The Treatment

Twenty-five.

Caffery got back to Shrivemoor just after 6 p.m. and as he parked he saw Kryotos, dressed in a cream jacket, climbing into her husband's car. He crossed the road. "Anything happened?" he asked, both hands on the roof, looking up the road to check that no cars were coming in this lane. " Logan back?"

"Been and gone, photocopied some Actions and left them in your pigeon-hole nothing doing."

"Shit." He bent down, looked into the car and nodded at Kryotos's husband. "Pardon my language."

"No problem."

"There're some messages for you," Kryotos said, putting on her seat-belt and eyeing Caffery cautiously. He had that run-ragged look about his eyes again. "That dentist, he called, wants to talk to you, and someone called Gummer, oh and West End Central have found Champ Keodua-wotsit for you, if you still want to see him."

"Peach?"

"No change." She nodded up at the incident-room windows where the sunlight bounced off the silver anti-blast film. "Danni's still up there."

"Shit."

"I know. She's not in the best mood."

"OK." He straightened up and knocked on the car roof. "Right, thanks, Marilyn. See you tomorrow."

The incident room was empty and Danni was in the SIO's room filling in her duty sheets for the month. Next to her was an open bottle of Glenfiddich an oiler courtesy of a Sunday tabloid journalist doing an article on geographical profiling: Caffery and Souness had talked her through the Rossmo/Barwell stuff and she'd squeezed three articles out of it.

"Danni?"

She looked up. "Oh," she muttered. "You." She went back to her work.

He stood awkwardly in the doorway, watching her, not certain whether to leave or stay. When she seemed determined not to speak to him he sat down at his desk, hands folded on his stomach, and stared out of the window in silence. Before long Souness caved in.

"Right." She signed off the form, threw her pen on the desk and sat back in her chair. "Spit it out."

"OK…" He put his hands flat on the desk and looked out of the window for a moment, thinking how to approach this. "I He turned to her. "Look about this morning."

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

She pursed her mouth, looking at him suspiciously with her narrow, blue eyes.

"It was out of all proportion," he continued. "I'm finding this case, y'know, not great, for the reasons you know all about and I suppose I haven't been sleeping." He shrugged. "Just means I'm sorry."

Her mouth remained in its sour little bud knot. "I see." She picked up the pen and tapped it on the desk, up-ending it, tapping, staring at the desk. She seemed about to say something, then changed her mind and rubbed her head. She stretched her arms in the air and looked out of the window. "Oh, fuck," she muttered. "I suppose I'll have to forgive ye."

"Oh," he sighed, 'well thanks, you know, thanks for the build-up."

"That's OK." She put her finger in her ear and jiggled it ferociously, looking sideways at him. "I don't think I could get my head that far up my own arse." Could ye not have come up wi' something a wee bit better than that?"

"Next time, I'll try."

"You do that," she said, swivelling her chair round to face him, her hands clasped on her stomach. "Anyway have ye seen this?" She shook her belly up and down. "See that? I'm losing weight." She looked up at him, her face serious. "And didn't you say something about owing me dinner?"

"Did I?"

"Yes, you did if you were wrong about Gordon Wardell being all over the newspapers you'd buy me dinner."

"Was I wrong?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm your boss."

"I was right, then."

"Maybe."

"In the end I had to forgive ye, Jack, I've got no transport today Paulina took the Beemer." They didn't discuss where to go. They just got into the Jaguar and drove to Brixton as if it was the most natural place on earth, as if they were being drawn by the imprisoned river Effra along its route. On its fringes, where the mystifying eye-dust of nightclub and art house hadn't permeated, Brixton was still dangerous and lonely. Here, shrivelled men in mud-stained track suits and straw hats, tinsel flowers on the brims, rolled their eyes at the stars and the lamp-posts and mouthed madness to the moon. Here street-lights had been taken out by BB guns from the estates, and the only illumination was cold cubes of ultraviolet in the shops, installed to stop addicts cranking up in the doorways by making their own arm veins invisible. In central Brixton the real nightlife hadn't woken up yet it was too early: the Bug bar, the Fridge, Mass were all silent. It wouldn't be until midnight that central Brixton turned into little Ibiza traffic jams at midnight and Balearic beat bunnies standing up through car sunroofs waving at the world. Still, as they parked on Coldharbour Lane, Caffery was glad of the comparative light and warmth.

