The Treatment

by Mo Hayder

  “Aye, this morning.” Souness was sitting with one foot up on the other knee, using a screwdriver to pick a stone out of the sole of her cowboy boot. Her sunburn had turned a little brown overnight, making her ordinary eyes a starry, periwinkle blue. “He's definitely not dying—and even if he was he decided he was going to go a lot faster if he couldn't get a Superking in his mouth. The consultant's got the right arse about it.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “At the Nersessians'.”

  The family liaison officer had called Souness from the house and told her about Alek Peach's tears: “Every inch of the sodding way from King's to Guernsey Grove.” He had ignored Mrs. Nersessian—standing with her arms wide open, a tragic look on her face—and had gone straight upstairs to where Carmel Peach was still lying on her side and had curled up on top of the coverlet, his arms around her. There they lay for an hour, neither speaking, chain-smoking together as if the cigarettes were the glue in their marriage. And by the way, the officer, who had just consumed almost a pound of baklava and four Armenian demitasses, wanted to know, what was it that Mrs. Nersessian owed the Peaches? If all she wanted was a captive audience for her vineleaf mezzas, wasn't she taking the Good Samaritan thing a little far?

  Caffery listened to Souness in silence. He hadn't slept last night. Rebecca had lain next to him with her eyes closed, but he didn't believe she had slept either. He knew that she was seeing a ghostly image of herself—like a kite, a body distorted and reangled. Dangling from a ceiling. He'd picked a scab off all the things she didn't want to talk about and she'd reacted as if he'd punched her in the face. He rubbed his eyes. “Danni.”

  “Mmmm?”

  “I'm going to take the dog team into the park, just for a while.”

  “Eh?” She looked up. “What're ye talking about? We've finished in there.”

  “The human-remains dogs this time. We're not going to find him alive, are we?” He scratched the back of his neck. “I mean, not now.”

  “I'll ignore that, Jack. I don't want to hear ye talk like that again.”

  “I still want to go.”

  She looked at him for a long time. “When you get a bone between your teeth, Jack …” Shaking her head, she went back to the stone. She freed it, chucked it in the bin and brushed off her hands. “Go on, do what you like. Just make sure ye don't tell any of the hacks what those dogs are. I'll not have that in the papers.”

  In the incident room Marilyn Kryotos had arrived and had taken off her shoes as was her usual habit before the team arrived at the office. She was talking on the phone and Caffery paused for a moment on the other side of the desk, drawing a question mark in the air. She finished the call and straightened, hands pressed in the small of her back. “Intelligence unit at Dulwich.”

  “Well?”

  “This.” She handed him the notes she had made. The search word “troll” had dragged up an old outstanding case. A violent sexual assault on a thirteen-year-old Laotian boy, Champaluang Keoduangdy, in the dried-out boating lake of Brockwell Park. “I'll try and track him down today, but in the meantime there's a DI at Brixton who was there in the eighties and might remember something.”

  “No one done for it?”

  “Nope—and it's before the nonce register.”

  “Set up an appointment, will you, with the victim and with the DI.”

  In Brockwell Park the sun edged in increments up the sky behind that great Druid tor, Arkaig Tower: its shadow raced down the park to collect at its feet. Two dog handlers in blue shirts were climbing into forensic overalls next to the unit van. Caffery could see, on the passenger seat of the van, two SIRCHIE-brand antiputrefaction masks. The dogs in the back were not the same ones that had been there for the last two days. These were human-remains dogs.

  “You do know if we find him the dogs might, uh, destroy some evidence, don't you?” The sergeant was embarrassed. “We can't always stop them, they're hungry.” There were pork trotters in a Dewhurst carrier bag—three days overripe—for the dogs to blunt their hunger on if they were unable to find dead Rory Peach.

