Birdman

Two years later, in the family library after his first hunt, Toby met Sophie, the daughter of a local barrister. Long, thin and aloof as marble, she stood erect and white against the rich panelling. Everything Lucilla wasn't. Toby, fourteen, handed her a glass of champagne, and was surprised and thrilled to notice that the fingers which took it were colder than the chilled glass stem.

Lucilla instantly sensed the attachment and chose that summer for his rite of passage. She sent father and son abroad. They washed up in South East Asia, Luzon to be precise, and Henrick, full of his own notions about how to rear his young, took Toby to a Makati whorehouse, where he was presented with fifteen girls slouched on their salung-puwets behind a floor-to ceiling pane of glass.

Toby chose the thinnest, palest of the girls. In bed he ordered her not to speak, not to move, no thrashing or wailing. Sipping coffee and eating fried sinangag on the balcony the next morning, overlooking sun-filled Pasay, he was overwhelmed with the sense that something abnormal was being born in him.

A month later his mother caught him in the yew topiary with Sophie, he with his jodhpurs around his knees, she closed eyes, long calm face, holding still as if for an X-ray. By the time Toby had dressed and got back to the house Lucilla had already created pandemonium. The staff were milling about in the sun and Toby narrowly avoided being mowed down by the grim-faced Henrick reversing the Land Rover in a spray of gravel across the forecourt and down the driveway.

The message was clear — Toby was to deal with Lucilla alone.

Watched by the staff, Toby climbed the steps and placed his white hand on the heavy oak door, his eyes half closed as he waited for the subtle trembles which would map for him where in the house his mother was waiting.

She was in the formal dining room, pacing the length of the wall under the Antwerp tapestries, breathing loudly through her nose. The blue light from the window illuminated the fine tracery of tears on her jowls. It was the first time they had been alone together since the incident in the bathroom.

'Mother.'

'Sit.'

He sat at the head of the table, his father's place. To his left the blue window held the hazy sweep of the lawns and shadowy cypresses, but the panelled dining room was dark, as if the years of tension had collected there. Lucilla dropped into her usual mahogany chair, closed her eyes, placed both hands on her hot neck and shook her head. 'That anaemic creature. Her father is a damn pederast, she is a mistake of nature.'

Toby was calm. 'I don't have time for a display, Lucilla. Just tell me what I do now.'

She opened her eyes at that, her hands trembling at her neck. 'What did I do to deserve you for a son?'

'Tell me what I do now.'

'You'll board at Sherborne until it is time to go to university.'

'Is that it?'

'And in the holidays, since you hold me in such contempt, you will stay with the Chase-Greys in Connecticut. We'll make you an allowance.'

'You don't want to see me again?'

Lucilla crossed herself, an ancient gesture he remembered her doing only once before. 'I don't want to see you again.'

* * *

Toby went back to Sherborne and he and Sophie didn't see each other again. Three years later she married a defence budget co-ordinator and went to live in Walton-on-Thames. Toby adapted well. Sophie, he had come to see, was not the cause but a symptom of something bigger. He had a sense of it gathering inside, dark and malformed, as charged as a storm.

In his last year at Sherborne he focused on getting into medical school. He was bright and the newly formed United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas's — UMDS — accepted him.

It was at UMDS that Birdman first began to unfurl and examine his wings.

16

Nine p.m. and in Shrivemoor Street the lights came on, yellow sodium streaked the hot night. The building was silent, dark save for a single strip of fluorescent light peeping through the blinds of a first-floor room where Caffery and Essex, ties off, collars loosened, sat facing each other over an indexer's desk, working their way through a four-pack of Speckled Hen real ale and a family drum of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

On his return to the incident room that afternoon Caffery had chosen not to tell Maddox of his progress. When the fax arrived at 4 p.m., just as DI Diamond was leaving to get a warrant for Gemini's red GTI, Jack had beckoned Essex into the SIO's room.

'Got plans tonight?' He showed him the long roll of paper. 'It puts me a jump ahead, but it's just the beginning.'

Now the fax was unfurled over the desk, drooping over the edge and settling in ripples on the floor.

'One hundred and sixty-eight women,' Essex said, mouth full of chicken. 'Take away from three hundred and twenty makes, um—'

'One hundred and fifty-two.'

'Thank you.' He scribbled the numbers at the bottom of the list leaving silvery grease spots with his fingers. 'Eliminate anyone over, say, fifty?'

'Which won't be many.'

'At a guess, what, twenty more? And we're left with one hundred and—'

'Thirty-two.' Caffery pulled a beer tab. 'Run it through HOLMES and if nothing comes up we interview. We can't do a thing over the weekend, but starting on Monday, average interview twenty minutes, we could probably knock out fifty a day between the two of us and be narrowing it down by the Wednesday — that keeps us inside our timetable. Just.'

'Piece of piss,' Essex said, picking up his beer.

'You lie.' Caffery raised his drink. 'And for that I will be eternally grateful.'

They touched cans and drank. 'Funny.' Essex wiped his mouth and leaned back in his seat. 'Funny how you can't see it.'

'See what?'

'Maddox's confidence in you.'

'Confidence?' He shook his head, smiling at the irony. 'This is confidence? He's given me four days.'

'That's four days more than he's given any other DI. The man's a play-by-the-book merchant, Jack. A plodder. And you…' Across the room the MSS printer sprang to life. 'Well, look at it through his eyes.' Essex stood, wandered over to the printer and lifted the perspex cover. 'Scared as he is that you'll capsize the case, he's giving you rein. Think about it.' He peered inside as the print head ping-ponged across the paper. 'Ah, from our specialist adviser at Lambeth.'

'The lab?' Caffery was pleased to change the subject.

'Yup.' Essex smiled. 'It's Jane Amedure. Jane Amedure — the little Bootle genius. She showed me the ropes when I did exhibits on Operation Ambleside.'

'Ambleside?'

'Last year.' Essex didn't look up. 'Algerian did his old lady and left her in a freezer in a council flat Old Kent Road way. Six months before they found her.' He took a swig of beer. 'The power had been off for three.'

'Unshockable. aren't you?'

'Yup. Then there was our chum Colin Ireland. Killed his victim's cat and put its mouth around the victim's—'

'Yes. I heard. Thank you.' Caffery was suddenly tired. He rubbed his eyes. 'Go on then, what's she giving us?'

'Um.' Essex skimmed through the report. 'Let's see: toxicology and histology, hair analysis. OK, here goes: toxicology… now our unidentified victim, the one that died first, well, she was a user: there was benzoylecgonine and diamorphine in deep tissues.'

'Benzoylecgonine and diamorphine — that means coke and heroin?'

'Ten out of ten. On Shellene Craw, well, we didn't really need confirmation, but the SA's giving us it anyway: positive for smack, crack, Es, the works. And Wilcox's confirmed also smack. Hatch, as we thought, positive, and, surprise surprise' — he looked up — 'a negative on Spacek. Not even crack. Clean.'