bliss. Heart pounding now, suddenly panicked, he jammed his foot on the accelerator, leaned across the front seat, flipped open the glove compartment and dragged out the map. The road slipped away under the wheels of the Jaguar and the speedo crept up past seventy, eighty. From a driving course at Hendon he knew plenty of surveillance-avoidance techniques, but most of them depended on local knowledge, so he flipped open the map on the steering-wheel, steadying the car with the pressure of his knees and raced through the pages. He found the Thetford page and jabbed a finger down to anchor it, shooting a look in the mirror.
No! His hand drifted from the map. He couldn't believe it. The car had melted into the distance. He was alone on the road.
'Shit.' He held the car steady, staring in the rear-view mirror to make sure he wasn't imagining it. Nothing. Just a silent road stretching out behind. He fumbled around for his mobile, holding it up, jabbing at it with his thumb to check he hadn't got a message if something was happening Souness would have warned him, given him a head start, he was sure. But there was no message icon and the road behind was deserted. He'd imagined it. Imagined the whole thing. If that doesn't make you sit up and take notice…
'Right.' He dropped the phone on the passenger seat, pushed the map aside, and let the car continue for two miles in silence, the blood pounding in his head. He was strung out, he decided, looking at the way his hands were shaking. When he got back to London he was going to tell Souness and Paulina all about it. Because Lamb was just spinning him a line. He knew in his heart that was all she was doing. Don't get your hopes up.
He told himself this so many times as he drove into Norfolk past abandoned, boarded-up houses on deserted roads, past rubbish tips and derelict industrial greenhouses that by the time he found Lamb sitting on the step outside the back door smoking a cigarette, dressed in pale leggings, high-heeled yellow sandals and a Shania Twain T-shirt, he had convinced himself not to listen to anything she said.
'Tracey,' he said. 'What do you want?'
She took a drag on the cigarette, looked up at him through the smoke and smiled. 'You want some tea?'
'Not really, no.'
'OK.' She nodded. She had watched him climb out of the car, his shirt blinding white in the sun, and waited for him to cross from the garage. Yes. She'd been right. She could see it in his face. And as he approached, taking off his sunglasses, she saw him glance, just once, over his shoulder at the road behind him. And that little gesture told her everything: He shouldn't be here he knows that. He's just as bent as I thought. I was right this is going to be easy. 'Who are you working for?'
He put his keys in his pocket and nodded into the house. 'Can you turn the music down?'
'I said who are you working for?'
He sighed. 'I'm not working for anyone. I'm Bill. I told you that.'
'Then this lad this kid that Penderecki done who is so interested in him?'
'Just me.'
'You're a liar.' She took another drag on the cigarette and pointed it at him. 'I know your type there's gelt in it, isn't there? I don't know who that lad was, or anything, but you know what I think? I think someone really, really wants to know. And when someone really wants to know there's always gelt in it somewhere.' She wiped her hands on the dirty leggings, pushed the ironweed hair behind her ear and made a face. She summoned phlegm into her throat and hawked it on to the ground. 'Five K.'
'What?'
'Five K and I'll tell you '
'Five grand? Do I look like a '
'I mean it five K and I'll tell you exactly what happened.'
'Piss off, Tracey. You're a liar. And I don't have to pay, Tracey, to force information out of you. I'm all that's standing between you and the dirty squad and I won't hesitate '
'Oh, no.' She gave him a slow smile. 'You'll pay me.'
'I fucking won't.' He looked up at the sky and began feeling in his pocket for his keys. 'You're full of crap.'
