by Neil Cross
‘Zoe-’
She hangs up.
Her hand is shaking.
She grabs the tin of tobacco from her drawer and sneaks outside, to the CCTV blind spot on the corner.
She calls Mark North. ‘You were right,’ she says. ‘I give him chances. I give him chance after chance and he just lies. He just lies and lies.’ She tugs at her hair and says, ‘Christ. You were so right.’
Mark doesn’t say anything.
Zoe smokes the roll-up, picks a bitter thread of tobacco from her tongue. She says, ‘I’m shaking.’
‘Why are you shaking?’
‘I’ve never done this before.’
‘Done what?’
‘Harrington Hotel,’ she says. ‘Ten minutes.’
There’s a silence. ‘Are you sure?’ he says at the end of it. ‘Because you need to be sure about this.’
‘No,’ she laughs, ‘I’m not sure. But I’m done with it. I’m finished. I’ve had enough.’
Mark doesn’t hang up and neither does she.
She can hear her own breath feeding back down the line, ragged with anxiety and arousal.
Zoe calls Miriam and tells her to cancel her meetings until after lunch.
Miriam’s worried — Zoe’s never done this before.
‘It’s a personal thing,’ Zoe says. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see you about two.’
She walks to the Harrington, a boutique place on Tabernacle Street. She hasn’t brought a coat and it’s raining. She hugs herself for warmth.
When the hotel is in sight she breaks into a jog. Click click click go her heels.
Mark’s already booked a room and checked in.
He’s sitting in the over-designed lobby, pretending to read the Guardian. He’s holding a white key card with a black magnetic stripe.
They don’t speak. Just step into the waiting elevator.
Inside, they stand shoulder to shoulder.
Zoe can hear her heart.
CHAPTER 6
The squat consists of eight derelict council flats knocked into one. It’s occupied by artists, students, anarchists, junkies and the mentally deranged.
There’s no heating. Crumbling walls are hidden behind graffiti, tie-dyed and screen-printed bedsheets, posters.
Malcolm Perry only stirs when he hears the shouting downstairs. It’s still early, and shouting like that usually involves Random Andy, the schizophrenic often to be found huddling in one corner of the farthest flat, indulged by the dreadlocked art insurgents to whom intolerable mental anguish is a valid form of self-expression.
The shouting is louder than usual this morning, but Malcolm has been up for three days straight on a dirty form of amphetamine called Pink Champagne, washed down a few hours ago with some Temazepam.
Which is why he’s still in bed when the police kick down the door and surge into the room like spawning salmon, a big black copper in a tweed overcoat bringing up the rear, stomping into the room with a sneer of contempt for Malcolm’s posters and his screen-printing equipment.
Malcolm is a skinny man with long, fine hair and a scrubby beard. He’s naked from the waist down, his dick shrivelled by the cold and by the Pink Champagne into a nub of wrinkled gristle.
He’s wearing hiking socks on spindly legs, and one of his own T-shirts.
The big copper stalks up. He looms over Malcolm, looks like he’s about to rip his head off. Instead, he leans close and reads aloud the words printed on Malcolm’s T-shirt.
‘Work Obey Consume,’ he says.
‘That’s right,’ says Malcolm, belligerent and confused.
‘Search this place,’ says the big copper. ‘Nick everyone in here. Interview them all.’
The big copper squats with a look of distaste. With finger and thumb he tweezes a pair of greasy tracksuit bottoms from a pile of clothes near the foot of the bed. He throws them and a pair of rubber flip-flops to Malcolm, completely ignoring Malcolm’s Para boots. ‘Put these on,’ he says.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To my house,’ says the copper. ‘It’s not much. But it’s better than this shithole.’
Luther orders a search of the squats and immediate surroundings.
A second team make a number of arrests based on drugs offences, parole violations, receiving stolen goods, outstanding warrants, suspicion of this, suspicion of that.
And they rush Malcolm to Hobb Lane under blues and twos.
Howie stops off for Luther to pick up a burger. He eats it upside-down in waxed paper.
He’s wiping his mouth on one hand as they walk into the station at the corner of Hobb Lane and Abbadon Street.
The building is a brutish old monstrosity: a utilitarian 1950s construction crudely grafted onto a Victorian frame. It’s a chimera, and thus born to be a police station.
