The Treatment

Seventeen.

(23 July)

He went to Shrivemoor. It was the only place to go. He was composed enough to put a suit in the car for the next day, to put the malt whisky into a carrier-bag on the back seat, and to pack most of Penderecki's stash away in the under-stairs cupboard. The video cassettes and the zip disks those he took with him.

The offices were empty. He switched on all the fluorescents, rinsed a mug in the kitchen, filled it with the malt, and went into the SIO's room, where he sat and watched the snake of car headlights down below.

Well, Jack, now look at your pretty little CV…

That was rape. Wasn't it? Everything had been a green light until No. He could turn it inside out, reinvent it, excuse it, but the hard fact remained it had been rape. He had hurt her, her mouth had been bleeding. Maybe it meant she was right, and maybe that was what she wanted, to prove that he was out of control. He sighed and put his head in his hands. There were so many games to play. So many obstacles.

Caffery sat at his desk into the early hours of the morning, facing out of the window, letting himself get drunk on Laphroaig and London tap water while outside the city folded down for the night.

Hal Church got up early and dressed in blue jersey shorts and a T-shirt. "You look like a tourist," he told the mirror. "A middle-aged tourist." He went round the house locking all the windows, set up a lamp on a security timer on the first landing and put his AA card on the dashboard of the Daewoo. He stopped for a moment in the garage, the smell of new paint and varnish overlaid with petrol, the sunlight a crack of white under the roll-up garage doors, the back seat piled with the polystyrene icebox and Josh's old Pokemons. Here he was, an adult, his own child to take on holiday, a wife. He had the sudden aching sense that his life was whistling past him, stirring the hair on his arms it was going so fast. Where did time go where did life go?

By eight the sun was hot in the back garden, the sky a still, absorbent blue, and Josh's paddling-pool had a thin scum of dead insects and grass floating on it. Hal turned it over to drain. "Come on, Smurf." He pulled the Labrador back by her collar, stopping her lapping the water from the grass. "Time for a walk, old girl."

When they got back Josh was in the kitchen eating Golden Grahams with a soup spoon. He was wearing his Obi-Wan Kenobi T-shirt, and Benedicte, dressed in a grey cord shirt of Hal's, capri pants and deck shoes, was opening a can of mandarins in syrup.

"Morning." He leaned over and kissed Josh on the head. His son grunted and went on eating. "Morning, darling." He kissed Benedicte's cheek. "Sleep well?"

"Yup." She plopped the segments into a glass bowl, hooked one up into her mouth, and shoved the bowl in front of Josh, who scowled at it. Hal hung up Smurf's lead on the back of the door and watched Benedicte out of the corner of his eye. She was upset about something, he could see he watched her take her coffee cup to the fridge, smell the milk, frown, hold it up to the light, tilt it one way then another, then dribble some in her coffee and turn to face him. "Hal."

Here it comes, he thought. "Yes?"

"Hal, did you let Smurf upstairs again?"

"What?"

Benedicte sighed. She wasn't in a good mood and there was so much to be done before they could leave, and when she'd gone into the bathroom that morning she'd found something that had upset her.

"She got up to the top floor and pissed on my laundry basket." Hal and Josh looked at each other, Josh stifling a giggle, and that annoyed her. "It's not funny, you know. You can clean it up if she pisses on the bed again."

"Hang on. She was locked down here when I got up this morning." Hal was serious now. "Josh? You didn't let her out last night, did you?"

"Uh." Josh clicked the spoon against his teeth, thinking about this. "No." He shook his head. "I never. She must of got there herself."

"And that," Benedicte put the milk back in the fridge and went to the sink to rinse her fingers under the tap, 'that is the smoking gun. Mr. Hal Church, you stand accused."

Hal stuck his tongue out at her. "Well, I didn't do it, Miss Smart A-R-S-E." He went into the hallway and took the keys from the telephone table.

"Where are you going?"

"To cancel the newspapers." He turned and stuck out his tongue again. "And get away from you, you big girl."

Benedicte thumbed her nose back at him. "See if I care."

Hal checked that Josh couldn't see and quickly dropped his trousers, giving her a glimpse of his buttocks, then straightened and slammed the door behind him. Benedicte snorted loudly through her nose and Josh looked up.

"What?"

"Nothing." She smiled to herself and put the cafetiere in the sink. You know how to get round me, Hal, you bastard. She banged around the kitchen a bit, emptying coffee grounds, putting ties on the cereal packs. Josh finished his mandarins and took Smurf into the family room to watch TV: Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Benedicte scooped a little water into her mouth from the tap her tongue was burred this morning, heavy in her mouth. Then she looked up at the clock and suddenly realized it was even later than she thought.

