The Treatment (13 page)

Benedicte was in the kitchen unpacking Tesco's bags and Hal placed his hands on her hips, kissed the back of her neck then gently inched her sideways so that he could reach a bag of pretzels in the cupboard. Around their feet Josh jumped like a small cricket from bag to bag, opening it, pushing his nose in it.

“Mum, where's the Sunny Delight?”

“Sunny Delight.” Hal put a hand to his forehead. “Oh, for pete's sake. An orange kid. I'm going to have an orange kid.”

“Da-aad!” Josh spun round on his heel, his hands over his face. “Don't mess wid my head.”

“Hey,
wassup
, orange kid.”

Josh giggled and came back at his father. “You come diss me and you is in some serious trouble, man.”

“Josh,” from the bag Ben pulled a ball of mozzarella, moving in its whey, and placed it on the worktop, ready for the pizza she was going to make, “will you
stop
talking like that? It's not funny.”

Josh dropped his head and made a face at his father.

“Josh. Come here.” Hal bent over until his head was close to his son's. “You's pretty fly for a white boy,” he whispered.

“
Word
!” Josh gave his father the Brixton salute. “Boyacasha.”

“For heaven's sake, you two, just
can
it.” Benedicte poked Hal in the belly. “Go on, let him have some juice, his knuckles've been scraping the ground all afternoon.”

“Why don't you just get him a packet of Rothman's while you're at it. Josh? You will tell us when you want to go into detox, won't you, son?”

“Hey, Dad.” Josh put the Sunny Delight on the kitchen top and stood on tiptoe to get a glass. “Mummy had to call the filth.”

“The
police
, Josh, not the
filth
. Where do you pick these things up?”

“The police?” Hal looked at Ben, concerned. “How come?”

“We had to get the filth.” Josh put the glass on the counter and used his teeth to open the bottle. “Because of someone tried to steal Smurf.”

“
What
?”

“I'll tell you in a minute,” Benedicte murmured, sliding her eyes meaningfully in their son's direction. “Josh, not your teeth, please. You never know when you might need your teeth.” She took it from him and used her own teeth to tear off the plastic strip. “Now take your drink through,
OK, peanut? If you're good we'll fill up the paddling pool and get Tracey Island out.”

“Ye-es!” Josh saluted, excited, and zoomed into the other room, almost spilling his drink as he went. “Virgil Tracey to control, launching Thunderbird Four pod now!” He threw himself at the sofa. “F-A-B!”

When he was settled in the family room within earshot but absorbed with the TV, Hal opened the pretzels, found a bottle of Hoegarden and turned back to Benedicte. He worked with linseed oil and maple and the oils had colored his palms so that his heart line was deeply, permanently ingrained. As faithful as a donkey, his family was everything to him: any real or perceived threat to them he felt like gunfire. “Well? What happened?”

“God, it was really creepy.” She put the kettle on and pushed the hair out of her eyes, keeping them on Josh to make sure he wasn't listening.
The Simpsons
was starting and she could see him sitting on the sofa with his knees up, clutching the glass of orange juice to his mouth, eyes pinned on the screen. “Outside the ruddy camping shop on Brixton Hill, of all places. First thing this morning. I tied her outside because she was whining about being left in the car and I'm standing at the counter buying an icebox for Cornwall and I turn round and—” she waved her hand in the air “—and there's this bloke. Molesting her.”

“Molesting her?” Hal chucked a handful of pretzels into his mouth. “What do you mean,
molesting
?”

She put a finger to her mouth. “
Sexually
,” she hissed. “He put his hand between her legs.”

“
What
?”

“I know. I told you—creepy. He had her tail in one hand, held up like this—sort of like you'd hold up a … um, I don't know, like you'd hold up a cow's tail. You know, like the vets do. And he was bent over and staring, as if he was trying to, God, it's so disgusting, but like he was trying to
smell
her, or just sort of see up her, you know. So I—well, I shouted, and everyone in the shop's staring at me, but I thought, Well, I'm not going to let him get away with that.”

“Who was he?”
“He was a, uh, white guy, tall—he'd been in the shop behind me when I was buying all the stuff for Cornwall. I noticed him 'cause he had a hood on, and he was standing in the corner like he didn't want to be seen or something. I thought he was staring at me then, but he went out and I forgot about it and the next I know he's got Smurf's tail up in the air—”

“Bastard—”

“—and, anyway, I thought, I'm not going to let him get away with that so I ran out of the shop and I'm shouting and screaming like some total nutter.” Benedicte opened the fridge and rummaged for the milk. “But he went down Acre Lane and I'd let go of Josh so I had to go back and—”

“Jesus—”

“—and I called the police and told them. I mean, poor Smurf, deaf as a post and there she was having her
pounani
looked at like some common tramp.”

“You're laughing.”

“I'm not
laughing
. I called the police. Like we haven't seen enough of the police in the last few days. I had to call them, not that there's anything they can do.” She stopped. She was frowning into the fridge.

“And?”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, look at this!” She slammed the fridge closed and turned toward the family room. “Josh!”

“What's he done?”

“He's been moving stuff around again.
Josh
!”

He looked up innocently. “Wha'?”

“Come here!”

“I've never heard anything so screwy.” Hal tipped more pretzels into his mouth. “Looking up Smurf's bum.”

Obediently Josh dropped off the sofa and came over into the kitchen. Benedicte frowned at him. “Have you been moving everything around in here?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ye-
es
.”

