What She Saw (10 page)

Rosen lay down on his stomach and traced torchlight across the symbols again. An ill-defined but absolute sense of horror passed through him. He recalled Corrigan's gut reaction to the eye:
This is bad shit and I don't like it
.

He photographed the symbols carefully, making sure he got the two lines together, separately and each word on its own, in multiple copies.

‘It's like the signature on a painting only instead of signing the front of the canvas, the artist's signed the back,' said Henshaw.

Rosen was up on his feet again, scrolling through the pictures, deleting the poor and saving the good images.

‘He – we'll call him “he” for the sake of argument – has used covert language to counterpoint the sinister detail of his artwork.' Henshaw's face had changed like a chameleon: one moment actor-handsome, the next analytical academic.

In his notebook, Rosen drew the symbols in bold pen lines.

‘Ever come across anything like this before?' asked Henshaw.

‘I've seen things written in the victim's blood at murder scenes. But nothing as. . . artistic as this.'

‘This isn't the work of an individual, is it?' said Henshaw.

‘Did Baxter tell you?'

‘No, Baxter just told me where to find you.'

‘Then how do you know this involves more than one person?' asked Rosen. ‘We didn't know this until late last night.'

‘There's too much work involved for just one individual, unless
that individual's Superman. An abduction. . .' Henshaw threw out a thumb, bullet-pointing his response by counting with his fingers, a trait Rosen had noticed when he'd seen him on TV. He'd thought it was an affectation, but in real life it looked much less mannered than on the box. ‘. . . the concealment of a child for over a week. The precisely timed vandalism of a CCTV camera. The delivery of the child to this spot. This' – he indicated the eye – ‘this labour of love. I just don't think one person alone could do all that. Too many skill sets and too much to do. I might be wrong.'

‘Well, you're not wrong,' said Rosen, tapping in Henshaw's mobile number to his iPhone from the card he'd handed him when they met. ‘I'll send the symbols to your phone, James. When you get back to UCL, approach your linguistics department. Don't contextualize it. Get someone to identify the alphabet these symbols come from. Though it may well be that the symbols are the group's own code, a self-generated secret language,' said Rosen.

‘That's what I think,' said Henshaw.

Rosen looked at the symbols in his notebook, obscure configurations that mocked,
Crack me
.

‘If it is a cult of some sort,' said Rosen, ‘it's as vicious as it's strange, and I've no idea where it's coming from or what it's about.'

‘I'll be back to you as soon as I hear anything.' Henshaw glanced at his watch. ‘I'm going back to UCL right now.' He shook Rosen's hand. ‘I'm available twenty-four-seven. No detail too trivial.'

‘Likewise,' replied Rosen. ‘Anything comes across your radar, I'm available any time of the day or night.'

‘Just so you know, David, I'm on board as a volunteer. I'm not on the payroll.'

‘That's decent of you,' replied Rosen.

Henshaw smiled. ‘I've got an ulterior motive. I'm looking for the inside track on a big case so I can really make a name for myself and leave UCL.'

Rosen asked, ‘You dislike teaching that much?'

‘Not at all. I love it, but I really need to go freelance. I have a little boy. I need to spend more time with him.'

‘What if this isn't the big break?' asked Rosen. ‘It may or may not be.'

‘That's the chance I have to take, David.'

Henshaw indicated the place where they'd attempted to burn Thomas alive.

‘There's a big problem here for the perpetrators,' said Henshaw.

‘Fire away.'

‘If this was their first outing, then it rates as a disaster. They've messed up. The kid's alive. They'll have to strike back quick and make a better job of it, make sure next time they get it right. Whatever we call them, whatever they are, the peer pressure's going to be sky high.'

22

5 P.M.

G
randma's bedroom was Macy's favourite room in the world, although it no longer smelled of cinnamon, the scent she associated with the old woman propped up in the single bed. Macy sat on the bed, recalling the smell of her earliest memory of Grandma when she was a very small girl and the old lady had been fit and healthy.

