The Treatment (6 page)

“No—
now! Get me something to make it stop
.”

“Carmel, the doctor's given you something and we're doing everything we can.” He took a step inside the room, looking for somewhere to sit, finding a pink cane chair with a teddy on it. He put the bear on the floor and sat down, his elbows on his knees, leaning forward to look at Carmel. “I've got fifteen of my own men out there, another twenty uniformed officers and I don't know how many volunteers. We're taking it very seriously, putting everything we've got into it. When we've gone through what you can remember I'm going to have an officer come over and talk to you—he's specially assigned to you, OK? He'll be available to you whenever you want.”

“But I don't …” Her body twisted with anguish. “… I don't remember what happened.” She dropped her face into her hands and began to sob softly. “
Oh, God, my little boy's gone and I don't even remember what happened
.”

It was a long time since the Amateur Swimmers' Association had changed its code of conduct: in response to changing awareness of child abuse it now recommended that teachers minimized physical contact with children and taught lessons from the pool edge. Not all swimming pools enforced the recommendations, and often the choice of whether to get in or not varied according to the teacher, but there was one teacher at the Brixton Recreation Center who adhered rigidly to the recommendation. Relatively new to the pool, it hadn't escaped anyone's attention that Chris “Fish” Gummer always kept a distance from the children he taught. In fact, he sometimes appeared positively to
dislike
them.

“Almost as if he's nervous of them,” the lifeguards would say to each other, watching him in his baggy red drawstring swimming trunks, wearing his red bathing cap although he wouldn't get into the water (he insisted upon the cap, with its under-chin strap fastening, maybe because
his hair was so thin that he looked bald from a distance). “You wonder why he puts himself through it.” They traded ideas for what Gummer reminded them of—a penguin, a fish, a flying bomb. Most of the names fitted, but Fish was probably the best: his smooth body with its rather small, triangular head, the ovoid weightiness in his middle, his legs big above the knee, tapering at the ankle, and then, comically tacked onto those slender ankles, overlarge feet, which he held turned out at forty-five degrees. The fine hair on his chest and legs slicked down to nothing when wet. “You must've got webbed feet,” people told him. But he didn't: he examined them and found that his toes, instead of being flat and spatulate, were rather long and slender. But, fish or not, he made an unlikely swimming teacher. For one thing he was older than the other instructors.

“Probably a perve.”

“Nah, he'd never've got the job.”

They had had it drilled into them:
This post is exempt from section 4 (2) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
As far as the recreation center personnel officers were concerned, no criminal offense expired. Ever. It didn't matter how many years ago it had happened.

“Unless he
ain't got
a record,” one of the lifeguards muttered. “Because he never got caught.”

“Or 'cause he changed his name.”

“He couldn't change his name if he had a record, could he?”

“Couldn't he?” One of the older lifeguards cracked his knuckles and stared out at Gummer, who stood at poolside waiting for two of the girls to pull on their Rollo swim belts. “Why not?”

At that the lifeguards all fell silent and turned to look at Gummer. He seemed particularly harried today. It was the turn of the Squids, the six-and seven-year-olds, and the two girls seemed to be having problems getting into their belts. But Gummer wasn't about to crouch down and help. “You're all a bit slow today, aren't you? What's going on?”

Behind him one or two of the children whispered
something. He turned. “What? What's got into you all?” No one spoke. There were more parents than usual today in the viewing gallery, he'd noticed, and some members of the class were absent. “Something's going on,” he said, turning back to the two girls. “Isn't anyone going to tell me?”

“Rory,” the taller of the two said suddenly. She was a solemn girl from Trinidad, whose hair was beaded in rows, and she wore a pink Spice Girls swimsuit. Her toenails were painted the same color. “It's 'cause of Rory.”

“Rory?” He raised his eyebrows. “What are you talking about?” “Rory off of Donegal Crescent.” “What about him? What happened to Rory?” Neither girl spoke. The little one, a smaller, darker skinned girl in a green two-piece, put her finger in her mouth. “We saw the police.” “And did the police tell you what happened?” The two girls looked at each other, then back at him. “No? No one told you what happened?” “No.” The bigger girl shook her head. “But we know what happened anyway.”