"Oh, fuckety-fuck." She pushed hair out of her eyes. "Only an hour. Josh, go and clean your teeth, tadpole." She closed the back door and locked it. Over the fence the trees bristled with noise, a breeze rustling through the leaves, hissing like rain. God, but she hated that park. She turned to put the plates away, moving quickly. "Josh, come on." He was still on the floor in the family room, black currant juice round his mouth, his usual cushion on his chest why does he need a cushion clutched to his chest just to concentrate on the TV? Watching Ren and Stimpy… Funny, I thought he was watching Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

I'm going mad, she thought, it must be the stress. The moment Hal got back they'd have to get moving. "O-o-oh, Ha-al," she said aloud, to the closed front door. "Hurry up. We're going to be late, Hal."

"We're going to be late, Hal," Josh imitated from the sofa.

"Yeah, very funny." She put her hand to her head. "Josh, I thought I told you to…" But she couldn't remember what she'd told him to do the colours on the TV were distracting her. They looked like they'd been blocked in by someone on PCP: the purples were the most saturated, like the juice of irises, the yellows the heartbreakingly pure yellow of pollen.

"The purple st purples," she murmured, leaning against the sink. "The blossom est blossom." Outside, in the glaring sun, the grass seemed to be swaying in slow motion. For a moment she thought she might be sick, and there was that awful thickness in her mouth again. And, now she thought about it, hadn't the coffee tasted odd? "Josh Come on, Ben, get yourself together "Josh, Mummy's going to lie down, OK? Tell Daddy when he comes in."

"Kay."

Maybe I'll just lie down here, on the floor, it looks soft enough.

She let a cup slide into the sink, the slow, silent explosion of brown over the stainless steel, and went into the toilet, banging her hip on the washbasin, holding out her hands to steady herself. The floor tiles seemed to lift up and melt into the wall and her mouth was so dry she had to scoop more water into it. What's the matter with you? Outside the bathroom something dark and huge scuttled across the hallway. She looked up.

"Smurf?"

No answer.

"Josh?"

But he wouldn't be able to hear. He was in the other room with the TV on. Instead of worrying she sat down on the floor, her head between her hands, wondering why her mouth was so furred. Something touched her shoulder.

Hal?

"I thought you said you wanted that room?"

Hal?

"Can't you go to the room?"

The room? What room? Why's he asking about a room?

"Come on." A bright light and now her armpits felt as if a vice had locked on to them. "Just leave me for a moment, Hal I'll be all right." The back of her shoulders was hurting, and her spine too, as if she was being bounced on a hard wooden floor. The light was blinding and when she tried to speak her voice seemed to come from a thousand miles away. "Hal?" She couldn't speak her tongue was so thick that it seemed to have blocked her mouth. "Whud uh She wanted to call to Josh but no sound came out and now she thought she could hear his pale, frightened sobs above the silly banging of her head. Bang bang bang. And her armpits were so sore.

"Don't let the troll get me, Mummy. Mummmeeee! Please!"

The troll? What?

Then something was hanging over her. A face. The eyes glassy and folded.

"NNNNOOOOOOOO!!" she heard herself yell, and in that instant she was awake, somewhere with no sound or light, sitting upright, her voice ringing off empty walls.

Souness had a guilty secret when it came to the press: sometimes she practised. At night Paulina would sit cross-legged on the kitchen table in her nightie, a cup of Horlicks in one hand, and yell out the questions: "Superintendent Souness She enjoyed the role. Sometimes she held the handle of a tennis racquet to Souness's mouth. "What do you say to people who feel that Brockwell Park should have been better searched?"

Souness, in her pyjamas, hands on hips, would obediently rehearse her answers. Paulina was a disciplinarian: "No! You need to show more emotion. Convince me you mean it."

"What? You'll be wanting tears next. I'm nae crying in front of eight million viewers I'm not a shagging Yank, you know…"

This morning the rehearsals had paid off: she'd put in a fine performance, no one knocked her off balance, and when she told the press she was optimistic about finding Rory's killer soon, she meant it. She almost felt like humming a tune as she came into the office at eleven. She was surprised, and a little pissed off, to find the SIO's room locked from the inside.

"Jack?"

She peered through the window and saw him in her seat, glasses on, his feet up on the desk, holding the remote control at the TV, which had been turned to face him. Caffery was very pale, his hair looked as if it hadn't been combed in weeks. Souness rapped at the window.

