The Treatment (26 page)

Broken. The bastard broke her leg.

Whoever had done this to an ancient animal like Smurf
wouldn't be afraid of hurting Josh. “Oh, Smurf.” She buried her face in the dear fur, the sweet doggy smell of leaves and forest mulch. “What's
happening
to us, Smurf, what's happening?” Smurf craned her head round, trying to lick the tears from Benedicte's face, and that small demonstration of faith, of dependency, gave her sudden courage.

“OK.” Taking a deep breath, teeth chattering uncontrollably, she levered herself into a sitting position. “OK, Smurf. I'm going to get this fucker.” She stroked the dog's head. “You see if I don't.”

She jerked up her knee, tugging experimentally, wondering if she could pull hard enough to break the copper radiator pipe. But her ankle was already bloodied from pulling, and shiny, like inflamed gums, so she sat up in a crouch and inspected the handcuff. Four delicate blind head screws—tiny, hardly bigger than match heads. Decisive now, she straightened up and pulled off Hal's cord shirt. She undid her bra, held it to her mouth and nibbled at the fabric on the inside until the underwiring poked through and she could get a grip on it.

Strong enough to kill him, the shit. I don't care how big he is.

She drew out the slender curve of wire and used her teeth to strip the protective plastic ends away. Then, with the sharp ends, she dug at the handcuff screws. But the wire buckled and mashed the screw heads. “Shit, shit, shit.” She turned her attention to the radiator, pulled off the plastic knob and was exploring the copper pipe when Smurf, although she had been deaf for months, sat up abruptly and growled softly at the door. A low, shaky growl.

Benedicte froze—crunched where she was in a runner's crouch, veins protruding on her hands.
What the—?
Fear took a long, calm lick at her spine, and all her fine plans dissolved. Something was sniffing along the bottom of the door.

W
HERE DO WE START?
” “OK—let's go through it.” Caffery put his briefcase on the kitchen counter, pulled out his glasses and the crime scene photographs. The room had been stripped by Quinn's team: Large chunks of the lino had been excised, rectangular sections of the curtains had been removed and the skirting board where Rory's blood had been found was still covered in amido black and stick-on number tags. Glasses on the draining board had been dusted and a sandwich maker that had been taken away to the lab had been returned, the cord coiled and taped to the lid. They thought that it was here, in this room, that the bite had been inflicted on Rory Peach—the damage had been enough for the eight-year-old to drop blood on the floor. The paper towel had soaked up the rest. Caffery put on his glasses, looked briefly at the photos of the kitchen and handed them to Souness. He tried to imagine the scene—Rory struggling, Alek Peach, chained and exhausted, unable to move, or simply unconscious. Alek was not in the photographs but the impression and the stain he had left on the floor was.

“So he was lying like this.” He stood at the intersection of the rooms, on the floor divider, and swung his hand along the mark. “Across the floor between the kitchen and the living room—chained here.” He indicated the living room radiator. “And here to this radiator.”

Souness wrinkled her nose. “Is there food left in the fridge?”

“Eh?” He looked round and sniffed. “Oh, that, no—I think it's just …” Carmel, Rory and Alek Peach had all defecated on themselves at some point in the three days. They hadn't had a choice. DS Quinn had been surprised by the amount of urine Carmel produced—it had seeped out onto the landing carpet. “I think that's just—them.”

Souness made a face and opened the fridge to check. Inside were a few flowers of mold, fingerprint dust on a plastic carton of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and a jar of pickles in the door compartment. Otherwise it was empty. She closed the fridge and looked around the room, her mouth pulled down at the sides. “Is that really what the smell is? Those poor wee fuckers.”

“Come here.” Caffery went into the hallway and stood at the bottom of the stairs. Rory Peach's water gun, covered in fingerprint dust, lay on the first step. “Right. This is where Alek Peach says he was attacked—so what do we think?” They both looked back down the hallway at the kitchen, then Souness turned to the living room.

“Here. Probably came from in here.”

“I think so too—so let's say he's come from in there, from the living room, and attacked Peach from behind. No blood, but that might not be important—he might not have started bleeding straight off.”

“What're ye getting at?”

“I don't know—just bear with me.” He stood with his arms out at ninety degrees, one hand pointing down the hall to the kitchen, one pointing into the living room. “Now, before he attacked Alek, he had broken in through the back door and then he must have overpowered Carmel—must have done that first, and taken her all the way up here.” He took the stairs two at a time, coins jangling in his pocket. Outside the airing cupboard he stopped. “Hospital says she was dragged up the stairs—so he did that and somehow or other got her tied up in here—”

“Christ—smells even worse up here.”

“—and then he went back downstairs like this.” They both went back down, Souness with her fingers under her
nose. “And waited—we're guessing—here.” He stood in the doorway of the living room and raised his eyebrows at Souness.

“Right?”

“Aye. I'll go along with that.”

Caffery raised his eyebrows. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“He did all of this in total silence?”

“Uh.” Souness shook her head. “I'm not with you.”