“You
know
what happened? Well, that's very clever of you, isn't it?” He put his hands on his knees and bent a little, his eyes narrowed. He was conscious of being monitored from the viewing gallery—the parents were all sitting together with their wary, watchful expressions, little glittering eyes on him as if they suspected him of something. “Well? Come on, then, what happened?”

“It was the troll.”

“Ah, yes.” He had wondered when this would come up. He straightened, picked up a pile of frog floats, threw them into the pool and stopped for a minute to watch them bob off. He rubbed his hands on his T-shirt and turned back to the girls. “The troll.”

The smaller girl looked down at her feet.

“Have you ever seen the troll?”

“No,” said the taller girl.

“So how do you know all this? Have any of your friends seen the troll?” She shrugged. She turned her toes inward and tugged at
the legs of her swimsuit, jiggling a little as if she wanted the toilet. “Did you hear me? I said, have any of your friends ever seen the troll?”

She nodded, not meeting his eyes.

“Which friends have seen him?”

“Some of them,” she said, looking away casually at the water. He knew she was lying. “He lives in the trees in the park.”

“Yes?”

“And he climbed up the drainpipe of that house. The drainpipe of Rory's house.”

“I see.”

“Climbed up the drainpipe and murdered them. Ate them in their beds.”

At this the little girl in the green two-piece began to cry. Tears slipped over her lower lids and onto her knuckles.

“OK, OK.” Fish straightened up, nervous now that there were tears. “I think we're jumping to conclusions a bit here. No one knows what happened.” Anxious that the parents didn't see what was happening he positioned himself so that the child was hidden from the gallery. “No one knows if it was the troll yet, do they? Do we? Eh? Do we?”

Eventually he got her to nod her agreement, but she didn't stop crying, her finger still stuck in her mouth. “Right.” He turned and clapped his hands at the others. “Come on, nothing to get excited about. Let's have you in the pool. Take a float if you need one.”

Later, walking home with his swimming kit in his battered red holdall, he passed four of the gates into the park and found that they were all closed, police notices propped in front of them. He continued on his way, unusually agitated, and when he got home he swallowed his pills immediately, washing them down with black coffee. Then he went to the window, his hands shaking.

A number of windows in Brixton had a view directly over the park. Some belonged to the twin towers at the north, some to the half-built houses on the Clock Tower Grove Estate, and some, like Gummer's, belonged to the council flats above the row of shops on Effra Road. He opened the window and put his head out tentatively. From
here Donegal Crescent was almost a mile away and he couldn't see the police tape or the small gathering of journalists and onlookers at the Tulse Hill end of the park, but he did notice the quietness. On a summer's day like this the park was usually spotted with bright dresses and children, but today the great expanse of wood was silent, only the dull
click-click
of insects and the sound of a car radio coming from Effra Road. Beyond the treetops he got a glimpse, in the distance, of empty lawns stretching up to the top of the hill. He closed the window and drew the curtain.

It took Carmel a long time to stop crying. Caffery and the WPC had exchanged one embarrassed glance, then gone back to staring at separate patches of wallpaper until the Ativan began to work, something softer crept through Carmel's veins and she stopped weeping. She reached over and patted the bed, feeling around for the Superkings. Slowly, falteringly, she lit a cigarette, pulled the ashtray toward her and began to speak. “Even though I told them all this already? In the ambulance?”

“I'd like to hear it again. There might be something we missed.”

But it amounted to little more than a rehashing of the statement she'd given the divisional CID officer. There were few new clues to hang on to. She recalled feeling unwell after eating dinner and that she had sent Rory downstairs to play on the PlayStation with Alek before going to the bedroom to lie down. She had been concerned because they were planning to drive to Margate the following day and she didn't want to be ill. That was all she remembered until she woke up in the airing cupboard. There had been no noises, no one suspicious in the neighborhood and, apart from the illness, nothing unusual about the few hours that led up to the attack. “We was supposed to be going on holiday the next day. That's why no one come for us. They must've thought we was away.”

“You told the CID officer you heard something that sounded like an animal?”

“Yes. Breathing. Sniffing. Outside of the cupboard.”