He looked up. Quickly he turned off the TV, took off his glasses and came to the door, unlocking it.

"Ye all right?"

"Yeah no sleep again."

"Aye, and ye stink of booze. What're ye watching?"

"Nothing. Daytime soap."

"Daytime soap." She unhooked her pager from her belt, threw it on the desk and opened the window. "Will you be a wee sweetheart and not tell the team that?"

"Sure, sure." He sat down at the desk and started popping Altoid mints into his mouth.

Souness felt a sudden pang of worry for him he looked utterly beaten. She bent over and ruffled his hair. "Sure you're still with us, Jack?"

"I'm sure."

"Anything to report?"

"Yeah got some prints…" He rubbed his eyes, moved his jaw around, loosening himself up, and handed her a folder.

"Prints Jesus." She took the folder and shook out the photos. "How come no one told me?"

"Relax, they're glove prints. The ninhydrin found them."

"Ninhydrin? Isn't that for latents?"

"Yeah, but he's got something on the tips of the gloves and the ninhydrin pulled up the amino acid in it so it could have been sweat or he could've got food on them, meat or something. We were lucky the unit were trying for the wallpaper but some of the aerosol got on the floor and that's where we got the print."

"If it was sweat '

"Sorry." He shook his head. "Already been there. First thing I said. No DNA. Course, they're trying -like they're trying with the semen."

"So you don't hold out much hope?"

"On prints and DNA? No." He stretched and rested his elbow on the desk, positioning himself between Souness and the VCR. "But we do know the make of gloves the pattern was hatched, crisscross."

"Marigold?"

"Exactly."

" Carmel Peach?"

"Doesn't wear rubber gloves. Except for cleaning the toilet upstairs. Never brings them downstairs and, anyway, she only buys Asda's own brand."

"So we know what to spin for if we find him."

"That's right."

The gloves responsible for the peculiar and distinctive cross-hatch pattern on the floor of the Peaches' kitchen had travelled a long way since they had been removed from the leaves in Brockwell Park then dumped by Roland Klare into a skip on the Railton Road. The skip had been picked up the following day just before the POLSA team had extended the search parameters and driven to a dump site in Gravesend, within sight of the river, where the rubber gloves lay under two blue plastic bags of building rubble, unremarkable and unnoticed, save by the rats.

Caffery was pleased when Souness went out for a coffee and he could be alone. He didn't want company he was still aching from the Scotch and he felt as if there was nothing but air and electricity between his ribcage and pelvis. He flipped the tape out of the video and locked it with the others in his filing cabinet. It had been blank, of course, like all the others. He knew he'd have to turn them in now. Penderecki's body had been removed from the house and Environmental Health had come in to clean up: Ewan's history was being wiped.

He sat down and dialled Rebecca's mobile. We need to talk, he thought, we can go through what happened, talk our way back to each other. But something stopped him. He lost his nerve and hung up before she could answer. He sat for a few moments, breathing slowly in and out, then picked up the phone again, changed his mind again, put the receiver back in the cradle and stood, angry with himself. He was supposed to be at work.

"Right." He went into the exhibits room to get the crime-scene photos of the Peaches' house, took them back to the SIO's room and sat for a long time staring at them. He placed them alongside the Half Moon Lane photographs, then got the photographs of the developed glove prints that Quinn had given him. The

Peaches' kitchen floor, the place the prints had been developed, was of cushioned linoleum. Ordinarily the unit wouldn't have used ninhydrin on this surface it was sheer fluke and luck that the chemical, sprayed from an aerosol, had drifted and developed a print in the last place they'd have looked. The lino was decorated with rose-covered trellises. Caffery stared at the grid those trellises made, trying to catch the tail of an idea, trying to remember what had bothered him when he'd looked at these photos, his mind locking and jerking and trying to circle back to Rebecca.

The light on the photographs faded and the room fell into shadow. He looked up. A cloud canopy had draped itself over Shrivemoor and before long rain was peppering the building. He turned: everyone in the incident room had stopped work and was staring up at the windows, awed by the weather's giant fist gripping the building. Kryotos was there, and Logan, sitting on their desks, clutching their mugs and gazing at the rain. Caffery took off his glasses, went to the doorway and nodded at Kryotos.

She put down her coffee and came over. "What's up?"