He stopped at a cash point "Just for forty quid or so."

"I'd get more than that if I were you. I'm nae a cheap date, y'know." Souness stood with her hands in her pockets, her back to him, and tried to outstare the beggar with the baby who sat under the cash point Caffery checked his balance. That figure he'd given Tracey Lamb hadn't come out of nowhere he'd had good reason: he knew how far the bank would extend his overdraft at short notice. Three thousand pounds. What could three grand buy you? No matter how many times he reminded himself she's a liar, she's a washed-up old con his hopeful heart, his pathetically hopeful heart, kept up the pestering: what if what if what if…

"Right." He pocketed the money, checked around to make sure no one was watching, and nodded towards Coldharbour Lane. "Dinner, then?"

The Windrush population, who had once laid claim to these few streets, had largely been pushed out of central Brixton and into the narrow capillaries around. There were few true black pubs left few places one could walk into on a Saturday afternoon and see young men playing dominoes, screaming, slapping their thighs, flipping open their mobiles to relay twists in the game to absent friends. Most of Coldharbour Lane catered to the new population, and Caffery and Souness chose a place near the square, the Satay Bar, with its mirrors and bird-of-paradise flowers in towering glass vases. They ordered Malay kebabs with rice cubes and two Singha beers, and sat at a tiny table next to the window. Souness sat comfortably, her jacket unbuttoned, her pager resting on the table between them.

"I like it here." She leaned forward a little and peered out of the window. "This road is so fucking trendy that if you sit still long enough, in your wee cave, once in a while a bit of A-list totty breaks cover. Saw Caprice out there once, I'm sure it was her, wearing these…" she sucked breath in through closed teeth and chopped her hands at the top of her thighs '… these red shorts, right up to here, and who's that one with the big tits? She gets fat like me now and then. You know. Big mouth."

"Dunno."

Souness smiled wryly and picked up a kebab. "First sign of depression that."

"What?"

"Losing interest in sex."

"I haven't lost interest in sex."

"Oh, aye," she pointed at him with the kebab, 'the day you die'll be the day you lose interest in sex, Jack Caffery."

"I'm just…" He unrolled his knife and fork and pulled his plate towards him. He looked at the food for a minute, then leaned forward, elbows on either side of the plate. "You've been in the force, Danni, what? Fifteen, sixteen years?"

"And the rest I know I've the face of a wee angel, but my thirty's only nine years away."

"So remember back to when you joined. Do you remember what was in your head?"

"Oh, aye. I was excited. Came straight out the moment I got into Hendon I came out. But," she said, emphasizing the word with a little jab of the kebab, "I never used it, Jack. Even when the world changed and I could've used it, I never did." She put the food in her mouth, chewed. "Of course, that doesn't mean I never kissed a little ass. No. Nor kissed a little pussy neither."

"And you still love it?"

"Kissing pussy?"

He smiled. "The force."

"Aye. I still love it. Every minute of it."

"And you never feel you got in for the wrong reason?"

"No." She forked rice cubes into her mouth and looked around the restaurant, chewing hard, focusing her eyes on a point somewhere above his head. "But, then, nothing happened to me like what happened to you when you were a wain."

At that Caffery cleared his throat and sat back a little, looking down at his food. He knew Souness was waiting for him to pick up the baton. Suddenly he wasn't very hungry. "You know, don't you…" he looked up at her '… you know I only joined the force because I had some fucked-up idea I was going to find Ew He paused. "Find my brother."

"Aye, it doesn't take a genius to see that."

He sat forward. "But, Danni, I can't disentangle it. I get a case like Rory Peach and suddenly I'm ten years old again, fists up and wanting to take them all on wanting to bare-knuckle fight."

"So ye get angry from time to time. What of it?"

