Mo Hayder - The Treatment

Brixton was soaking. Rain washed a thin soup of juices and fish blood out of the market and into the gutters. There were few hints of the huge operation that was taking place in the hunt for Roland Klare – a couple of extra uniforms on the street, a couple of squad cars on the one-way system. Caffery stood outside the Rec swimming-pool, looking at the steamed-up windows. All the chlorine and shouts from the pool seemed to have ended up flattened against those windows. With Kryotos's help, and with the help of a neighbour in Effra Road, Caffery had tracked down Chris Gummer to this pool. When Gummer had stopped him on the station forecourt four days ago and talked about Rory Peach being tied up, he had made a strange dipping gesture and crossed his arms over his chest. Caffery remembered it vividly now: it was the same way that the Half Moon Lane father and son had been fastened, with their arms across their bodies. The photos were blurred and old, but Chris Gummer was a believable match for the father.

He stood for a moment, behind the glass, looking at the swimmers. Two large women dressed in pink-flowered swimming caps sat in the shallows, swirling water around their hips, and nearby a group of bald men, hunched and thin in arm, talked in a small circle. In the deep end children shrieked and jumped off the diving boards. Chris Gummer seemed oblivious to them all.

He wore a bathing cap and was pulling his long, oily white body through the pool with a fatigued breaststroke, his head held up high above the water, eyes half closed, mouth working like a fish

It's him, Caffery thought, it's him

He knocked on the window. Gummer looked up, saw Caffery and trod water for a while, as if deciding what to do. Then his face changed. He took a gulp of air and continued swimming to the far end of the pool. Caffery knocked again, and this time Gummer didn't even look round.

"Fair enough." He pushed the red emergency handle and stepped out on to the pool edge. Somewhere an alarm screamed, and the lifeguards at their station looked around in confusion. Gummer reached the side of the pool and suddenly realized what was happening. The lifeguards were blowing whistles. He clung to the edge, wiping his eyes and staring at Caffery walking towards him.

"What?" He moved along the side towards the shallow end, looking up at him. "Stop following me."

"Get out of the pool. I need to talk to you."

"About what?"

"Get out and I'll tell you."

A cropped-haired woman in shorts and flip-flops jumped in front of Caffery and stood, heels together, back erect, like a traffic gendarme, her hand extended at shoulder height, palm out, as if Caffery might stop through the pure ferocity of her expression.

"Yeah, c'mon, c'mon." He pulled his warrant card from his pocket and flicked it at her. "Out of my way."

"I have to think about the health of the other swimmers…" But she was already backing off, her confidence punctured by the card, wondering if their speculations about Gummer had been right after all. "Your shoes, sir…" she finished lamely.

"Come on, Chris," Caffery kept pace with him. Bloodshot eyes in a white face, the slick rubber cap corrugating the skin on his forehead. "We need to talk. There's something you forgot to tell me."

"Go away." Gummer stretched his feet down in the water until he found the bottom. "When I wanted to talk to you, you wouldn't talk to me." He pushed himself off the side and began to wade away, out into the centre of the pool, his thin white arms held straight out at the sides. Caffery walked calmly down to the shallow end and before the lifeguard could stop him he had stepped, fully dressed and still in his shoes, into the shallow end of the pool. Swimmers scattered, shocked by this lean man wading out among them, and in the centre of the pool Gummer saw that the game was up. He turned, holding up spade-like hands, his mouth quivering. "All right, all right! That's enough."

They talked in a corner of the cafe. Both of them smelt of chlorine Caffery's trousers were wet to the knees. A group of teenage boys in FILA sports jackets were using a glue stick to fake bus passes at another table. They kept jumping up to buy chocolate and Red Bulls from the vending machine, and Caffery sat with his back to them, looking across the table at Gummer, who had bought a cup of coffee and two chocolate bars, which he unwrapped, broke into four pieces and positioned on a paper plate in front of him. The chocolate remained untouched for the rest of the conversation.

"Chris, look." His tobacco had survived the swimming-pool. He sprinkled a little into a cigarette paper. "I'm sorry about that. But I needed to talk to you."

"I really needed to talk to you." Gummer had dressed in a worn checked shirt, frayed in places, his fine baby hair dripping on to the collar. His face was as shiny as a peeled egg. "That's why I came all the way to Thornton Heath. But that didn't make any difference, did it?"

"I'm sorry. I learned my lesson."

He shrugged and let his gaze wander away somewhere over Caffery's head. Blood rimmed his eyes. Caffery lit the cigarette and pulled the little foil ashtray towards him. "Chris, tell me something. How did you know about Champaluang?"

"I told you. It was in the paper."

"And that's the first time you heard someone mention the troll?"

He nodded. "You should have listened to me."

"You're right." He turned the cigarette round and round in his fingers, looking at it thoughtfully. "Chris, tell me if I'm wrong, but when you heard about Champaluang, you must have wondered, I mean, help me out here, but when you heard about the troll you must have wondered if it wasn't the same person who was in your house…"

Gummer took a sharp breath. His mouth moved a little, but no sound came out. He dropped his eyes and hunched his shoulders forward, his hands wedged between his knees. Caffery saw that he was shaking.

"Chris?"

He didn't look up. Caffery tapped ash into the little foil ashtray, looking at the top of his head at the skin through the hair wondering where to go next. "I think that the troll was in your house once, Chris. Maybe a long time ago. Am I right?"

He didn't respond. Caffery thought about the Half Moon Lane photos in his pocket. Show him the photographs? What if you're wrong? "Let's put it this way. People have some screwed-up fantasies don't they?" he began. "Don't you think it's amazing the things that some people get off to?"

Gummer shrugged. He kept his eyes fixed on the chocolate.

Oh, Christ, he's going to be difficult

"For example, some people…" He shifted in his chair and crossed his legs. "Some people's fantasy might be uh watching a man rape a child, say. Do you think that's possible?" Gummer gave a little cough and put his hands up to his face, pressing the tips of his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes. Caffery could see the scalp flush red with blood. "A boy, for example. Some people might have a fantasy about that do you think?"

Gummer dropped both hands flat on the table and took deep breaths through his nose. His eyes were closed and Caffery could see the corneas moving beneath the eyelids like a shadow show.

Don't give up

"A father raping a son, for example."

"I'm not a paedophile," he said suddenly, opening his eyes. "I loved my son more than anything."

"Why didn't you go to the police?"

"I tried to I tried to talk to you. You wouldn't listen."

"I mean before. When it happened."

He took in a sharp breath and shook his head convulsively. "No, no, no, no, no." He swung his head from side to side, overemphasizing it like a child. "No my wife said no. We weren't to go to the police."

"She didn't want the truth to get out?"

"Are you surprised?"

"They could have done something."