"Marilyn," he murmured, 'you got any aspirin?" "You look like you need it stay there." She went back to her desk and began rummaging in the drawers. An unnoticed window in the corner had been left open and the desk beneath was being sprinkled with the rain. He turned to go back into the SIO's room, scratching his neck with a ballpoint, when suddenly, as if someone had called his name from behind, he stopped. He turned slowly to stare at the opened window. When Kryotos found the aspirin and straightened up she saw that he had come back into the incident room and was standing in the corner, staring at the water-damaged paper.

"Ooops," she said, closing the window and looking through the papers. "Nothing serious no lives lost. Here." She held out the pain-killers.

He took them from her, then put his hand on her arm and led her into the SIO's room, sitting her down opposite him. "Marilyn."

"What?"

"How many cloudbursts do you think we've had this week?"

"God knows. About a hundred."

"When was the really bad one? The one with the thunder?"

"The day before yesterday, you mean?"

"No before that."

"Last weekend it rained all weekend. And Monday."

"Monday too. Yeah, I remember." It had been an almost tropical storm. Afterwards London smelt of the sea. "The day we found Rory."

"That's right. Why?"

"Oh…" He chucked the tablets into his mouth and swallowed, rubbing his forehead, not certain himself. "Oh, nothing. Nothing."

Caffery went to Donegal Crescent to speak to the Gujarati shopkeeper who had raised the alarm. He asked for tobacco, then showed his card, "Remember me?" and started to ask questions. He wanted to know what had made the dog start barking.

"I told you, the dog saw something running away. From the back of the house."

"But you were walking in the opposite direction and you were more than a hundred yards away. That's good hearing by anyone's standard."

The man blinked a couple of times then turned and fumbled for the tobacco and even from the back

Caffery could see he was trying to think what to say.

He tried again. "Maybe something made the dog turn round."

The shopkeeper turned back. He put the tobacco down and straightened the pile of Evening Standards on the counter, shaking his head. "You won't confuse me. You won't. I was walking away and the dog looked round."

"Why?"

"Maybe there was a noise."

"It must have been a loud noise. You were a good distance from the Peaches' house so it must have been louder than just the sound of someone running."

The shopkeeper nodded. "Something louder than that."

"Maybe it was glass breaking?"

"Maybe," he agreed. "Maybe something like that. I didn't hear it, but the dog did. And then he started barking. That's all."

"That…" Caffery found change in his pocket and paid for the tobacco. He might have smiled but the aspirin wasn't working yet. "That's what I thought." Now he knew what was bothering him.

Benedicte was in a room, the spare room on the first floor, her room she recognized the curtains and the scalloped light shade and the smell of new carpet. Her heart was pounding so hard it seemed to be throwing her brain around her skull.

"Hal?"

Is there someone in here?

"Hal?"

No answer. She tried to sit up but the room jolted to one side, moving in a rolling, maritime gait and she toppled forward on to her face, slamming her shoulder on the floor, grazing a sheet of skin from her cheek. For a moment she lay panting, her eyes rolling around in her head.

lHAA-A-L! Hal, for Christ's sake, Hal." There was blood on her tongue. "HAL!" She tried to crawl towards the door, and realized something was stopping her. She whipped round, her heart hammering, and saw that her ankle was attached to the radiator by a silvery cuff. Handcuffs? Someone's been in the house. It wasn't a dream. Someone's been in the house. That dark scuttling thing I saw And then, with a sick, sick rush she understood. Oh, God, a frantic thump in her stomach, the Peach family; the police detective No harm in being aware Josh screaming that there was a troll in the garden the Peach family and that means…

"Josh?" She jerked forward, clawing in the direction of the door, yanking at the handcuff. "JOSH! Oh, my God, Josh Hal!" She wrenched her foot, shaking it, tugging it, jamming her free foot into the skirting-board and pushing back. "Josh!" And then, when she couldn't move from the radiator, she lost all sense of logic and began to throw her weight against the floor, volleying off it, ramming her fists blindly into the floor. "JO-SHM'

In the silvery brand-new millennium, where everything was freshly stamped and newly named, and no one went to sleep safe in the knowledge they'd have the same job title by morning, AMIT, which had once been known as the murder team, was under new management: now part of the Serious Crime Operations Group, their chain of command was direct from the Deputy Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard and every week Souness went up to Victoria for a meeting with him "Prayers', she called it, for the reverent expressions the team leaders wore in the

DAC's presence. And every week she had a lot to gripe about when she got back to Shrivemoor. Today she arrived only a few minutes after Caffery got back from Donegal Crescent. She came in carrying a pile of dockets, her mobile phone and a McDonald's coffee balanced on top. She put it all down on the desk and was starting on her gripe when she noticed how Caffery was watching her tipped back in his chair, arms crossed, waiting for her to finish so he could speak. "Oh," she groaned, seeing his expression, 'what now?"

