"I don't care what it is I just care that it works."
Thirty-four.
(3 August)
The following week the police brought the Churches back to the house. The workman caught sight of the marked area car pulling up in the driveway. Everyone knew they'd almost starved to death, everyone was talking about it, speculating about how it might have been in there, 'right under our noses how could we not have guessed?" The workman felt a little guilty. He'd seen Roland Klare coming and going, just once or twice, and hadn't given it a second thought. Not that he was going to mention that to anyone. Now he laid his tools down and crept a little further along the RSJ to watch the Churches. He was surprised they had lost weight. The fat family had lost weight.
A PC got out and spread his arms wide as if to protect the family from prying eyes, looking over his shoulder as they climbed out. There was no one watching, no press, no neighbours in fact, no one paid much attention at all, except for the workman, but the officer seemed to feel it was part of his job. He stood protectively while the wife got out she was wearing a bandage on her ankle, but apart from that she looked, the workman thought, amazing. And slim in her little blue sundress. Christ, she looks really hot.
She opened the car door and stretched her arms inside for the boy. He was too old to be carried really, and she had some difficulty lifting him, but he clung to her like a toy monkey, not speaking, staring at her neck. Hal Church had already got out and stood on the driveway, a little apart from them, watching with an odd look on his face, as if he didn't want to meet their eyes. He closed the car door and followed his wife and the PC up the driveway, a few paces behind, his head bent. When they reached the door he allowed the officer to accompany his wife and son into the house ahead of him.
Amazing how losing a little weight can make you look so healthy, the workman thought. That is one healthy, healthy family. He turned away and picked up his tool belt. Lucky bastards.
Souness had relented and given Caffery an extra two weeks' leave to think things through he and Rebecca decided to spend some time in Norfolk. They had good reason. Before they left he drove over to Shrivemoor to go through the arrest statement. He went early, while Rebecca was still showering and packing, and he and Souness sat in the SIO's room and talked over coffee. It was a hot August morning, so hot that out of the window the air seemed to have been burned white by the sun, and the distant Croydon skyline had hardened to a steady silver glitter. Roland Klare, Souness said, was on the mental-health wing at Brixton Prison. They'd forced him into clothes that didn't stink of piss. Yes, he was ill, she said, but he was still an evil radge, and Caffery should stop beating himself up over what he'd done. He's a sick piece of shite so take that guilty look off your face.
But hashing through the statement, co-ordinating their lie, felt wrong. He felt sure that whatever they did the fallout would come eventually, a God finger would appear above him in the thunderclouds. He wondered how many more Klares there would be, how many more Blisses. He wondered where it would end.
"Right." He picked up his keys and stood. "I'll be off, then."
"You away for your holidays, are ye? You and Becky?"
"That's it."
"Going anywhere special?"
"No," he lied. "Nowhere special."
In the incident room Kryotos was leaning against her desk, her arms folded, watching him come out of the SIO's room. She wore a well-starched blue dress with a sweetheart neckline, had kicked off her shoes, and now she extended a foot to halt him in his tracks. He stopped and looked at the bare foot, slightly embarrassed. She was smiling at him and he thought he knew what was coming. "Marilyn '
"You're brilliant, Jack." Although there was no one in earshot, she leaned in to him and whispered, "You are absolutely brilliant. You got him, that bastard, you got him."
Caffery stood awkwardly, one hand in his pocket, one on the back of his neck, not looking at her. He wasn't going to hold up his hand and say, "No, you don't understand. You don't understand the first thing about me."
"Thank you, Marilyn, I appreciate it."
"You're welcome." She pushed herself off the desk and rummaged in a carrier-bag. "Orange cake."
"No, I '
"Come on, Jack." She straightened and held out a Tupperware container. "You and Rebecca can eat it -go on, make me happy." She pushed it at him. "Come on, you know you want it."
He shook his head and sighed, smiling sideways at her. "Oh, Marilyn, when will you ever give up?" He took the container from her. "Go on, then. We can eat it in the car. Thank you."
It was a fine high blue day, a day for tennis or picnicking on long lawns next to lakes, and Caffery drove up the Mil, glad to be leaving London behind. Rebecca had packed walking shoes, all her paints, an easel and Kryotos's orange cake in the boot. She wore a green seersucker dress and new Ray-Bans and she sat in the passenger seat not speaking, gazing out of the window at lines of trees on distant ridges, at sunlight flashing on tractors. All week long she had kept up her determined cheerfulness. Sometimes it made her feel a little tight inside, keeping it going like this, but she wasn't going to drop it.
Caffery took a turning off the main road and soon they were on poor, weed-cracked lanes, with concrete posts and wire fencing on either side. It was as if they were crossing a deserted army base. "Look." He slowed the car. "Her house is down there."
They were passing a small turning. Rebecca opened the window and leaned out, peering down the little track. A rusting sign hung on the gate and beyond it the track disappeared into the trees. Then it was gone, the Jaguar had passed the turning, and Rebecca found herself looking at a disused chalk quarry, long rusty stains down the edges, an abandoned caravan in the trees at the top, four pheasants taking off in formation over it. She wound up the window and Jack put his foot on the accelerator and they continued, on to Bury, Rebecca saying a silent prayer that whatever happened today, Jack would be OK, Jack would be calm and smooth at the end of it.
The centre of Bury St. Edmunds seemed to be full of flowers: impatiens and forget-me-nots tumbled out of window-boxes, roses, peonies, columbine crammed against low garden walls. When they arrived they could hear bells striking in the abbey's Norman tower. They parked next to the court, got coffee from the WRVS shop and stood outside in the sun, waiting for Lamb's case to start.
"It's going to be fine," Rebecca said. They'd chosen to stand slightly behind the white Securicor van parked in the front. Caffery didn't want to be seen by the young barristers from the crown court who crunched around in the gravel talking on their phones and practising golf swings. He might know one of them. "I promise you, Jack, it's going to work. No one will know you they'll have got the tapes, and everything will work she won't get bailed."
"I don't know." Either the caffeine had kicked in, or he was more nervous than he realized. His hands were shaking. "I don't know."
"Well, I do, and I'm telling you. It's going to be fine."
When Lamb's case came up they put out their cigarettes in the bottom of their coffee cups, went inside and climbed the narrow staircase to the public gallery. The sun streamed down from the huge white atrium there was nowhere to hide from the light and the court was suffocatingly hot and hushed, the clerks and probation officers' faces shiny above their collars. The public gallery was a hard little bench up behind the dock, separated from the court only by glass. Caffery and Rebecca slid into their seats, Caffery unbuttoning his cuffs, rolling up his sleeves, Rebecca tugging at the neck of her dress to let air in.
"Number 111 on your list. Tracey Lamb, Alvarez representing."
Alvarez, Caffery guessed instantly, was the pepper pot woman sitting on the right of the table -short, squat, dressed in a grubby sky-blue suit like a down-at-heel air hostess. But the CPS solicitor? He scanned the faces he had no idea what the prosecution solicitor looked like. It took him a moment to realize it was the grey man facing Alvarez with the froggy neck, dressed as if he'd wanted to match Alvarez, in a sky-blue shirt and a yellow tie.