“When was this?”

“The first day, I think.”

“How often did this happen?”

“Just that once.”

“Well, um, do you think there was an animal in the house? Do you think the intruder brought a dog with him?”

She shook her head. “I never heard nothing else, no barking or nothing, and it weren't no dog. Not unless it was standing up on its, you know …” She tapped the backs of her calves. “Standing up on its back legs.”

“What do you think it was?”

“I don't know. I ain't never heard nothing like it.”

“Did you hear Rory or Alek at all in that time?”

“Rory.” She squeezed her eyes closed and nodded. “Crying. He was in the kitchen.”

“When was this?”

“Just before you lot come.” The words dragged a little jerk out of her as if the effort hurt her. She tamped out her cigarette, lit another from the carton and started to cough. It took her a long time to regain her composure. She wiped her eyes, then her mouth, pushed her hair out of her eyes and said, “There was something I never told them last night.”

Caffery looked up from his notes. “I'm sorry?” The WPC was looking at him in surprise, her eyebrows raised. “What did you say?”

“Something else.”

“What was that?”

“I think he took photographs.”

“Photographs?”

“I saw the flash going off under the cupboard door. I could even hear it winding on. I'm sure that's what it was—photographs.”

“What do you think he was photographing?”

“I don't know. I don't want to know.” She started to shake again, rubbing her arms convulsively. “It was so fucking horrible. I was soft—so bleeding soft that I just sat there like a fucking frightened mouse for them three days. I never knew he was going to take Rory. If I'd of known what he was going to do …”

“You weren't a coward, Carmel. Just look what you did
to your arms trying to get out. You tried as hard as anyone could have been expected—” Caffery stopped, suddenly self-conscious.
Don't—you'll only make things worse.
Quickly he found his attaché case on the floor. “Look, I know how difficult this is but we need you to sign something. It's not a statement, just a couple of release forms. We found a picture of Rory, a school picture, and we'd like your permission to reproduce it—to show people. And I've taken some of Rory's clothes and his schoolbooks.”

“His clothes? Schoolbooks?”

“For the dogs. And—”

“And?”

And to scrape. For his own DNA so we have a hope of identifying him. Since, although I'm not going to say it, I think, Mrs. Peach, that your son's probably already dead.

It was one of the hottest Julys London had seen and Caffery knew what could happen to a body in forty-eight hours of this heat. He knew that if Rory wasn't found before tomorrow morning there was no way he would allow a relative to identify him.

“And?” she repeated.

“And nothing. Just for the dogs. You can sign it now, if that's OK.”

She nodded. He handed her the forms and a pen.

“Mrs. Peach?”

“What?” She signed the papers and held them limply over her shoulder without turning.

“I'm having trouble getting Rory's age. Some of the neighbors say nine.” He took the papers and put them in his case. “Is that right?”

“No. That's not right.”

“No?”

“No.” She rolled over to look at him. For the first time he saw her face full on. Her eyes, he realized, looked dead, the way his mother's had after Ewan. “He's not nine until August. He's eight. Only eight.”

Downstairs Caffery paused to thank Mrs. Nersessian. “It's my pleasure, darling. Poor thing, don't even
ask
me to imagine what she's feeling.”

The tiny living room was immaculately clean and choked with possessions—a silver punch bowl on the polished table, a collection of Steuben glass animals on the glass shelves. On the plastic-covered sofa a dark-eyed girl of about ten, in shorts and red-striped T-shirt, stared mutely at Caffery. Mrs. Nersessian clicked her fingers. “Annahid, go on. Get your little
dvor
upstairs. You can watch your videos but keep the sound down. Rory's mama's asleep.” The child slowly peeled her thighs from the plastic and disappeared from the room.

Mrs. Nersessian turned to Caffery and put her hand on his arm. “Nersessian. That's an Armenian name. Now, you don't meet an Armenian every day and you need to know before you come into an Armenian household that you got to be prepared to eat.” She slipped into the kitchen and began fussing around, opening the fridge, getting her good crockery from the shelves. “I'm going to get you a little pistachio
loukoum,
” she called through the door. “And some mint tea and then we'll say a little prayer for Rory.”