Birdman

32

Only Logan and Essex stayed until 1 a.m. Maddox had to be at Greenwich and the other guests departed hurriedly, throwing Caffery embarrassed glances where he sat, on the stairs, gazing at his hands, breathing deeply, willing his heart to keep beating.

Veronica, surreally calm, tried to stop them leaving.

'It's nothing to get excited about. Don't go. We can always sit in the dining room.'

When she realized she was fighting a losing battle she slammed the front door closed and moodily retired to the kitchen to load the dishwasher. Logan drove to Shrivemoor for his grab bag, and Essex spent the thirty minutes administering to Caffery, doling out the remainder of the Glenmorangie in a series of short, digestible shots.

'Like a baby,' Caffery muttered, staring into the tumbler.

'Like a big, snotty, nappy-wearing baby,' Essex agreed. 'Well? Are you going to tell me?'

Caffery looked at the living room door, pulled closed so that he couldn't see the nightmarish splatter of bones on the floor. 'I think that might be my brother.'

Essex's face dropped. 'Your brother?'

'He walked down the railway track at the back of the house. September the fourteenth 1974. Never been seen again.'

And there, in the weak electric light, Caffery unburdened himself of the story, told Essex of the argument in the tree house that had given him the permanently blackened thumb, of Ewan slipping out of his reach, down onto the banks of the railway cutting — 'We called it ''the death trail''. What an irony' — of the way his mother sobbed and shouted in the back garden, biting her own arms as the police searched Penderecki's home only to emerge after ten hours with nothing, not one scrap of evidence that Ewan had ever set foot in there. Then the finger of suspicion turning to his own father, his being led away, detained for two days — 'My God, it nearly finished their marriage.'

The Glenmorangie dwindled in its bottle.

'Eventually everyone gave up, dropped it, I suppose they had to. But I couldn't. You see, I know he hid Ewan's body — just for the time they searched the house. Maybe he took it out to the countryside, there's some bits and pieces, bills, letters' — he jerked his head upstairs — 'clues I've salvaged over the years, keep trying to sort them out, sit down and get a lead from them. But I'm certain of one thing—' He swilled his drink and swallowed it whole. 'He's hung on to him. Penderecki's still got Ewan.'

'So you're waiting here. For him to return your brother?'

Caffery stared at his thumbnail, blinking painfully. 'Is that what he's done tonight? Do you think that's Ewan lying in there?'

Essex got slowly to his feet, wincing as the blood returned to his legs. 'I don't know, Jack. But we're going to find out.'

The summer storm moved south-west across Greenwich, the silver wand of the Crystal Palace transmitter trembling in the moonlight. Even the houses studding the edge of Blackheath seemed to crouch a little closer — as if they could stop the old heath rearing off in the wind.

Harteveld was silent — sitting at the mahogany table in the living room, a copy of The Times spread out in front of him, a bottle of pastis at his elbow. The pressure in the air made his temples ache — no matter how many painkillers he swallowed, how much coke he did, he couldn't get rid of the pain. And his hands. His hands were cold. Like ice. He was reading about the bodies they had found at the Millennium site. Kayleigh Hatch, Petra Spacek, Shellene Craw, Michelle Wilcox — and a girl they couldn't identify because she was so badly decomposed. He knew exactly who she was — the Glasgow street child whose death he had slept through. No-one had reported her missing.

Suddenly he swept the paper from the table, dropping his face into his hands. For several seconds he sat like this, rocking his head from side to side, raking his fingers into his scalp, as if he might be able to dislodge his thoughts with his nails. Then, trembling violently, he jerked to his feet. He grabbed the pastis and stumbled into the orangery, throwing the doors open. The wind boomed across the garden, hitting him in the face, rattling the window panes.

Toby Harteveld stood quite still, his face turned into the gale, listening to the long grasses in the parterre bowing and hissing like rain. The storm was coming. It was rushing out of the night sky towards him, moving faster than a comet, its target the very centre of his chest.