When the WPC saw Caffery she half stood, "Sir," and sat down, nodding at the bed. On the bed, facing away from the door, wearing a large T-shirt with a 1998 World Cup motif on the back and a pair of white leggings, lay Carmel Peach, a raw-skinned woman with thin limbs and chapped red arms. In front of her rested a packet of Superkings, a lighter and a crystal ashtray. He couldn't see her face but he could see that both her wrists were bandaged: Carmel Peach, everyone knew, had tried hard to pull her own hands off in order to escape from the handcuffs and reach her son.
He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment. You've been here before, Jack, haven't you? He remembered standing uselessly in the doorway while his mother lay on the bed and cried her heart out for Ewan. And if she thinks about you at all it's only to wish that you'd piss off.
"You're the CID, aren't you?" She didn't turn to look at him.
"Yes. I'm with AMIT. Do you feel a bit better now?"
She stared resolutely at the curtains. "Have you -you know?"
"Mrs. Peach '
She lifted her hands briefly as if to stop him speaking, then subsided. "Just tell it me straight."
"I'm sorry." He looked around the room, shaking his head for the benefit of the WPC, glad Carmel couldn't see his face. "I'm sorry. There's no news yet."
She didn't respond at first. Her bare feet stiffened briefly, but that was all. Then, just as he was about to continue, she suddenly, violently, jackknifed her body on the bed and hammered fists into her stomach, groaning and writhing, rucking the cover into pleats. The WPC stepped forward. "It's all right, Carmel love, it's all right." She gently caught Carmel 's hands and stroked the backs of them with her thumbs. "There we go. There we go." Slowly she subsided. "There we go. We know you're upset, but you don't want to hurt yourself, too, do you, love?"
The WPC looked up at Caffery, who stood in the doorway, appalled, rooted to the spot. He should have stepped forward, should have grabbed Carmel's hands like that, but all he could do was remember stop thinking about it remember his mother biting her arms as the police searched Penderecki's house across the tracks, actually chewing her own arms to relieve what was inside. He realized he was as helpless now as he had been then to deal with female grief.
The WPC sat down and Carmel subsided. She seemed to be concentrating on her breathing. Then she took four deep breaths, wiped her forehead and shook her head. "And Alek? What about AlekV
"I he's he's still at King's. They're doing everything they can for him."
"But they can't save him."
"Look, Carmel, I would be failing in my duty if I didn't advise you to expect the worst."
"Oh, just shut up for fuck's sake, shut up, can't you?" She put her face in her hands. "Get the doctor back," she demanded. "Get him to give me something more. Look at me, for fuck's sake, I need something stronger than what he's given me."
"Mrs. Peach, I know it's difficult for you. But it's important that you tell us everything you can remember. As soon as I've taken an initial statement from you I'll get your GP back '
"No now! Get me something to make it stop."
" Carmel, the doctor's given you something and we're doing everything we can." He took a step inside the room, looking for somewhere to sit, finding a pink cane chair with a teddy on it. He put the bear on the floor, propped up against the skirting-board, and sat down, his elbows on his knees, leaning forward to look at Carmel. "I've got fifteen of my own men out there, another twenty uniformed officers and I don't know how many volunteers. We're taking it very seriously, putting everything we've got into it. When we've gone through what you can remember I'm going to have an officer come over and talk to you he's specially assigned to you, OK? He'll be available to you whenever you want."
"But I don't…" her body twisted with anguish '… I don't remember what happened." She dropped her face into her hands and began to sob softly. "Oh, God, my little boy's gone and I don't even remember what happened?
It was a long time since the Amateur Swimmers' Association had changed its code of conduct: in response to changing awareness of child abuse it now recommended that teachers minimized physical contact with children and taught lessons from the pool edge. Not all swimming-pools enforced the recommendations, and often the choice of whether to get in the water or not varied according to the teacher, but there was one teacher at the Brixton Recreation Centre who adhered rigidly to the recommendation. Relatively new to the pool, it hadn't escaped anyone's attention that Chris "Fish' Gummer always kept a distance from the children he taught. In fact, he sometimes appeared positively to dislike them.
"Almost as if he's nervous of them," the lifeguards would say to each other, watching him in his baggy red drawstring swimming-trunks, wearing his red bathing cap although he wouldn't get into the water (he insisted upon the cap, with its under-chin strap fastening, maybe because his hair was so thin that he looked bald from a distance). "You wonder why he puts himself through it."
They traded ideas for what Gummer reminded them of a penguin, a fish, a flying bomb. Most of the names fitted, but Fish was probably the best: his smooth body with its rather small, triangular head, the ovoid weightiness in his middle, his legs big above the knee, tapering at the ankle, and then, comically tacked on to those slender ankles, overlarge feet, which he held turned out at forty-five degrees. The fine hair on his chest and legs slicked down to nothing when wet. "You must've got webbed feet," people told him. But he didn't: he examined them and found that his toes, instead of being flat and spatulate, were rather long and slender. But, fish or not, he made an unlikely swimming teacher. For one thing he was older than the other teachers.
"Probably a per ve
"Nah, he'd never've got the job."
They had had it drilled into them this post is exempt from section 4 (2) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. As far as the recreation centre personnel officers were concerned no criminal offence expired. Ever. It didn't matter how many years ago it had happened.
"Unless he ain't got a record," one of the lifeguards muttered. "Because he never got caught."
"Or cos he changed his name."
"He couldn't change his name if he had a record, could he?"
"Couldn't he?" One of the older lifeguards cracked his knuckles and stared out at Gummer, who stood on the poolside waiting for two of the girls to pull on their Rollo swim-belts. "Why not?"
At that the lifeguards all fell silent and turned to look at Gummer. He seemed particularly harried today. It was the turn of the 'squids', the six and seven-year-olds, and the two girls seemed to be having problems getting into their belts.
But Gummer wasn't about to crouch down and help. "You're all a bit slow today, aren't you? What's going on?"
Behind him one or two of the children whispered something. He turned. "What? What's got into you all?" No one spoke. There were more parents than usual today in the viewing gallery, he'd noticed, and some members of the class were absent. "Something's going on," he said, turning back to the two girls. "Isn't anyone going to tell me?"
"Rory," the taller of the two said suddenly. She was a solemn girl from Trinidad, whose hair was beaded in rows, and she wore a pink Spice Girls swimsuit. Her toenails were painted the same colour. "It's cos of Rory."