By the end of the day they had found Shellene's prints on a tumbler, a bone-handled fork and a bottle of Malibu pulled from the back of the drinks cabinet in the living room. Two aubergine-coloured hairs were caught in the drain trap of the ground-floor cloakroom and Logan found syringes in a lacquer box, and small amounts of heroin and cocaine in two antique blue-glass and silver ink bottles. Everything was painstakingly sealed in evidence bags.
'But I'm still worried,' Fiona Quinn admitted at the evening's meeting. 'I was expecting organic evidence of the mutilations. I don't think I've got it from today's search.'
Nor had she found suture material, the surgeon's scalpel that Krishnamurthi believed had been used in the mutilations or the Wright's Coal Tar soap.
'He should have made more mess. There would have been leakage when he opened them: blood, putrid matter. We should have some trace evidence, at least in the drain traps. FSS have pulled plenty from his car, from the boot, and I think that's our key — I think he took them somewhere else. Maybe to kill them, but possibly after he killed them. It'll be where he's keeping the cage birds.'
'Schloss-Lawson & Walker,' Caffery said. 'Family solicitors. They're drawing up a list of his other properties and I'm with Quinn: we find anything else, we search it.'
'Yes,' Quinn murmured. 'And when we find it, I think we'll find Jackson.'
No-one spoke for a moment. Essex's first task tomorrow was to call Clover Jackson — ask her to come in tomorrow and look at Polaroids of the articles recovered from Harteveld's bathroom. See if the lime-green skirt was the same one her daughter had been wearing the night she disappeared.
'OK,' Maddox sighed. 'Marilyn, actions to be generated in the morning re Harteveld's other residences. I want Jackson before this weather gets working on her.'
After the meeting Caffery, exhausted, took his tie off and called Rebecca.
'I was on my way to the park,' she said. 'I want to paint the naval college.'
'Can I meet you there?'
'Oh, sure. Half an hour? Hey — are you OK?'
'Yes. Why?'
'Oh.' She was quiet for a moment. 'You don't sound OK.'
'Well I am. I'm fine. Honestly.'
When Essex heard this he started jumping. 'You randy little fucker, you. You kept that quiet. Get her to put a word in with Joni for us, eh? Tell her how sensitive I am or some shit.'
Caffery locked his tie in the desk drawer, splashed water on his face in the washroom, put the mobile in his pocket and drove to Greenwich. The late sun was turning the Royal Observatory's ancient windows gold when he arrived at the park. With Harteveld dead he should feel relief. Instead he was uneasy, his nerves pared and ready as if his body was preparing itself for more hurdles. You're just tired, Jack, he told himself. Get a night's sleep, the world'll look better tomorrow.
She was sitting on the grass in front of Flamsteed's onion dome, a block of watercolour paper on her raised knees, one paintbrush between her teeth as she mixed paint with another. Caffery stopped, enjoying the luxury of watching her unseen. The sun lit the curve of her cheek, he almost believed he could see each fine hair gold on her skin. In the short tartan skirt she seemed shockingly vulnerable. Like an encouragement on this spread of emerald grass.
She put the brush down, wiped her hands on a small piece of rag, and, as if she had known he was there all along, looked up, squinting slightly, a slim brown hand shading her eyes from the low sun.
'Hello.' She had no make-up on, and he could see the beginnings of a laugh line on the right of her mouth. 'Hello, Jack.'
'You know my name.'
'Yes.' She looked down, hair dropping to hide her expression. 'Look, I've got Burgundy.' Opening a rucksack she held a bottle and a corkscrew out to him. 'And this. A whole bag of fresh nectarines. I hope you weren't looking forward to a McDonald's.'
'This means we're having a drink together.'
'So?'
He shrugged, pulled his jacket off, sat on the grass and took the bottle from her. 'I'm not the one who's worried.'
'Anyway, it was you who wanted to see me.'
'True.'
'Why, then? What do you want?'
