Tracey Lamb, lying like a frog on the floor with all her limbs moving at once, became still at this sentence. The two officers exchanged glances, wondering at this sudden hiatus. Then Lamb rolled on to her side and covered her face, her chest convulsing, tears making mirrors of her red cheeks.
'Miss Lamb, you have to get up have you seen '
'Yes, I have seen, I do know,' she wailed. 'Of course I've seen. Who do you think she is, you cunts? Eh? That 'poor little girl' just who do you think she is?'
They had to drag her, one on either side, out of the house and over to the car, past the rusting oil containers, the old ivy-covered engine hoist. The arresting officer had just spent a day at Hendon learning the Quik-kuf arrest technique. By the time Caffery arrived at 11 a.m. the PC was using a ballpoint to close the double-locking pins of the handcuffs and Tracey Lamb was under arrest.
It took until lunchtime for the MG 1-16 forms to be filled in and signed so that Tracey Lamb could be officially charged with the indecent assault of the boy in the video. The interviewing officers members of the paedophile unit down from Scotland Yard had brought the video with them. They'd had it for ten years and had been looking for her all that time. A wig, they told her, didn't make much difference in identifying her. After she'd been charged they agreed with the custody officer that she could be bailed.
Outside, on the trimmed lawn in front of the police station, she lit a cigarette and stood for a moment, ignoring the council workers coming in and out of their offices for sandwiches, and gazed up over the unfinished stump of the cathedral tower, out to the clouds moving in ranks across the sky. Shit. She couldn't believe it just couldn't believe it. They'd warned her that there might be other charges under the Obscene Publications Act, which 'might arise in the course of our investigation', but the duty brief, Kelly Alvarez, a little Mexican-looking woman in a navy suit with a grubby lifeboat sticker on the lapel, told her it wasn't as bad as she thought. They only had one tape, and the photos taken of her as a child would help establish 'the enormous influence your father and later your brother exerted over you. Don't worry, Tracey, we might, if we're lucky, get away with a non-custodial.'
But she couldn't accept it. She'd been hauled in before, of course, done her own bits of time here and there, but what really slaughtered her was the money. When the unit had dragged her out of the house and into the panda car she'd caught sight of Caffery standing just inside the trees, watching, a stuck sort of look on his face. Now she didn't know what to think.
'How did they find me?' she wanted to know. 'Who fitted me up?'
Alvarez shrugged. 'They've had the video for years.'
'But how did they know it was me?'
'I'll find out I promise. Now, don't worry about this, Tracey it's not the end of the world.'
'Of course it's not,' she muttered to herself now, walking away from the station, down the sunny Bury streets. Like a bag lady in your Wellingtons. 'Not the end of the fucking world.'
She paused, the cigarette half-way to her mouth. A familiar car. Just crouching like a cat at the corner of the road. Quickly she turned on her heel and walked in the opposite direction, pulling the collar of the T-shirt higher as if it might make her invisible.
Caffery had seen her coming out of the turning ahead and started the car. He was wired, so alert his eyes hurt in those few hours that Lamb had spent in the police station everything had come into focus: now he understood the tail on the country lane yesterday. Souness's red BMW. Rebecca hadn't gone to the police, it was all down to bottle-blonde Paulina -infant-blue eyes and a pedigree car. An intelligence officer for the paedo unit, in the incident room she had latched on to him instantly. She must have heard about Penderecki's death, must have been watching him. Souness hadn't said anything about it over dinner last night. She must have known she knew that Paulina had taken the car so what was all that trust and love and tolerance shit last night? Now he was in the business of waiting for the other boot to fall, waiting to get the first sinister hint that Souness or the paedophile unit were talking to the CIB Let's count your breaches of the discipline code, shall we? Corrupt practice, abuse of authority. He knew the whole thing was about to crash around him and now he just had time to give it one last shot.
He put the car into gear and slid along next to Lamb before she could turn into a side-street. He opened the passenger window. Tracey.'
She ignored him, kept on walking, and he had to edge the Jaguar forward, one hand on the steering-wheel, leaning across the passenger seat: 'Tracey -listen this wasn't mine I swear I didn't have anything to do with it.' He held his hand over the envelope in his breast pocket to stop it falling out on the seat. 'The money's here. It's right here.'
'Bit fucking late now, isn't it?'
'No we can still talk.' He looked up at her. 'We can still talk.'
She stopped. She tucked her bottom lip under her long teeth and bent a little, trying to see what was inside his pocket. So intent, so fascinated, she had the wet mouth of a dog running a scent line. He'd got her by the nose.
She took a step closer and slowly he opened his hand away from the pocket to show her. That's it, that's the way just a little nearer… Reflected in the car's wing mirror someone walked across the lawn from the courthouse and Caffery registered it momentarily, a passing flash of anxiety that he might be seen with Lamb, and that momentary lapse cost him the day. When he looked back the line had broken. She'd seen the simple flicker of his attention and followed his eye, seen what he was looking at, and lost her faith. She took a step back, glancing up at the courthouse, her eyes darting back and forward.
'Tracey '
'What?'
'Come on talk to me.'
'No. There's nothing to tell. I was lying.' She was backing away now.
'Shit.' He slammed his fist on the steering-wheel and put the car in gear. 'Tracey.'
'There's nothing to tell.' She set her face and walked away. He had to shoot the car forward to keep up with her.
Tracey!'
'I mean it -I was lying. You're not stupid, you knew I was lying.' She took a last puff on the cigarette. She didn't want to stop to tread on the butt so she threw it through the opened window of the Jaguar, crossed her arms resolutely across her breasts and turned into the abbey grounds where the car couldn't follow.
Twenty-seven.
He didn't let it touch him he didn't let it get to him. He did what he'd said he was going to do and put a line under it. He had already wasted enough of the morning. Cigarette between his teeth he put his tie back on, checking in the mirror, put on his sunglasses, and grappled his mobile out of his jacket. What was Souness doing right now? Sitting in the SIO's office, counting off the minutes, waiting for him to come through the door, waiting to ask him the questions about Tracey Lamb and Norfolk. It was time to get it all out into the open.
'Well?'
'Well what, Jack?'
'Have you got something to tell me?'
'About what} Your lads aren't back they were going to call you direct, weren't they?'
'Anything else?'
'Jack, listen, son. I hate to be a pain in the arse, but I've got the DACe-mailing me, the borough fucking commander on the line and, oh, just one or two reports to get ready for the case review, so with all due respect…'
He sat back in his seat, staring at the alley of beech trees that marched off towards the abbey. She didn't know. Souness didn't know. What the fuck was
'Jack? I don't want to hang up on ye, son, but '
'OK, Danni. I'm sorry. Put me through to Marilyn, will you?'
Kryotos agreed to contact Champ and reschedule the meeting. Champ was in the West End he wanted lunch and if Caffery could make it for two thirty they could meet in Soho. So he pointed the car down the M11: Canary
