'I think so.'
'Jesus.' She picked up the top photograph and stared at it. 'Poor wee mite.' She had Alek and Rory, and the truth of what had happened to them in number thirty Donegal Crescent, in her hand, and it made the blood go from her face. 'Not enough that he's dead,' she said quietly. 'He had to go through that first.'
'I know.' Caffery was rummaging in the tin. Underneath the pictures of Rory Peach he found an old Polaroid of a child wrapped with torn sheets, a gag on his face, his hands placed across his chest like a pharaoh. He knew what this was. He recognized the wallpaper. And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles poster. 'He was right,' he said, handing the photo to Souness. 'He was fucking right it wasn't a hoax.'
'Who was right?'
'DI Durham.' There were more pictures of the same child underneath. 'See? It's the Half Moon Lane family.'
'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, what the fuck ever happened to them then?'
'I don't know. I just don't know.' Further down, under the Polaroids, he found a photograph of a boy face down in a scatter of dead leaves, his trousers and underwear pulled down to his knees. This, he felt sure, was Champaluang Keoduangdy twelve years ago one of Roland Klare's earliest victims. 'Jesus,' he muttered, 'it's all here.' He lifted the tin and found underneath it four more Polaroids. These pictured a boy tied to a radiator, a white radiator against a tangerine-coloured wall. The boy, it was clearly a boy, lay on his side. He was white, he looked about Rory Peach's age and he wore sandals, a blue T-shirt and shorts just like the child in the Half Moon Lane photograph. The child's face was half hidden; there was a glimmer of brown tape on the side of his cheek where he'd been gagged and his shorts had been half unzipped to show his underwear. It wasn't Rory Peach and it wasn't the Half Moon Lane child. This time when she saw it Souness began stamping her feet. 'Oh, my God,' she muttered. 'Oh, my God, I smell trouble. My God, I think you were right '
'The next family?' He looked up at her. 'Do you think that's the next family?'
'Aye, aye I wouldn't be surprised. Come on let's get them back to Shrivemoor.' She tucked the torch into her waistband and started gathering up the photos, stuffing them into the tin. 'Come on.'
She squeezed her way back past the tables to the bedroom window and glanced out. In the street below cars were arriving subtly as ants from a nest, clustering around the foot of the building. 'Good, they're here.'
'Right.' He closed the door and came out from behind the tables. 'I want to look in the cupboard in the hall.'
'I thought you'd done it.'
'Nope. Come on.'
In the hallway he stood for a moment, his hands resting on the door. Logan had been up here on the first day of the investigation, Caffery remembered seeing Roland Klare's name in his statements, but this writing 'Hazard' was so small Logan could easily have missed it. He tried now to picture the size of the room beyond. Another bedroom? No door handle just a brass knob, so maybe a cupboard? Just like Cartnel Peach, sealed away in a cupboard, a warning scrawled across it.
'Come on, Jack,' Souness stood next to him, clutching the tin to her stomach. 'We haven't got all '
'OK.' He pushed the door. It opened smoothly and he found he was looking at another small cupboard. The bulb was out and it took a moment for his eyes to get used to the light, but when he did he put his hands on the edges of the doorframe to keep his balance.
'What is it?'
'Uh.' He wiped his mouth. 'I don't know. Give us the torch.'
Souness passed the torch to him. He clicked it on and let the beam play around the small area. At the back of the cupboard was a waist-high glass tank. Like a fish tank. 'There's something at the back of the cupboard.'
'Then go and have a look.'
'Yeah.' Yeah, sure, no problem. The tank was about two-thirds full of liquid, semi-opaque, and near the surface something clogged floated. Sure, something's fucking floating in it but that's no problem
'Come on, Jack, let's get on wi' it.'
'It stinks sure you don't want to do it?'
'Ye wee coward.'
'You do it, then.'
'No fucking way that's a man's job.'
'Right.' He took a deep breath and stepped inside. 'First off, there's something on the floor here.' He let the torch play across the wall to the right. 'Clothes,' he said. 'A pile of clothes on the floor.' He could come back to those later. 'And, uh, then, this tank…' He stepped nearer, let the light play over it, and immediately saw that the object floating in the yellowish fluid was a tangle of clothes. Clothes floating in he bent nearer clothes floating in 'Jesus.' He took an involuntary step back.
'What?' Souness said. 'What is it?'
'Piss. It's only about a hundred gallons of piss.'
'Jesus-'
'Crazy fucking bastard.' Caffery shone the torch into the tank. Men's clothes, a nylon zip-up top, a hooded tracksuit, three pairs of trainers. Roland Klare had been storing clothes in two feet of urine. 'Crazy, crazy fucking bastard '
Benedicte was fevered, lightheaded. Her skin was scratchy, there were sores inside her mouth from her manic suctioning of the copper pipe, and her finger-pads were raw from digging into the floor. It had been a day's work to push Smurf's corpse as far away as she could. She had covered her with Hal's shirt, but the bluebottles had managed to find their way under it and were feeding on the lush est choicest food they had ever known. They proliferated, doubling their numbers it seemed, in her fever, every time she opened her eyes.
Sometimes she knew she was awake, and sometimes she wasn't sure. Her eyes raced around inside their sockets, lights floated in and out, and sometimes she could see her life before this flickering along so happily, so happy and smooth, only soft edges and milky comfort and, look, there she was with Josh and Hal and Smurf, the whole family, sitting on the lawn. It was summer time they were wearing shorts, Josh's Pocari Sweat canister was on the steps, a radio played, fresh cut grass stuck to the back of Josh's legs when he got up to jump into the paddling-pool. Then she could hear Josh downstairs crying. Josh? Was that really Josh? And the other noise? What was that? An animal grunting. Or was it a man? Sobbing?
Ben come on now, come on wake up.
Josh? Sweating, her heart thudding, she opened her eyes in the dark room. Moonlight on the ceiling. Over in the corner the grey shape of her poor dead puppy. She was awake. Really awake. Had that been Josh, crying? She rolled on to her side so that her ear was pressed against the floorboards and listened to the house under her. Silent.
She'd imagined it.
She crunched up her eyes and tried to go back to the picture of Josh and Hal sitting on the grass. But her brain seemed swollen, as if it was pressing against her eyes, and she just couldn't do it. She couldn't see their faces. In just five days her son and her husband had been reduced to a few blurry images Josh a tiny, defenceless shadow with grasping hands, and Hal a dark landscape in bed next to her at night.
'Oh, Josh,' she whispered. 'Hal, Josh, I love you.'
The house was silent as she closed her eyes again. Over the roof she could hear a plane. She had a sudden image of the light in the cabin, the lovely rosy light of sunset racing around the cabin Hal and her on the way to Cuba in the days when no one went to Cuba, a travel agent would laugh if you asked to go to Cuba, and you had to fly through any number of Caribbean islands just to get there. And he had wanted to go because he wanted to see the furniture factories in Holgufn. She held her hands across her face and imagined a sea she had always wanted to visit a magical sea, the sea of Cortez maybe a mysterious sea where whales come to mate and strange singing could be heard coming across the water at dusk…
As she dreamed she twitched, lying on the floor, chained to the radiator, the flies landing on her eyes.
Coming down the front steps of Arkaig Tower Souness started to walk more slowly. In the lift she had been flipping through 'The Treatment', the odd little vade me cum from the desk drawer, shaking her head in amazement, and now she was so absorbed in it she almost came to a halt. Caffery stopped and turned to look at her: 'Danni?'
'Fucking beautiful.' She shook her head and gave a low whistle. 'Fucking beautiful.'
