The Treatment (39 page)

“Oh, no.” She gave him a slow smile. “You'll pay me.”

“I fucking won't.” He looked up at the sky and began feeling in his pocket for his keys. “You're full of crap.”

“I'm your informant. You're supposed to register me. Have you?”

“Of course I have.”

“
You're
the liar.” She smiled. “I know your sort— you're worse than my sort because you're legal. Much worse.”

“Don't threaten me, Tracey.”

“Five K—and I'll
show
you what happened.”

“Uh-uh.” He turned to go. “You're in a sitcom now, Tracey.”

“
Listen
.”

“No way.” He started toward the car, holding up his hand to dismiss her. “No fucking way.”

“You'd be really, really surprised what I found out me brother knew all along.” She jumped up, determined he shouldn't go. This was her one-way ticket sauntering away across the sunny forecourt. “You'd be surprised what happened to Penderecki's boy and what I can tell you about him.” Caffery was walking faster now and she hurried after him, her arms extended, her feet in the yellow high heels pecking the ground like a wading bird. “Look, I'm not fucking with you—why would I?” The phlegm rattled away in her throat. “I can show you exactly what happened to him. Not
tell
you, I'll
show
you.”

“Tracey.” Caffery stopped and held up his finger warningly. “Cut the bullshit, Tracey. I mean it!” A flock of crows took to the air from the trees behind him, startling her by the way those wings darkened the sky so quickly— as if the crows wanted to emphasize his words. “I'm going straight back to London,” he said, “and I'm going to hand the whole thing over to the Yard and don't fucking call me again with your fairy tales.”

“But—”

“But nothing.” He swung the keys on his finger and turned for the car, leaving her standing next to the rusted old Fiat.

“Fuck,” she muttered after a while, deflated. The Jaguar reversed up the drive and she stood, watching the flock of crows bank away against the blue sky. When they had disappeared behind the trees she turned and limped back to the house.

Afterward she sat on the doorstep, staring out at the hangar, at the rusting old engines, and the old Land Rover roofs tangled in woodbine. She had almost forgotten she was holding a cigarette. It was only when it burned her fingers that she dropped it. She scowled, leaned over, pulling her hair back from her face, and let a globe of granular phlegm drop directly on top of the burning butt. She was scuffing the phlegm with her shoe, so she didn't slide on it in the morning, when she heard wheels on the gravel. She looked up, suddenly nervous.

“Oh, fuck.” She got to her feet, wheezing, sliding the locks on the door and hurrying back inside the house.
Maybe he meant it—maybe here come the mates
—she had got halfway down the corridor when she heard the voice ahead of her.

“Tracey!”

That made her stop—just by the kitchen door, her heart knocking against her throat. She swallowed. Rested her bitten nails on the doorpost and leaned cautiously back into the hallway. He was standing motionless in the sunlit front doorway, his hands in his pockets, his face tight. A wasp had got into the house and was banging itself
on the ceiling. “What?” she called. “What do you want?”

“Three grand.”

“What?”

“I said three grand—I'll give you three.”

Roland Klare could have told the police that they needed to be looking for someone more than just Alek Peach. Oh, yes, he could tell them that in one sentence. He knelt on the sofa, his nose and hands pressed against the window, one knee jerking up and down nervously, and stared out at the lovely trees and dried-up lawns of Brockwell Park. The photographs hanging in a row in his darkroom clearly showed Alek Peach doing the unthinkable to his son. But the same images made something else quite clear: they made it clear that Alek Peach hadn't been the only person in the house at the time. They made it clear that someone else had been involved—the someone who was holding the camera.

Klare made a little clicking noise in his mouth and tapped at the window, wondering what to do next. “Hmmm, yes,” he muttered. “Hmm.” He pushed himself away from the glass and turned back to the big, well-lit living room, rubbing his hands nervously.

C
AFFERY GOT BACK TO SHRIVEMOOR
just after 6 P
.
M
.
and as he parked he saw Kryotos, dressed in a cream jacket, climbing into her husband's car. He crossed the road. “Anything happened?” he asked, both hands on the roof, looking up the road to check that no cars were coming in this lane. “Logan back?”

“Been and gone, photocopied some Actions and left them in your pigeonhole—nothing doing.”

“Shit.” He bent down, looked into the car and nodded at Kryotos's husband. “Pardon my language.”

“No problem.”

“There're some messages for you,” Kryotos said, putting on her seat belt and eyeing Caffery cautiously. He had that run-ragged look about his eyes again. “That dentist, he called, wants to talk to you, and someone called Gummer, oh and West End Central have found Champ Keo-dua—whatsit for you, if you still want to see him.”

“Peach?”

“No change.” She nodded up at the incident room windows, where the sunlight bounced off the silver antiblast film. “Danni's still up there.”

“Shit.”

“I know. She's not in the best mood.”

“OK.” He straightened up and knocked on the car roof. “Right, thanks, Marilyn. See you tomorrow.”

The incident room was empty and Danni was in the SIOs' room filling in her duty sheets for the month. Next to her was an open bottle of Glenfiddich—an oiler courtesy of a Sunday tabloid journalist doing an article on geographical profiling.

“Danni?”

She looked up. “Oh,” she muttered. “You.” She went back to her work.

He stood awkwardly in the doorway, watching her, not certain whether to leave or stay. When she seemed determined not to speak to him he sat down at his desk, hands folded on his stomach, and stared out the window in silence. Before long Souness caved in.

“Right.” She signed off the form, threw her pen on the desk and sat back in her chair. “Spit it out.”

