All prisons in London insist on being informed about any helicopter that passes. It keeps them calm. India 99, seeing the familiar glass-roofed gym and octagonal emergency control room ahead on their right, got on to channel eight and identified themselves to HMP Brixton before they continued towards the park. It was a warm and breathless night; the low cloud cover trapped the orange city light, spreading it back down across the roofs so that the helicopter seemed to be flying through a glowing layer of heat, as if its belly and rotor blades had been dipped in hot, electric orange. Now they were over Acre Lane a long, spangled, untangled row of pearls. On they went, out over the hot, packed streets behind Brixton Water Lane, on and on, over a warren of houses and pubs, until suddenly, on a tremendous rush of air and aviation fuel flak flak flak FLAK they floated out into the clear darkness over Brockwell Park.
Someone in the dark cockpit whistled. "It's bigger than I thought."
The three men peered dubiously down at the vast expanse of black. This unlit stretch of wood and grass in the middle of the blazing city seemed to go on for ever as if they'd left London behind and were flying over an empty ocean. Ahead, in the distance, the lights of Tulse Hill marked the furthest borders of the park, twinkling in a tiny string on the horizon.
"Jesus." In the little dark cockpit, his face lit by the glow from the instrument panel, the air observer shifted uncomfortably. "How we going to do this?"
"We'll do it." The commander checked the radio frequency card in the plastic leg pocket of his flying suit, adjusted the headset and spoke above the rotor noise to Brixton divisional control. "Lima Delta from India nine nine."
"Good evening, India nine nine. We've got a helicopter over us is that you?"
"Roger. Request talk through with the search unit on this code twenty-five."
"Roger. Use MPS 6 go ahead, India nine nine."
The next voice the commander heard was DI Caffery's. "Hi there, nine nine. We can see you. Thanks for coming."
The air observer leaned over the thermal-imaging screen. It was a bad night for it the trapped heat was pushing the equipment to its limits, making everything on the screen the same uniform milky grey. Then he saw, in the top left-hand corner, a luminous white figure holding up its hand into the night. "OK, yes. I've got him."
"Yeah, hello there, ground units," the commander said into his mike. "You're more than welcome. We've got eyeball with you too."
The observer toggled the camera and now he could see them all, the ground units, glimmering forms strung out around the perimeter of the trees. It looked like almost forty officers down there. "Jeez, they've got it well contained."
"You've got it well contained," the commander told DI Caffery.
"I know. Nothing's getting in or out of here tonight. Not without us knowing."
"It's a large area and there's wildlife in there too, but we'll do our best."
"Thank you."
The tactical commander leaned into the front of the cockpit and held up his thumb. "OK, lads, let's do it."
The pilot put the Squirrel into a right-hand orbit above the southern quarter of the park. About half a mile to the west they could see the chalky smudge of the dried-out boating-lake, and from among the trees the basalt glitter of the four lakes. They took the park in zones, moving in concentric circles five hundred feet in the air. The air observer, hunched over his screen, steeled against the deafening roar of the rotors, could see no hotspots. He toggled the controls on his laptop. The ground crews had been easy, hot and moving and outside the trees, but tonight the thermal return was as poor as it got and anything could be hiding under that summer leaf canopy. The equipment was virtually blind. "We'll be lucky," he murmured to the commander, as they moved on through the rest of the park. "Peeing in the wind." Peeing, not pissing, careful what he said everything up here was recorded for evidence. "Peeing in the wind is what we're doing."
On the ground, next to the TSG's Sherpa van, Caffery stood with Souness and stared up at the helicopter lights. He was relying on the Air Unit to crack this -to find Rory Peach. It was an hour now since the alarm had been raised. It had been the Gujarati shopkeeper who had dialled 999.
Most of the Peaches' dole money went on Carmel 's Superkings by the weekend the money had run out and there was usually a tab to be settled at the corner shop. This weekend nobody had paid off the bill so on Monday evening the shopkeeper went down Donegal
Crescent to demand his money. It wasn't the first time, he'd told Caffery, and no, he wasn't afraid of Alek Peach, but he had taken the Alsatian with him anyway, and at 7.00 p.m. had rung the Peaches' doorbell.
No reply. He knocked loudly but still there was no reply. Reluctantly he continued into the park with the dog.
They walked along the back gardens of Donegal Crescent and were some distance into the park when the Alsatian turned suddenly and began to bark in the direction of the houses. The shopkeeper turned. He thought, although he wouldn't swear to it, he thought he saw something running there. Shadowy and wide-beamed. Moving rapidly away from the back of the Peaches' house. His first impression was that it was an animal, because of how furiously and nervously the Alsatian was barking, straining at the lead, but the shadow disappeared quickly into the woods. Curious now, he dragged the reluctant dog back to number thirty and peered through the letterbox.
This time he knew something was wrong. There was junk mail scattered on the hallway floor and a message, or part of a message, had been spray-painted in red on the staircase wall.
"Jack?" Souness said, over the roar of the helicopter above. "What're ye thinking?"
"That he has to be in there somewhere," he yelled, jabbing his finger at the park. "He's in there."
"How do you know he didn't come back out of the park?"
"No." He cupped his hand around his mouth and leaned into her. "If he did come out I can promise you someone's going to remember. All the park exits lead into main streets. The little boy's bleeding, probably terrified '
"WHAT?"
"HE'S NAKED AND BLEEDING. I THINK SOMEONE WOULD PICK UP THE PHONE FOR THAT, DON'T YOU? EVEN IN BRIX TON
He looked at the helicopter. He had other good reasons to think that Rory was in the park he knew the statistics on child abduction: most studies would predict that if Rory wasn't alive he would probably be found within five miles of the abduction site, less than fifty yards from a footpath. Other worldwide stats would tell a more chilling story: they'd predict that Rory wouldn't be killed immediately, that his kidnapper would probably keep him alive for anything up to twenty-four hours. They'd say that the motive in an abduction of a boy within Rory's age range would probably be sex. They'd say that the sex would probably be sadistic.
If Caffery had more than a passing knowledge of the habits and life cycle of the paedophile there was a simple reason: he could reach back twenty-seven years into his own past and find a mirror image of this in another disappearance. His own brother, Ewan the same age as Rory had been sucked out of the middle of a normal day. From the back of the family house. Rory could be Ewan all over again. Caffery knew he should say something about it to Souness, he should take her aside right now and tell her, "Maybe you should cut me out of this give it to DC Logan or someone because I don't know how I'm going to react."
"WHAT IF THEY DON'T FIND ANYTHING?" Souness yelled.
'don't worry, they'll find something." He lifted the radio to his mouth, lowering his voice and getting on to the helicopter commander's channel. "Nine nine, anything happening up there?"