Number thirty had been released as a crime scene and technically he should get Carmel Peach's permission to enter, but she was still at the Nersessians' and, anyway, he'd kept a copy of the padlock key. Donegal Crescent was quiet no cars passed. The only sounds were a TV in a lit-up living room next door and a dog barking in one of the back gardens. He carried the torch in his pocket. He liked its heaviness.
Inside, the hallway was dark, the air bitter and salty, sealed up, heated and reheated. He reached for the light and even as he did he remembered Shit. The electricity key: Souness had removed it when they left and placed it on top of the meter. He switched on the torch, followed the beam quickly to the kitchen, and pushed the key back in. The lights came on, the fridge started up noisily. He stood for a moment, blinking in the light, his senses quivering. The walk down the hallway the silent living room on his right, the door to the basement had set the hair on his neck straight up. Not like you not like you It took a moment for his heart to stop racing.
He flipped open the fridge it was covered in DS Quinn's fingerprint dust and a black and grey crust of microbes. The smell was of riverbeds and mushroom fields, but there was another smell in the house. The smell that Souness had been troubled by the last time they were here. This time it was stronger, still faint but distinctive. He switched off the fridge at the plug, anxious to preserve whatever electricity was left, and went back to the kitchen doorway, finding the light switch for the hallway. It was just as he'd remembered it the framed prints on the wall, the plastic runner to protect the carpet, Rory's turbo water-gun on the stairs. And the smell. Stronger now.
He sniffed, trying to imagine the receptor that very particular smell stroked. It was almost, almost but not quite, the sweetly familiar smell in Penderecki's house. Almost the smell of death. 7s it something the science unit missed? Something else in the house no one's seen?
Something else in the house. Yes. Someone else had been in the house with the Peaches. He was sure.
He put the torch in his trouser pocket and went to the bottom of the stairs. The last thing Peach said he remembered was standing here, looking up the staircase. Caffery hung his jacket on the newel post and went slowly up the stairs. The higher he got, the stronger the smell. He stood on the landing, resting his hands on the cupboard door. The message was still there, smudged and scraped where DS Fiona Quinn had cut samples from the paint. Female Hazard. This little cupboard had been Carmel Peach's home for more than three days. Here she had lain, crunched up and in pain, listening to her son crying below, her wrists bleeding.
If she was to be believed.
Come on, then.
He pushed open the door. There was a lagged tank at the back of the cupboard and slatted shelves above. On the top shelf, a stack of towels. Caffery sniffed. He crouched down, sniffing the carpet. Here, even outside the cupboard, it had been soaked in Carmel's urine and the sharp alleyway smell of it came up to him now, almost making him cover his nose. But that isn't the smell you're after it's something else… He straightened and turned, looking up and down the landing.
The master bedroom was at the front of the house, the bathroom facing it. The boards creaked as he walked to the end of the landing, flicking on the lights and looking in both rooms. Silence. The street-light shone orange on the bedroom curtains. A copy of Hello! magazine lay on the dressing-table, Carmel's cosmetics stood in a silent little line, a cardigan and a pair of socks were on the floor. In the bathroom Rory's bath toys were piled in a plastic laundry basket under the sink. Caffery turned off the lights and went back on to the landing. He watches them he watches them, in bed. Past the cupboard, Carmel's cupboard, down to the back of the house. This was Rory's room. He pushed open the door and stood for a moment.
It was a neat square stuck on the house over the kitchen, with a big casement window. DS Quinn had pulled the curtains to stop curious eyes, but there was enough of a gap to see the trees in the park moving in the wind. The smell was stronger in here.
Caffery had the sudden sensation that something was standing in the hallway behind him. He turned quickly. The corridor was silent, just the street-lights glowing from the bedroom. You're imagining things now. Making things up… He moved quietly into the room, bending to pick up toys, turn things over, trying to imagine someone in the park looking through the window and watching Rory play. Wolverine stared silently down at him from an X- men poster next to the bed, Gundam and WWF models lay scattered on the floor try to imagine Rory crouched here playing with his toys and being watched. He turned. In the little sliver of window-pane between the curtains the bare bulb glared back. He snapped the light off and opened the curtains. The trees on the other side of the broken fence were less than fifty yards away.
