Brown had hypothesised that the early death of her real parents and brother had left her incapable of making emotional commitments, that she was frightened of letting anyone get close in case they were also taken from her. That made sense to Freeman, but once again it had seemed that all Brown had done was to state the obvious. And a reluctance to hang out at the mall with the local cheerleaders didn't explain her sudden coldness towards Katherine. Getting to the bottom of that was going to take some gentle probing.
Brown had been right about Mersiha's file being little more than a diary. He'd been very efficient in recording the sessions, all with dates and times, presumably to help with his billing, but Freeman had discovered no insights into the workings of his daughter's mind. If he'd seen the file sooner, he would probably have suggested to Katherine that they put an end to the treatment. Brown himself admitted several times in the file that he was making little progress in persuading Mersiha to open up. The key to her problems, Brown said, lay in what happened to her as a child, but she had built an impenetrable wall around that part of her life.
Freeman could barely imagine what it would be like to lose both parents at such an early age. It was no wonder that she always seemed so interested in what he was doing and where he was going. Having lost her real parents, she must have lived in fear that her adopted family would also be taken away from her, no matter how many times Freeman reassured her that she was in America to stay. The violent death of her brother, the attempt to kill her in the basement, her time in the Serbian internment camp, any one of those events would be enough to scar a child mentally for life. It was a constant source of wonder that Mersiha hadn't turned out to be a bed-wetting sociopath rather then the bright, beautiful girl she was. Sleepwalking, insecurity and a little secretiveness were a small price to pay for what she'd been through.
She looked across at him and smiled. Her teeth were perfect, her smile that of a cover girl, and it was all natural – she'd never needed retainers or any dental work beyond a couple of small fillings which the dentist blamed on too many sweet things when she'd first moved to the States. Freeman wished that her real parents could still be around to see how their girl had grown.
They'd have been very proud.
'What?' she asked.
'What do you mean?'
'You're grinning at me.'
'So? I'm happy.'
Her smile widened. 'Yeah? Me too.'
He drove in silence for a while. 'Have you and Katherine had an argument?' Freeman asked eventually. He kept his eyes on the road.
Mersiha sat without replying for a while. Her hand reached for the radio controls but she pulled it back at the last moment as if she realised that it would be impolite to disturb the silence with music. 'No, we haven't argued,' she said.
'It seems to me that you're not talking like you used to. You used to enjoy hanging around with each other. You used to behave like sisters.'
'Maybe I'm just getting older.' Mersiha sounded suddenly sad as if a melancholy memory had just intruded into her thoughts.
'You don't think she resents you, do you?' he asked.
'You sound like Dr Brown,' she said.
'Sorry,' Freeman said, 'I didn't mean to. It's just that you're becoming a young woman, and Katherine has always taken a real pride in the way she looks.'
'I remind her that she's getting older, you mean?'
Freeman smiled. 'Pumpkin, we're all getting older.'
Mersiha ran a hand through her thick black hair. She could be a model, Freeman realised. She had the look, and the confidence. 'I don't know what's wrong,' she said. 'I've just been a bit low lately, that's all.'
'Thinking about home, you mean?'
She shook her head. 'This is my home,' she said.
'Good,' Freeman said. 'I'm glad you feel that way. Really.' He saw the marina in the distance, the masts of countless yachts standing to attention like soldiers on parade. 'Can you do me a favour?'
'Sure.' She replied without hesitation.
'Make an effort to reassure Katherine, will you? She loves you, she really does. She takes any sign of coolness personally. She might not say so, but inside I know it really hurts her. She needs reassurance, too.'
Mersiha sighed. 'Yeah, okay.' Freeman held out his right hand, his little finger crooked. Mersiha interlinked the little finger on her left hand with his and they shook. That made it an unbreakable promise. Mersiha took her hand away first. She looked out of the window and sighed again.
Ernie Derbyshire's head felt as if it was going to explode. He tried lifting it, to ease the pressure, but the strain was too much and he flopped back. Breathing hurt, swallowing hurt, everything hurt, but the anticipation of what was to come was worse than any physical discomfort. He closed his eyes and thought back to the days when he was a child, hiding under his bed from a father who drank too much and who took a perverse pleasure in beating his offspring with a studded leather belt. At five years old his backside was as scarred and marked as a deep-sea fisherman's hands.
Derbyshire had hated his father, hated him with a vengeance, and he'd have run away from home if only there had been somewhere for him to go. He'd tried closing his eyes tight and wishing that he was somewhere else. The young Derbyshire had convinced himself that if only he could imagine a place in perfect detail it would become real, and he could escape there, away from the damp basement flat and the abusive father. It was a field with a grass that was greener than he'd ever seen in the Bronx, with buttercups and dandelions and big spreading trees and a cloudless blue sky. Small songbirds sat in the trees, singing and calling, and through the middle of the field bubbled a stream of icy-cold water. Derbyshire could picture himself paddling in the stream, his socks and shoes off, smooth hard pebbles pushing up between his toes.
