When Souness, standing on the doorstep, saw the words she began to stamp her feet as if they were cold.
"What's the matter?"
"Uh nothing." She rubbed her nose. "Really, I'm fine."
"You ready?"
"Of course. Of course I'm ready."
He broke the seal and used DS Quinn's padlock key. Neither of them spoke. The hallway was dark. To their left, in the living room, the dull glow of streetlights came through a gap in the curtains and lay in a faint stripe across the sofa. Caffery felt for the light switch, but it clicked up and down emptily. The light was dead and somewhere in the darkness ahead the key meter bleeped.
"Told you."
"Aye, you did."
He shone the torch into the hallway, playing the beam up the stairs and around the walls. This is where it happened. His neck prickled suddenly as if the air had moved and he had to resist the urge to shine the torch into the living room to check that they were alone in the house. The hallway was small, walls pale, decorated with two seascape prints, both knocked off centre. He was aware of his face momentarily reflected in the glass as he moved down the hallway to the kitchen, the torch playing in front of him.
The meter was next to the cooker. He pulled out the key, pushed it back in, and with a sudden whump and whir the house came alive. The fridge started, the light in the hallway came on and Souness appeared in the doorway blinking, disorientated, looking around this normal yellow-and-white kitchen with the toaster on the work top and the opened packet of Coco-Pops on the fridge. The SSCU's fingerprint dust was everywhere on the fridge, the door, the window frame; purplish puffs of ninhydrin on the wallpaper, silver nitrate on the cupboards. The scent of pine from the board on the window partly masked the smell of old blood. Souness and Caffery stood silently in the kitchen, their faces odd, embarrassed to be here, thinking of what the Peach family had gone through in this house.
Benedicte was shaking, exhausted from screaming, blinking at her cuffed foot in the navy canvas deck shoe. Now that she had stopped struggling, now that the room and the house were silent, she was aware of a new sound. A strained, rasping sound that she hadn't noticed in her panic. It was coming from the wardrobe…
Oh, Jesus, she shivered, what the…?
She crawled forward as far as the cuff would allow, then dropped on to her stomach and snaked her body forward, like a landed eel, moving in silence, just the hush and shush of the carpet against her trousers, until she could reach the bottom of the wardrobe door with her fingertips. She scrabbled at the door with her nails, straining forward until it swung open.
"Oh Something was propped inside the cupboard. One crabbed shape against the far wall. Benedicte recoiled, pushing herself back against the radiator. "Smurf?"
In the cupboard the dark thing moved a little.
"Smurf?"
The old Labrador struggled feebly to her feet, the air in her lungs whistling noisily, her claws tapping at the floor of the wardrobe. She came hobbling out, wheezing and whimpering, careful not to put weight on the right front paw. Benedicte saw instantly that the leg was swinging, like a pendulum, from a point above the knee. The Labrador limped across the room and dropped with a sigh into the curled crook of her body. Oh, my God, Smurf, what's he done to you? She raced her hands across the dog's coat, down the knobbly legs with their tired old tendons, the little horny dew claw at the back of the ankle, until she found the reflective glimmer of wet fur a soft, hot area. The bone must have cracked, pierced the skin, and retracted when she touched it Smurf whimpered and tried to pull away.
Broken. The bastard broke her leg.
Whoever had done this to an ancient animal like Smurf wouldn't be afraid of hurting Josh. "Oh, Smurf." She buried her face in the dear fur, the sweet doggy smell of leaves and forest mulch. "What's happening to us, Smurf, what's happening?" Smurf craned her head round, trying to lick the tears from Benedicte's face, and that small demonstration of faith, of dependency, gave her sudden courage.
"OK." Taking a deep breath, teeth chattering uncontrollably, she levered herself into a sitting position. "OK, Smurf. I'm going to get this fucker." She stroked the dog's head. "You see if I don't."
She jerked up her knee, tugging experimentally, wondering if she could pull hard enough to break the copper radiator pipe. But her ankle was already bloodied from pulling and shiny, like inflamed gums so she sat up in a crouch and inspected the handcuffs. Four delicate blind head screws tiny, hardly bigger than match heads. Decisive now, she straightened up and pulled off Hal's cord shirt. She undid her bra, held it to her mouth and nibbled at the fabric on the inside until the under wiring poked through and she could get a grip on it.
Strong enough to kill him, the shit. I don't care how big he is.
She drew out the slender curve of wire and used her teeth to strip the protective plastic ends away. Then, with the sharp end, she dug at the handcuff screws. But the wire buckled and mashed the screw heads. "Shit, shit, shit. Don't give up." She turned her attention to the radiator, pulled off the plastic knob and was exploring the copper pipe when Smurf, although she had been deaf for months, sat up abruptly and growled softly at the door. A low, shaky growl.
Benedicte froze crunched where she was in a runner's crouch, veins protruding on her hands. What the? Fear took a long, calm lick at her spine, and all her fine plans dissolved. Something was sniffing along the bottom of the door.
Eighteen.
"Where do we start?"
"OK let's go through it." Caffery put his briefcase on the kitchen counter, pulled out his glasses and the crime-scene photographs. The room had been stripped by Quinn's team: large chunks of the lino had been excised, rectangular sections of the curtains had been removed and the skirting-board where Rory's blood had been found was still covered in amido black and stick-on number tags. Glasses on the draining-board had been dusted and a toasted-sandwich-maker that had been taken away to the lab had been returned, the cord coiled and taped to the lid.
They thought that it was here, in this room, that the bite had been inflicted on Rory Peach the damage had been enough for the eight-year-old to drop blood on the floor. The paper towel had soaked up the rest. Caffery put on his glasses, looked briefly at the photos of the kitchen and handed them to Souness. He tried to imagine the scene Rory struggling, Alek Peach, chained and exhausted, unable to move, or simply unconscious. Alek was not in the photographs but the impression and the stain he had left on the floor was.
"So he was lying like this." He stood at the intersection of the rooms, on the floor divider, and swung his hand along the mark. "Across the floor between the kitchen and the living room chained here," he indicated the living-room radiator, 'and here to this radiator."
Souness wrinkled her nose. "Is there food left in the fridge?"
"Eh?" He looked round and sniffed. "Oh, that, no -I think it's just…" Carmel, Rory and Alek Peach had all defecated on themselves at some point in the three days. They hadn't had a choice. DS Quinn had been surprised by the amount of urine Carmel produced -it had seeped out on to the landing carpet. "I think that's just them."
Souness made a face and opened the fridge to check. Inside were a few flowers of mould, fingerprint dust on a plastic carton of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and a jar of pickle in the door compartment. Otherwise it was empty. She closed the fridge and looked around the room, her mouth pulled down at the sides. "Is that really what the smell is? Those poor wee fuckers."