Free The Treatment by Mo Hayder Page A

against the cushion and a cigarillo smoldered in the ashtray.
    “Happy?”
    “Oooops!” She dropped her legs with a bang and twisted round, grinning up at him.
    He saw with relief that she was calm. Flushed and tipsy but mellow.
    “You look happy.”
    “Uh-huh.” A CD played in the background—some-thing smooth, Air or someone like it. “Drunk.”
    “You lush.” He bent over and kissed her. “I've been calling you all day.” He went into the kitchen, hung his jacket on the back of the door and got his Glenmorangie and a glass.
    “I've been in Brixton with some Slade finalists. They think I'm God or something.”
    “Shameless.” He pulled off his shoes and collapsed on the sofa, uncorking the whisky. “Egotistic little tart.”
    “I know.” She coiled her hank of spice-colored hair into a long snake, laid it over one shoulder, and clambered across to him. Good gymnast's legs she had—always lightly tanned, the color of sesame oil. “Ouch,” Souness once admitted, after half a bottle of scotch. “She's the sort of woman you feel right here. In your groin.”
    “I saw someone I knew on the news.” Rebecca rested her arms on his shoulders and kissed his neck. “Just from behind. I knew it was you from your backside. And because you looked pissed off, even from a distance.”
    He downed a glass, refilled it and linked his fingers through hers. In the last three days they hadn't had time together—he'd realized it that morning when the sound of one of the indexers crossing her legs in her fawn Pretty Pollys had popped a sweat on his forehead.
    “You must be knackered.”
    “I've got a four-hour turnaround. Back to the office by five.”
    “It's a little kid, isn't it?”
    “Mmmm. Yes.” He held up her hand and studied her fingers. Her pearly clean nails against his. The thumb on his left hand was black; it was a bruise that wouldn't grow out. His own stigmata. Injured the day Ewan went missing, never changing in twenty-eight years. “Let's not talk about it, eh?”
    “Why not?”
    Why not?
Because already Ewan was willfully superimposing himself over a picture of Rory Peach—
and you've spotted that, Becky, I know you've already spotted the resemblance and if we start, if I let you, we'll be talking about Ewan before I can put the brakes on, and then the mood will change and I'll say something about you, maybe, and Bliss, and …
    “Because I'm tired. I've had it all day.”
    “OK.” She bit her lip and thought about this. “Well,” she tried, working her fingers inside his shirt and smiling. “How about this? Are you horny?”
    He sighed and put down his glass. “Of course.”
    She giggled. “Yeah, stupid question. I mean, when are you not?”
    “I thought I was constantly pissed off.”
    “No. You're constantly randy is what you are. Pissed off is what you do between having hard-ons.”
    “Come here.” He pulled her astride his lap and worked his hands up her T-shirt. “Did you see
Time Out
?”
    “I know.” She began to unbutton his shirt, closing her eyes when he found her nipples and worked them between his thumb and forefinger. “How ace am I, then, eh?” she murmured dreamily, her head back. “Oh, God, that's nice. Did you read it, then?”
    “Yes. I'm proud of you.”
    But he was lying. He shuffled down the sofa a few inches and moved his hands across her skin, like oil against his hard fingers, down the whole width of her pelvis, and the long fierce muscles of her stomach. Rebecca had told him that her body had changed since her artwork had taken off—she said her skin was smoother, her waist thinner; that she didn't get calluses on her feet anymore and that these days she walked more slowly. But what Caffery saw was the opposite: a hardening, a quickening. And he knew it dated back to the assault. To Bliss. Reflecting this switch came the new artwork, the sculptures. Before the assault Rebecca's work had been something quite different. Now the colors had disappeared and