Caffery put his hands on either side of his plate and looked down for a moment. His black nail looked purplish against the yellow check tablecloth. "They never caught him."
"Nope. He never did it again. Stopped just like that. And I never saw him again. I called him the troll, cos he was so big and so fucking ugly, man. I told the other boys I mean the meat-rack boys and the name just got handed down, like a legend. Later the other kids, you know, the straight little kids from the estates, they used to talk about the troll in the woods, play these games and run around and scream and work themselves up and shit."
"We think we've got him."
Champ didn't stop chewing. He scooped some tiny pieces of clam on to a piece of bread and pushed it into his mouth. "I guessed that when you called. Who've you got?"
"I've got a photo. Do you think you'd remember him?"
"Yeah I'd remember him. Plain as day. Black hair he weren't a black guy, he was white but he had this black hair shiny' he held his hand up next to his head 'like mine. And he was huge I reckon about six and a half feet but he was young, you know. He can't have been more than sixteen."
"Sixteen? You told the police in his twenties."
"Well, yeah, I was only eleven he seemed really old. But I s'pose he can't have been all that much older than me."
Caffery didn't speak for a while. He sat with his mouth slightly open, staring blankly at the cups resting on the cappuccino machine, a clean white napkin spread across them. Champ continued to chew, watching him. After a while he sat forward and said: "Problem?"
Caffery closed his mouth and dropped his chin. "No, no. No problem." He pushed away his plate and felt under the table for his briefcase. "I'll show you the picture then, if you think you'll remember."
"I'll never forget him, the troll." He leaned over, looked at Peach's photograph and shook his head. "Nope. Not him."
"You sure?"
"Sure I'm sure." He put his fork down and patted his mouth with the napkin. "Right dessert?"
"What's this fucking mess you've made?" Tracey Lamb was furious. While she'd been at the police station Steven had tried to get out of the caravan he'd thrown himself around, putting a long crack in one of the acrylic windows and upsetting his slop bucket. Now he sat on the bunk bed rocking himself, his head in his hands. "I wasn't gone that long." She splashed around some Dettol from under the sink, then grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. "Was I eh, you little fuck? I wasn't gone that long." She shook his arm roughly. "So what the fuck's all this about?"
Traaaytheee His bottom lip stuck out. He looked as if he was going to cry.
"Oh, stop it, for fuck's sake." She shoved a cloth in his hand and pulled him down on to his knees. "There, wipe it up. Go on, clean it up, you filthy little shit."
He started to move the cloth across the floor and Tracey dropped down on the bunk lighting a cigarette, watching him. On the way back from the police station she had been turning the problem of Steven over and over in her mind. When she was arrested her first thought had been that Caffery had set her up, that she'd been wrong about him, that he wasn't bent, wasn't working for someone. But during the questioning, as she calmed down and thought it through, she started to wonder if maybe she was mistaken. She sensed that Caffery was just as cautious of the dirty squad as she was. When he came down yesterday he'd been as nervous as a horse he had spent half the time looking over his shoulder as if he knew someone might turn up at any minute. He was cacking it. And during the arrest that morning he hadn't wanted to show himself he had taken one look at the area cars and melted away into the trees before any of the officers saw him. He hadn't expected it because, she decided, because he is as bent as you thought. And afterwards, outside the nick. What was that in his top pocket if it wasn't the gelt?
Kelly Alvarez had promised to tell Tracey how the unit had tracked her down. Maybe Scotland Yard had already been on to her, and maybe loose-cannon Caffery had discovered she was about to be done and used the opportunity to get in a little ahead of the pack. Maybe he really did want Steven. She started to feel better. You might still be in for that three K, Trace. She decided to call him tomorrow straight after the Narey hearing and try to suss him out again. She chucked the cigarette in the sink. Whatever Caffery's true nature, she knew that the person on his hands and knees in front of her was far more important to him than that pervert in Brixton, with his insane photographs and hygiene obsessions.
The barracudas. Named after fish, but not real fish: real fish would die in the chlorinated water. "The water tastes funny because of the chlorine," Gummer would tell the new children. "And chlorine is there for a purpose see? And what does it do? It protects us. It protects us against germs and other nasty things that get into the water. Very important."
But the barracudas didn't need to be told about chlorine the barracudas knew far too much already. They were at that dangerous age. All the instructors were trained, not only in their own responsibilities towards the children but also to be on the look-out for any signs of abuse and Gummer knew that children in their swimsuits attracted more than their fair share of inappropriate interest. Once, a man had paid the spectator's fee to get into the building, gone into the gallery and had stood there blatantly taking photographs of the barracudas swimming around. Gummer didn't raise the alarm, instead he stood on the pool edge and waved his hands warningly until he'd scampered away. Gummer was relieved he didn't want the police coming and questioning him about the incident and making him start thinking about the wrong things. They'd see it in his face. Safer not to be questioned at all. So the mysterious cameraman had gone off with his cache of photographs scot free.
Photographs
Gummer, standing now on the pool edge in his T-shirt and bathing cap, was thinking about the photos he had in his flat a nine-year-old boy, beautiful, so beautiful. He had them displayed in a back bedroom, pasted on the walls. No one would ask questions about them there was no one to see them, no one ever came into his flat, nor would they ever. He let his mind wander off and tinker with the subject, and the first image he got was of Rory Peach. A boy, naked, arms crossed over his chest. Tied to a radiator. That bit, the bit about the radiator, hadn't actually been in the newspapers, but he knew it was reality. Then Gummer thought about another set of photos. Where were they? In someone's house? Maybe displayed somewhere? He wondered for the hundredth time if the police would find them…
"Look at me I'm a mermaid!"
Gummer stiffened. The barracudas, especially the girls, were always getting too close for comfort. If one of them brushed against him it made his flesh crawl.
"Can we do that thing now?" They were jumping up and down in the shallows, one or two climbing out of the water, pushing themselves on to their bellies on the pool edge and kicking their legs out. "Want to do that trick now."
"No, I don't think so."
"Yes!" In the pool a little girl spiked out her arms and legs into a star. "I stand like this and then you have to swim through my legs."
"No, we don't do that in this class." The children coming out of the pool were making him nervous, too many of them and too fast, like penguins flinging themselves at a rock. And when he got nervous his head got red all the way across the top to the bony bit at the base of his skull, and down his neck and into the tops of his arms. "I think we should all get back into the pool."