The truth? I'd like to—
He stopped himself. Began pulling the foil from the bottle. 'We've got him. It was Toby Harteveld. We released it to the press an hour ago.'
'Oh.' Rebecca dropped the rucksack and looked at him. 'Toby.'
'Something else.'
'What?'
'He's dead. You'll see it on the TV, I wanted you to know now. He jumped from London Bridge this morning at ten o'clock.'
'I see.' She let her breath out slowly and stared out at the ocean floor of London spread out below them: upstream, London Bridge put its shipwrecked elbows up out of the blue mist and downstream, shimmering near the smog-streaked horizon, the Millennium Dome, like a cleaned bone against the blue. Beyond that the aggregate yard… 'It's over, then.'
'I suppose so.'
Rebecca was silent for a long time. Eventually, as if she had decided to shake it off, she took two glasses from the rucksack and placed them next to him on the grass. She looked at him and smiled. 'We've got something in common. You and me.'
'Good.' Caffery lifted the arms of the corkscrew. 'What?'
'Fingernails.' She looked at her hands. 'Ever since this thing began I haven't been able to touch anything without my nails crumbling. It's as if that's where the stress comes out.' She paused. 'What's your excuse?'
He smiled, holding up his bruised thumb. 'This?'
'Yes?'
'Oh — you really want to know?'
'Of course.'
'Well, let's see. We had a tree house. That's the first thing.'
'A tree house?'
'Almost all gone now. Maybe one day I'll show you where it was.'
'I'd like that.'
'My brother, Ewan, pushed me. I was eight. The black should have grown out, but it hasn't. Doctors are baffled. I'm a medical marvel.'
'I hope you killed him for it.'
'Who?'
'Your brother.'
'No — I—' He paused. 'No. I forgave him. I suppose.'
He fell silent and Rebecca frowned. 'What've I said—'
'Nothing, nothing.' He uncorked the bottle and poured wine into her glass.
'I'm sorry, I didn't mean — I'm sort of tactless sometimes.'
'Don't!' He held his hand up. 'Really, don't, Rebecca. Just — don't — worry.'
They stared at each other, Rebecca puzzled, Caffery stuck with a confident, lying smile stitched on his face. In his jacket pocket the mobile found the embarrassed gap in their conversation and rang loudly, making them both jump.
'God.' He put the bottle down, reached over, caught the sleeve between his middle and forefinger and dragged the jacket bumping across the grass. 'Talk about timing. I'm sorry.'
'Don't be.' She sank back on her haunches, half grateful to be off the hook. He answered the phone.
'I've done it.' She sounded very faint.
'Veronica?'
'I've done it.'
Caffery glanced at Rebecca and turned away, cupping his hand around the mouthpiece. 'Veronica, where are you?'
'I've done it. I've finally done it.'
'Don't talk in riddles.'
Silence.
'Veronica?'
'You bastard.' She caught her breath as if she was crying. 'You deserved it.'
'Look—'
But she had hung up.
Caffery sighed, placed the phone between his feet and looked up at Rebecca. She was drawing lines in the grass with the butt of a brush, not looking at him.
'Who was that?' she asked eventually.
'A woman.'
'Oh. Veronica? Is that her name?'
'Yes.'
'What did she want?'
'Attention.'
'Well' — she dropped her chin into her hand and looked up at him — 'are you going to give it to her?'
'No.'
Rebecca nodded. 'I see.'
She doesn't believe you, Jack.
He fumbled for a cigarette, and suddenly, from behind the red roofs of the observatory, a flock of squabbling starlings rose into the air. Caffery paused and stared at them, inexplicably shocked.
'Birds.'
Rebecca tipped her head back to look and the late sunlight slipped across her face. 'Ah.' She smiled. 'Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generations tread thee down.' The starlings pivoted on the air, paused for a shivering moment, then plunged towards the ground, filling the air with wings. Rebecca drew her shoulders up. 'Oh.'
The birds swivelled again and were gone as suddenly as they had appeared, deep into the air over the hill. A feather see-sawed through the air and landed at Jack's feet.
