The Treatment (19 page)

“
Muuuuuum!
”

“
Josh?
” Sleepily she dropped out of bed and padded along the corridor. “Coming, tadpole.” In his bedroom she flicked on the switch and stood in the doorway blinking in the light. Josh was sitting against the headboard, a pillow clutched to his chest. His feet were stretched rigid in front of him, his hair sticking up from his head as if electricity had passed through him. He was staring at a crack in the curtains.

“Mum—the troll—”

“It's all right, tadpole.” Benedicte went straight over and pulled back the curtain. The garden was dark and silent, the window closed. Over the fence the outline of Brockwell Park was purple against the stars and, in the distance, Crystal Palace transmitter lit up the sky. “Troll's not there, darling. Nothing there at all.” She dropped the curtain and sat down on the edge of his bed, putting a hand on his hot little forehead. “It's Mummy's fault. I shouldn't have put you in these pajamas, they're too warm.” She tried to pull the flannel pajama top up over his head. “You're wet through. I'll put you in a T-shirt—”

“No!” Josh jerked away from her, moving his head so that he could see past her to the window.

“Now, come on, darling, it's the middle of the night and Mummy just wants to get you out of these wet jammies so you can go back to sleep.”

“
Nooo!
” He pulled his hands away. “He's watching me.
He was there
.”

“Josh, I think you dreamed it—the troll couldn't get this high. You're all the way up in the air here, you're quite safe.”

“You all right, peanut?” Hal was standing in the doorway blinking like a sleepy cat.

Benedicte turned. “Oh, Hal, I didn't mean to wake you up.…”

“That's OK.” He looked at his son, bolt upright in bed, bracing the pillow against his chest. “What's up, peanut?”

“He thinks maybe he saw the troll—”

“Not
maybe
.”

“He saw the troll at the window, you know, the one from the park.”

“OK, ssh, ssh.” Hal came to the bed and kissed his son's head. “Want me to go and check he's gone?”

Josh nodded.

“Ooooh.” Hal went to the window, whistled softly and pressed his nose to the pane, looking down into the back garden. He pretended to squint and jiggle around, trying for a better view. After a while he stood back and smiled. “OK, all over. He's gone now.”

“NOO-OOO!!” Josh began to cry. “
You can't see him like that,
he's hiding under the window.
You can't see him if you don't open the window
.”

Hal sighed, pulled back the curtains and unscrewed the window lock. He put his hands on the ledge and leaned out. The air was balmy, a delicious, palm-frondy night, and he could smell the rank green water of the four ponds in the park. The crackle of electricity came like cicadas from the building-site spotlights. He pantomimed looking carefully down at the garden. “Hmmm …Well, he's run away now—absolutely not here. Do you want to see?”

Josh wiped his nose on the sleeve of his pajamas and blinked at the window.

“Want to see?”

He shook his head.

“OK.” Hal pulled the window closed and was about to
lock it, when Benedicte noticed him hesitate. He opened the window again and stretched his arm round, rubbing his fingers on the outside of the pane.

“Hal?”

He didn't answer. He frowned momentarily, then pulled the window closed, locking it carefully, drawing the curtains.

“There you are, tadpole—all gone. No trolls out there.”

But Benedicte didn't like Hal's expression. Something was wrong. She leaned over quickly, pushing her face toward Josh. “Come on, tadpole. Kiss on the nose for Mummy?” But Josh turned onto his side, harrumphing like a girl, his little face knotted and angry. “OK—night-night, then, darling.”

At the door she waited for Hal to blow Josh a kiss, then switched off the light, closed the door and beckoned Hal to follow her downstairs. In the kitchen she slipped bare feet into Hal's muddy trainers and took the torch into the garden. Hal followed in his slippers. “What?” he hissed. “What's up?”

She shone the torch around the garden, looking at the grass for any sign that someone had walked across it. “What did you see, Hal?”

“Eh?”

“Up there.” She turned and shone the torch up the side of the house to Josh's window. “On the window?”

“Oh, nothing. Just a handprint.”

Benedicte turned to him, her face white. “A
handprint
?”

“Sssh
. I don't want to frighten him even more.”

“Well, just a bloody moment,” she hissed, “you're frightening me now.” She went to the bottom of the wall and shone the torch into the flower bed. “Josh thinks he saw something and now you tell me there was a handprint. I mean—”

“Ben,” he looked up at the window, “it's twenty feet above the ground—someone would have to float up there.”

She looked up and down the wall. Hal was right—someone would need a ladder and she couldn't see anything in the flower beds. No footprints. Nothing disturbed down here.

“Come on, Ben.” Hal was starting to feel cold in his pajamas. “One of the workmen left it on the pane when he put it in.”

She stood in the grass biting her lip, feeling stupid.

“It was one of the workmen, Ben; we haven't cleaned the windows on the outside. And anyway—”

“Anyway what?”

“It was upside down.”

“What?”

“It was upside down so it must have been there before the pane went in.”

Benedicte sighed. She hated these night fears of hers. She hated the park for being where it was, just over the fence. Christ, she even hated poor little Rory Peach for getting himself kidnapped and killed. She couldn't wait to get to Cornwall. She shone the torch around the little fenced garden. Josh's paddling pool reflected back the torch and the moonlight but nothing else stirred.
OK—fair enough, but don't blame me for being nervous.
Reluctantly she clicked off the torch and followed Hal back up the steps, locking the door behind her and pulling the little curtain. Hal was awake now so he got a beer from the fridge and leaned on the kitchen worktop, looking at her.

“I do understand,” he said suddenly. “I saw Alek Peach. In the park.”

