She was wearing a modern powder-blue skirt suit and looked like a piece of bright porcelain sitting on the desk, coolly smoking a cigarette, checking out Souness's work environment with her bland aquamarine eyes. It seemed to Caffery that every time someone mentioned the paedophile networks Paulina would glance up at him as if she knew how he had spent the night, as if she could sense what he was thinking. She had been the one to tell Souness about Caffery's connection with Penderecki, and he almost expected her to mention it now, to turn those unnerving eyes on him and say, "Maybe Mr. Caffery can help us here maybe he has contact with someone who could help."
Her focus on him seemed so acute that the moment the meeting broke up he made his excuses and went into the SIO's room, closing the door behind him.
The crows reminded Rebecca of a school of fish, the way they climbed up the air currents, twisting above the low roofs of Greenwich, turning to display their dark undersides and changing colour as one. She watched them from the table in her studio, a cup of coffee at her elbow, a cigarillo in the ashtray. She was cold.
This was the flat she had shared with Joni, until the attack. Until Joni's back had been broken by Malcolm Bliss and Rebecca had been… "Oh, God." She shuddered and picked up the cigarillo. She knew she should find a new place, get out of this flat, with the smells and memories, and the staircase leading up to Joni's room. But it was so easy just to go over to Jack's and let herself in: there was the sound of him showering in the morning, the smoky, urban smell of his suit when he came home in the evenings, sweat on his arms when he came back from his runs, his hard hot stomach against hers in the night. Yeah and his obsession, which is probably going to kill him.
She sat back in her chair and stared around her. The shutters were open flat white oblongs of light lay on the polished oak floors and along the right-hand wall her sculptures were lined up on a trestle table, ready to be taken to the gallery next month. Like little men, or little towers. Ridiculous. Jack's right they're ridiculous. On the left, stacked against the wall, her old paintings, the ones Jack liked, done before the attack. The artwork seemed to have come from two different places, two different mothers. On the left the old. On the right the new. And between them, poking out of the ceiling in the centre of the room, glinting slyly and scattering a secretive glitter on the walls, a butcher's hook.
Rebecca had got up on to a stool and screwed it into the plaster the morning after Jack turned on her in Tesco's. Of course it wouldn't take any weight -certainly not the weight of a body but she wanted it there: she thought it might help kick over the blank on her timeline. But so far it hadn't worked. So far the blank was still there an absence, a space a space with shape and weight and texture and it was directly here, under the hook, between the old paintings and the new. The attack. "How did you get from there to She clenched the cigarillo between her teeth and reached her arms up above her, trying to make a bridge, an electric charge to leap between the two. "From there to there." She tried to picture Malcolm Bliss she must have been in the room with him in that little bungalow… and Joni must have been there too but it felt like forcing a tired muscle, like trying to push her thoughts through a needle eye, and suddenly instead of Bliss she saw Dali's spindle-legged camels and the image of the bungalow slipped out of reach and she was left again with just the hook in the ceiling and nothing else.
Shit shit shit.
She pinched out the cigarillo and stood up. Her memory wouldn't make the jump here and now, so there was absolutely no reason to think it might when she and Jack were in bed. She was being ridiculous -ridiculous and childish. She ought to just toughen up. She pushed her hair off her face and tied it in a knot at the back of her neck. She was going to go over to Jack's tonight and they were going to start all over again.
Fourteen.
The 'barracudas' the ten-year-olds, just the age they started to be trouble were showing off. They made Fish Gummer uncomfortable.
"Can we do a trick now?"
"Yeah, let's do that trick thing."
"No, no." He checked the big clock at the far end of the steamy pool. "I think we're finished now it's gone half past."
"Yeah, let's do that." A muscular Nigerian girl in a lemon-yellow swimsuit was jumping up and down excitedly. "Let's do that thing where we swim through your legs."
"Absolutely not."
"The other teachers let us do it."
"I don't care."
"You get in the pool and we swim through your legs '
"Underwater '
"Yeah like mermaids '
"No, I don't think so."
Three of them slithered towards him at the edge of the pool, their wet, glowing little faces smiling up at him. "We hold our breath like this A head disappeared under the water.
"Yes yes yes!" a girl in pink squealed, throwing an exuberant backward roll in the water.
"No!" He was getting anxious. The remaining two had reached the pool edge and were giggling uncontrollably.
"That's it," giggled another. "We all hold our breath." She pinched her nose and disappeared into the water.
"And you put your legs open and we swim through them '
Now he saw a little hand come out of the water, groping for his ankle. "No!" He wrenched his foot away and fumbled for the whistle on the tape around his neck, a look of rigid fear on his face. "Just stop!" he said. "I said no. Absolutely no." The hand subsided and all the children flicked up their legs like dolphins and came to the surface, spluttering and shocked. They stared at him in stunned silence, getting their breath back, not knowing how to react.
Then, suddenly, at the back of the group, the Nigerian girl clamped her hand over her mouth and began to snicker. It spread quickly and soon they were all laughing. All of them looking at him and giggling. He wanted to turn and run into the changing room. Now they knew how to upset him, and he knew it wouldn't end here.
By the end of the day nothing was moving. The teams came back in dribs and drabs, dropping the completed Actions forms into Kryotos's tray. They'd give verbal reports at the day's meeting, but Caffery, sitting in the SIO's room watching them through the glass, already knew from their faces that no one had any new leads. He sighed and sat back, lighting another cigarette. His stomach was tight he hadn't eaten and the day had been long and exhausting and dry. Champ's nickname for his attacker had passed into the local folklore, but none of the children could give the police more than the myth, nothing concrete. Caffery had Brixton send the photographs of Champ Keoduangdy's bite over to King's, hoping Ndizeye, the forensic odontologist, could establish if the person who had bitten Champ at the boating-lake more than twelve years ago was the same person who had inflicted the mark on Rory Peach. Ndizeye had completed Rory's casts "An adult-sized arch and the incisors look smooth, so he's over twenty. Great clear casts. Teeth can be as individual as DNA, you know." But, no matter how individual the teeth were, Caffery knew that what they really needed was some DNA. And then at four thirty Kryotos came in with a smile on her face.
"Fiona Quinn on the line," she said, jabbing her finger at the phone. "The DNA's back."
He snatched up the phone and stood looking out of the window. "Fiona." He desperately needed to hear what she had to say. He wondered how his voice sounded. "How are you?"
"I'm OK, Jack, but I've got bad news. It's come back no profile."
"No profile?"
"No profile."
"Shit." He sat down again, deflated.
"But, Jack, at least eighty per cent of our samples come back this way, no or partial profile. It's really fragile, DNA."