  “Yes.” Caffery rubbed his nose and looked across the trees. It was still there—that draw he felt to the park. He just couldn't give up on it yet. “Yes, I know.” They started near the van, pounding the earth with heavy metal probes. This was a familiar ritual to the dogs—the noise told them why they were here. It opened the glands in their mouths and they moved in excited circles, blood-boltered, dripping saliva into the earth. Caffery's hope rose a little as the dogs pushed noses into the holes made by the probes, crawled under bushes, and sniffed around the soft black edges of the lakes. But it is not only a helicopter's thermalimaging equipment that is hampered by hot weather: heat decreases a dog's sensitivity too, and an hour into the search they had found nothing. The officers were sweating in their forensic overalls, but Caffery didn't call a halt. He was watching Texas, the larger of the two German shepherds. From time to time the dog lifted his head, distracted, and turned in a small, fidgety circle.

  “Come on, boy.” The handler jerked the dog back to his task. “Over here.” But in the dog's odd lapses Caffery sensed something. Every square inch of the park had been searched—there had to be an angle he was missing: a light was being shone dead into his eyes and still he couldn't see it.

  You're the one who thinks that he knows, thinks he has a special tap into the mind of the killer, and yet you can't see what happened here.

  “What's a troll, Danni?”

  “A troll? A troll's just an old queer who likes gorgeous young meat. A tree jumper.”

  He thought about Rebecca the other night, squatting in the tree like a leprechaun. Zeus was a baby in a tree. He thought about the little boy in the Clock Tower Grove Estate pretending to climb a drainpipe. And then suddenly he had it. He was right—Rory was still in the park. And he thought he knew where.

  At twelve-thirty P.M. Hal Church came home for lunch from his furniture-design studio in Coldharbour Lane. He was a largish man—with his sleeves rolled up, sandy hair receding from a tanned forehead, he looked far more the broad-shouldered artisan than the designer.

  Benedicte was in the kitchen unpacking Tesco's bags and Hal placed his hands on her hips, kissed the back of her neck then gently inched her sideways so that he could reach a bag of pretzels in the cupboard. Around their feet Josh jumped like a small cricket from bag to bag, opening it, pushing his nose in it.

  “Mum, where's the Sunny Delight?”

  “Sunny Delight.” Hal put a hand to his forehead. “Oh, for pete's sake. An orange kid. I'm going to have an orange kid.”

  “Da-aad!” Josh spun round on his heel, his hands over his face. “Don't mess wid my head.”

  “Hey, wassup, orange kid.”

  Josh giggled and came back at his father. “You come diss me and you is in some serious trouble, man.”

  “Josh,” from the bag Ben pulled a ball of mozzarella, moving in its whey, and placed it on the worktop, ready for the pizza she was going to make, “will you stop talking like that? It's not funny.”

  Josh dropped his head and made a face at his father.

  “Josh. Come here.” Hal bent over until his head was close to his son's. “You's pretty fly for a white boy,” he whispered.

  “Word!” Josh gave his father the Brixton salute. “Boyacasha.”

  “For heaven's sake, you two, just can it.” Benedicte poked Hal in the belly. “Go on, let him have some juice, his knuckles've been scraping the ground all afternoon.”

  “Why don't you just get him a packet of Rothman's while you're at it. Josh? You will tell us when you want to go into detox, won't you, son?”

  “Hey, Dad.” Josh put the Sunny Delight on the kitchen top and stood on tiptoe to get a glass. “Mummy had to call the filth.”

  “The police, Josh, not the filth. Where do you pick these things up?”

  “The police?” Hal looked at Ben, concerned. “How come?”

  “We had to get the
filth.” Josh put the glass on the counter and used his teeth to open the bottle. “Because of someone tried to steal Smurf.”

  “What?”

  “I'll tell you in a minute,” Benedicte murmured, sliding her eyes meaningfully in their son's direction. “Josh, not your teeth, please. You never know when you might need your teeth.” She took it from him and used her own teeth to tear off the plastic strip. “Now take your drink through, OK, peanut? If you're good we'll fill up the paddling pool and get Tracey Island out.”

  “Ye-es!” Josh saluted, excited, and zoomed into the other room, almost spilling his drink as he went. “Virgil Tracey to control, launching Thunderbird Four pod now!” He threw himself at the sofa. “F-A-B!”

  When he was settled in the family room within earshot but absorbed with the TV, Hal opened the pretzels, found a bottle of Hoegarden and turned back to Benedicte. He worked with linseed oil and maple and the oils had colored his palms so that his heart line was deeply, permanently ingrained. As faithful as a donkey, his family was everything to him: any real or perceived threat to them he felt like gunfire. “Well? What happened?”

