Caffery lit another cigarette and leaned back, suddenly realizing that he was opposite the deli Rebecca sometimes came to for mozzarella, still dripping in its muslin. Closed now, but he remembered her wandering with her bright, intrigued eyes among the loops of mountain salami, sea-green olive-oil bottles, dusty tins of something untranslatable: "Probably merda d'artista," she had whispered to Caffery, who had stood speechless, transfixed by a row of air-dried serra no hams hanging by the knuckles along the back of the shop: afraid that Rebecca would look up, scared of what she would make of those odd, dangling shapes. Now, from the car, he could see them, ghostly in the blue light of a fly-killer. He wished he had taken her by the arm then and said, "Do you ever think about how Bliss left you suspended just like that, suspended like a piece of meat?"
"Oh, God not this again." He rubbed his face wearily, wondering what she was thinking wondering where she was. He knew she wasn't at home crying, scrubbing herself in the shower; he knew she wasn't shivering in a blanket in a medical examination room at the local station, dark rings around her eyes. He had a sudden picture of her looking over her shoulder at him, blood on her mouth, watching his face. What was she thinking? Rapist? Maybe she was happy he had been proved the foxy, unclean thing she said he was. Maybe there was no working back from that.
"Hey!" Souness was tapping on the window. "Will ye take that glaekit expression off your face and let me in the shagging car?" She was sweating from standing in the steamy take away She'd got gun go pea soup in polystyrene cups and two Jamaican patties. "It's all I could find. Don't worry, it's all vegetarian no billy goat in any of it."
They ate on the way back to Shrivemoor – Souness got soup on her tie and patty flakes all over her suit, but she didn't notice. She was still thinking about Alek Peach: "So why not just fess up and tell us who it was?" At Shrivemoor she swiped her card and they got into the lift. "It's his own wain, for Christ's sake."
"Guilt. Maybe he's into something maybe with the business, maybe… I don't know, but maybe he's in so bad that this was a reprisal. He'd feel guilty, wouldn't he? Wouldn't he feel guilty if he'd done something that had brought this on to his family?"
"I don't know." She stared blankly at her fractured reflection in the aluminium lift walls. "He'd have to be well shit ted up by whoever it is not to report them." She sighed. "But I'm with you something's not adding up."
"Less and less is. He says he couldn't hear Rory the whole time he was tied up. Don't you think that's odd?"
"Hmmm…"
"If he couldn't hear Rory, how come Carmel could? She was," he reached up and knocked on the ceiling of the lift, 'upstairs and she could hear him crying. But Alek couldn't?"
"I did wonder." She looked at him sideways. "You think he's lying?"
"Look at the inconsistencies. The photographs Carmel heard being taken? The ones Alek knew nothing about? And this holiday thing? Luck? Or was it not such a coincidence after all? Maybe someone knew they were going on holiday, someone knew they wouldn't get disturbed." The lift doors opened and Caffery got out, walking backwards, looking at Souness. "Now I keep asking myself, how would a stranger know that they were going on holiday? Wouldn't it be more likely that it was someone they knew?"
"OK. OK." She swiped her card and they went into the deserted incident room. The monitors were dark and silent; Kryotos, as she did every day, had washed everyone's mugs and left them on a tray in the corner. Souness put her hands on the desk and leaned over towards him. "Jack. I think you're on to something. I don't know what but I think you've got a point…"
Benedicte lay on her back, exhausted, thirsty. She had felt through every inch of her prison, moving her body like a sidewinder, rubbing her elbows raw. She could reach the wardrobe but even at full stretch the door and the window fell more than a yard from her fingertips. She used every atom of energy trying to buckle the copper pipe she had pulled so hard at the handcuff that her ankle had swollen and was almost enfolding the cuff, and the handcuff screws were ruined she'd jabbed at them so much with the wire.
It was dark, but she'd learned quickly how to estimate time. Trains, distant, on the other side of the park she'd heard them once or twice before in Brixton: sometimes at night the sky lit up momentarily like white lightning from an electrical fault on the rail, and once, the June night that England had beaten Germany in the Eurocup, she'd heard the drivers blowing their horns at each other. Now the trains had a beautiful cadence in the quiet, they reminded her that people were out there, and the rhythm of them began to make sense. When they stopped she estimated it must be between twelve and one in the morning.
From downstairs she had heard nothing. Now she could smell the liquid she'd heard pouring on to the landing floor. It wasn't petrol, it was urine. He had come up here, stood only a few feet away from the bathroom, and pissed against the door. The disgusting little shit. Just be grateful, she told herself, that it wasn't petrol.
She sat up, began to unroll her buckled body. Urine. She had avoided that indignity until now but she knew there was no point in holding on. "Gotta pee, Smurf." She had to stop herself apologizing to the dog. "It's got to be done."
She pulled her trousers and knickers down over the free foot and crumpled them around the bound ankle. With a pinched, contrapuntal squirm, she rotated herself so that she was crouching facing the radiator, holding on to it for balance, and crab-shuffled one leg sideways so she was as far from the shackled foot as possible. She held the trousers clear with one hand, feeling like crying as the carpet under her feet grew wet and warm. She hoped, dear God, she hoped they'd be out of here before she had to move her bowels.
Suddenly in the hallway downstairs something moved. The front door slammed. Benedicte stayed quite still, facing the radiator, trousers around one foot, hardly daring to breathe.
He's gone? Then what about…
lJosh?" Her voice rose frantically and, forgetting the mess under her on the floor, she hopped around like an injured animal, getting hopelessly, pathetically, tangled in her underwear. "HAL? JOSH? JOSH -GIVE ME BACK MY SON! JOSH!" She hammered on the wall, screaming, bawling. And when no one answered she collapsed on the floor, on her back in her own urine, put her hands over her face and sobbed.
In the back of the cupboard in the incident-room kitchen Caffery found a dusty, forgotten bottle of Tesco's gin and some flat tonic water. He and Souness had spent an hour sitting at Kryotos's workstation, finishing off the Laphroaig and hashing through their next move. Bela Nersessian, they both agreed, was the person to speak to. They'd bring her to the office and start lightly, just casual inquiries into Alek Peach, his personal life, his business dealings if he had any. The family liaison officer set up the interview for the following day, and Caffery felt a small lift of spirit. Souness, too, was satisfied that they had a new direction. At 11 p.m. she decided she was over for the night.
"Ye should do the same." She stood in the doorway with her jacket on, trying to scratch off the soup on her tie, spitting on her finger and rubbing fruitlessly at it. "You'll be no good to me, Jack, shagged out."
"Yup." He held a hand up. "I'm right behind you."
But he wasn't. He had no intention of going home. When she had gone he took Penderecki's cache from the lock-up filing cabinet, and sat with a mug of warm G and T at his elbow, staring out of the window, building houses from the videotapes. Several times he picked up the phone and put it down. Rebecca hadn't called and he didn't know how to approach it. Dark fathoms under your feet, Jack. At 11.30 p.m. he pushed the tapes aside, swallowed the G and T, took off his glasses, and dialled her mobile.