The Treatment (22 page)

“X marks the spot,” he muttered, stubbing out the spliff. Penderecki could still jerk his strings—even past life he had the power. He found tools in the cupboard, a small camera in Ewan's room, and took the back-door key from above the lintel. “This had better not be a dead end, you old fucker. You old fucker.”

The sun was sinking low over the roofs, and in the back gardens along the rail cutting children shrieked, hung on jungle gyms, chased one another in circles. Caffery used a fox track—two yards into the undergrowth, parallel to the railway—moving carefully, quietly, his head down: the Transport Police, who resented the “real” police, would be in hog heaven to find one of his kind wandering down the track. It was oddly silent down here. A sort of muffled, suspended silence. Occasionally the rails would hum and a train would race past, making the air thunder, and for a moment the cutting would hold its breath. But then the train would pass and the stillness would descend again, grass pollen floating to earth like duck down.

He couldn't help thinking about Ewan as he walked along here, with the smell of the tracks after a day in the sun. Metal and hot black engine oil. He thought of the two of them, racing up and down the cutting, playing cowboys and Indians, setting traps for each other. Ewan—
oh, Jesus
. He rubbed the sweat off his face with his T-shirt—he didn't want to imagine what he might find down the track. He reached the public toilets—their graffitied backs staring out blankly over the track (
Tracii sucks cock—Shaz sucks pussy
), tiny windows, like gun slots in a pillbox, smashed and plugged with chipboard. Checking the map he positioned himself with New Cross behind him, Honour Oak ahead, and began to count along the sleepers.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—

Stepping over dead rats, dried toilet paper, sunbleached Coke cans.

Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two—this had better not be a wind-up.

Outside Brockley station the land on either side of the railway lost its undergrowth and lay as flat as an alluvial plain, dusted with thistle and dock leaves, until about ten
feet away from the railway line, where the banks rightangled abruptly upward in great walls of vegetation, so deep and entwined that anything could live in there—ca-puchin monkeys, maybe, chattering and swinging on vines. Up ahead a footbridge, remote and spindly, like a bridge slung over a jungle gorge.

One hundred and forty-three, one hundred and fortyfour, one hundred and forty—

The hundred and forty-fifth sleeper. He stopped. Dropped the hammer and stood, feet straddling the sleeper, facing at right angles away from the line, in the direction of the arrow on the map. Immediately he could see that someone had been here before. Someone had walked back and forward in a straight line between this sleeper and the foot of the bank—under tender new ivy shoots the vegetation was dead and trampled.
Just do it, don't stop to think.
He went to the bank and began tugging at the woodbine, tearing open a hole large enough to get into. He ducked inside.

It smelled of stinging nettles and dandelion, of fox dirt and oil, and it took a moment for his eyes to get used to the light. He stopped, wiping the sweat from his face, getting his bearings, and now he found he could straighten up in here. Someone had cleared a dome shape in the hanging undergrowth—in front of him was the bank, behind him curtains of ivy and bramble. And down here? Down on the ground? He crouched and found dried stems and root matter. He tore at it, tugging the meshwork away.

In spite of what he'd expected, in spite of the fact that he was prepared, when he saw what was under the roots his heart began to race. He didn't really believe what he was seeing. A small circle of ground, about two feet by three, had been disturbed within the year. Few plants had taken root there.

He sat down next to the circle, next to the turfed-over clumps of brown Eocene London clay, rested his hands on his ankles and began to shake.

“You can see the balloon at Vauxhall.” Ayo Adeyami went straight into the family room at the back of the house and
knelt on Benedicte's sofa, opening the window and leaning out. “And look! The London Eye.”

“I know.” In the kitchen Benedicte pulled off her shoes and put down a bowl of water for Smurf. They'd been for dinner at Pizza Express and afterward had agreed to leave the men, Hal and Ayo's husband, Darren, in the pub “just for one pint.” The two women had come back here with Josh and Smurf. Ayo was going to water Benedicte's plants while they were in Cornwall and she still hadn't seen the house.

She was enthralled. “It's brilliant! Absolutely brilliant.”

“I know.”

“No need to be smug.”

“I know. Hey!” From the kitchen she leaned across the low units and spoke to Josh, who had already flung himself on the floor in the family room and was watching
The Simpsons,
his chin in his hands. “Hey, brat, keep the volume down, OK? Come on—we've got guests.”

Josh grumbled about it. But he turned the sound down and dropped the control.

“Good.” Benedicte got a bottle of Freixenet out of the fridge. “That fireplace,” she said to Ayo, putting the bottle between her thighs and trying to pry out the cork. “That fireplace is Travatino limestone.”

“Is it, crap.” Ayo looked over her shoulder and grinned. “It's cast concrete. Darren put one in our place.”

“Yeah …” She scrunched up her face and wrestled with the champagne cork. “But most people'd believe me.”

“Most people are soft.” Ayo leaned farther out the window, smiling in the soft evening air. She was seven months pregnant and she carried it well: from behind she looked as slender as a teenager with her long limbs. Like a carving in a print dress, thought Benedicte, she would never get fat.

“There's something wrong in those towers,” Ayo said. She was craning her neck to the left, to Arkaig Tower and Herne Hill Tower, the doomy twins at the bottom of the park. “They're evil.”

“I know—great guardians of Brixton.” The cork came
away with a dull pop and she began to fill two crystal flutes. “Champagne?”

“Oh, Ben.” Ayo pulled the window closed and turned to settle on the sofa. “I'm sure even
thinking
about champagne is bad for the baby.”

“Come on. I took acid
and
Es when I was pregnant with Josh.”

“See?
See?
I rest my case.”