  “God, it was really creepy.” She put the kettle on and pushed the hair out of her eyes, keeping them on Josh to make sure he wasn't listening. The Simpsons was starting and she could see him sitting on the sofa with his knees up, clutching the glass of orange juice to his mouth, eyes pinned on the screen. “Outside the ruddy camping shop on Brixton Hill, of all places. First thing this morning. I tied her outside because she was whining about being left in the car and I'm standing at the counter buying an icebox for Cornwall and I turn round and—” she waved her hand in the air “—and there's this bloke. Molesting her.”

  “Molesting her?” Hal chucked a handful of pretzels into his mouth. “What do you mean, molesting?”

  She put a finger to her mouth. “Sexually,” she hissed. “He put his hand between her legs.”

  “What?”

  “I know. I told you—creepy. He had her tail in one hand, held up like this—sort of like you'd hold up a … um, I don't know, like you'd hold up a cow's tail. You know, like the vets do. And he was bent over and staring, as if he was trying to, God, it's so disgusting, but like he was trying to smell her, or just sort of see up her, you know. So I—well, I shouted, and everyone in the shop's staring at me, but I thought, Well, I'm not going to let him get away with that.”

  “Who was he?” “He was a, uh, white guy, tall—he'd been in the shop behind me when I was buying all the stuff for Cornwall. I noticed him 'cause he had a hood on, and he was standing in the corner like he didn't want to be seen or something. I thought he was staring at me then, but he went out and I forgot about it and the next I know he's got Smurf's tail up in the air—”

  “Bastard—”

  “—and, anyway, I thought, I'm not going to let him get away with that so I ran out of the shop and I'm shouting and screaming like some total nutter.” Benedicte opened the fridge and rummaged for the milk. “But he went down Acre Lane and I'd let go of Josh so I had to go back and—”

  “Jesus—”

  “—and I called the police and told them. I mean, poor Smurf, deaf as a post and there she was having her pounani looked at like some common tramp.”

  “You're laughing.”

  “I'm not laughing. I called the police. Like we haven't seen enough of the police in the last few days. I had to call them, not that there's anything they can do.” She stopped. She was frowning into the fridge.

  “And?”

  “Oh, for heaven's sake, look at this!” She slammed the fridge closed and turned toward the family room. “Josh!”

  “What's he done?”

  “He's been moving stuff around again. Josh!”

  He looked up innocently. “Wha'?”

  “Come here!”

  “I've never heard anything so screwy.” Hal tipped more pretzels into his mouth. “Looking up Smurf's bum.”

  Obediently Josh dropped off the sofa and came over into the kitchen. Benedicte frowned at him. “Have you been moving everything around in here?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Ye-es.”

  “If you put the milk on the wire bits it tips over, I've told you.” She looked inside the fridge again. “Well, if you haven't been doing it then I don't know who has. The fridge goblins, I suppose.” She took the milk out and held it up to the light. “Oh, for God's sake.”

  “Eugh!” Hal made a face. “That is disgusting. I can smell it from here.”

  “God.” She looked faint. “It smells like piss.”

  “Here—let me.” He took it from her and, holding it at arm's length, went to the sink. Shaking his head he turned on the waste disposal, rinsed the bottle, put it in the bin then shook a handful of drain-cleaner crystals in and let the tap run until the disposal unit was clear. “Gurgh! When did you get it?”

  “It's not past its sell-by date.”

  “Maybe the fridge is buggered.” Hal opened it and looked dubiously at the dial. “I'll get on to it when we get back from Cornwall.”

  In the park Caffery took the young sergeant to one side.

  “This is going to sound like a stupid question.”

  “Try me.”

  “Is there any way of getting the dogs to search up?”

  “Up?”

  He nodded up into the trees. “In the branches.”

  “Sure.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah—well.” The PC rubbed his face, reddening slightly. “You know how it goes, aircrafts, y'know, come down, don't they? Sometimes, um, things get caught in trees.” He looked upward. “But why?”

