At the front door, Currie could hear a loud television from within. It sounded like someone was being murdered: screams seeping out through the gaps in the bricks and panels.
They knocked, and the television immediately went silent.
And that was when Currie started to feel it. There was no sensible reason to be, but he was nervous. Not afraid, exactly, but not far off either. The speed with which the TV had gone quiet reminded him of a spider going still as a fly snagged on its web. He could almost imagine the man inside, equally motionless. Listening.
After a minute, the door opened. They were faced by a tall, thin man. He was wearing a white shirt too large for him, and old, rubbery tracksuit bottoms.
Currie didn't even recognise him at first. The photograph in the file had shown a man in his late thirties with a good-looking, symmetrical face. There had been a hint of cruelty in the strong angles at his jaw, but it was the eyes that gave him away: full of intelligence and hate. Twelve years ago, Frank Carroll - an ex-cop of only a few hours - had stared out at the world, looking like he understood a hundred ways to take you apart and was picturing them right then, enjoying each, one by one. By all accounts, he'd been a powerfully built man, equally as capable of carrying out those acts in the flesh as he was in his mind.
But prison clearly hadn't been kind to him. His skin was old and weathered, and his hair had gone grey and receded. He'd lost a great deal of weight, too. That solid, strong man now looked pigeon-chested and frail: hunched over slightly, like something in his back had gone. The old muscles hung down like slack, useless cords. His eyes still held that cruelty, but even there one of them seemed dislocated and wrong, as though it had been taken out and replaced at an odd angle.
Currie's unease intensified.
'Mr Carroll?' He held up his badge. 'Detective Currie, Detective Swann. We'd like to ask you a few questions.'
Frank Carroll stared at him.
Currie felt an absurd urge to scratch himself.
'Come in.'
He shot Swann a glance as they followed Carroll into his flat, closing the door behind them - then grimaced as the stench of the place hit him properly. It was like someone had dabbed ammonia under his nose. The small corridor reeked of old sweat.
In front of them, the man moved slowly and carefully into the lounge. The room was in a disgusting state. The carpet was covered with dust - probably jumping with fleas too, Currie thought - and the old wallpaper was stained yellow. There was an ashtray on a dirty table, full of cigarette butts, while piles of tattered newspapers and magazines lined the walls. The air felt hazy, grey.
Carroll sat down awkwardly on a two-seater settee, his bony knees poking up against the greasy tracksuit.
'I know why you're here,' he said.
'Oh yeah? Do tell.'
'You're here about those girls.' Carroll sniffed dismissively. 'I saw you on the television. Talking about them. I recognised you from there.'
'That's very observant. Once a cop always a cop, eh?'
'I'm not a policeman anymore.'
'Yeah, we know that.' He glanced around, taking in the details of the living room. Not much of a decorator, either. He looked back at the old man. 'Doesn't explain why you might be expecting to see us, though.'
Carroll just looked at him, the faintest trace of amusement flashing in his eyes. Currie flicked through a list of mental images to locate the one he was reminded of, found it quickly. The sly old man holding court; one who'd seen it all. You don't impress me, son.
'We were interested in your file. There are some peculiar similarities there. But then - you'll have realised that, won't you? Being so observant, and all.'
Carroll smiled, and his lips all but disappeared. 'Doesn't explain why you might be looking through my file, though. Get a phone call, did we?'
Swann moved over to one wall and nudged a stack of magazines with his foot. Carroll's gaze shot to him, quick as that spider Currie had imagined. Swann smiled.
'Anything we should know about in here, Frank?'
'Lots of news.' He rolled the word as though it might be unfamiliar to them.
'News is fascinating,' Swann agreed. 'The older the better. Are you planning on doing some papier mache, or something?'
'There's nothing illegal in there, if that's what you mean,' Carroll said. 'Why would there be?'
Currie said, 'Because you like little girls. Or at least, you did. Fifteen years, reduced to ten. I was quite appalled when I read the file. Your own daughter, Frank.'