“OK …” He put his hands flat on the desk and looked out the window for a moment, thinking how to approach this. “I—” He turned to her. “Look—about this morning.”

“Yes?”

“I'm sorry.”

She pursed her mouth, looking at him suspiciously with her narrow, blue eyes.

“It was out of all proportion,” he continued. “I'm finding this case, y'know, not great, for the reasons you know all about—and I suppose I haven't been sleeping.” He shrugged. “Just means I'm sorry.”

Her mouth remained in its sour little bud knot. “I see.” She picked up the pen and tapped it on the desk, upending it, tapping, staring at the desk. She seemed about to say something, then changed her mind and rubbed her head. She stretched her arms in the air and looked out the window. “Oh, fuck,” she muttered. “I suppose I'll have to forgive ye.”

“Oh,” he sighed, “well, thanks. You know, thanks for the buildup.”

“That's OK.” She put her finger in her ear and jiggled it ferociously, looking sideways at him. “ ‘I don't think I could get my head that far up my own arse. ’ Could ye not have come up wi' something a wee bit better than that?”

“Next time, I'll try.”

“You do that,” she said, swiveling her chair round to face him, her hands clasped on her stomach. “Anyway— have ye seen this?” She shook her belly up and down. “See that? I'm losing weight.” She looked up at him, her face serious. “And didn't you say something about owing me dinner?”

“Did I?”

“Yes, you did—if you were wrong about Gordon Wardell being all over the newspapers, you'd buy me dinner.”

“Was I wrong?”

“Doesn't matter. I'm your boss.”

“I was right, then.”

“Maybe.”

“In the end I had to forgive ye, Jack, I've got no transport today—Paulina took the Beemer.” They didn't discuss where to go. They just got into the Jaguar and drove to Brixton as if it was the most natural place on earth, as if they were being drawn by the imprisoned river Effra along its route. On its fringes, where the mystifying eye-dust of nightclub and art house hadn't permeated, Brixton was still dangerous and lonely. Here, shriveled men in mudstained tracksuits and straw hats, tinsel flowers on the brims, rolled their eyes at the stars and the lampposts and mouthed madness to the moon. Here streetlights had been taken out by BB guns from the estates, and the only illumination was cold cubes of ultraviolet in the shops, installed to stop addicts cranking up in the doorways by making their own arm veins invisible. In central Brixton the real nightlife hadn't woken up yet—it was too early: the Bug bar, the Fridge, Mass, were all silent. It wouldn't be until midnight that central Brixton turned into little Ibiza—traffic jams at midnight and Balearic beat bunnies standing up through car sunroofs waving at the world. Still, as they parked and walked toward Coldharbour Lane, Caffery was glad of the comparative light and warmth.

He stopped at a cashpoint: “Just for forty quid or so.”

“I'd get more than that if I were you. I'm nae a cheap date, y'know.” Souness stood with her hands in her pockets, her back to him, trying to outstare the beggar with a baby who sat under the cashpoint. Caffery checked his balance. That figure he'd given Tracey Lamb hadn't come out of nowhere—he'd had good reason: he knew how far the bank would extend his overdraft at short notice. Three thousand pounds.
What could three grand buy you?
No matter how many times he reminded himself—
she's a liar, she's a washed-up old con
—his hopeful heart, his pathetically hopeful heart, kept up the pestering:
what if what if what if …

“Right.” He pocketed the money, checked around to make sure no one was watching and nodded toward Coldharbour Lane. “Dinner, then?”

The Windrush population, who had once laid claim to these few streets, had largely been pushed out of central Brixton and into the narrow capillaries around it. There were few true black pubs left—few places one could walk into on a Saturday afternoon and see young men playing dominoes, screaming, slapping their thighs, flipping open their mobiles to relay twists in the game to absent friends. Most of Coldharbour Lane catered to the new population, and Caffery and Souness chose a place near the square, the Satay Bar, with its mirrors and bird-of-paradise flowers in towering glass vases. They ordered Malay kebabs, rice cubes and two Singha beers, and sat at a tiny table next to the window. Souness sat comfortably, her jacket unbuttoned, her pager resting on the table between them.

“I like it here.” She leaned forward a little and peered out the window. “This road is so fucking trendy that if you sit still long enough, in your wee cave, once in a while a bit of A-list totty breaks cover. Saw Caprice out there once, I'm sure it was her, wearing these …” she sucked breath in through closed teeth and chopped her hands at the tops of her thighs “… these red shorts, right up to here, and who's that one with the big tits? She gets fat like me now and then. You know. Big mouth.”

“Dunno.”

Souness smiled wryly and picked up a kebab. “First sign of depression, that.”

“What?”

“Losing interest in sex.”

“I haven't lost interest in sex.”

“Oh, aye,” she pointed at him with the kebab, “the day you die'll be the day
you
lose interest in sex, Jack Caffery.”

“I'm just …” He unrolled his knife and fork and pulled his plate toward him. He looked at the food for a minute, then leaned forward, elbows on either side of the plate. “You've been in the force, Danni, what? Fifteen, sixteen years?”

“And the rest—I know I've the face of a wee angel, but my thirty's only nine years away.”

“So—remember back to when you joined. Do you remember what was in your head?”

“Oh, aye. I was excited. Came straight out—the moment I got into Hendon I came out.
But
,” she said, emphasizing the word with a little jab of the kebab, “I never used it, Jack. Even when the world changed and I could've used it, I never did.” She put the food in her mouth, chewed. “Of course, that doesn't mean I never kissed a little ass. No. Nor kissed a little pussy neither.”