“If you put the milk on the wire bits it tips over, I've told you.” She looked inside the fridge again. “Well, if you haven't been doing it then I don't know who has. The
fridge goblins, I suppose.” She took the milk out and held it up to the light. “Oh, for God's sake.”

“Eugh!” Hal made a face. “That is disgusting. I can smell it from here.”

“God.” She looked faint. “It smells like piss.”

“Here—let me.” He took it from her and, holding it at arm's length, went to the sink. Shaking his head he turned on the waste disposal, rinsed the bottle, put it in the bin then shook a handful of drain-cleaner crystals in and let the tap run until the disposal unit was clear. “Gurgh! When did you get it?”

“It's not past its sell-by date.”

“Maybe the fridge is buggered.” Hal opened it and looked dubiously at the dial. “I'll get on to it when we get back from Cornwall.”

In the park Caffery took the young sergeant to one side.

“This is going to sound like a stupid question.”

“Try me.”

“Is there any way of getting the dogs to search up?”

“Up?”

He nodded up into the trees. “In the branches.”

“Sure.”

“
Sure
?”

“Yeah—well.” The PC rubbed his face, reddening slightly. “You know how it goes, aircrafts, y'know, come down, don't they? Sometimes, um,
things
get caught in trees.” He looked upward. “But why?”

“I dunno.” Caffery turned to check that no one was listening. If he was wrong he didn't want to have to explain. “Look, it's just an idea. There's no harm, is there?”

“OK.” The PC went to the van and found a light, galvanized steel stick, about the size of a walking stick with a green plastic handle. “Texas?” The shepherd's head snapped up and he watched with small quizzical eyes as the handler tapped the trunk of a chestnut. He tapped up in the branches and the dog understood. His head jerked forward and he trotted after the officer, tail lowered, nose pointing straight up into the leaves. Caffery followed a few yards behind.

They circled the park. It was 1 P
.
M
.
when the dog stopped in front of a huge hornbeam dripping with caterpillars. He reared up on his hind legs, placed his paws against the tree trunk, and there he stayed.

He was at the exact spot where Roland Klare had recovered the Pentax camera and pink gloves three days ago.

C
AFFERY, THE EXHIBITS OFFICER
and DS Fiona Quinn had a brief plan-of-action meeting with the pathologist, Harsha Krishnamurthi, in the coroner's office reception. Over dusty silk flower displays on Formica tables they discussed how to cut up Rory Peach. Afterward Caffery went into the men's and splashed water across his face.

When he had looked into the branches and seen how Rory had been tied his impulse had been to drive back to Brockley, walk straight into Penderecki's house, take him by his thinning hair, slam his face into a wall and kick him. Kick him until he stopped moving. The eight-year-old had been curled into a ball, fastened with rope, knees up to his chin, arms covering his head—from above he would have resembled something the size and shape of a car tire. His fingernails had carved demilunes into his own cheek. If Rory had been any bigger they might have seen him ear-lier—if he'd been ten or eleven and not eight, maybe, Caffery thought, and then he thought that twenty-eight years ago no one had checked the trees along the railway track. No one had wondered about the trees. Even today he was stumbling over new ways Penderecki could have concealed Ewan during the police search of his house.

He wiped his face with a paper towel and went through, past the anteroom where bodies were stored in banks of
lockers, ID tags slotted into holders on the doors, pink for a girl and blue for a boy—we are color-coded by our sex, he thought, not only at birth but in death too—and into the dissecting room. It was cool in here, as if it were winter. Mint-green tiles lined the walls, like an old-fashioned swimming pool, and there it was—that familiar butcher's smell of old, mopped-around blood. Hoses lay under the tables, releasing small puddles of water onto the tiled floor. Two bodies, names written in black marker on each calf, had been pushed to one end of the room to make space, their belongings and toe tags sitting on a separate gurney in yellow hospital waste bags. The bodies were split open, a heap of colors, blue paper towels crammed in the neck cavities, and a mortician in a green plastic apron and black Wellingtons stood over one, lifting out a pile of intestines. He shook them, as if he were shaking washing coming from a tub.

Rory Peach, once a boy who played football and stuck go-faster stripes on his bike, was now a circle wrapped in a white plastic sheet on the table in the center of the tiled room. Around him stood three morticians arranged in an odd tableau. They didn't look up when Caffery appeared in the doorway. Morticians are a strange, silent group. Sometimes secretive, often cliquey, always down to earth: the real muscle behind the pathologist, they do most of the hard labor in an autopsy without raising an eyebrow. Caffery had never seen them behave the way they did that summer afternoon. It took him a moment, after they had broken off and gone in separate directions, collecting bowls, turning on hoses, to realize that he had just witnessed them paying respect. Oh, God, he thought, this isn't going to be easy.

Harsha Krishnamurthi came in. Tall, graying. All business. Fiddling with the headset of his hands-free Dictaphone, he got it into position then briskly pulled away Rory Peach's sheet. Everyone in the mortuary stiffened slightly, as if they'd drawn a collective breath.

He was crunched into a croissant shape, almost like a sleeping cat, his hands wrapped over his head. He looked as if he were examining something on his chest. Brown parcel tape had been wrapped around his head, covering his mouth and eyes. He didn't have an odor, as if his flesh
was too clean and young to smell, and his skin was smooth as if he'd just got out of a bath. Krishnamurthi cleared his throat, asked Caffery if this was the same body found in the tree in Brockwell Park. Caffery nodded: “It is.” The formalities were over.