'I thought they were going to attack us!' Rebecca laughed, straightening her hair, giggling at her nervousness. Then she saw his face and stopped. 'What is it?'
'I don't know.' He shook his head. He'd seen the birds close, seen mottled irises and it had made his innards twitch. He thought about Veronica, about the pile of bones, her tight, unhealthy smile when Penderecki stepped into the room, almost as if she'd planned it. Suddenly he tamped out the cigarette and stood. 'I'd better go.'
'So you are going to give her attention.'
'Yes.' He rolled his sleeves down. 'I suppose I am.'
Veronica's red Tigra was parked outside the house. Smug. As if it had a right to be there. It was dark now, and over the roofs, on Penderecki's side of the railway cutting, a thin column of smoke rose. The house was in darkness. Caffery let himself in, cautious, prepared for the worst.
'Veronica?' He stood on the doormat, nervous in his own home. 'VERONICA?'
Silence. He switched the hall light on and stood blinking. Everything was as he had left it, the hall carpet slightly rucked, the bag of dry cleaning he'd forgotten that morning still slouched against the skirting. Through the open door of the kitchen he could make out the outline of his morning coffee cup on the table. He closed the door, hung his jacket on the banister and went into the kitchen.
'Veronica?' It was airless in here. On the windowsill one of her plants, a bougainvillaea, had flowered an obscene red during the day, and now it seemed to him that it was leaching the very oxygen from the house with its fat fleshy leaves. Hastily he opened the window, let the smoky tang of night air into the kitchen and took a quick welcome swig of Glenmorangie straight from the bottle.
The living room was undisturbed, Veronica's precious glasses in their tea chests still waiting to be collected. He opened the French windows and went back into the hall. It was in the dining room that he found the first evidence of her presence. The room had been cleaned thoroughly, obsessively, the scent of lavender furniture polish was still heavy in the air.
He stood in the doorway for a long time before he noticed, propped on the mantelpiece, a black-edged card, the type used for funeral services. The message was simple.
Fuck you, Jack.
Love Veronica
'Thank you, Veronica.' He put the card in his pocket, opened the bay windows and went back into the hallway. The only noise was the grandfather clock ticking, and the lazy mechanic buzz of a dying fly. Upstairs, then. She must be upstairs.
'I'm here, Veronica.' He stopped halfway to the landing, looking up at the closed bedroom doors. 'Veronica.' Silence. He mounted the last few steps and paused, his hand on the bedroom door.
He was suddenly overwhelmingly tired. If she had overdosed and was lying on his bed he would spend another sleepless night. Casualty. Stomach pumps. Psychiatric evaluation. Her granite-grey family sitting silently, letting him know he was responsible without saying a word.
Or he could, he could — the thought made him shiver — simply turn around and walk out of the door. Call Rebecca, apologize for leaving, meet her for a drink, spend the night trying to coax her into bed while Veronica silently slipped over the edge, alone.
He stood, pulse racing, while the possibility exhausted itself. Then took a long, deep breath and slowly, very slowly, opened the bedroom door.
'Shit.'
She'd made the bed and dusted in here too. But there were no startling death images, no arterial spray on the wall, no empty pill bottles. No Veronica.
He quickly checked the cupboards. Everything was as it should be, towels folded neatly in candy-striped piles, bedside clock ticking quietly. Ewan's bedroom, then. He went back onto the landing and found the door to Ewan's room open. Veronica stood a pace inside, staring at him.
'Veronica.'
They regarded each other for a moment, pulses pounding. She was wearing a white silk blouse and white linen slacks. A scarf printed with tiny gold buckles was secured at the neck by a diamond pin. Her face was white and controlled. There was nothing about her to suggest she had tried to harm herself.
'Why are you in my house?'
'I came to collect Mummy's glasses. Is that allowed?'
'Take them and get out.'
'Civility.' She sucked in a breath through her teeth and arched her eyebrows. 'Know that word, Jack? Civility.'
