all those other blokes depending on you to supply them with new flesh. The point is, you didn't mean anyone to die. But that's what happened and you're either going to tell me that the bloke in this picture is the one who called himself two-one-six-oh or I'm going to walk out of this room and let you go down for everything from paedophilia to pandering to murder. That's it. You're going down, Barry, and you can't escape it. It's up to you how far you want to sink."
She had her eyes locked on his and his skittered wildly in their sockets. She wanted to ask him how he'd come to be the man he was-what forces in his own past had brought him to this-but it didn't matter. Abused in childhood. Molested. Raped and sodomised. Whatever had turned him into the malevolent procurer he was, all that was water under the bridge. Boys were dead and a reckoning was called for.
"Look at the picture, Barry," she said.
He moved his gaze to it another time and he looked at it long and hard. He finally said, "I can't be sure. This is old, isn't it? There's no goatee. Not even a moustache. He's got...his hair is different."
"There's more of it, yes. But look at the rest of him. Look at his eyes."
He put his glasses back on. He picked up the picture. "Who's he with?" he asked.
"His mum," Barbara said.
"Where'd you get the picture?"
"From her flat. Inside Walden Lodge. Just up the hill from where Davey Benton's body was found. Is this the man, Barry? Is this two-one-six-oh? Is this the bloke you gave Davey to at the Canterbury Hotel?"
Minshall set the photograph down. "I don't..."
"Barry," she said, "take a nice, long look."
He did so. Again. And Barbara switched from Come on to prayer.
He finally spoke. "I think it is," he said.
She let out her breath. I think it is wouldn't cut the mustard. I think it is wouldn't get a conviction. But it was enough to spawn an identity parade, and that was good enough for her.
HIS MOTHER had finally arrived at midnight. She'd taken one look at him and opened her arms. She didn't ask how Helen was because someone had managed to catch her en route from Cornwall and tell her. He could see that from her face and from the way his brother hung back from greeting him, gnawing on his thumbnail instead. All Peter managed to say was, "We rang Judith straightaway. She'll be here by noon, Tommy."
There should have been comfort in this-his family and Helen's family gathering at the hospital so that he did not have to face this alone-but comfort was inconceivable. As was seeing to any simple biological need, from sleeping to eating. It all seemed unnecessary when his being was focussed on a single pinpoint of light in the midnight of his mind.
In the hospital bed, Helen was insignificant in comparison to the machinery round her. They had told him the names, but he recalled only their individual functions: for breathing, to monitor the heart, for hydration, to measure oxygen in the blood, to maintain watch over the foetus. Aside from the whir of these instruments, there was no other sound in the room. And outside the room, the corridor was hushed, as if the hospital itself and every person within it already knew.
He didn't weep. He didn't pace. He made no attempt to drive his fist through the wall. So perhaps that was why his mother ultimately insisted he had to go home for a while when the next day dawned and found them all still milling round the hospital corridors. A bath, a shower, a meal, anything, she told him. We'll stay right here, Tommy. Peter and I and everyone else. You must make an attempt to take care of yourself. Please go home. Someone can go with you if you like.
There were volunteers to do that: Helen's sister Pen, his brother, St. James. Even Helen's father although it was easy to see that the poor man's heart was in shreds and he'd be no help to anyone while his youngest daughter was where she was...as she was. So at first he'd said no, he would stay at the hospital. He couldn't leave her, they must see that.
But finally, sometime in the morning, he consented. Home for a shower and a change of clothes. How long could that take? Two constables ushered him through a small gathering of