"Doing anything tonight?"

"Uh…" She pulled off her jacket and plugged in the mobile to charge. "Let me see, do you mean was I doing anything before I saw the look you've got on your face?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "Uh-huh."

"I was taking Paulina to the fair on Blackheath."

"Will you come over to Donegal Crescent with me? I don't want to screw up things at home for you, but I think it's important."

"Uh…" She looked at him sideways, thinking about this, clicking her tongue and scratching her head. After a while she sighed and hitched up her waistband. "See me ever the professional. Come on, then let me go for a quick slash and call Paulina, then I'll be with you."

Benedicte lay exhausted and shivering, unable to believe that she was still breathing in and out. Tears ran off her face, into her hair, she had flung herself so hard against the floor and the radiator that she'd cut her arm there was blood on the radiator, the walls, the carpet.

"Josh," she wept. "Hal?" Any number of awful eventualities she could brew up in a second Josh already dead, Josh wedged into the branches of a tree, Josh ambushed by that creature of his imagination: the troll. "Stop it," she muttered, dropping her hand over her eyes. "There is no such thing as a troll… Just get yourself together."

But how did he get in? Is the front door open? The front door must be open and Hal? What happened to you? But from the colour of the light beyond the curtain, the sulphured yellow of street-lamps, and the silence, Benedicte knew it was night. Although it had seemed like only a few moments of unconsciousness she had, in fact, been here all day. And if it was night, and if Hal still hadn't come to get her, she knew it was because he couldn't come to get her.

She wriggled on to her back and pushed her hand inside her capri pants, creeping them inside her knickers to feel herself. Normal. Not sticky or wet. She squeezed her inner thighs. No bruises, no pain. She touched the soft flesh around her armpits and found it was bruised. Aching. Someone had dragged her up here all the way up the stairs. Now she remembered her shoulders banging on the hard floor is that what he did to Carmel Peach?

"Hal?" She turned her face to the floor and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Hal? josh? Can you hear me?"

Silence.

She pressed her ear to the carpet, straining to hear a flicker of her child in the house below. The same way she had once held her breath and waited to feel his movement in her womb just a small movement would be enough.

"JOSH?"

Silence.

Oh, God nothing but silence. She wiped her eyes.

"Josh!" Her voice was hollow. She wailed like an abandoned child.

"JOSH? HAL?"

Caffery, pulling off the main road and into Donegal Crescent, suddenly braked. He unwound the window and looked up into the evening sky.

"What was that?"

"What was what}'

"Didn't you hear something?"

Souness opened the window and put out her head. It was almost dark but kids were still out with their bikes, playing under the street-lights. "What was it?"

He shook his head. "I dunno." He listened again. But now all he could hear was the thump-thump-thump of speed garage from an open window on the main road, the children with the bikes shouting to each other and the distant peep-peep-peep of crickets in the park.

Your imagination's on fire

"Jack?"

"No. I'm imagining things." He closed the window. "Nothing." He parked the old Jaguar next to a Lambeth Council dumpster, reached across Souness into the glove compartment, pulled out a flashlight and showed it to her. "In case the leccy's on a key."

"Aye, you should have been in the SAS, son."

The houses in Donegal Crescent were curiously somnolent curtains drawn, windows closed, as if even on this hot night the residents were trying to close out the truth, pretend the witness-appeal signs weren't lined up the road. Number thirty was different from the others. It wasn't the blue-and-white police tape, it wasn't the fact that there was a couple standing, arm in arm, looking at it like solemn tourists paying respect at a military grave. It was the simple, baid fact of what had happened here. The Property Services Department had cleaned up, put a new lock on the door the Met would try to claim the expenses from the Peaches' insurance if they had any -but the Peaches had not been back to the house, not even to pick up belongings, and now kids had graffitied the walls. On the left of the door, just above a purple hebe, two words were written in black spray: troll's house.

When Souness, standing on the doorstep, saw the words she began to stamp her feet as if they were cold.

"What's the matter?"

"Uh nothing." She rubbed her nose. "Really, I'm fine."

"You ready?"

"Of course. Of course I'm ready."

He broke the seal and used DS Quinn's padlock key. Neither of them spoke. The hallway was dark. To their left, in the living room, the dull glow of streetlights came through a gap in the curtains and lay in a faint stripe across the sofa. Caffery felt for the light switch, but it clicked up and down emptily. The light was dead and somewhere in the darkness ahead the key meter bleeped.

