The Treatment Read Online Free

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 to himself. “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 percent.”
    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 toIndia 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 stopped, 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 door open. “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, “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 one another. In the kitchen three embarrassed-looking paramedicsin 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