“It can't be as bad as all the crap at the hospital.”

“Yeah—I got a lecture about it. No chemotherapy, no X rays, no ribavirin.” She stretched her feet out on the floor, dropping her chin on her chest. “God, I can't remember what my feet look like. Have you seen the size of these knockers? Darren thinks he's died and gone to heaven. Ah …” She took the drink from Benedicte and rested the glass on her bump, slyly watching Josh from half-closed eyes. “Ben?” she said innocently.

“Mmm?”

“You know with Josh?”

“Yeah?”

“Did he press on your bladder? Make you wee twenty times a night?”

“Mu-um.” Josh half sat up. “Can you two
stop
?” He held his hand up and snapped it open and closed. “Yak yak yak yak yak.”

Ayo nudged him with her foot. “Smarty-pants.”

Josh giggled and rolled onto his back, play-kicking at her. “Yak yak yakety-yak.”

“
Help
.” She struggled to get up, spilling champagne. “Help me, Ben. Your sprog is attacking me.”

“Hyperactive child. He should probably be on medication.” Benedicte helped Ayo to her feet, out of the way of Josh. “Come and let me show my house off to you—come and see the room that's going to save my life.”

The two women went up the stairs, clutching their champagne, giggling, Josh yelling insults after them. Smurf lolloped along behind, and this time Ben didn't send her back downstairs. “Be-en,” Ayo hissed, the moment they got out of Josh's earshot. “Ben, what do you think about this business? You know, the little boy in the park.”

“Oh—God.” Ben switched on the light on the landing. “Screwy. I'm sort of glad we're traipsing out to shagging Cornwall.” She'd been following it on TV. Two members of SERPASU, the South East Regional Police Air Support Unit, had resigned over the incident, and the BBC had devoted five minutes to it at the beginning of the program. The worst thing, for Ben, was a piece of video taken from a helicopter. A news crew, filming the search in the park the day after the kidnap, had analyzed the footage and discovered what they claimed was Rory Peach: a tiny patch of light curled in a tree. They broadcast it with a circle imposed over the top so the viewer knew where to look. Benedicte had found it disgusting. “I don't want to think about it, to be honest. I've thought about it enough.” She pushed her hair behind her ear and smiled at Ayo. “Come on, let's change the subject, OK? Now,” she paused with her hand on the door and made a solemn face, “
this
is the room that is going to save my life.” She opened the door. “Ta-da!”

Ayo peeped inside. The bedroom was no more than a box painted cream with blue curtains and a scalloped blue lampshade in the center of the ceiling. It smelled of paint and new carpets. “Ummm.” She smiled. “Nice.”

“I know it's not
nice
, exactly.” Benedicte made a face and poked Ayo in the arm. “But it's the first time I've had somewhere I can go for some peace and quiet. Now,” she closed the door and opened the next one, putting her hand inside the door to turn on the light, “the bathroom.”

They both peered inside. Josh's trainers, which were covered in mud from the woods, had been hosed off and were upside down on the edge of the bath. But there was something else out of kilter in here. Benedicte stepped inside. The floor, the little white pedestal mat under the toilet, and even a corner of the bath mat draped over the bath edge were wet. She could smell it instantly—they'd been urinated on. “Jesus,” she muttered, switching off the light and slamming the door. “Wait here, Ayo.” She hurried down the stairs. “Josh!
Josh!
”

In the TV room Josh looked up. He knew immediately from his mother's voice that he was in trouble. He moved an almost imperceptible fraction along the sofa away from
her and Benedicte paused, momentarily ashamed that she could have that effect on her nine-year-old son. “Jo-
osh
.”

“Yeah?” He was cautious.

“That mess upstairs.”

He didn't answer.

“
Josh!
I'm
speaking
to you.”

“What mess?”

“You know
what
mess. The one in the bathroom.”

Josh's mouth dropped open and he half stood. “I never—I never went in there.”

“Well, someone did. It wasn't Smurf—she's been with me all day and the door was closed.”

“I never, Mum, honest. Honest.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake.” She got bleach, rubber gloves and a bowl from under the kitchen sink and slammed the cupboard door. “You'll have to learn, Josh, not to lie. It's important.” She went upstairs to where Ayo was cleaning the mess up with a roll of Andrex. “He's turned into an absolute liar since we got here. It's like everything's gone haywire since we moved in.”

“Maybe the house is cursed.”

“Probably.” Benedicte unhooked the carrier bag from the bin under the sink and held it out for Ayo to dump the used tissue. “Probably built on ancient Navajo burial ground.” She didn't smile when she said it.

The mosquitoes had landed a live one. They banked and throttled next to Caffery's ears, flying in formation between the thistle and ragwort, alighting on his hands and sucking eye-popping tubes of blood up into their proboscises. He slapped at them, flicked them, but they clung, drunken and bloated, in his sweat and wouldn't move as he crouched, scraping at the earth and root matter with the claw hammer. The sun had dropped sulkily into the roofs, throwing its last rays into the bitter green cutting.

Should have brought a torch, you dickhead.

Every step, every rock he turned, he recorded, straightening up to photograph his work, flooding the little cloister with artificial blue light. Then, at nine-fifteen P
.
M
.
, after two hours of scraping and digging, he pushed the
hammer once more into the soil and hit something unfamiliar. Something that didn't give like soil but slid and whispered.
Oh, shit, here we go.
Heart thumping, he threw aside the hammer and dropped forward onto his knees, scraping at the earth with his bare hands. In the dim twilight he saw a flash of plastic.

He stopped digging, rocking back a little on his heels, his chest tight—for a moment he thought he might vomit. He had to close his eyes and breathe carefully through his nose until the sensation went away.