"What of it?" He pulled out his tobacco and quickly rolled a cigarette. "What of it? Well," he said, holding a lighter to the cigarette, 'well, one day it's going to go too far, I can see it. One day someone's going to push me and I'll do something I can't go back on." He dragged on the cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs, head back, eyes closed. Then he let out the smoke and rested the cigarette in the ashtray. "It's all about perspective that's what they'd call it, isn't it, perspective? Look at what I did at the hospital look at the way I laid into you, trying to batter it into you that there's someone '

"Ah, wait," Souness said. "I know what you're going to say."

"Do you?"

"Yes." She dipped the meat in peanut sauce and ripped a piece off the skewer with her teeth. "Aye, and I've been thinking about it too. You think there's still someone out there. Another family."

"Yes. I told you, I'm a dog with a bone." "s OK, Jack," she said, chewing hard. "I've spoken to the gov about it I can give you two of the outside team. Do whatever you want with them just bring them back with a smile on their faces. OK?"

He stared at her. "You're feeding me."

"No. No, I'm not. I think ye might just have a point. Now instead of sitting there with your mouth open like an eejit say thank you."

He shook his head. "OK," he said. "OK thanks, Danni thanks."

"It's nothing. Now, put that out," she jabbed the skewer at his cigarette, 'and just get on with your food. You look like a proper meal would kill you at the moment."

He stubbed out the cigarette, but when he pulled his plate towards him he found he still couldn't concentrate on the food. "What went on in that house, Danni?" he said after a while. "What the fuck went on in there?"

She used a fork to push the rest of the meat off the skewer into the sauce. "It's simple. Rory Peach got raped. By his father. It happens, you know."

"Then what was going on in that family?"

"I don't know." She forked some beef into her mouth and chewed. "I often wonder what it'd be like to rape. It's one of those things women wonder about not to be raped, but to be the one who rapes. Not very PC for an old dyke, is it?" She took a swig of Singha and wiped her mouth. "I had a conversation once with this rapist, and you know what he said? He said and I can remember every word, because it was then that I knew that whatever I did, however much I strapped my chest down and cut my hair, I'd never really understand what it feels like to be a guy he said," she sat forward and looked Jack in the eye, 'he said: "It's like your heart is sticking out, it's like you're biting down so hard on leather that your jaw cracks, it's like the hard-on to end all hard-ons, it's like having your soul dragged out through your dick." Souness sat back, stabbing her fork into the meat. "Pretty loony tunes, eh?" She stopped. Caffery had stood up. "Hey, where ye going?"

"Do you want another drink?"

"Yeah." She was bewildered. "Yeah, go on then, another beer." She put the food into her mouth and chewed as she watched him go to the bar, wondering what she'd said. Something was definitely a bit tangled in Caffery there was no doubt about it. Sometimes he had the eyes of a lion on a lead. When he got back with the drinks he was quiet.

"Jack what is it? Come on, talk to me."

"I think I'll call Rebecca."

"Aye, Rebecca. How is she?"

"She's fine."

"Good. Well, send her my love, then." She leaned over and took his plate. "You're not wanting this, are ye?"

"No go ahead."

She scraped what he hadn't eaten on to her plate, and started to fork her way through it. The meal finished early and Caffery found he didn't need the extra money he'd got from the cash point

On the phone Rebecca's voice was indistinct. "Jack -where am I – I mean, God," she took a breath, "I'm sorry, I mean where are you?"

"Are you all right?"

"I'm – I dunno drunk, I think. I think I'm lost, Jack."

"Where are you?"

"At the y'know, at the gallery."

"The same one I got you from before?"

"I think so."

"I'm only over the road. Wait for me."

The Satay Bar was only a hundred yards from the Air Gallery. He went inside, his tired eyes smarting in the smoke, and wove through the bar, past hanging aluminium panels, cast resin columns, tungsten pinpricks of lights, not meeting the cool, otherworldly gazes of all the modern faces in the semi-darkness. When he eventually found Rebecca, on the first floor, he stood for a moment and stared, as if he was seeing into another world.

A fully lit glass cabinet displayed models of pathology specimens in coloured fluid. In front of it, on matching chairs, sat four girls with pale East European faces and geometric haircuts. They wore intent expressions and were leaning forward listening to the man who sat on the red plastic sofa opposite them. He was tall and stricken-looking in a black polo neck and Caffery recognized him as a journalist from a late-night Channel 4 show.