He said he liked watching me in bed…
It was one of those odd cloudless nights in which the wind keeps the stars clean and the sky never seems to get properly black. In the park the trees moved as one, shivering where the wind licked at them. Caffery stood quite still, letting his attention move around the room behind him, up the walls, around the doorway then up, across the ceiling, over his head and out through the window, touching the sides of the house, down the garden path, over the fence and out, out into the night into the woods. Could someone sitting in one of those trees see into this room? Someone who liked climbing?
He went to Rory's bed and lay down, taking the torch out of his pocket and resting it on his stomach, conscious of the cold, bare window on his right. He put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling, wondering if he was expecting something to happen something to hurtle through the window and land on him on the bed. Secret places. There is always somewhere to hide things. Not the place you expect. His movement in the room had set up a small rotation of the lightbulb above the bed. He watched it dreamily, circling circling, thinking of Ewan does everything circle back? Rory's South Park duvet smelt of fabric softener and faintly of leaves, and Caffery half closed his eyes, enjoying that smell, remembering the tree-house. Tracey Lamb… was she really lying… did she know?
He sat up, the torch rolling off and banging loudly on the floor. A fly had crawled out of the plastic rose at the base of the light fitting.
He jumped up on the bed, reaching inquisitive fingers to it, turning the rose on its axis to face him. There was a small square hole in the plastic he poked his fingers in, feeling the roughness of the edge. The square had been excised as if with a Stanley knife.
Fiona? His pulse was racing now, pressing on his ears in the silence. Fiona, this isn't you, is it? What would the science unit want with a sample of the light rose?
'Hal, I hope you're having fun in Cornwall, it's Darren, mate. Look, I'll see you when you get back but Ayo wanted me to call and say that she never got round to coming over to your house, see, and she's sorry but the ting is our baby got here last night.' He paused for a moment and Benedicte had a picture of him, embarrassed, trying to be cool, shifting from foot to foot, being the big man. 'He's a bit early, our baby, right, a month early, cos she, you know, someone went and got her all stressed up at work over some fink some filth, Josh, you're right about them, Josh man, and anyway little Errol, that's gonna be his name, little Errol, he's in one of them premie things - he's OK, like, but…' He paused and seemed to be wondering what to say. 'Oh, man, don't get worried, he's OK, it's just we couldn't water no plants, and I'm sorry. We're going to open something together, the four of us, when you get back, and celebrate.' He coughed. 'Anyway, that's all, homeys. See you.'
Benedicte lay against the radiator with her face in her hands.
She had a headache, cramps in her limbs, and even with the dribble of water her mouth was still so filled with a glue-like substance that closing it was uncomfortable. The papers said that Carmel Peach would have been dead within twenty-four hours in that heat if she hadn't been found. Smurf's breathing was laboured and Benedicte knew that she was deteriorating fast. She was such an old dog, a poor old dog, and so confused her eyes were dull and crusted and in the last few hours she had stopped moving, except to pant or whimper. Ben dropped her hands and took deep breaths, trying to stop herself crying. Ayo had a new baby, and she and Josh and Hal were all going to die.
Caffery found a mop in the kitchen cupboard and took it upstairs. He switched on all the lights on the first floor and stood on the landing, looking up at the hatch in the ceiling. Secret places. The attic is one of the most common places for 'missing' children to hide Always check behind the water tank. The first attending team had searched the attic at number thirty looking for Rory. Had they missed something?
He switched on the light and prodded the hatch. It swung open smoothly, and when he stood on tiptoe and pushed up his hand, he found a light switch and the rubberized feet of a stainless-steel fold-down ladder suspended in the opening. The light came on and the ribbed vault of the roof lit up like a church. Tucking the flashlight in the back of his waistband he pulled down the ladder and began to climb.
