Caffery closed the curtains around the bed, went to Peach's side, rested both fists on the side of the bed and bent until his mouth was next to his ear: "It's time you were straight with me, Alek."
Peach's eyes fluttered. His head moved and a small groan escaped him.
"I don't give a shit if you're not well enough to talk to me, I don't give a shit."
Above the bed the heart monitor began to stammer. Somewhere, in some distant nurses' station, Caffery could hear it trigger an alarm. He moved even closer until he felt he was almost inside Peach's ear. "If it's you and you've got someone else you're going to tell me who. I don't care if you die but I'm not going to let it happen to someone else."
Peach's face suddenly changed. He licked his lips with a pale tongue. He blinked once or twice then snapped his eyes open, rolling them sideways. Caffery almost took a step back, there was such anger, such empty, un thought-through malice in those eyes. Then Peach's mouth began to move. His voice was whispery too low to be heard above the machines.
"What? Say it again, you little shit."
A nurse, summoned from the coffee room by the monitor alarms, appeared, shocked-faced, at a gap in the curtains. "Sir! Please, we have to ask you to leave In the ward outside someone was shouting about getting Security. "Sir pleaseV But Peach's mouth was still moving, and Caffery bent nearer, straining to hear what he was saying.
"What? Say it again."
Just as the unit manager arrived, just as Caffery knew he was going to be thrown out, Peach opened his mouth one more time and this time was loud enough to hear: "Fuck you," he was saying. "Fuck you."
The slit in the pipe was weeping, not even a trickle, more a slow, barely perceptible ballooning a single drop seemed to take several minutes to form. Nevertheless Benedicte fastened her mouth to it and sucked. It was only enough to wet her tongue and leave its metallic taste in her mouth, but she pressed her cracked lips to it with the desperation of a baby, forming a vacuum, and slowly, painfully drew another weak drop on to her tongue. She pushed her body nearer, hugging the radiator with one arm, working it, working it, but after twenty minutes, and less than a thimbleful of water, she was exhausted. She dropped on her back panting. "Oh, shit."
It took a long time to get her breath back. When she had, she brought Smurf to the pipe and tried to encourage her to drink, but the Labrador just turned her head away and sighed. "OK, Smurf, you stay there." It hadn't been much water, but Ben felt stronger, knowing what she'd achieved. "Won't be long now."
She turned her attention back to the boards. In the planks between her hands there was a join, a knot hole on the inner edge of one. She could widen it enough to get her fingers in. And if that didn't work she'd already made up her mind: she was going to use the grip rod to saw through her ankle. The thought didn't even make her feel ill.
The incident room was buzzing. The team was rested, and now they had new leads they were ready to roll. Caffery had been home for a shower and a change of clothes no sign, he noticed, that Rebecca had been there. Now he was refreshed, feeling clean under his arms and in his hair. He was determined to speak to Peach again, get some space, get a little leverage going. If Mr. Friendship wouldn't listen to him, maybe he'd listen to Souness.
He arrived in the incident room just as Kryotos's phone was ringing. She leaned over, and hooked up the receiver on one finger. "Yup?" She tucked it between her chin and her shoulder, and put both hands on the desk, staring down at a pile of forms as she listened. Caffery came and stood next to her, looking at her face. "For you," she mouthed.
"OK. In my office."
She put the call through. In the SIO's office he nodded at Souness and caught up the phone.
"DI."
"Jack," Fiona Quinn was breathless, 'wanted you to be the first to know. That DNA's come back."
"Jesus." He closed the door and pulled the chair up to the desk, his heart pounding. "And?"
"And we got a full male profile. Full. Came up as bright as the Oxford Street Christmas lights."
Caffery clicked his fingers frantically at Souness. She looked up in surprise. "What?"
"DNA," he mouthed, his hand over the receiver.
She used her heels to rodeo the chair over to his desk. She sat close to him, trying to overhear the conversation. He almost had to keep her from grabbing the phone.
"What've we got, Fiona?"
"You're not going to believe it."
"I might. Try me."
The sky over Brockwell Park was a calm, pearly blue, only a few clouds strung along the horizon, as if they were heavier than the blue colour and had sunk down to the edges. Roland Klare could have seen the sky through his window, but at the moment he wasn't interested in patterns in the sky: he was further back in the flat, in the cupboard, bathed in red light, tongue between his teeth as he cut the negatives and placed the first in the enlarger.
He knew he was getting close and had to stop his knee from jerking in a nervous tic as he moved the lamphouse up and down, trying to get the print to fit on the paper. He adjusted the focus, switched off the red bulb and flicked on the enlarger light. A triangle of white flooded down on to the paper, perfect against the blackness of the cupboard just as it appeared in the book. The timer was broken but Klare was ready he had read somewhere that the word 'photography' equalled one second, so he sat on the stool, staring down at the paper, his hands between his knees, and muttered the words out loud: "One photography, two photography, three photography." When the twenty seconds he'd calculated were up he switched off the enlarger light and, illuminated only by the red safe-light, carried the paper over to the litter tray where he'd prepared the developing solution. He stood over it, swirling the paper around, keeping count in his head, peering down at the magical picture creeping across the paper.
"A hundred and two photography, a hundred and three photography, a hundred and He stopped counting. The print was taking shape. It was still blurry, and it was too dark in this light to see properly, so he quickly splashed around some stop-bath and fixer hardly able to keep still as he waited for the allotted time then carried the dripping print into the kitchen, ran it under the tap and peered at it. The picture was a little hazy, either from the damaged enlarger or maybe because the original hadn't been properly focused. Heart thumping now, Klare took it to the living-room window and held it up to the sunlight.
Twenty-three.
The ward had settled now and was quiet, the only noise the whir of syringe drivers, the occasional equipment alarm. It was a warm day and the window in the nurses' room was open a crack, the curtains lifting as a mild summer breeze moved through the ward. Ten minutes before lunch one of the staff slipped silently along the ward. She stopped outside the private room, as if something had just struck her, and stood for a moment, one foot stretched out slightly behind the other, then turned the handle and went in, closing the door behind her. Less than a minute later the door opened and the same woman came out. She headed quickly away from the room, her body stiffer than before, her pace suddenly abrupt.
Ayo thought herself a good nurse: a nurse of the critically ill, she rarely had a problem finding the human vibration in everyone, never had any problem reaching under the wires and tubes and finding the warm pulsing soul. But when she had pushed the door open and looked at Alek Peach lying on the bed well, Alek Peach was like no one I've ever seen… It was as if there was a shell lying on the bed, an empty husk. He breathed, his heart moved, his vital functions were good, sound but the warmth had gone from him. It had all leaked away.