  “I dunno.” Caffery turned to check that no one was listening. If he was wrong he didn't want to have to explain. “Look, it's just an idea. There's no harm, is there?”

  “OK.” The PC went to the van and found a light, galvanized steel stick, about the size of a walking stick with a green plastic handle. “Texas?” The shepherd's head snapped up and he watched with small quizzical eyes as the handler tapped the trunk of a chestnut. He tapped up in the branches and the dog understood. His head jerked forward and he trotted after the officer, tail lowered, nose pointing straight up into the leaves. Caffery followed a few yards behind.

  They circled the park. It was 1 P.M. when the dog stopped in front of a huge hornbeam dripping with caterpillars. He reared up on his hind legs, placed his paws against the tree trunk, and there he stayed.

  He was at the exact spot where Roland Klare had recovered the Pentax camera and pink gloves three days ago.

  9

  CAFFERY, THE EXHIBITS OFFICER and DS Fiona Quinn had a brief plan-of-action meeting with the pathologist, Harsha Krishnamurthi, in the coroner's office reception. Over dusty silk flower displays on Formica tables they discussed how to cut up Rory Peach. Afterward Caffery went into the men's and splashed water across his face.

  When he had looked into the branches and seen how Rory had been tied his impulse had been to drive back to Brockley, walk straight into Penderecki's house, take him by his thinning hair, slam his face into a wall and kick him. Kick him until he stopped moving. The eight-year-old had been curled into a ball, fastened with rope, knees up to his chin, arms covering his head—from above he would have resembled something the size and shape of a car tire. His fingernails had carved demilunes into his own cheek. If Rory had been any bigger they might have seen him ear-lier—if he'd been ten or eleven and not eight, maybe, Caffery thought, and then he thought that twenty-eight years ago no one had checked the trees along the railway track. No one had wondered about the trees. Even today he was stumbling over new ways Penderecki could have concealed Ewan during the police search of his house.

  He wiped his face with a paper towel and went through, past the anteroom where bodies were stored in banks of lockers, ID tags slotted into holders on the doors, pink for a girl and blue for a boy—we are color-coded by our sex, he thought, not only at birth but in
death too—and into the dissecting room. It was cool in here, as if it were winter. Mint-green tiles lined the walls, like an old-fashioned swimming pool, and there it was—that familiar butcher's smell of old, mopped-around blood. Hoses lay under the tables, releasing small puddles of water onto the tiled floor. Two bodies, names written in black marker on each calf, had been pushed to one end of the room to make space, their belongings and toe tags sitting on a separate gurney in yellow hospital waste bags. The bodies were split open, a heap of colors, blue paper towels crammed in the neck cavities, and a mortician in a green plastic apron and black Wellingtons stood over one, lifting out a pile of intestines. He shook them, as if he were shaking washing coming from a tub.

  Rory Peach, once a boy who played football and stuck go-faster stripes on his bike, was now a circle wrapped in a white plastic sheet on the table in the center of the tiled room. Around him stood three morticians arranged in an odd tableau. They didn't look up when Caffery appeared in the doorway. Morticians are a strange, silent group. Sometimes secretive, often cliquey, always down to earth: the real muscle behind the pathologist, they do most of the hard labor in an autopsy without raising an eyebrow. Caffery had never seen them behave the way they did that summer afternoon. It took him a moment, after they had broken off and gone in separate directions, collecting bowls, turning on hoses, to realize that he had just witnessed them paying respect. Oh, God, he thought, this isn't going to be easy.

  Harsha Krishnamurthi came in. Tall, graying. All business. Fiddling with the headset of his hands-free Dictaphone, he got it into position then briskly pulled away Rory Peach's sheet. Everyone in the mortuary stiffened slightly, as if they'd drawn a collective breath.

  He was crunched into a croissant shape, almost like a sleeping cat, his hands wrapped over his head. He looked as if he were examining something on his chest. Brown parcel tape had been wrapped around his head, covering his mouth and eyes. He didn't have an odor, as if his flesh was too clean and young to smell, and his skin was smooth as if he'd just got out of a bath. Krishnamurthi cleared his throat, asked Caffery if this was the same body found in the tree in Brockwell Park. Caffery nodded: “It is.” The formalities were over.