Birdman

But in spring, just as his drive towards her faltered, Veronica's agenda swerved. She became serious about him, started a campaign to tether him to her. One night she sat him down and in serious tones told him about the big injustice in her life, long before they had met: two of her teenage years taken from her by a struggle against cancer.

The ploy worked. Brought up short, suddenly he didn't know how to finish with her.

How arrogant, Jack, he realized, as if you not leaving might be compensation. How arrogant can you get.

In the kitchen she tucked her thin, asymmetric chin down onto her chest, her tongue between her teeth, and ripped a sprig of mint into shreds. He poured a shot of whisky and swallowed it in one.

Tonight he would do it. Maybe over dinner—

* * *

It was ready in an hour. Veronica switched all the lights on in the house and lit citronella garden candles on the patio.

'Pancetta and broad-bean salad with rocket, prawns in honey and soy sauce, followed by clementine sorbet. Am I the perfect woman or what?' She shook her hair and briefly exposed expensively cared for teeth. 'Thought I'd try it out on you and see if it'll do for the party.'

'The party.' He'd forgotten. They'd arranged it when they thought that ten days after standby week was a good, quiet time to throw a party.

'Lucky I haven't forgotten, isn't it?' She pushed past him, carrying the Le Creuset piled with baby new potatoes. In the living room the French windows were open onto the garden. 'We're eating in here tonight, no point in opening the dining room.' She stopped, looking at his crumpled T-shirt, the dark feral hair. 'Do you think you should dress for dinner?'

'You are joking.'

'Well, I—' She unfolded a napkin on her lap. 'I think it'd be nice.'

'No.' He sat down. 'I need my suit. My case has started.'

Go on, ask me about the case, Veronica, show an interest in something other than my wardrobe, my table linen.

But she started pushing potatoes onto his plate. 'You've got more than one suit, haven't you? Dad sent you that grey one.'

'The others're at the cleaner's.'

'Oh Jack, you should have said. I could have picked them up.'

'Veronica—'

'OK.' She held her hand up. 'I'm sorry. I won't mention it again—' She broke off. In the hallway the phone was ringing. 'I wonder who that is.' She speared a potato. 'As if I couldn't guess.'

Caffery put his glass down and pushed his chair back.

'God,' she sighed, exasperated, putting the fork down. 'They've got a sixth sense, they really have. Can't you just let it ring?'

'No.'

In the hallway he picked up the phone. 'Yeah?'

'Don't tell me. You were asleep.'

'I told you I wouldn't.'

'Sorry to do this to you, mate.'

'Yeah, what's up?'

'I'm back down here. The governor OK'd bringing in some equipment. One of the search team found something.'

'Equipment?'

'GPR.'

'GPR? That—' Caffery broke off. Veronica pushed past him and walked purposefully up the stairs, closing the bedroom door behind her. He stood in the narrow hallway staring after her, one hand propped up against the wall.

'You there, Jack?'

'Yeah, sorry. What were you saying? GPR, that's Ground Probing something?'

'Ground Probing Radar.'

'OK. What you're telling me is—' Caffery dug a small niche in the wall with his black thumbnail. 'You're telling me you've got more?'

'We've got more.' Maddox was solemn. 'Four more.'

'Shit.' He massaged his neck. 'In at the deep end or what.'

'They've started on the recovery now.'

'OK. Where'll you be?'

'At the yard. We can follow them down to Devonshire Drive.'

'The mortuary? Greenwich?'

'Uh huh. Krishnamurthi's already started with the first one. He's agreed to do an all-nighter for us.'

'OK. I'll see you there in thirty.'

* * *

Upstairs, Veronica was in the bedroom with the door shut. Caffery dressed in Ewan's room, checked once out of the window for activity over the railway at Penderecki's — nothing — and, doing up his tie, put his head round the bedroom door.

'Right. We're going to talk. When I get back—'

He stopped. She was sitting in bed, the covers pulled up to her neck, clutching a bottle of pills.

'What are they?'

She looked up at him. Bruised, sullen eyes. 'Ibuprofen. Why?'

'What are you doing?'

'Nothing.'

'What are you doing, Veronica?'

'My throat's up again.'

He stopped, the tie extended in his left hand. 'Your throat's up?'

'That's what I said.'

'Since when?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, either your throat's up or it isn't.'

She muttered something under her breath, opened the bottle, shook two pills into her hand and looked up at him. 'Going somewhere nice?'

'Why didn't you tell me your throat was up? Shouldn't you be having tests?'

'Don't worry about it. You've got more important things to think about.'

'Veronica—'

'What now?'

He was silent for a moment. 'Nothing.' He finished knotting the tie and turned for the stairs.

'Don't worry about me, will you?' she called after him. 'I won't wait up.'

3

Two-thirty a.m. Caffery and Maddox stood silently staring off into the white-tiled autopsy suite: five aluminium dissecting stations, five bodies, unseamed from pubis to shoulders, skin peeled away like hides revealing raw ribs marbled with fat and muscle. Juices leaked into the pans beneath them.

Caffery knew this welclass="underline" the smell of disinfectant mingling with the unmistakable stench of viscera in the chill air. But five. Five. All tagged and dated the same day. He had never seen it on this scale. The morticians, moving silently in their peppermint-green galoshes and scrubs, didn't appear to find this unusual. One smiled as she handed him a face mask.

'Just one moment, gentlemen.' Harsha Krishnamurthi was at the furthest dissecting table. The corpse's scalp had been peeled from the skull down to the squamous cleft of the nose, and folded over so that the hair and face hung like a wet rubber mask, inside out, covering the mouth and neck, pooling on the clavicle. Krishnamurthi lifted the intestines out and slopped them into a stainless steel bowl.

'Who's running?'

'Me.' A small mortician in round glasses appeared at his side.

'Good, Martin. Weigh them, run them, prepare samples. Paula, I'm finished here, you can close up. Don't let the sutures overlap the wounds. Now, gentlemen.' He pushed aside the halogen light, lifted his plastic visor and turned to Maddox and Caffery, gloved, splattered hands held rigidly out in front. He was handsome, slim, in his fifties, the deep-polished wood-coloured eyes slightly wet with age, his grey beard carefully trimmed. 'Grand tour, is it?'

Maddox nodded. 'Have we got a cause of death?'

'I think so. And, if I'm right, a very interesting one too. I'll come to that.' He pointed down the room. 'Entomology'll give you more — but I can give you approximates on all of them: the first one you found was the last one to die. Let's call her number five. She died less than a week ago. Then we jump back almost a month, then another five weeks and then another month and a half. The first one probably died Decemberish but the gaps are getting closer. We're lucky: not too much in the way of third-party artefacts — they're pretty well preserved.' He pointed to a sad loose pile of blackened flesh on the second dissecting table.

'The first to die. Long bones tell me she hadn't even turned eighteen. There's something that looks like a tattoo on her left arm. Might be the only way we can ID her. That or odontology. Now.' He held up a crooked finger. 'Appearance on arrivaclass="underline" I don't know how much you saw in the field, but they were all wearing make-up. Heavy make-up. Clearly visible. Even after they've been in the ground this long. Eyeshadow, lipstick. The photographer has it all covered.'