"Told you."

"Aye, you did."

He shone the torch into the hallway, playing the beam up the stairs and around the walls. This is where it happened. His neck prickled suddenly as if the air had moved and he had to resist the urge to shine the torch into the living room to check that they were alone in the house. The hallway was small, walls pale, decorated with two seascape prints, both knocked off centre. He was aware of his face momentarily reflected in the glass as he moved down the hallway to the kitchen, the torch playing in front of him.

The meter was next to the cooker. He pulled out the key, pushed it back in, and with a sudden whump and whir the house came alive. The fridge started, the light in the hallway came on and Souness appeared in the doorway blinking, disorientated, looking around this normal yellow-and-white kitchen with the toaster on the work top and the opened packet of Coco-Pops on the fridge. The SSCU's fingerprint dust was everywhere on the fridge, the door, the window frame; purplish puffs of ninhydrin on the wallpaper, silver nitrate on the cupboards. The scent of pine from the board on the window partly masked the smell of old blood. Souness and Caffery stood silently in the kitchen, their faces odd, embarrassed to be here, thinking of what the Peach family had gone through in this house.

Benedicte was shaking, exhausted from screaming, blinking at her cuffed foot in the navy canvas deck shoe. Now that she had stopped struggling, now that the room and the house were silent, she was aware of a new sound. A strained, rasping sound that she hadn't noticed in her panic. It was coming from the wardrobe…

Oh, Jesus, she shivered, what the…?

She crawled forward as far as the cuff would allow, then dropped on to her stomach and snaked her body forward, like a landed eel, moving in silence, just the hush and shush of the carpet against her trousers, until she could reach the bottom of the wardrobe door with her fingertips. She scrabbled at the door with her nails, straining forward until it swung open.

"Oh Something was propped inside the cupboard. One crabbed shape against the far wall. Benedicte recoiled, pushing herself back against the radiator. "Smurf?"

In the cupboard the dark thing moved a little.

"Smurf?"

The old Labrador struggled feebly to her feet, the air in her lungs whistling noisily, her claws tapping at the floor of the wardrobe. She came hobbling out, wheezing and whimpering, careful not to put weight on the right front paw. Benedicte saw instantly that the leg was swinging, like a pendulum, from a point above the knee. The Labrador limped across the room and dropped with a sigh into the curled crook of her body. Oh, my God, Smurf, what's he done to you? She raced her hands across the dog's coat, down the knobbly legs with their tired old tendons, the little horny dew claw at the back of the ankle, until she found the reflective glimmer of wet fur a soft, hot area. The bone must have cracked, pierced the skin, and retracted when she touched it Smurf whimpered and tried to pull away.

Broken. The bastard broke her leg.

Whoever had done this to an ancient animal like Smurf wouldn't be afraid of hurting Josh. "Oh, Smurf." She buried her face in the dear fur, the sweet doggy smell of leaves and forest mulch. "What's happening to us, Smurf, what's happening?" Smurf craned her head round, trying to lick the tears from Benedicte's face, and that small demonstration of faith, of dependency, gave her sudden courage.

"OK." Taking a deep breath, teeth chattering uncontrollably, she levered herself into a sitting position. "OK, Smurf. I'm going to get this fucker." She stroked the dog's head. "You see if I don't."

She jerked up her knee, tugging experimentally, wondering if she could pull hard enough to break the copper radiator pipe. But her ankle was already bloodied from pulling and shiny, like inflamed gums so she sat up in a crouch and inspected the handcuffs. Four delicate blind head screws tiny, hardly bigger than match heads. Decisive now, she straightened up and pulled off Hal's cord shirt. She undid her bra, held it to her mouth and nibbled at the fabric on the inside until the under wiring poked through and she could get a grip on it.

Strong enough to kill him, the shit. I don't care how big he is.

She drew out the slender curve of wire and used her teeth to strip the protective plastic ends away. Then, with the sharp end, she dug at the handcuff screws. But the wire buckled and mashed the screw heads. "Shit, shit, shit. Don't give up." She turned her attention to the radiator, pulled off the plastic knob and was exploring the copper pipe when Smurf, although she had been deaf for months, sat up abruptly and growled softly at the door. A low, shaky growl.

Benedicte froze crunched where she was in a runner's crouch, veins protruding on her hands. What the? Fear took a long, calm lick at her spine, and all her fine plans dissolved. Something was sniffing along the bottom of the door.