He had seen a photograph of Mary Carroll in the file as well. She looked considerably younger than fifteen. When the picture had been taken, she was dressed in a white T-shirt, and her face was gaunt and hollow, with dark rings around haunted eyes. One of them was swollen almost shut. Her straggly blond hair looked like it hadn't been washed or combed in a week.
'I don't have a daughter,' Carroll said.
'Unfortunately for her, you do,' Currie said. 'And a son as well. Although I doubt you get birthday cards from either of them. Does that happen often?'
'They're dead to me.'
'Well, we all know what you did to her.'
Carroll turned to him slowly. 'Lots of things.'
Currie made an effort to smile pleasantly. He'd become accustomed to dealing with that kind of filth, but sometimes it still shocked him. The things people did, and the way they managed to feel about it.
'We're thinking of one in particular,' he said. 'You used to tie her to the bed, didn't you? Leave her for days on end without food or water.'
'That's one of the less interesting ones.'
Swann nudged the magazine stack again, not even looking over. 'You were released two years ago, Frank. Coincidentally, some similar things started happening to girls just afterwards. We're very interested in those things, even if you're not.'
The whole time, Carroll just kept staring at Currie. The expression on the man's face was utterly blank.
'Did somebody call you?' he asked again.
'No,' Swann said. 'We have a computer that throws up names for us. And I do mean that literally . . .' The magazines spilled out across the floor. 'Whoops.'
Carroll glanced over, then shook his head and looked down at the floor in front of him. His hands twittered together - like birds with broken wings - and he steepled them before his face, bony elbows resting on bony knees.
'Do you know what they do to police in prison?' he said.
'I guess you can tell us,' Swann said.
'They break you,' Carroll said. 'My left eye is glass, and that side of my face is paralysed. I'm registered disabled. It takes me time just to walk across the room. And you think I could hurt someone?'
He had a point, Currie thought. The victims all appeared to have been subdued by hand, and Carroll looked as though he could barely lift his arms. So what was it? Nasty, broken old man, living out his days, or was there more to him than just the age and stench?
'I'm afraid you're going to have to come with us, Frank.'
Carroll shook his head again. Then he slowly reached down and hitched up the bottom of his jogging pants, revealing a pale, hairless stretch of leg. There was a black band wrapped around it. It took Currie a moment to realise what it was. And when Carroll glanced up at him, he looked intensely satisfied with himself.
An electronic tag, secured in place. GPS. The works.
'You can always check where I've been with this.'
Currie looked over at Swann, and his partner tilted his head: your call. Currie looked back at Frank Carroll and forced out another smile he didn't feel.
'We'll do that, Mr Carroll,' he said. 'In the meantime, and at your own speed, get your coat.'
Chapter Seven
Monday 22nd August
Two weeks after visiting Tori in hospital I drove across town, on my way somewhere I hadn't been in nearly a year.
The last fortnight had been a pack of hot, sweaty days, and today was the first real reminder that summer wasn't going to last for ever. The sun had spent the morning hidden behind a sky full of grey mist. It was still warm, but the air had a hint of winter to it now: the sense of cold and frost approaching steadily from the distance.
I liked it. It was a reminder that time moved on.
The last two weeks, I'd lived as much like a hermit as I could: holed up in my flat, expecting a knock at the door at any moment. I'd found it hard to sleep before, but for at least the first few days after my trip to the woods, it had been almost impossible. And yet nothing had happened. The police hadn't turned up and arrested me, and Choc hadn't called round either. I'd scanned the news, and as far as I could tell Eddie's body hadn't even been found.
The whole time, I'd kept repeating my mantra that nothing had happened. I wasn't sure it had worked, but for whatever reason - maybe just the passing of time - the guilt and fear had started to lessen, and I'd managed to shade things over in my head a little, and sometimes whole hours went by when I could kid myself I was a normal person with only normal things to worry about. Deep down, though, it still felt like I was living on borrowed time, and that might have had something to do with where I was going now.
