'This is Wendy. She's usually with me in personnel.'
Wendy gave Caffery a damp smile and extended her hand.
'Hello, Wendy.' She blushed deeper as he took her hand. It had the same limp humidity as her colleague's.
'We're wondering if we could help Detective Inspector Caffery here. He wants somewhere discreet to do some interviewing. Is that little back room of yours available?'
Wendy stood up and pulled the cardigan tightly around her breasts. Caffery saw she was younger than he'd thought; it was the clothes that belonged to an older woman. 'I don't see why not. We're very old-fashioned about the police here. We like to give you all the support we can.'
'I'll be on my way, then.' The clerk held his hand out again and Caffery shook it.
'Grateful for your help. I'll wait for the fax.'
Left alone, Wendy stared at Caffery in shy awe, waiting for him to speak, until he became irritated by her silence.
'The room?'
The spell broke. 'Sorry!' She blushed and dabbed her nose. 'Silly me. We don't get many policemen in here. We do admire you, admire the work you do, actually, we think you're wonderful. My brother wanted to join the force but he wasn't tall enough. Now, come through, come through.' She unplugged an orange card from the computer and clipped it on a chain around her neck. 'It's the little glass room at the back. I'll open it for you — see if it's appropriate.'
The library was very quiet. Sunlight came through unwashed windows and lay in dusty slabs on the floor. A few doctors sat in little booths, absorbed in study. A pretty Indian woman in a white coat looked up at him and smiled. In front of her a periodical was open at a page headed 'Amnion Rupture Sequence' and beneath it a large colour photograph of a red accident of birth: a baby, headless, spread out next to a tape measure like a deboned chicken. Caffery didn't smile back.
Wendy stopped at a small glass-walled room. Blinds were drawn in the windows, isolating it from the library. 'This is the quiet room.' She opened the door. 'Oh, Mr Cook.'
In the shadows at the back of the room a figure was rising from behind a desk. He wore a green overall, open to reveal a tie-dye T-shirt. His eyes were bloodshot, strangely colourless, and his pale red hair was long enough to fasten in a net at the nape of his neck. As Caffery's eyes got used to the dark, he saw that some of the hair sticking out of the neck of the T-shirt was grey.
Cook caught him looking. 'Is it that bad?' He cast a sorrowful look over the shirt, his face deep in shadow. 'I'm colour blind. Helpless as an infant when it comes to choosing clothes.'
'It's very — young.'
Cook raised his eyes to the ceiling. 'I thought as much. They lie to you, these shop assistants. It's like a game to them.' He shuffled around to the edge of the desk and for the first time Caffery noticed a book on the table. He just had time to register a black and white photo of a Stryker bone saw when Cook snapped the book shut, tucked it under his arm and shuffled to the door. 'I'll be getting out of your way, then.' He drew a pair of sunglasses from his overalls and rubbed his eyes. 'All yours.' He slipped outside and closed the door quietly.
Caffery and Wendy stood in silence for a moment until Wendy shook her head and made a disapproving clicking sound in her throat.
'Some of the people we employ. Really, it's a shame.' She mopped her nose with the tissue from her sleeve and straightened her glasses. 'Now, Inspector Caffery, can I get you a nice cup of tea? It's machine, I'm afraid, but I've got a little Nestlé's evaporated under my desk I'd be happy to let you have…'
In Caffery and Maddox's office the blinds were up and the afternoon sun coming through the dusty window had grilled everything on the desk. Caffery could smell the hot plastic of the phone as he opened a window, pulled the blinds, leaned on his elbow and picked out Penderecki's number on the key pad. He let it ring and watched the hands on the clock turn. He knew it wouldn't be answered.
One day last year he had tried calling Penderecki mid-afternoon. He knew Penderecki's movements so intimately that he was puzzled when the phone wasn't answered. He let it ring, watching out of the French windows, wondering if the unthinkable had happened and Penderecki was lying dead on the floor of the house.
But then Penderecki's stout figure appeared at the back door, braces worn over a dirty vest. The trees were in full foliage, but Caffery could make out his face and the glutinous white arc of his arm waving amongst the leaves. It took him a moment to realize Penderecki was waving at him, putting his thumbs up, grinning his toothless smile. He was telling Caffery that he knew who it was on the phone.
From that day on, whether Caffery called him from the office or the house, Penderecki let it ring. On the rare occasions he did answer it was with a dry, accentless, 'Hello, Jack.' Caffery assumed he'd bought a digital read-out for the phone. Now the only pleasure was knowing that the sound of the phone ringing was filling the house for as long as he chose to let it. Small childish pleasure, Jack. Maybe Veronica's right about you. Sometimes he called several times a day.
He let it ring for ten minutes then replaced the receiver and wandered into the incident room to see if a fax had come from the clerk at St Dunstan's.
15
Lucilla was half Italian, half German, the most volcanic presence in the Harteveld house. Dense-boned and walnut-skinned, as tall and wide as the door frames, at parties she couldn't be dissuaded from singing, propped against the Steinway, mascara running down her face, moved to tears by some aria. Toby Harteveld, remote behind his beautiful-English-boy hauteur, found it impossible to believe this woman, with her black flaring hair and jealous rages, was really his mother. He learned early to hate her.
It was the summer between prep school and Sherborne when he walked into an unlocked bathroom to find her naked, one leg up on the commode as she shaved the thick black hairs trailing from the pubis down the inside of the thighs.
She smiled. 'Hello, puppy. Here—' She held the razor out to him. 'You can help.'
'No, Mother.' He was calm. As if he had always known this would happen.
'No?' She laughed. 'No, Mother?' Her head lowered. 'Are you a little poofter, T? Tell me? Are you a little buggerer? Mmm?'
'No, Mother.'
'I'll tell your father you tried to touch me.'
'No, Mother.'
'No, Mother? You think I won't?' She inspected him with her shining black eyes, head on one side as if she was deciding which end to devour first, then with an impatient toss of the dark head she flung open the window and leaned out over the gravel court below, soft breasts spilling across the ledge. 'Henrick! Henrick! Please come for your son.'
Toby took the opportunity to slip out of the door. He raced down the stairs, ignoring the indignant shouts from the bathroom, past vibrating chandeliers and shocked staff, through panelled passageways and out into the grounds. He found an elm bole at the lakeside, curled up beside it and hid until the evening.
When he returned the house was quiet, as if nothing much had happened. His father ladled lobster bisque at dinner, his thin lips slightly paler than usual, and the incident was never mentioned again.
Over the following months Toby became withdrawn. He demanded a lock on his bedroom and in the afternoon lay with his pale hands folded lightly over his stomach listening to Lucilla's explosive passions in the passages outside. Her mere existence made his internal organs contract; sometimes he fancied she had slyly removed his pillowcases from the laundry and rubbed herself, her juices, into them; he seemed to be able to smell her wherever he went. He learned to sleep face down, his stomach pressed securely into the mattress in case she found a way to let herself into his room. He never, ever fell asleep until he was sure, absolutely sure, that his mother was safe in bed on the other side of the house.