At the press conference that morning Souness asked the assembled journalists and TV reporters to observe a minute's silence for Rory Peach. The country was gripped: the News of the World pawed the ground in the wings, gearing up for a new name-and-shame campaign. As if in divine judgement of the engine she had set rumbling, on Souness's way back to the incident room, sitting at traffic lights in the red BMW, the skies over South London cracked open and dropped hundreds of gallons of rainwater into the streets in minutes. A proper summer cloudburst: the streets looked as if they might be washed away.
At Shrivemoor Caffery was sitting at an open window watching the rain. He could smell earth and thought he wouldn't have blinked if he'd seen an uprooted palm floating along in the gutter in the street below. He closed the window and sat back at his desk, watching Kryotos through the open door. She seemed to have recovered and was bashing away at the HOLMES database. The tears in the kitchen had been a shock: he'd never known Kryotos lose perspective before. He'd always been a little envious of her -wondering why he couldn't keep a distance like that.
Suddenly, as if she could sense him watching her, Kryotos looked up. Their eyes met but this time she didn't look away embarrassed. Instead she seemed confused as if Caffery's thoughts were strung out in a long banner above his head and she was reading them. She frowned, perplexed, and Caffery, uncomfortable with the sense that his naked brain was being watched, gave her a brief, efficient smile. He leaned over, kicked the door closed and went back to studying the ALS photos of Rory's neck.
"In the plus column, at least finding Rory means we've got some forensics." When Souness got back from the press conference she seemed to be making an effort to be positive. She brought through coffee and some of Kryotos's sticky, flaky pastries in a tin and shook the rain off her jacket, draping it on the back of her chair. "We've got those white fibres and as soon as Quinny's got us some DNA we can think about doing a mass screening."
"And what are your parameters going to be? Every white nonce in Brixton over five eleven?"
"I've got to show them something we're three days and closing on the area interim report She stopped. "OK, Jack. Ye've got that look on your face again. Come on, what's on your mind?"
He shrugged. "He's going to do it again. Very soon."
"Ah, I wondered when this was going to start! My profiling baby getting out of his wee pram."
"Only this time he'll make sure he doesn't get disturbed and he'll complete his fantasy whatever that was. It's a progression and he won't stop at the Peaches. He's juicing himself up for something more, I think he's probably chosen his next victims already."
"Oh, aye?" Souness pulled the chair back and sat down, folding her arms. "And where's all this coming from, if it's not a rude question?"
"We've got an ex-con."
"Oh, we have, have we?"
"Yes. He's got form and he's done time for it. Probably for the same thing or something similar." He took off his glasses. "I've told Marilyn to go into that Quest Search database and put any non-custodial sentences on the back-burner."
"Are ye going to explain?"
He pushed the photos towards her. "See?" No one had seen it or mentioned it in the morgue, and yet photographed under the blue alternative light source it was clear what had made the marks on Rory's neck. "See these?" Souness nodded. "Can you see these underlying marks? Here and here?"
"Aye, I can."
"Well?"
Souness tipped her chair forward and was silent for a moment, squinting at the photos with her head on one side. Her eyes moved rapidly across the odd marks, trying to shape them into something recognizable. When it came to her she dropped the chair back with a thud. "Jesus of course, of course."
Roland Klare, who, like most Brixton residents, had been following the Donegal Crescent case on the television, now very much wanted to see the photographs that were stuck inside the Pentax. There was no question of taking the film to a chemist, even if he could get it out of the camera. But there was an alternative. When he got home that afternoon he consulted his notebook.
Yes! He'd been right. He'd been sure it was somewhere in the flat. He went into the bedroom and began pulling things aside.
Within an hour he had found it. It had been stored in a box of old Ladybird books: a large, slightly battered paperback, Build Your Own Darkroom AT HOME! On the cover there was a picture of a man in a white coat holding a piece of photographic paper by the corner, swilling it in a tank. Klare had discovered the book years ago on the platform at Loughborough Junction. Pleased with himself, he took it into the kitchen and wiped it clean, then made himself a drink and went into the living room. Outside it was dark and light at once: big clouds curled up from the distant horizon and shuffled across the sky, shooting sunlight down one moment, tipping out rain the next, but Roland Klare didn't notice. He got a pen and paper and settled on the sofa, his back to the window, and began to read.
Eleven.
It was evening when Caffery found the time to visit DI Durham. He pointed the car against the rush, up over Beulah Hill where the drives were gravelled the roads were wide as French boulevards, and horse chestnuts dropped red sap on to the pavements. In Norwood the buildings were a pace nearer the road, and by Brixton Water Lane the city had thoroughly meshed itself around him.
In central Brixton the traffic was already heavy. He parked in a turning off Acre Lane and wove through the cars, the thump-thump-thump of sub-woofers resonating against his stomach muscles. Amazing to think that this was less than a mile from Brockwell Park. Rory Peach, had he been able to sit up, would have been able to look down from his tree His tree? His tree? You make it sound as if he chose it and see these darkened stretches of decaying municipal pride. The person who had put Rory up that tree had form. Which meant that he had almost certainly made and developed connections in prison segregated prison units were key cogs in paedophile networks, seeding beds for ideas and plans, where contacts and lifelong friendships were made. AMIT were going to concentrate one of their pods on moving through the nonce register and Kryotos's Quest Search results, speaking to convicted paedophiles in the Brixton area, trying to tap into that vast underground switchboard. He thought about those invisible connections, the creeping circuitry that linked every sick thing to every other sick thing. And inevitably, as it always did these days, his mind circled back to Penderecki.
Penderecki. He thought about him as he crossed to the police station. How long would it be before Penderecki was grilled? How many degrees of separation? And what if? What if…?
DI Durham was welcoming. He remembered the 1989 attack well. "Yeah little Champ. Nasty." The office window was level to a street-light that came on red as they talked. Durham, in navy blue shirt and tartan tie, had been in Brixton fifteen years. He played with his double chin as he spoke, squeezing it and massaging it as if it had appeared overnight. "Dug that out for you." He slammed the filing cabinet and put the file in front of Caffery. "Is it the Peach thing, then? Is that what you're thinking?"
"I don't know yet." He opened the file. November 1989 and eleven-year-old Champaluang Keoduangdy had been attacked in Brockwell Park and so badly injured he had spent several days in hospital. "I was searching for a nonce called the troll and this case came up."
"That's right it's all in there." Durham leaned over and picked out Champ's statement between thumb and forefinger. "That's what Champ called the guy who did him. A troll. Don't know why." He paused. Caffery had sat forward, hands flat on the desk and was staring at something in the file. "You all right there, son?"
He didn't answer. He felt as if something had landed claws first on his shoulders. This was the forensic medical examiner's report. The assault on Champ had indeed been violent: the attacker had almost ripped a chunk of flesh from the boy's shoulder. Caffery closed the file and looked up at Durham. He knew the colour had left his face. "He was bitten}'