I drove down into the Washmores and got the first thrill of recognition. This was the area I'd grown up in. Everything here was familiar but subtly different, as though half the houses had received a paint job and an unidentifiable extension. Ahead of me the road finished at bollards, blocking off the bridge over the river, which I could hear rushing past in the distance. I drove right, down a thin, cobbled lane. The dry-stone wall to the side was hairy with moss, and halfway along there was the old streetlight. It had a glass box for a head, narrow arms sticking out sideways beneath the chin, and a thin, flaky green body below. I'd swung on that thing as a kid. Looking at it now, it was weird to think I could ever have been that small.
A minute later I approached a large Victorian house, set back and down from the road. The huge outside walls were soot-black with age, and a driveway curled away out of sight.
If I closed my eyes I could picture it.
Behind the building, a garden spread down over three tiers, most of it untended and overgrown now. Outside the front door, washing lines spanned the first level, and the memory associated with this was my mother stretching up to hang out wet clothes, spare pegs clipped to her sleeve. The second garden still had a bare patch of ground from the bonfires my father used to make for some reason known only to himself. I'd managed to reach the age of twenty-eight without needing to build a fire, but he was always burning something. And, at the bottom, a slope of long grass ended in the bushes and fence that marked the edge of my parents' property. Beyond them, the woods where Owen had been killed.
My brother was for ever frozen in my memory at the age of twelve. He'd gone out to play in the woods by himself, and my parents hadn't even realised there might be anything wrong until the police knocked on the door just before tea-time. Owen had been shot in the side by an air-rifle. Someone out walking had found him, curled up on the dusty ground like a caterpillar. Motorists reported seeing a group of older kids that afternoon, leaving the woods at the far end by the ring road, but they were never identified. Teenagers messing around. Over the years, I've wondered if they even realised what they'd done.
I parked up behind the Domestic Goddess van and made my way down the long tarmac drive. There were small trees on either side of the steps at the bottom, grown together overhead to create an arch. I paused underneath, peering up into the dark mass of branches above. I remembered climbing these as a kid - but now I could have reached at least halfway up on tiptoes and touched branches that would never support me again.
Time moves on.
My mother's old clothes-line still hung slackly across the top garden, running from a rusted hook in the house wall to a thick green tree by the fence, and the same grey slabs formed the path. It led to the front door, next to the set of sharp, rusty railings that edged the short drop to the second garden.
The front door was open. From inside, I could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner.
It had been over three years since my mother's death, and a year since my father's, and in the intervening time I'd done absolutely nothing with the property beyond hire Linda - the Domestic Goddess - to come round and clean once a month. The house had been effectively held in stasis while I worked up the resolve to deal with it. The contents had to be boxed up and disposed of. Everything would need redecorating.
A big job, basically, and I could pretend that was the reason. In truth, it wasn't the size of the task that daunted me so much as the details. My memories of the first half of my childhood were good, but they were tarnished by the gulf that had developed in my family after Owen died. I wasn't entirely sure I was ready to deal with this place even now, but the events of the last few weeks had sharpened my intent a little.
If not now, when?
'Linda?'
I called out and knocked twice on the open door as I went in. She was expecting me - I heard a click, and then the whirr of the vacuum cleaner winding down.
Linda was in her early forties and pleasantly rounded: a lovely, amiable woman who turned up in old jeans and jumpers and seemed to get a kick out of cleaning. Which is a pretty enviable gene to have. She was standing just outside the kitchen now, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm. As I walked up, she smiled at me and blew hair out of her eyes.
'Nearly done.'
'Seems fine to me.' I looked dubiously at the carpet, worn down to a grey grid in the middle, and then at the cream woodchip wallpaper. 'I'll have to rip all this out anyway.'
Linda nodded.
'It'll be nice when it's done up. Are you going to sell it?'
'God, yes.'
For a terrible moment, I imagined moving in here.
'Well, it'll make someone a nice home,' she said.
'Here's hoping.'
Next to Linda, opposite the kitchen, was the closed door to my brother's old bedroom. It was the one area of the house I'd asked Linda not to touch. Nobody had been in there since the day Owen died. My parents never threw any of his things away, none of us went in, and the door remained closed. It was an unwritten rule. The room was sealed and buried, like a time capsule.