"Like Michelangelo's blocked windows in the Medici library these are vaginas that go nowhere," he was saying, biting with precision on the ends of his words. "They invert the natural order of a phallo-centric society; they create the organic, the organ like, where a male-obsessed perspective thinks there should be a space. They are saying, "Look! Look at the tribal ness look at the vagina-ness do not ignore it!"

Rebecca sat next to him as he talked about her work. She was folded into the crease of the sofa, dressed in a T-shirt and a dragonfly-blue skirt. Her chin was down on her chest, her hands were loosely wrapped around an open bottle of absinthe resting on her bare knees and, although no one seemed to have noticed, she was fast asleep.

"Becky." Caffery put himself between the small audience and the sofa and held a hand out to her. "C'mon, Becky."

The journalist stopped talking and turned to look at him: "Yes?" He pressed a hand on his chest and lowered his chin. "Did you want to ask something?"

Caffery bent down to see Rebecca's face. "Rebecca?" She didn't stir. She'd had her hair cut since he'd last seen her. It stood in wild tufts around her little smudged face. Two clumps of black eyeliner had collected in the corners of her eyes and she looked like nothing so much as a casualty at a teenagers' drinking party. A little drunken pixie. "Becky come on." He took her hand, peeling the fingers from the bottle, and she stirred a little.

"Uh?" She looked up and her eyes zigzagged across his face. "Jack?" Her breath was sour.

"Come on." He took the bottle from her hands and put it on the table. "Let's go." He draped her hand over his shoulder, and bent down to put his arm round her waist.

"She going?" the journalist asked mildly.

"Yes."

He shrugged and turned back to the women. "Now, Cornelius Kolig, for example, might take a different approach to the issue of sexual abuse…"

The women uncrossed and crossed their legs with the absolute symmetry of a dance troupe and leaned forward, ignoring Rebecca, eyes fixed on the journalist, ready to suck up his words.

"You bunch of pricks," she said suddenly, pushing herself away from Caffery. "Can't you see it's all bollocks?" She plucked the bottle of absinthe from the table and waved it around wildly. The liquid moved like melted emeralds in the lights, sloshing out on to the floor, and the girls looked up in surprise. "It's all a huge joke don't you get it? The joke is on you." She stopped for a moment, swaying slightly as if she was surprised to find herself standing up. "You you She took a step back and almost lost her balance, putting out her hand to steady herself. "Oh She stopped suddenly, breathing hard, looking helplessly around her. "Jack?"

"Yeah, come on."

"I want to go…" She slumped slightly and began to cry. "I want to go home."

He managed to get her out of the club without attracting attention. Outside, when the night air hit her, she reacted slowly, raising dead-weight hands to rub her arms but she allowed him to bundle her into the passenger seat of the Jaguar and fasten the seat-belt across her. "I want to go home."

"I know." He propped her up and pushed her hands inside the car, where they remained, on her lap, her head slumped against the window as he drove in silence through Dulwich, glancing at her from time to time, wondering how she had let herself become a sideshow like this. Rebecca had a long, vibrant survival streak in her it was the first thing he'd noticed about her, the thing that most repelled and most attracted him. It was incredible to see her so demoted, so helpless, so needful. Her face in the car headlights was a little grey, her mouth bluish.

They stopped at lights in Dulwich, outside a white weather boarded villa they could have been in a Pennsylvanian Amish village, not South London and he put out a hand to touch her head, to stroke the sturdy little tufts of hair. "Rebecca? How you doing?"

She opened her eyes and when she saw him she gave him a muzzy little smile. "Hi, Jack," she murmured. "I love you."

He smiled. "You all right?" Her mouth was a dusty purple shade. "You

OK?"

"No." She dropped her hands. She was shivering. "Not really."

"What's the matter?" She fumbled for the door, her feet rucking up the rubber mat on the floor. "Becky?" But before he could pull into the kerb she stuck her head out of the door and vomited on to the tarmac, her body shaking, tears coming up.