'I'm not here to argue—' He stopped. He had focused further into the rest of the room, the empty shelves, the box files on the floor — open, every one cracked wide, emptied.
For a moment he stood, taking this in, silent and unmoving, only the congested thudding of his heart for company — Shit, she knows exactly where to push me — then stepped forward, ignoring her standing calmly next to him, and crouched amongst the debris, his hands shaking. As he picked through the files — lifting them, upturning and shaking, running trembling fingers through their white spaces — he knew he would find little. He knew how thoroughly a coiled heart like Veronica's does its work.
'Well?' he said eventually, sitting back on his heels, breathing hard. 'Well? What've you done? Where've you put it all?'
She shrugged as if his interest surprised her and turned casually to look at the window. Reluctantly he followed her eyes. Beyond the pale, lifting curtains phlegmy tendrils of smoke drifted across the moon.
'Shit,' he sighed. 'Shit, yes, of course, I should have guessed.' He got wearily to his feet and crossed the room, placing cold fingers lightly on the window frame. And there, just as he had expected, on the other side of the cutting, lit black and red by drifting embers, stood Penderecki, holding up the incinerator hood to throw in another handful, whistling to himself and smiling as if he'd been waiting and watching for Jack to come.
'Oh, Veronica.' He rested his hot forehead against the pane and expelled a long breath. 'You should have ripped my heart out instead.'
'Oh come on, Jack, don't overreact.'
'You bitch,' he murmured. 'You little bitch.'
'What? What did you call me?'
'Bitch.' Caffery turned calmly to her. 'I called you a fucking bitch.'
'You're crazy.' She looked at him in disbelief. 'You know, sometimes you make me hope that pervert did kill your brother. And slowly too.' Her face twisted. 'Because you deserve it, Jack. You deserve it for the way you're killing me. You're killing me—' But Caffery had grabbed her roughly by the arm. Her cuff buttons exploded across the room. 'Jack!'
He dragged her to the door, crunching and scattering the empty files underfoot. 'Jack!' She kicked at him. 'Let go of me — Jack!'
'Shut up.' Anger made him strong and composed. He wrenched her down the stairs — enjoying her powerlessness, enjoying the futile spitting and struggling, the manicured nails ripping on the banisters. At the foot of the stairs he stopped and held her at arm's length, regarding her calmly.
'Christ.' She wrenched her arm from him and took a step back, massaging her elbow, her eyes wide, hair dishevelled. A vein had burst in the white of her left eye, but her face was dry. He saw he had scared her. 'Don't touch me again, OK? Don't—'
'Just shut up and listen—'
'Please — Daddy'll take it very seriously if you come near me—'
'I said shut the fuck up and listen!' He pushed his face close to hers. 'Now, I'm telling you once: if you ever come near me again I will kill you. I mean it — I will fucking KILL you. Is that clear?'
'Jack — please—'
He shook her violently. 'I said is that clear?'
'YES, yes!' Suddenly she started sobbing. 'Now g-get your hands off me, OK? Just get your fucking hands off me.'
'Out of my house.' He released her, his mouth curled in disgust, wrenching the front door open. 'Go on. Get out of my house, now.'
'OK, OK.' She hurried down the steps muttering under her breath, glancing over her shoulder to make sure he wasn't following. 'I'm going, OK?'
Caffery went into the living room, picked up the tea chest and carried it back to the front door. Veronica stood on the garden path shakily stabbing out a number on her mobile phone. When the door opened she stepped back in momentary fear. Then she saw what he was holding and her face changed.
'Oh, no,' she wailed. 'They cost a fortune.'
But he passed her — out into the street, launching the tea chest into the air. It pinwheeled gracefully, spurting lead crystal glasses and green tissue, bounced once on the bonnet of the Tigra, splintered the windscreen and came to a shattering halt in the centre of the road.
'I mean it, Veronica,' he murmured in her ear as he passed her on his way back up the path. 'I will kill you.' He slammed the front door, bolted it and went into the kitchen to find the Glenmorangie.