Birdman

After a while he wrote: Cook: says he is married/lives with someone. Believe him??????? he pondered this for a moment, then scribbled underneath: No.

* * *

For lunch he and Essex had Pasta Funghi and Spitfire beer in the Ashburnham Arms. Back at the hospital for the afternoon session, the library was quieter. Essex wandered off to round up staff from radiology and Caffery took a seat near the window to check through the morning's notes. Slowly he became aware of a grey-haired figure in a white coat sitting in a booth on the far side of the periodical stacks, his head bent intently in study. There was something familiar about him.

Caffery approached.

'Afternoon.'

The man took his steel-rim glasses off and looked up mildly. 'Good afternoon.'

'I'm sorry to interrupt.'

'Not at all. Can I help?'

'Yes.' Caffery sat down and put his elbows on the desk. 'You're Dr Cavendish.'

'This is true.'

'You've moved from Guy's?'

'No, no.' He closed the book and put the glasses in his pocket. 'I'm here for a satellite clinic. Sickle cell. Unusually high incidence in south-east London.'

'We've met.'

Cavendish looked embarrassed. 'Forgive me. If there's one lacuna in my character it is the ability to recall faces. I am not an individual primarily steered by visual stimuli, a quirk that Mrs Cavendish has found to be of great benefit over the years.'

Caffery smiled. 'We met about four months ago. You were treating a friend in a follow-up Hodgkin's clinic. Gave her an ultrasound.'

'Plausible, plausible. To check the spleen.'

'We're very grateful.'

'Thank you. How is she progressing?'

'Not good. She's had a relapse. You treated her yesterday afternoon at Guy's.'

Cavendish's eyes narrowed. 'Ah yes, I see. I believe you are confusing me with Dr Bostall?'

'No — Veronica Marks. You saw her yesterday.'

'Well, yes. I know the name, but I didn't—' He broke off and crossed and uncrossed his legs under the table. 'You'll appreciate that I am bound by the ethics of my profession. At the risk of appearing offensive I will refrain from discussing individual cases.'

'But you did see her last night?'

'Hmmm.' He opened the book and put his glasses on. 'I think we'd be best advised to truncate this conversation now, Mr—?'

'Caffery.' Caffery sat down opposite him, his heart thumping. 'Dr Cavendish, I need to ask you some thing.'

'I think not. I find myself rather embarrassed.'

'Not linked to any particular case. It's just, I–I'm intrigued by some of the new diagnostic tests for Hodgkin's.'

Cavendish looked up. 'Intrigue is healthy and devoutly to be desired. Especially in the young.'

'The dye test.'

'Not related to a specific case?'

'No.'

'Gallium or lymphangio?'

'The one that goes in through the feet. The one you can see.'

'The lymphangiogram. Indicates if the cancer has spread to the lower body. My patients lead me to believe it is an uncomfortable procedure.'

'You haven't changed the test recently? You don't put a different dye in? One that fades more quickly?'

'No, no. Still linseed oil. It takes several days, sometimes weeks, to leave the system.' He ran a finger across dry lips. 'Mr Caffery, if you find you have a true interest in this I'd draw your attention to an article on vinblastine in the British Medical Journal this month. Very interesting, written by a colleague, coincidentally, but I recommend it in the true spirit of impartiality.'

'Thank you.' Caffery offered his hand. 'I think you've told me everything I need to know.'

26

By 7 p.m. the day had become windy, the breeze yanked low, brown clouds across the sky, drivers pulled visors down against the on-off flashing of the late sun.

Caffery didn't want to go home. Veronica would be there, faux pallor and weariness, and he was afraid of what he might say — or do — to her. Nor did he want to go to the office and have conversations die around him, the knowledge that he was backing a loser against all the odds, holding out for Gemini who even now was on his way to Greenwich police station. What Caffery wanted was to see Rebecca. The excuse, when it came, was reassuringly legitimate.

He dropped Essex at the station, in the heart of a sudden shower, did a U-turn and retraced his steps through rush-hour traffic on Trafalgar Road. At Bugsby Way the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started and the evening sun came back for one last try at drying the world, glinting on the silt-heavy Thames, casting the long shadows of peeling advertising hoardings across the road. The only things that moved were stray plastic bags rolling along the empty service routes, and Caffery was struck once more by the strange, end-of-the-world loneliness of this landscape.

The aggregate yard had changed dramatically. The scene hadn't yet been released, but the forensics team had finally completed their fingertip search; the GPR equipment had gone, the conveyor belt and the sieves lay unattended, and the alloy crush barriers intended to restrain the press stood redundant, a length of police tape fluttering lazily from one.

DC Betts sat, unobtrusively, in the team car parked at the end of the service road, quietly warming his face in the evening sun. Caffery acknowledged him and ducked under the perimeter tape. Since he was last here the ground had sprouted a fine summer cover of new vegetation, wet from the rain. He headed back towards Bugsby Way, retracing the steps he'd taken with Fiona Quinn that first night. It was hard going, strange long grasses, the colour of mud, clung to his ankles, and by the time he'd reached the far perimeter fence the shadows were longer, his socks sodden, studded with seed heads.

He stood still and lifted his face into the air, eyes half closed, smelling the bad, bitter perfume of wild poppy mingling with the river smells. The search had revealed only one sizeable gap on this side of the fence. On the service road the holes were numerous. The accepted theory was that Birdman had parked in the service road and carried the bodies almost a quarter of a mile across this difficult terrain, going back to the car to retrieve the gardening spade which they thought he'd used to make the graves. Caffery believed that Birdman had had reason to come here before the killings, or to pass it on his way somewhere. For a St Dunstan's worker this could be part of the homeward journey to any number of places: Kent or Essex, even parts of Blackheath.

A snarl of DS Quinn's fluorescent tape, peeled and discarded in the fingertip search, lay at Caffery's feet. He picked it up and studied it thoughtfully, turning it in his hands. All the bottles and cans recovered from here were now speckled in fingerprint dust and bagged in the evidence room at Shrivemoor: Heineken, Tennants, Red Stripe, Wray and Nephew.

Wray and Nephew — Gemini — drugs. Something about that connection glittered with significance. Drugs and the ligature marks on Spacek's wrists and ankles.

Only Spacek had struggled. A connection buried in there somewhere. Two seagulls swooped over the yard, eyeing him. Caffery's thoughts rolled slow as clouds.

Four of the girls were users. Only Spacek wasn't. There was a continuity. He dropped the tape and turned it over with his toe.

Something — tape? — to bind Spacek. Drugs.

And then, abruptly, he knew. He put his head back and breathed deeply, surprised to find his heart was thudding.

The offender had to tie Spacek up because she was the only one who wouldn't stay still. She wasn't a user, he couldn't talk her into taking a needle in the back of the neck. The target wasn't drugging the girls to keep them still, nor was he threatening them. The truth was far simpler, far more tragic.