The Treatment Read Online Free PDF Page B

taken from genuine victims of
rape and sexual abuse.
    In private Rebecca would never talk about what had been done to her a year ago. Caffery had been there, had seen her close up, unconscious and displayed, suspended from a ceiling: a killer's bloody, valedictory exhibit. Hehad sat patiently through her statement for the inquest of her dead flatmate, Joni Marsh, in a little hospital room in Lewisham. It had been a rainy day and the maple tree outside the window dripped steadily through the interview.
    “Look, if you find this difficult …”
    “No—no, it's not difficult.”
    At that point he was already half in love with Rebecca. Seeing her bent head, those slender hands fidgeting in her lap as she tried to put it into words, tried to explain the indignity performed on her, he took pity and prompted her through the statement, broke every rule in the book to lessen the ordeal. Fed her what he knew so that all she had to do was nod. She remained shaken—in the inquest she cried during her testimony and couldn't start again, and eventually the coroner allowed her to step down from the witness stand. Even now, if Caffery tried to coax her into talking about it, she would pull up the drawbridge. Or, more infuriatingly, laugh and swear it hadn't affected her. In public, however, she used it almost as an accessory, like part of her wardrobe:
    Cue outraged women's groups, garnering
glee from the tabloids and schizophrenic cat-
and-mouse, press-dodging games from Morant.
On future ambitions? “Being banned by Giuliani—
that would be quite fun.” And most oft-repeated
hack question? “When are you going to chuck in
the art and do what you really want to do—
model?” Random 2 opens at the Zinc Gallery,
Clerkenwell, August 26-September 20.
    As long as the world thinks she's resilient, that's all she cares about.
He closed the magazine, rested his face for a moment on his crossed hands and tried not to think about her, tried not to think about Ewan and tried not to think about Rory. Out of the window, beyond his bowed head, London's midnight lights sparkled like luminous-spined sea creatures.
    “Coffee?”
    He jerked a little where he lay. Opened his eyes. “Marilyn?”
    Marilyn Kryotos, the manager—the “receiver”—of the cumbersome HOLMES murder database, stood in the doorway staring at him. She wore pink lipstick and a navy-blue dress, one lapel pinned with a mother-of-pearl brooch in the shape of a bunny. “Did you
sleep
here?” She sounded half impressed, half disgusted. “In the office?”
    “OK, OK.” He straightened from the desk, pressing knuckles into his eyes. It was a little before dawn and the night was pink around the bottom of the Croydon skyscrapers. A fly floated feet up in the mug of scotch. He checked his watch.
    “You're early.”
    “First light. Half the team are here already. Danni's on her way to Brixton.”
    “Fuck.” He groped for his tie.
    “Do you want a comb?”
    “No, no.”
    “You need one.”
    “I know.”
    He went to the twenty-four-hour filling station opposite the office, bought a sandwich, a comb, a toothbrush, and hurried back, past the area maps lining the corridor, stopping to pick up the spare shirt he kept in the exhibits room. In the men's he stripped off his shirt, splashed water across his chest, under his arms, and bent to put his face under the tap, wet his hair, then went to the air dryer, lifting his arms, pushing his head under it to dry his hair. He knew he was in the silent eye of the storm. He knew that as the country woke, as televisions came on and the news spread, the incident-room phone would begin to ring. Meanwhile there was red tape to wade through, community-impact assessment meetings to be arranged with the borough commander, and case reviews to think about. The stopwatch had started and he had to be ready.
    “Did you get that thing about Rebecca?” Kryotos stood in the incident room, holding a coffee mug and a cake tin.
    “The
Time Out
, you