"No leads?"
"Oh, we've got one lead a great lead. The guy wore trainers, Peach thinks."
"He thinks?"
"Yeah." She nodded at his disappointment. "He's not sure what make, but he thought maybe they were cheap ones and suggested Hi-Tec'
"Hi-Tecs? Magic. As if we've never seen that on a witness statement before."
"Good, eh?" She scratched her chin. "I pushed him for all he could give me. He co-operated I believe him. I don't think there's more." She swivelled the chair, fired up her PC and began to type up the report for Kryotos to enter in HOLMES:
On the 14th July I was at home at number 30 Donegal Crescent. My son Rory and me were playing on the Play Station in the basement. We were supposed to be going down to Margate the next day for a long weekend. No one else was in the room. I believed at that time that my wife, Carmel Peach, was upstairs, but I hadn't seen or heard from her for some time, so at about 7.30 (p.m.) I came upstairs to see where my wife was. I had not heard anything suspicious and all the doors were locked, the windows closed.
I came into the hallway and turned to face the stairs at which point I believe I was hit from behind. Nothing was said
Caffery, standing over Souness as she typed, pointed at the screen. "Didn't he hear the window breaking in the kitchen?"
"Says not."
"So this guy just drops into their hallway? Like Santa Claus?"
"That's how it sounds."
He frowned. He put his hand on the monitor and leaned over to read the rest of the statement:
Nothing was said and from that point on I remember nothing until I woke up later with a headache and a sore throat. I do not know how long I had been unconscious. I was handcuffed to something and blindfolded and gagged. After a while I realized it was the radiators I was handcuffed to. I didn't know which room I was in, but I could hear my wife crying and it sounded as if she was in the landing which seemed to be above and behind me, so I guessed I was in the living room. And I recognized the carpet because it's new. I didn't know what time it was because it was dark, but when the sun came up I could see the light through the blindfold and I thought it was coming front the direction of the kitchen at the rear of the house. I stayed in this place for three days, during which time I did not see or hear my son, although I could hear my wife crying on and off. I do not know what happened to my son. I glimpsed the man once only under the bottom of the blindfold. I think he was very tall, even taller than I am maybe. I would say in his late twenties, maybe thirty, because he seemed strong and he must have been strong to have dragged me from the hallway into the living room. He was wearing a pair of dirty white trainers, I couldn't see the make, but they looked like old Hi-Tecs or something. He had very large feet. I heard him moving up and down the wall and at one time he stayed in the corner of the room, crouched down -I could tell that from the sound of his breathing like he was going to pounce, but he didn't. All I remember is that he sniffed a lot as if he was smelling something. It's the way my wife is sometimes she was always thinking she could smell something. On, I think, Monday morning I lost consciousness. Knowing my son I do not believe that he would have voluntarily left the house with anyone. I do not know the man who was in my house and there is no one that I know of who has any grudge against me or against my family.
"And that's it." Souness opened a new document and began the witness assessment attachment her observations of Peach's state of mind, intelligence, ability with the English language, his emotional state (poor: Peach had been clearly confused during the interview, becoming tearful and agitated, particularly when his son was mentioned).
"What about the photos? The camera?"
"No." She shook her head. " Carmel must have imagined it I asked him, he definitely doesn't remember photographs."
"He's sure."
"Oh, aye I double-checked."
"Shit." While Souness typed, Caffery went to his desk. He sat down and picked off the Post-It notes Kryotos had stuck to his monitor. Messages: Rebecca had called, a few journalists wanted an interview, Kryotos wanted him to know she'd received the Quest Search disk from Registry, and that she had made a call to Missing Persons. After a period of forty-eight hours the Horseferry Road coroner's office would receive any unidentified bodies found in the Metropolitan area, but Caffery knew the call was a token gesture futile: the whole of London was burning over Rory Peach he wouldn't have made it as far as Missing Persons without someone speaking to Shrivemoor. He stuck this last Post-It to his finger and stared at it blankly. Where was Rory Peach? And were there photographs of the whole event somewhere? A camera flash. The sound of a wind-on mechanism.
These weren't easy things to imagine. Had Carmel invented it? If not, and if Alek hadn't heard it in the living room, they must have been taken in the hallway. What the fuck do you want with photographs of the poor bastards' hallway?
He leaned back in his chair and sighed. He was out of ideas. "If we had just had some DNA we could start a screening locally."
Souness looked up. "Aye, and if we had a body we could get some DNA."
"So what's our next step?"
"Och, ye know the answer to that, Jack. More in-depth interviews with the Peaches, doctors allowing, get a victimology sketched out, widen the parameters, and uh…" She paused. "Drop the area around the park Before she could hold up her hand Caffery had sucked breath in between his teeth. "I know, I know ye don't like it '
"No, I don't like it I still think he's in there. How could someone have left that park carrying a struggling kid and no one see him?"
"Maybe the hairn was walking."
"No one saw him. Anyway, none of Rory's clothes are missing. He would have been naked."
"Maybe the intruder brought his own clothes."
"Rory was bleeding, he was probably in shock I just don't buy it."
"Well, he's not in the park now, is he?"
"No," Caffery admitted, ferreting under the desk for the holdall. He needed a drink. "Doesn't look that way." He held up a bottle of Scotch but Souness shook her head.
"Nah." She clicked, sending the report to the printer in the incident room, and stood, stretching, looking at her watch. "Nah, it's late. I need a kip."
She went into the incident room to distribute the statement in the team's pigeon-holes and for a few minutes Caffery was alone. He stood, holding the bottle, looking at his eyes reflected in the window, superimposed over the Croydon skyscrapers. What if Rebecca was right? What if people saw the naked teeth of a killer every time they looked at him?
"A little thing inside you that just keeps growing and growing and if you don't get away from this house, if you're stuck on a case that's pushing all your buttons, then bam! you'll do it again."
He half filled a mug with Scotch, knocked it back and stared at his face, green tie unknotted and hanging loose around his neck.
It might go as far as it did last time
She was wrong, he decided. She was making it up to get him away from the house. When Souness came back he turned and looked at her. "Danni?"
"Mmmm?"
"What do you think that was all about, before? You know, Peach giving me the old treatment about my eyes."
"Och Christ knows." She shrugged and bent over the workstation, closing down the computer for the night. "Ye know how they get he's probably got post-traumatic stress. Probably felt more comfortable talking to a woman, even an ugly old dyke like me." She straightened, pulled on her jacket, looked at him and smiled, clapping him on the back. "There's nothing wrong with your eyes, Jack, believe me. Ask any of the lassies in the team if there's anything wrong with your eyes and you'll get the answer." She coughed and straightened her back, running her palms down her lapels. "Except me, of course. I don't count."