A railway track skirted one end of the field, wooden sleepers and gleaming steel rails lying on a bed of gravel. Derbyshire had walked along the rails, jumping from sleeper to sleeper, promising himself that if he avoided treading on the gravel he'd be able to stay in the safe place for ever. He'd never seen a train, though occasionally he thought he'd heard its shrill whistle in the distance. The young Derbyshire thought it was the train which was the problem. Until he could picture the train, the place would never be real, but no matter how hard he tried it remained elusive, just around the corner, out of sight, and whenever he opened his eyes he was still underneath the bed, his face down in the dust, hiding from the belt and the beating.
He heard the rattle of the bolt that kept the cold-room door locked and he opened his ice-crusted eyes. His breath plumed around his face and through the misty vapour he saw two pairs of legs step through the door. He'd been hanging upside down for so long that his brain automatically rerouted the signals from his eyes and he had no problem identifying Red Scarf and Orange Peel. They were wearing thick coats with wool scarves around their necks and leather gloves. They were carrying baseball bats.
Derbyshire began to tremble.
The two heavies circled Derbyshire, scraping the bats along the concrete floor. It was a game they played, a game they'd been playing for almost six hours. They'd left him alone all Friday night, letting his imagination run riot, then they'd questioned him for an hour or so, smiling and offering him cigarettes and telling him that if he played ball with them then they wouldn't play ball with him. Red Scarf had laughed loudly at that, but his eyes had remained flint hard and Derbyshire knew that he'd been lying. For most of the time he'd been hanging by his chained feet from a hook in the ceiling, surrounded by sides of prime beef.
They'd got physical for the first time just after eleven o'clock. He remembered the time because Orange Peel had made a point of looking at his watch and asking his partner when they were going to have lunch. Red Scarf had said something about not being hungry just then, and as he finished speaking he'd whacked the back of Derbyshire's legs with his baseball bat like Babe Ruth going for a home run. Derbyshire never knew where the next blow was going to come from. They took a perverse delight in catching him unawares, varying the rhythm and the target areas, extending the torture way beyond what he'd have believed was possible. His legs were a mass of screaming nerves, and he was sure his left knee had splintered. Red Scarf had aimed most of his blows at Derbyshire's stomach and groin, and the detective had almost choked on his own blood and vomit.
The routine was always the same. They taunted him. They beat him until he passed out. They left him alone. Derbyshire had no idea how many times the routine had been repeated.
He had no recollection of individual beatings, just the cycle of pain.
'How's it going, shit-for-brains?' Red Scarf asked.
'Just hanging around,' Derbyshire mumbled. He had a sudden feeling of deja vu, as if he'd made the same quip before.
'He's a funny man,' Orange Peel said from somewhere behind him.
'A very funny man,' Red Scarf agreed.
Orange Peel slammed his bat into Derbyshire's left kidney and the detective grunted, biting his teeth together. He was almost too tired to scream any more. He closed his eyes again and tried to escape to the safe place. Another blow, this time between his shoulders, hard enough to start his body swinging.
They'd left the cold-room door open so Derbyshire didn't hear the third man come in, but when he opened his eyes again he saw a pair of professionally shined shoes and above them dark blue trousers with a crease as keen as a surgeon's scalpel. Derbyshire's gaze travelled up to a black cashmere coat, to a white silk scarf, and above it, a gaunt face, the eyes as cold and lifeless as the slabs of beef. The cheeks were hollow, the lips fleshy and pale, and the hooked nose belonged more to a predatory bird than to a man. It was a cruel face, a face that didn't smile very often. The hair was steel grey and closely cropped, a convict's haircut. Derbyshire recognised the face from the newspaper cuttings he'd given Lennie Nelson. It was Bzuchar Utsyev.
Utsyev smiled malevolently down at Derbyshire, the way a vulture might greet a prospective meal, then turned to Red Scarf.
'He's told you everything?' he asked.
Red Scarf grinned and whacked the baseball bat against the palm of his own left hand, making Derbyshire wince. 'Couldn't think of anything else to ask him, boss.'
Utsyev ran his hand across his chin as if feeling for stubble.
'His contact?'
'A guy called Lennie Nelson. A high-flier with the First Bank of Baltimore.' He grinned. 'A nigger,' he added, as if the fact would appeal to Utsyev.
Utsyev held out his hand. Without being asked, Red Scarf handed over the cheque. Utsyev studied it as if it were a search warrant. 'For services rendered?' he asked Derbyshire. When the detective didn't answer, Utsyev tore the cheque into small pieces and threw them into his face like confetti. Some of them stuck to the blood and sweat and Derbyshire looked like a man who'd tried to heal his own shaving cuts and had done a particularly bad job of it.
'You want us to keep hurting him?' Orange Peel asked, weighing his bat in his hands.