Macy's earliest memory of being alive: Grandma, large and fat, cinnamon through and through, a memory suffused with the heat and light of the summer sun which Grandma blocked out with her generous shoulders as she stooped to kiss and cuddle her little granddaughter, and tell her how very much she loved her.

And how much did she love her grandma back? She'd hunted in books for a word but there was no word to convey the size and depth of that love.

The room now smelled of old age and the scented Glade candle burning in the corner, placed there by Macy to help lift the atmosphere in the old lady's room. Macy turned the box of matches next to the candle and stared, unblinking, at her grandma, at the light that played on her gaunt face and neck, drinking her in with her eyes in the knowledge that before too long she would exist only in memories.

In a family owning neither mobile phone nor camera, Macy tried to take photographs of Grandma's face with her mind's eye and, in closing her eyes, sealed the image of the old woman in her brain. Opening her eyes, she leaned in a little closer: the flickering shadows cast by the single tongue of fire made Grandma look something other than her usual self.

Slowly, the old woman opened her eyes from a shallow doze and said, ‘Macy?'

‘Yes, Grandma?'

‘Come a little closer, Macy. Let me see you.' Macy obeyed and turned her face to the light.

‘You didn't fall down any stairs,' announced Grandma, struggling to push herself from the pillow. ‘Don't protect my feelings. Tell me the truth, Macy. Tell me the truth now. You know what I've told you about telling the truth.'

‘Don't upset yourself, Grandma. I'll tell you the truth. I always tell the truth, you know that – that's what you taught me.' Macy paused. ‘I was caught by two men on the street. One of them hit me. They stole my money. I'm OK. It's OK now. I was being tactful.'

‘It's not OK, Macy.' Her grandma sank back on her pillows, emotional effort sapping her strength. ‘Did you tell the police?'

‘Yes, I told a detective called Mr Rosen; he was very kind to me. He looked sad when I told him what happened, like he was really sorry for me. I was lucky.'

‘How can you say that, Macy?' Grandma's voice was so soft now that Macy had to scrutinize her lips to make sure of the words.

‘The two men, they did something much worse. To a little boy called Thomas Glass.'

‘The little boy who was abducted?'

‘Do you want me to read to you, Grandma?' Macy changed the subject. Grandma appeared to have fallen asleep but then opened her eyes. ‘How about I read from my school reading book? It's stories. I
don't like stories, I don't like made-up things, I've told my teacher, Miss Harvey, I prefer real things, I prefer the truth.' A thought occurred to Macy and she asked her grandma, ‘What's the point of stories?'

‘You like my stories about when I was a little girl growing up.'

‘But those stories are real, they really happened, didn't they?' Macy explored Grandma's face and concluded, ‘Am I making you tired?'

‘I suppose I am a little tired, Macy.'

‘Sorry, Grandma.'

The old woman's breathing was growing thicker. ‘Don't. . . be. . .

Don't forget. . . you and me. . . the bond eternal. . .'

Peace and stillness wreathed the old lady's face.

A terrible thought occurred to Macy and sickness overwhelmed her. She leaned in, pressed her ear to Grandma's lips and felt hugely relieved to hear her breathing in and out.

Macy got up from the bed, carefully so as not to jolt Grandma awake, and went over to the bedroom window overlooking Bannerman Square. She looked down. Last night, Grandma had told her, she had seen yellow light from the burning car dancing on her bedroom walls, had heard the explosion when the car's fuel engine blew up. She had even managed, on her way back from the bathroom, to stand at the window for a moment, watching the arrival of the fire engines, the ambulances and the police cars, but had been too ill to watch the spectacle below for long.

Macy pinpointed the Portakabin where she'd spoken to Mr Rosen, the policeman with the tired, kind eyes, and Bellwood, the black policewoman with the smiley face.

Grandma let out a very light snore and Macy knew this was a sign that she would probably sleep through till morning. She went to blow out the candle but, on second thoughts, left it burning because she didn't want to leave Grandma alone in the dark.

She closed the bedroom door behind her and, as she did so, the front
door of the flat opened. She knew by the slow, heavy footsteps that it was her brother, Paul.