"Oh, Jesus, Becky." Caffery rubbed her back with one hand, his eye on the traffic in the rear-view, looking for a space to pull over. She was shuddering and crying, wiping her mouth with one hand and trying to close the door with the other.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry '

"All right, just a moment, just a moment…"

The lights changed and he cut across traffic to pull the car on to the kerb. She dropped back into her seat, sobbing, her hand to her mouth, mascara running down her cheeks. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her cry.

"Come here, come here He tried to pull her to him but she pushed him away.

"No don't touch me, I'm disgusting."

"Becky?"

"I took some heroin I took some smack."

"Some what?"

"Some smack."

"Oh, for God's sake." He sighed, dropped back in the seat, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "When?"

"I don't know. I don't know maybe a few hours ago…"

"Why?"

"I…" She rolled her eyes to him and now he wondered why he hadn't recognized that glazed smacked-up look before. "I wanted to try it."

"Do you have to try everything? Every fucking thing?"

She wiped her mouth and didn't answer. The traffic was slowing down to see what was happening to see if there was an argument. He leaned over and pulled her door closed so that the interior light didn't give the passers-by a stage-lit show. "Is this the first time?"

She nodded.

"OK." He shoved the Jag into gear. "I'm not going to lecture you. Let's get you home."

In Brockley he got her cleaned up and made her drink tea. She sat like a child in bed wearing one of his shirts, her hands wrapped round the mug, a pale, numb look on her face.

"I'm getting a doctor."

"No. I'm OK." She stared into the bottom of the mug. "I feel better now. Will you…" she didn't look up at him '… will you come to bed?"

He stood in the doorway, his hands on the doorposts, and shook his head.

"No?"

"No."

"I see." She was silent for a while, as if moving this new resolve of his around in her head. Then suddenly she let go of the mug and put her face in her hands. The mug rolled off the bed and shattered on the wooden floor. "Oh, Jack," she sobbed, "I'm lost '

"OK, OK." He sat on the bed and rubbed her back.

"I'm lost. I used to know where I was, but I just I just don't know any more She cried so hard she seemed to be crying for everything for every small disappointment, for everything she had ever lost. Tears boiled down her cheeks.

"Becky…" he put his arms around her and kissed her head '… you can't go on like this."

"I know." Her shoulders were shaking and her neck had grown hot. She shook her head. "I know."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know I She rubbed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to control herself.

"Rebecca?" He dipped his head to look at her face. "What are you going to do?"

She wiped the tears off her cheeks. Her breathing was getting steadier.

"Well?"

"Uh." She turned her head away. "I'm going to I don't know, I'm going to tell the truth, I suppose."

"OK '

"No, I mean really tell the truth." She raised her hands, then dropped them again. "Jack."

"What?"

"I've been I've been lying. A bit," she stumbled. "No not a bit, a lot. Jack, I've been lying to you all the way along I've lied and now I'm so sorry and it's because I lied that we've got like this and it's all my fault and I'm '

"Hey ssh, come on, calm down, what have you been lying about?"

"You'll hate me '

"What have you been lying about?"

"About Malcolm."

"What about him?"

She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes closed, speaking into the air as if reciting a hard-remembered poem. "I don't remember what happened, Jack. The last thing I remember is getting on my bike to go to Malcolm's and that's all until you were going to Paul's funeral." Silence. She opened her eyes and looked at him. "Jack I know I've fucked up and I'm sorry I just thought oh, I don't know I thought there was something wrong with me if I didn't remember or or '

He dropped his hand from around her shoulder and sat for a long time in silence. So this was what it had all been about. He thought about the statement in the hospital, he thought about the inquest, about her dead flat mate body lying in the hallway, about Rebecca, hanging in the kitchen. And then he realized that what she had just done was to take a step towards him.

"Is that what it's all been about? The sex?"

"I got scared, I must've thought I might suddenly remember while we were oh, fuck." She jammed knuckles into her eyes. "I know it's stupid '

"Because I've been trying to make you think about it?"

She nodded, her bottom lip twisted under her teeth. All her eye makeup was down on her face, the eyelashes quite soft and naked.

"You didn't report it, did you?"

"Of course not you didn't really think…?"

"Bloody hell, Rebecca." He pulled her closer, pressing his face into her lopped-off hair. "Bloody hell."