“OK, listen. Carmel's no help, right? She has no idea where she was attacked; the last thing she remembers is making supper. But as for Alek …” He went to the closed door next to the kitchen and rested his hand on it. The basement. “Now
Alek
remembers.” He opened the door and went down two or three steps. “He was here with Rory. They were playing on the PlayStation—that's when he wondered where Carmel was.” Souness followed him down the stairs, peering at the room. The walls were decorated with Deep South memorabilia, crossed pistols, longhorn belt buckles, a framed picture of Elvis. The carpet was deep pile, white, and in one corner was a mirrored bar, a photograph of a young Alek Peach next to a Las Vegas-style fruit machine, wearing a cowboy hat, smiling at the camera. Caffery went down the last few stairs and beckoned to Souness. “Come down—I want to try something. Here.” He switched on the TV and the PlayStation and handed Souness the controls. “Quake any good to you?”

“You'd be surprised. I'm an expert.”

“I'm not surprised. Put it on loud as you want—turn up the volume.”

She sat down with the controller, shuffling to get comfortable in the velour chair.

“And where are you away to, then?”

“Just keep at it.”

He went upstairs, into the kitchen, the rumbling sound of the PlayStation with him all the way. He stood outside on the doorstep and did what he'd been planning to do all afternoon. Within seconds Souness appeared at the top of the stairs. “Ye all right?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Broke a bottle. Out here on the patio. The door was closed.”

“I heard it.”

“Exactly.” He could feel a little pulse of excitement flickering at the side of his mouth. “So why didn't Peach hear this back door being broken into?”

“You're saying he's
lying
?”

“No—I believe him. I believe him
one hundred percent
when he says he didn't hear that glass breaking on Friday night. Because …” He laid the crime-scene photos out on the worktop. “… because I think the glass broke on Monday.”

“Duh—sorry, Jack, I'm not with ye.”

“OK, OK.” He handed her the photos and went to the back door. “Now, the glass fell in onto the floor when the door was closed—see on the photos?”

“Aye.”

“Which is why we all—even Quinny—assumed the offender did it breaking in. He smashed the glass, put his hand through and unlocked it. The door opens …” He pushed it open to demonstrate. “It opens outward.”

“So the glass on the floor wouldn't have been disturbed.”

“Exactly.”

“But?”

He nodded. “
But
if that's what happened then Alek would have heard it—even from downstairs.”

“So you think—?”

“So I think it happened on
Monday
when the offender was
leaving
. Maybe it fell out when he slammed the door, or maybe Rory kicked it out in the struggle. It's the sound the shopkeeper's dog heard. Look,” he tapped the first photo, “this is how the kitchen looked when we got here. Glass on the floor.”

“Aye.”

“There was a rainstorm on Monday morning—a cloudburst. If the window had already been smashed those curtains should've been damp, but they weren't. And that glass on the floor from the break-in—it hasn't been moved around, right?”

“Uh …” She squinted at it. “No—that's just fallen straight out. Just sat there, hasn't it?”

“So all the time he was moving around in here it didn't get moved? Not once?”

“Could he not have just avoided it? Walked round it?”

“Then how did he get his prints
under
the glass?”

Souness was silent. She rubbed her head until the skin under the colorless hair became pink.

“Look at this photo.” He handed her the photo taken after the glass had been removed and the ninhydrin developed. He carefully counted the crosshatched trellises on the lino. “There.” He stood with his feet on either side of two faint brown stains just next to the door—the ninhydrin glove prints. This part of the floor had been under glass when the police arrived. “His prints were there before that window smashed.” He leaned forward, tapping the photo to make the point. “He didn't come in through that back door.”

“Then how? Everything else was battened down. Peach says all the doors were locked—the TSG had to use the sodding Enforcer to get in.”

“Exactly.” He took the photos from her and dropped them into his briefcase. “You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think Peach let him in.” He took his glasses off and looked at her. “I think Alek Peach knows
exactly
who did this to them.”

The snuffling stopped as abruptly as it had started. Benedicte held her breath—
Think, Ben, think—What the—?
Out of the hissing silence came the sound of water being poured onto the door. She rocketed back against the radiator.
Petrol—it's petrol—

The noise stopped and then she heard the long release of gas, or air. He was spraying something. Hair spray? Something to start the fire? Smurf growled softly, her fur pumped straight up along her spine and around her neck like a lizard ruff. Then in the hallway the thing, the troll, huge—
oh, Jesus, he sounds too heavy to be human
— turned and lumbered away, banging against the walls like a cornered sow, slithering and bumping down the stairs.

Then, quite suddenly, silence.

“Hal? Josh?”
That breathing sounded like an animal. Not a human being …

“Josh?”

Still there was silence. That could mean anything. It could, she realized with a lurch, mean Josh had already been taken. “JOSH!!!” She bawled so loudly that Smurf lifted her old, deaf head and howled along with her. “JOSH, PLEASE!!”

When she couldn't scream any longer, and when there was no noise from downstairs, no exploding thump of fire, she dropped exhausted on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. “Oh, Josh,” she wept. “My little baby boy.”

Caffery stopped outside the Blacka Dread music shop on Coldharbour Lane to let Souness trot back down the road and pick them up some food from a takeaway. He smoked a cigarette while he waited and watched the local pond life—a white guy in a leather deerstalker hat was dealing on the corner next to the Joy clothes shop, and from the Ritzy came a trio of trendy young black guys in sharp fawn leather jackets, with bleached blond hair and goatees. They saw the dealer and subtly crossed away from him to the other side of the street. A girl on a creaky bike, her mirrored Indian skirt caught in the mudguard, shouted something to the dealer as she cycled by.