Macy wandered into the living room as Paul crossed towards the kitchen.

‘Hello, Paul.' He ignored her and disappeared into the kitchen. In a room adjoining the living room, her mother's hairdryer created a small windstorm. She followed him to the kitchen door and stood in the doorway. ‘Hello, Paul?'

He was at the sink, filling a mug with cold water, his back turned to her.

‘Aren't you talking to me?' She spoke from the depths of her hurt.

He drank the mug of cold water without pause, his sleeve rising, three old scars on his forearm visible.

‘Are you very thirsty, Paul? What you been doing?'

She switched on the kitchen light and he half turned, the profile of his seventeen-year-old face somehow much older in the bare light of the small kitchen.

‘Paul, I don't like your new hairstyle. Why'd you get your head shaved? You've got lovely hair. Did you do it to raise money for charity? Or did you sell it to a hairdresser so she could make extensions?'

‘Who are you?' he asked.

‘I'm your little sister, Paul. You ought to talk to me.'

He filled his hands with water and splashed his face.

‘That's not hygienic.' He span around, his mouth like a long healed wound. ‘I'm joking, Paul, I'm trying to make you laugh! You always used to laugh at me. Remember?'

He turned his back on her and it felt like her heart had stopped beating.

‘Oh,' she said. ‘I. . . see. . .'

She switched off the light and went back into the living room. Staring at the blank TV – it was not to go on until
EastEnders
began on account of the electricity situation in the home – from the
corner of her eye she saw Paul head back to the front door.

‘Goodbye, Paul,' she whispered. ‘I still love you, even if you don't love me any more.'

He almost threw the front door open.

‘And I always will.'

But he closed it with infinite care.

‘Thank you for not slamming the door. Grandma's just gone off to sleep. I'm glad you still care about
her
.'

She listened to Mum's hairdryer and stared at the blank TV screen. Mum was so selfish with her hairdryer.

Macy recalled how Paul used to talk to her but had stopped and wouldn't say why. They were alike in so many ways but the growing distance between them was crippling her inside.

The thought of what would happen after Grandma died filled Macy with a fear that made her want to be sick but, when these feelings assaulted her and she'd tried being sick, she could never manage it – she could never lose the awful feeling.

She took a deep breath, sat still and did the one thing the prospect of losing Grandma always made her do.

Alone, she cried in the shadows.

23

6.18 P.M.

F
rom the doorway of the MIR, reality assumed a dream-like quality. Rosen looked out on a peaceful Bannerman Square. It was as if, twenty-one hours earlier, a bizarre and horrific crime hadn't been committed within touching distance of Claude House.

He bit into the ploughman's triple-decker sandwich he'd bought from Gino's, a deli on Lewisham High Street. As he did so, he heard in his pocket the reassuring crinkle of a mega bag of Walker's cheese-and-onion crisps.

At the desk, he opened his email and went directly to Riley's posting with the attachment marked A & E Lewisham list of outpatients and others attending. He opened it and scanned the names using his finger as a ruler. They were listed by the times they registered at reception, and there were approximately sixty names on the list, from 8.30 P.M. until midnight.

Finger and eyes arrived at 9 A.M. and down the list he went. Twenty past nine. Twenty to ten, the emergency admission of Thomas Glass with paramedics. At sixteen minutes to ten, the next arrival, Macy Conner and Paul Conner. She'd mentioned the x-ray on her bruised leg that lunchtime.

He called Riley.

‘Hi, Riley, it's Rosen, where are you?'

‘Changing over with DC Smith.'

‘Thanks for the list.'

‘Anything on it?'

‘I'm not sure yet. I really need to see the CCTV footage from last night.'

‘I've asked the head of security.'

‘Ask again. Stress it's a matter of life or death. . .' Rosen sighed.

‘I'll ask again.'

A cold, late April wind blew across the square and with it a sequence of traffic noises were carried from the high street. Rosen looked to the source of the sounds and at the place where the Megane had burned out and wondered,
Is that where you came from
?
The high street
?

And still, nobody except one little girl and one teenage boy had seen a thing.