'How about this? Did you see this when you came up?'
Caffery was crouched at the very edge of the roof, where it sloped down to the joists, resting his weight forward on his knuckles and staring down at the soffit the section under the joists on the roof overhang. Someone had removed the weatherboarding and he could see directly down into the back garden. There were two unwashed milk bottles on the patio twenty feet below. Someone had cut themselves a hunting hole if they had lain flat here and hung a small way through that hole their face would have been directly in front of Rory's window.
Outside, the night was unusually cool. As if all the heat had risen into the sky. Caffery and Souness stood for a while looking up at the clear stars, letting the wind ruffle them a little and take the smells away. The SSCU van's doors were open, and they could see the technicians busily chopping up samples, freezing what they could in the on-board freezers. These days, they routinely froze most samples -no one quite understood why, but DNA just popped right out of the frozen stuff in a way that it didn't when it was at room-temperature. Caffery rolled a cigarette and stared up at the sky, at the sickle-shaped moon so luminous and solid, it appeared cut out and pasted on the sky. He imagined Tracey Lamb looking at the same moon. Not now not that now He looked sideways at Souness. 'Danni?'
'Aye?'
'Is there something you want to tell me?'
She looked at him, surprised. 'No. Should there be?'
'No.'
'What's this? What's with all these glaekit questions? What's going on?'
'Oh, nothing.' He lit the cigarette. 'Really, nothing.' He believed her she didn't know. If there was a connection between Paulina and what had happened to Lamb that morning, Souness knew nothing about it.
Rebecca knew that today her life had changed utterly. Like a time-lapse film she had actually been able to feel the process, sense a new colour creeping over her. A thaw, maybe. The heroin must have worn off by now, but she felt unnaturally calm as if she was facing in the right direction at last. In one phone call to her agent she had cancelled the Clerkenwell exhibition and arranged to accept all the offers outstanding on work she'd chosen not to sell. As the day wore on the rumour seeped out, tagging some passing interest, and slowly, slowly it built until her agent had whipped them up: 'I speak to you, Rebecca, looking out of my office window at the streets of Soho, and all I can see is the thrash of fins and tails it's a feeding frenzy down there. Blood running down their chins. I could have sold your fucking lavvy seat, darling.'
She spent the day at Caffery's, lying on her back in the garden, smoking cigarillos, mobile to her ear, astonished that the fairy-tale figures being fed down the phone line could really be attached to her. Are you sure there isn't a mistake? She watched the smoke curl up to the blue and pondered this odd shift in her life. She wondered how he would see it how he'd feel about her now. I wouldn't blame you if you just told me to fuck off, Jack, I wouldn't blame you.
When he came home late that night, his face was grey. He seemed exhausted. 'There are some clever bastards in the world,' he said, getting a beer from the fridge and emptying the change out of his pockets, stuffing his jacket in the dry-cleaner's bag. 'Some clever, clever bastards.' But when she pressed him he wouldn't say any more. He took off his trousers, put them in the bag, too, and went up to the bathroom in his socks and shirt.
While he showered she opened some wine. It was a tall blue bottle, and because she liked the way it looked in the light, she brought it upstairs. She filled both glasses, put his on top of the toilet cistern with the bottle, and sipped at hers, wondering where to start.
'I've cancelled the show,' she said eventually, leaning against the sink, looking at his silhouette in the shower.
'What's that?'
'I said I've cancelled the show at Zinc'
He pulled back the shower curtain, trying to rub the soap from his eyes. 'What?'
'I'm selling the pieces that I'd got offers on the ones I thought I wanted to hold on to. Actually, I've already done it I've sold them.'
'Becky…' He turned off the shower, groped for a towel, wiping the soap and water off his face so that he could see her properly. 'You can't. You can't do that.'
'I can, you know.' She leaned over, took his glass from the cistern and handed it to him. Soap dripped from his arms and legs and stomach. A few days ago she would have stared, made a comment, told him what a total turn-on his body was, but she wasn't going to be flippant tonight. 'I can and I have. And guess what.' She turned her glass around, looking down into it, a little embarrassed. 'I'm going to go and see a therapist too.' She stuck out her tongue and smiled. 'I know, yuck, promise you won't tell a soul.'
He didn't answer. He sat down on the edge of the bath, his back to her, staring down into the wine-glass. She couldn't tell what he was thinking. After a while he turned, swung his legs out of the bath, put the glass on the floor and held out his hand to her.
'Come here.'
She took his hand and he pulled her on to his lap, wrapping soapy arms around her. 'That's good,' he said. 'That's really good.'
She bent her head and smiled secretly against his neck, getting soap on her face. The water was soaking into her T-shirt.
'My T-shirt's wet,' she said. 'Look at me.'
'Shall we go to bed? See if it works this time?'
She smiled. 'Except you're covered in soap.'
'I don't care. Come on.'
And they crawled between the sheets, wet and soapy, and he pulled her T-shirt over her head and used it to wipe the soap off his chest, his stomach, his legs, then threw it on the floor and fell forward, groping at her bra. 'If this is what a little smack does for you…'
'Oh, stop it.' She kicked him in the shin. 'Don't tease me. You know it's not that.'
'I know.' He was smiling as he pulled at her shorts, as he pressed his hard, damp body against hers, and she had to stop herself turning to him and saying it out loud like an idiot: I am so sure, so, so sure it's going to be OK.
Twenty-nine.
(27 July)
Tracey Lamb had to go to the Narey hearing that morning but she didn't want to come back and find Steven had made another mess in the caravan. 'Come on.' She put down some bits and pieces on the bunk, some Cokes, some Caramel bars, some biscuits. 'Come and sit down here and we'll play a game.'
The chocolate and the idea of a game cheered him up. He sat down on the bed, on top of his tangled sleeping-bag, and started to rock back and forward, grinning, showing the gaps in his teeth where they'd rotted from too many sweets. 'Gaaayhb. Gaaayb.'
'That's it. Now give me your hands.'
He held them out, delighted that Tracey was paying him attention.
'Good. Now keep still, while I…' She used the electric flex to fasten his hands together. 'Good.' She reached around his back to pass it behind him and slowly wound it around his body. She kept things light, laughing and poking him in the ribs to keep him smiling. 'Come on this is fun. See, what the game is, is that Tracey ain't all that good at tying Steven up -see? Steven can always get out, can't he?'
'Yeeeeth.' He nodded, grinning. 'Yeth.' He stared in rapt attention as she tightened the electric flex so that one arm was fastened at his side. She stood and fed the remaining lead first around the handles of the cupboards, then around the window catches and the base of the table. Now he could move around in a circle of only about two or three feet. He could reach the sink but he couldn't reach the windows or the door or do any harm.
'There.' She stood back, wiping her hands on her leggings. 'Now, I bet Steven can get out of that I bet Steven's too clever for Tracey, ain't he?'
