Rebecca had talked.
Jesus fucking Christ, Rebecca, you did it, you've talked she'd given them chapter and verse on what he'd done to her and what he'd done to Malcolm Bliss. Heart pounding now, suddenly panicked, he jammed his foot on the accelerator, leaned across the front seat, flipped open the glove compartment and dragged out the map. The road slipped away under the wheels of the Jaguar and the speedo crept up past seventy, eighty. From a driving course at Hendon he knew plenty of surveillance-avoidance techniques, but most of them depended on local knowledge, so he flipped open the map on the steering-wheel, steadying the car with the pressure of his knees and raced through the pages. He found the Thetford page and jabbed a finger down to anchor it, shooting a look in the mirror.
No! His hand drifted from the map. He couldn't believe it. The car had melted into the distance. He was alone on the road.
"Shit." He held the car steady, staring in the rear-view mirror to make sure he wasn't imagining it. Nothing. Just a silent road stretching out behind. He fumbled around for his mobile, holding it up, jabbing at it with his thumb to check he hadn't got a message if something was happening Souness would have warned him, given him a head start, he was sure. But there was no message icon and the road behind was deserted. He'd imagined it. Imagined the whole thing. If that doesn't make you sit up and take notice…
"Right." He dropped the phone on the passenger seat, pushed the map aside, and let the car continue for two miles in silence, the blood pounding in his head. He was strung out, he decided, looking at the way his hands were shaking. When he got back to London he was going to tell Souness and Paulina all about it. Because Lamb was just spinning him a line. He knew in his heart that was all she was doing. Don't get your hopes up.
He told himself this so many times as he drove into Norfolk past abandoned, boarded-up houses on deserted roads, past rubbish tips and derelict industrial greenhouses that by the time he found Lamb sitting on the step outside the back door smoking a cigarette, dressed in pale leggings, high-heeled yellow sandals and a Shania Twain T-shirt, he had convinced himself not to listen to anything she said.
"Tracey," he said. "What do you want?"
She took a drag on the cigarette, looked up at him through the smoke and smiled. "You want some tea?"
"Not really, no."
"OK." She nodded. She had watched him climb out of the car, his shirt blinding white in the sun, and waited for him to cross from the garage. Yes. She'd been right. She could see it in his face. And as he approached, taking off his sunglasses, she saw him glance, just once, over his shoulder at the road behind him. And that little gesture told her everything: He shouldn't be here he knows that. He's just as bent as I thought. I was right this is going to be easy. "Who are you working for?"
He put his keys in his pocket and nodded into the house. "Can you turn the music down?"
"I said who are you working for?"
He sighed. "I'm not working for anyone. I'm Bill. I told you that."
"Then this lad this kid that Penderecki done who is so interested in him?"
"Just me."
"You're a liar." She took another drag on the cigarette and pointed it at him. "I know your type there's gelt in it, isn't there? I don't know who that lad was, or anything, but you know what I think? I think someone really, really wants to know. And when someone really wants to know there's always gelt in it somewhere." She wiped her hands on the dirty leggings, pushed the ironweed hair behind her ear and made a face. She summoned phlegm into her throat and hawked it on to the ground. "Five K."
"What?"
"Five K and I'll tell you '
"Five grand? Do I look like a '
"I mean it five K and I'll tell you exactly what happened."
"Piss off, Tracey. You're a liar. And I don't have to pay, Tracey, to force information out of you. I'm all that's standing between you and the dirty squad and I won't hesitate '
"Oh, no." She gave him a slow smile. "You'll pay me."
"I fucking won't." He looked up at the sky and began feeling in his pocket for his keys. "You're full of crap."
"I'm your informant. You're supposed to register me. Have you?"
"Of course I have."
"You're the liar." She smiled. "I know your sort you're worse than my sort because you're legal. Much worse."
"Don't threaten me, Tracey '
"Five K and I'll show you what happened."
"Uh-uh." He turned to go. "You're in a sit com now, Tracey."
"Listen!"
"No way." He started towards the car, holding up his hand to dismiss her. "No fucking way."
"You'd be really, really surprised what I found out me brother knew all along." She jumped up, determined he shouldn't go. This was her one-way ticket sauntering away across the sunny forecourt. "You'd be surprised what happened to Penderecki's boy and what I can tell you about him." Caffery was walking faster now and she hurried after him, her arms extended, her feet in the yellow high heels pecking the ground like a wading bird. "Look, I'm not fucking with you why would I?" The phlegm rattled away in her throat. "I can show you exactly what happened to him. Not tell you, I'll show you."
"Tracey." Caffery stopped and held up his finger warningly "Cut the bullshit, Tracey. I mean it!" A flock of crows took to the air from the trees behind him, startling her by the way those wings darkened the sky so quickly as if the crows wanted to emphasize his words. "I'm going straight back to London," he said, 'and I'm going to hand the whole thing over to the Yard and don't fucking ring me again with your fairy-tales."
"But '
"But nothing." He swung the keys on his finger and turned for the car, leaving her standing next to the rusted old Fiat.
"Fuck," she muttered after a while, deflated. The Jaguar reversed up the drive and she stood, watching the flock of crows bank away against the blue sky. When they had disappeared behind the trees she turned and limped back to the house.
Afterwards she sat on the doorstep, staring out at the hangar, at the rusting old engines, and the old Land-rover roofs tangled in woodbine. She had almost forgotten she was holding a cigarette. It was only when it burnt her fingers that she dropped it. She scowled, leaned over, pulling her hair back from her face, and let a globe of granular phlegm drop directly on top of the burning butt. She was scuffing the phlegm with her shoe, so she didn't slide on it in the morning, when she heard wheels on the gravel. She looked up, suddenly nervous.
"Oh, fuck." She got to her feet, wheezing, sliding the locks on the door and hurrying back inside the house. Maybe he meant it maybe here come the mates She had got half-way down the corridor when she heard the voice ahead of her.
Tracey!"
That made her stop just by the kitchen door, her heart knocking against her throat. She swallowed. Rested her bitten nails on the doorpost and leaned cautiously back into the hallway. He was standing motionless in the sunlit front doorway, his hands in his pockets, his face tight. A wasp had got into the house and was banging itself on the ceiling. "What?" she called. "What do you want?"
"Three grand."
"What?"
"I said three grand I'll give you three."
Roland Klare could have told the police that they needed to be looking for someone more than just Alek Peach. Oh, yes, he could tell them that in one sentence. He knelt on the sofa, his nose and hands pressed against the window, one knee jerking up and down nervously, and stared out at the lovely trees and dried-up lawns of Brockwell Park. The photographs hanging in a row in his darkroom clearly showed Alek Peach raping his son. But the same images made something else quite clear: they made it clear that Alek Peach hadn't been the only person in the house at the time. They made it clear that someone else had been involved the someone who was holding the camera. Klare made a little clicking noise in his mouth and tapped at the window, wondering what to do next. "Hmmhm, yes," he muttered. "Hmm." He pushed himself away from the glass and turned back to the big, well lit living room, rubbing his hands nervously.