“Jesus.” Benedicte rubbed her face and sat down on the sofa, blinking. “When?”

“When me and Josh walked Smurf this evening. I didn't tell you—didn't want to upset you.”

“What does he look like?”

“Terrible. I've seen him up there before, when I was walking Smurf.” As if she'd heard her name, Smurf, who had been asleep in the TV room, got up and came through, yawning, her claws clicking on the tile. Hal bent down to stroke her and rub her old, deaf ears. “Haven't we, Smurfy, we've seen him before, haven't we? I just didn't recognize him from the newspapers.”

“What was he doing?”

“I don't know. Wandering around where—” He straightened and drank half of his beer, an odd look on his face. “He was wandering around where his little boy was.”

“I've seen it,” she murmured, slightly embarrassed that she'd actually gone up there to look. Walking through the forest it had been a shock suddenly to come upon a carpet of dying flowers. Purple paper ribbons, cellophane, cards, teddy bears saturated with dew. Rory had been nearly nine, she remembered thinking; he'd have been horrified by the teddies. “I don't know what they'll do with all those flowers.”

“There are families out there, can you believe it? Making it into a day trip—kids wearing ‘Kill the Pedos’ T-shirts.”

“I know. I know.” She shook her head. “Did Josh see them?”

“Saw them, didn't know what it was all about.”

“What about Alek Peach?”

“He was just standing back among the bushes, watching. You should have seen him staring at Josh—as if he was seeing a ghost.”

“Poor bastard.” She got up, came into the kitchen and put the torch in a drawer. “I can't wait to go to Cornwall, Hal, I can't wait to get out of Brixton for a few days.” She kissed the side of his face. “Don't stay up all night.”

At four-thirty A
.
M
.
, the sky over the houses in Brockley became baby-eye blue and only Venus was still shining. At the back window where Penderecki had stood so many times to watch Ewan and Jack playing in the tree house across the railway track, Caffery sat on a chair half stiff with shock. Flies had come to sip his sweat and he hadn't stopped them.

For years he had wondered how he'd feel if Penderecki died—and this was it, the end of the possibility that one day he'd discover what had happened to Ewan. Here he was, living out his fear, and it felt like having the life squeezed from him.

When the first morning goods train rattled through the cutting at 5 A
.
M
.
, at last Caffery moved. He batted at the flies and stood, letting the blood come slowly back into his legs, and went downstairs into the kitchen, his eyes smarting. He ran the tap, scooped some water onto his face, and set to work.

Somewhere in this house was the answer to his question. He went into the bathroom. The boom of noise and smell when he opened the door almost made him retch. Penderecki was rotted through. He had to stand very still until the gag reflex worked itself out of his throat.

Penderecki had run the noose through a hole smashed in the plaster ceiling and over a joist—the small garden mallet he'd used lay on the floor, and the plaster in the bath showed that he hadn't taken much time in doing this. He had come in here with the tools he needed, bashed a hole in the ceiling, slung the rope up there and done the deed. The small bathroom stool was not kicked over. Dropped in the toilet was a copy of Derek Humphry's
Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying
. Sweatshirt over his mouth, Caffery leaned over and read. One paragraph had been scored through with a pencil—angrily: “If you consider God the master of your fate, then read no further. Seek the best pain management and arrange for hospice care.” But he was familiar with the book's instructions and recognized that Penderecki had, at the last moment, abandoned his quasi-faith in God and turned instead to Humphry: “Ice will stop the air in the polythene bag becoming hot and stuffy….”

On the floor was an empty ice tray, over Penderecki's head a plastic bag. In death his face had swollen to fill the bag, pressing moist against the polythene. A bottle of vodka lay next to the door and a plate of something that looked like chocolate Angel Delight: “Power your chosen drugs and put them in your favorite pudding.” There were no flies on the pudding. They were enjoying dabbling and squelching in Penderecki too much. Caffery checked he had left no footprints then closed the door and went to search the rest of the house.

Penderecki had come to England in the forties—“Prob-ably something to do with the Yalta conference,” Rebecca said sagely. She seemed to understand the demographic waves that had brought Penderecki to the plot of land on the other side of the railway tracks to the Cafferys. Penderecki had never married and seemed to have become fanatical about a religion to which he had been unable to cling at the end. His body had hung here for what? Three, maybe four days, without anyone noticing. Perhaps there was someone still in Poland—framed paper cuttings hung on the wall, the sort of folk art distant relatives might send, but apart from this Ivan Penderecki had almost no personal possessions. Nearly seventy and the only children in his life had belonged to other people.

Caffery was prepared to pull the walls down if he thought that he'd find the smallest hint of Ewan, but the house gave up nothing. He got into the loft where the air was warm and circled with dust, but apart from an abandoned wasps' nest hanging from the rafters there was nothing. In one of the bedrooms there was a pile of H&M children's clothing catalogs—innocuous enough. Penderecki wasn't stupid—he'd known that with his police record a search warrant would be granted on the slimmest grounds. But apart from that small haul, Caffery found nothing.

In the hallway he pressed redial on the phone. The answer-phone at the Lewisham hospital oncology unit picked up. He dialed the number on the last caller ID digital display. Also the oncology unit. Someone at the hospital had rung three days ago. Since then no one had tried to contact Ivan Penderecki. And that was all.

Wherever Penderecki had hidden the little scrap of flesh and bone that had been Ewan, it wasn't in this house. The catalogs were only the tip—Caffery knew that. There was more. Somewhere. But then, of course, this was part of Penderecki's genius—his ability to hide things. Hide magazines and videos and photos and the body of a small boy.