Birdman

40

At Shrivemoor the investigating teams didn't care that the search — the last formality — wasn't complete. They sensed they were near the end. Maddox gave them a speech warning them not to relax, reminding them they still needed air-tight matching of samples, but he had to raise his voice to be heard. Kryotos had opened the blinds and the afternoon sun streamed into the room for the first time in days. The photos of the dead girls were turned to face the whiteboards and Betts and Essex slipped out to pick up beers while seats were pulled up to the windows, shoes kicked off, corkscrews retrieved from the bottom of desk drawers. Maddox shook his head, bemused. 'All right, but don't forget we're back to normal tomorrow.'

F team rinsed coffee cups, bringing them in for the beer. The indexers, seeing there was to be no more work today, pushed their chairs back from the desks and allowed Betts to slosh wine into paper cups. Caffery, just back from the mortuary, loosened his tie and opened a Pils while Essex, happy as a puppy, stripped off his shirt, knotted his tie around his naked neck, and found a spot where the late sun came into the room to recline with his feet on the desk. He swivelled round to look at F team, who had gathered at the top of the T-shaped desk, a beer can in front of each man. 'We'll get shot of you lot; on your shanks's back to Eltham.'

'At least you can go back to reading Woman's Realm without shame,' one said. 'Away from our 'orrible judgemental little eyes.'

'And back to wearing my favourite frock again,' Essex said wistfully. 'The peach one.'

'You'll be among people who understand you.'

'You'll feel more comfortable.'

'More confident.'

'Nicer to be with.'

'Nicer to look at—'

Caffery leaned back in his chair, staring off down the corridor. The door next to his office was open: F team's office, Diamond's headquarters. The corridor was dark; from the opened door a striped oblong of sun lay across the floor. From time to time a shadow muddied it. DI Diamond was in there, moving back and forward — packing his belongings to go back to Eltham.

The laughter continued. Essex had Kryotos on his lap — 'With the help of the lovely Marilyn I'm going to show you how to accessorize in this difficult day and age when we all understand the importance of thrift…'

Caffery stood, unnoticed. Unsnapping another can of Pils he quietly left the incident room.

DI Diamond was packing things into a yellow crate, occasionally brushing his hair back from his forehead where it flopped down free of the usual hair gel. From the little pots of cacti, the family photograph on the desk, Caffery realized that Diamond had expected to be here longer than two weeks. He stood silently in the doorway and watched as the DI blew the dust off the plants and unhooked the Michelin calendar from the wall. It was five minutes before he finished. He gave the desk a last wipe, emptied a pot of paper clips into the bin and straightened up.

'Yes?'

Caffery stepped inside. 'I brought you a beer.' He placed it on the desk and gestured at a photograph lying on the top of the folders in the crate, two small boys, smart in their blue school ties. 'They look like you. You must be proud.'

'Thanks.' Diamond gave him a long look with his powder-blue eyes. A faint sweat had broken out around his mouth and he wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He placed the photo face down, carefully pushed the beer back across the desk, turned away from Caffery and pulled Sellotape over the crate. 'But I don't drink on duty.'

When Susan woke he was gone. She was in a bedroom — he had tied her to the bed — groggy and disorientated, red and black, the pulse hard in her face and breasts. Her eyes had swollen so that the upper lids chafed against the lower lids, as if her eyelashes had been turned inside out.

He had gagged her with packing tape and taken Polaroids as he tortured her; showing them to her afterwards. Susan had cried when she saw the first one, she didn't recognize her poor swollen face, the bulging eyes. But after the first she remembered little. She began to slip in and out of consciousness.

Now the clock on the wall said 5.30, she'd been asleep — unconscious? — for eight hours. She knew she had the beginnings of a fever, and knew it meant the wounds were infected. She could smell them, and the top of her right nipple was yolky and swollen around the crusted black incision.

She lay still, listening carefully. The noise of a bird somewhere in the flat, not singing, but chirruping sickly. And outside the creak and whirr of — what was that? A crane? — the occasional thundering shudder of a tip-truck's load. Building work. She wasn't near Malpens Street, then. There was no building work in her area — So where? Where are you, Susan?

Something answered that she wasn't far from home. She was still in Greenwich or Lewisham.

She closed her eyes and tried to force her memory. Where was the nearest building site to Malpens Street? Where? But the effort exhausted her. She'd rest for a while. Then she was going to try to get to the window.

The party started to break up. Essex, wearing his shirt again, combed the desks for empty cans and Kryotos, who had picked up as many mugs as she could in both hands, hooking her fingers through the handles, was standing next to the printer watching a SPECRIM report arrive. Betts was taking the photos down from the walls.

Caffery had had trouble relaxing as instinctively as the others: his eyes were sore from the morgue formaldehyde, and he wanted the search complete, wanted the cement dust matched. He had spent most of the evening sitting at an opened window smoking thoughtfully, blowing the smoke upwards into the evening air. It was a few minutes past seven when Fiona Quinn's car pulled up in the street below.

Jack sat forward, pinching out the cigarette. Something was wrong. He could sense it in DS Quinn's tempo as she climbed out of the driver's seat.

He met them in the corridor. 'What's up?'

Logan dropped the yellow exhibits crate on the floor and ran a weary hand through his hair. 'Don't ask.'

In the incident room everyone looked up expectantly. When Maddox saw Quinn and Logan's expressions his face fell. 'Oh, for God's sake — don't tell me.'

'Sorry, sir. Some drugs paraphernalia — almost a third of a k of heroin — but for what we want the place was kosher.'

'Nothing organic,' Quinn said.

'Shit.' He put his fingers to his forehead. 'Back to the drawing board, then. Are we ever going to get shot of this?'

'Sir?' Everyone turned. Kryotos was standing next to the printer with a puzzled expression on her face. A baroque wave of feed paper — a SPECRIM — rose and curled into her hand.

'What?'

'We've got a casualty in Greenwich. Victim dumped in a wheelie bin. She's alive but—' She looked up. 'But the offender did a little amateur surgery on her.'