Mo Hayder: The Treatment

Five hundred feet overhead, in the dark cockpit, the commander moved as far forward as the corns lead, which tethered him like an umbilicus to the roof of the helicopter, would allow. "Hey, Howie? They want to know how we're doing, Howie." He couldn't see the air observer's face, hunched over as he was, his attention on the screen, the helmet obscuring his eyes.

"I'm struggling. Looks like an effing snowfield. Unless it moves it just blends in. Has to pretty much stand up and wave at me." He tried switching so that heat showed black on his screen. He tried red, he tried blue, sometimes a different colour helped, but tonight the thermal washout was beating him. "Can you give us some more right-hand orbits?"

"Rog." The pilot nosed the helicopter over, turning in circles, both he and the commander looking out of the right-hand side of the craft at the dense wood below. The air observer narrowed his eyes on the screen. He moved the laptop joystick and under the cockpit, in the sensor pod, the gyroscopically mounted camera, deathly stable, rotated its cool eye across the park.

"What you got?"

"I dunno. There's something at about ten o'clock but…" Without depth perception it was difficult to tell what he was seeing on the screen, and every time they got near the helicopter made the leaf cover shift. He thought he had seen an odd, doughnut-shaped light source, about the size of a car tyre. But then the leaf cover shifted again and now he thought he'd dreamed it. "Scheisse." He leaned intently over the screen, moving his head from side to side, flicking the screen from wide field to narrow and back again. "Yeah, maybe get them to have a look at that." He tapped the screen. "Can you see it?"

The commander leaned forward and looked at the screen. He couldn't see what the observer was talking about but sat back and tuned the radio control into DI Caffery's loop. "Ground unit from nine nine."

"Yeah, have you got anything?"

"We think we might've got a heat source but we can't quite confirm. Do you want to have a look at it?"

"Will do."

"Right, well, there's a pool, or a paddling-pool or something…"

"The boating-lake?"

"The boating-lake and the forest starts, I dunno, two hundred metres away?"

"Yup sounds about right."

The commander leaned forward and looked to where the observer held his finger over the screen, if you could start at that edge of the forest and move in about a hundred metres…"

"Rog. Got you."

The commander held his hand flat, instructing the pilot to hover, and the three crew members sat forward, not speaking, only the sound of their breathing in the headsets as they watched the glimmering forms of the TSG, the Territorial Support Group, streaming across the screen in the direction of the heat source.

"Right," the commander muttered. "Let's give them some help, shall we?" He threw a switch and powered up the Night Sun the gargantuan spotlight dangling from the helicopter's belly. Thirty million candle power it could burn through concrete at close range: the ground units followed it like the nativity star, yomping towards it through the trees. But on the screen the observer had lost the glowing ring-shaped heat source and now he was starting to wonder if he'd imagined it.

"Howie?" the commander said from behind. "Are we in the right place?"

The observer didn't reply. He sat hunched forward, trying to relocate the source.

"Howie?"

"Yeah I think, but I '

"Nine nine from ground units." Caffery came through on the radio. "We're drawing a blank down here. Can you help us out?"

"Howie?"

"I dunno I dunno. There was something." He threw the screen into narrow field once more and shook his head. The noise of the engines and the rotor blades, the heat and the smells were oppressive tonight and he was having trouble concentrating. On the ground the TSG officers stood looking up at the helicopter, arms open. "Shit," he muttered under his breath. "Howie, you sodding idiot." He was going to have to back down. "I look I don't know '

"OK, OK." The commander was getting impatient. "How are we for fuel?"

The pilot shook his head. "About twenty-five per cent."

He whistled. "So we need to be going somewhere in about, what? Twenty minutes. Howie? What are we thinking?"

"Look, I nothing. I imagined it. Nothing."

The commander sighed. "OK, I've got you." He switched to the CAD controller's frequency. "India Lima, we're low on fuel so we're going to slip into Fairoaks for a slurp. I think we've got a no-trace. Haven't we, Howie? Got a clear?"

"Yeah." He ran a finger under his chin strap, uncomfortable. "I guess so a no-trace. I guess."

"Nine nine to ground units, if you're clear down there so are we."

"You sure?" DI Caffery sounded tense. "You sure we're in the right place?"

"Yeah, you're in the right place but we've lost the source. It's a hot night we're fighting interference up here."

"Rog, if you're sure. Thanks for trying."

"Sorry about that."

"It's OK. Good evening to you all."

The commander could see Caffery on the screen waving. He adjusted his headset and switched back to the CAD controller. "That's a no-trace in the open, so we're complete on scene at grid ref TQ3427445, now routing to India Foxtrot." He noted the time on his assignment log and the helicopter banked away into the night.

On the ground below, Caffery watched the helicopter disappear across the rooftops, until its light was scarcely bigger than a satellite.

"You know what it means, don't you?"

"No," Souness admitted. "No, I don't.

It was late. The TSG had zoned off the area where the air observer had imagined a heat source, got down on their hands and knees and covered every square inch of it. Still no Rory Peach. Eventually they'd given up, and Caffery and Souness had finalized arrangements for a specialized search team to come in the next day: a Police Search Advisory team would start at first light in Brockwell Park.

There was still an emergency team briefing to get through and search parameters to establish before the night was out and so, at 11 p.m." they drove back to AMIT headquarters in Thornton Heath. Caffery parked the car and swung the keys into his pocket. "If he's in the park and they can't see him then he's not much of a heat source and he's not moving." In spite of what it meant professionally, part of him secretly hoped, for the boy's sake, that he was already dead.

There are some things, he believed, not worth surviving. "Maybe we're too late already."

"Unless," Souness climbed wearily from the car and together they crossed the road, 'unless he's not in the park."

"Oh, he's in the park. I promise you he's in the park." Caffery swiped his pass card and held the door for Souness. "It's just a question of where."

"Shrivemoor' was how most officers referred to this old red-brick building, after the unexciting residential street in which it stood. AMIT's offices were housed on the second floor. Tonight lights were on in all the windows. Most of the team had arrived, called away from dinner parties, pubs, babysitting duty. The HOLMES database operators, the five members of the intelligence cell, seven investigating officers, they were all here, wandering between the desks, drinking coffee, murmuring to each other. In the kitchen three embarrassed-looking paramedics in white-hooded forensic suits nonce suits, the team called them -waited while the exhibits officer photocopied their boot soles and used low-tack tape to lift hairs and fibres from their clothing.

While Souness made strong coffee, Caffery put his face under the tap to wake himself up and quickly checked his in-tray. Among the circulars, the memos, the post-mortem reports, someone had left this week's copy of Time Out. It was folded open at a page titled: "The Artists who Turn Crime into Art." A photograph of Rebecca eyes closed, head tilted back, a prison number painted on the centre of her forehead where a bindi spot would go.