And it smells, like every police station Luther’s ever been in, of linoleum, floor polish, armpits, printer toner, dust on radiators.
Balling his paper napkin as he mounts the stairs three at a time, he passes through the doors into the Serious Crime Unit.
Furniture filched from other departments; ratty office chairs and fire-sale desks crammed into a space that demands to be three times as large.
He strides to his office, a narrow, undersized workspace he shares with Ian Reed.
Benny Deadhead’s waiting for him at the door, holding out a skinny white hand. He and Luther shake.
Luther says, ‘You all right there, Ben? Thanks for coming.’
‘Where do I sit?’
They step into the cramped, disorderly office. Luther gestures to Reed’s desk.
Benny perches his skinny arse on the very edge of it. He is gangly and bearded, wearing a washed-out Chrome T-shirt.
Luther says, ‘You’re all over the paedo forums, right, Ben?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’ Luther leans in to catch his Belfast mumble. ‘Those little corners of the internet where the kiddie-fiddlers share their vibrant fantasy lives. That’s where I spend my working day.’
‘You been briefed about this case?’
‘I’ve been told as much as there is to tell.’
Luther closes the door. ‘How are you? Really?’
Benny’s had some mental health issues, work-related. It’s not uncommon in people who do his job. It’s the things they have to see.
‘I’m all right. I’m actually pretty good. Fighting the good fight.’
‘Because I’m going to ask you to hang around until this one’s sorted. You know about this stuff.’
‘I wish I didn’t.’
‘But you do.’
‘Have you squared it with the Duchess, me being here?’
‘No, but I will.’
‘Because I’m not sure she approves of me.’
Benny tends to leather jackets and patchouli oil.
‘It’s not you,’ Luther says. ‘She hates everyone.’
‘Fair enough, then. Do we think the bairn’s alive?’
‘We’re scared it might be, Ben.’
Benny plonks his ballistic nylon briefcase on the desk, unzips it, hauls out his laptop. ‘Where do I plug myself in?’
Malcolm Perry waits in the interview room. His breath tastes rank. He can feel the cold floor, linoleum over concrete, through the thin rubber of his flip-flops.
Eventually the big copper and his pretty, green-eyed DS walk in and take a seat. They introduce themselves, go through all the rigmarole with the tapes.
The DCI sits back, spreads his legs. Just sits there, watching Malcolm, vaguely amused, as the woman begins the interview.
‘Malcolm Perry,’ she says. ‘In 2001, aged fourteen, you happened across the obituary of Charlotte James, who’d died a week previously in a motorcycle accident. You set off for St Charles’s Cemetery equipped with,’ she frowns a little, refers to her report, ‘digging tools and a tarpaulin, which you apparently stole from a neighbour.’
Malcolm meets her gaze through long, centre-parted hair.
&n
bsp; ‘You were arrested trying to dig up Miss James in order, apparently, to have sex with her corpse.’
Malcolm shrugs one shoulder. Tucks a lock of hair behind his ear.
‘Since you were a juvenile, and since sexual interference with a human corpse was only made illegal under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, you were let off with a caution for minor offences. And an order to undergo counselling.
‘But in 2005, while working in a funeral home, you were caught in the act of sexually molesting the body of a twenty-eight-year-old female victim of a road traffic accident. You sucked blood and urine from her, bit her buttocks, then sodomized her. For which you served four months of a six-month sentence. Released with an order that you attend a bi-weekly counselling session.’
Howie closes the file, lays the flat of her hand on it and turns her green eyes on Malcolm.
‘So,’ she says. ‘How’s the counselling going? You making progress?’
‘Well,’ says Malcolm. ‘That depends what “progress” means.’
‘It means, do you still want to have sex with dead women?’
There’s a long silence.
‘All right,’ says Howie. ‘When did it start? These special feelings of love?’
‘When I was little,’ he says. ‘I used to hold funeral services for my pets. I had a little pet cemetery. It’s all in the file, I expect.’
‘How do you choose them? Your victims.’
‘Lovers.’
‘Whatever.’
‘You want a job in a funeral home, a hospital, a graveyard. Obviously, a morgue’s your best bet.’
‘So you like them fresh?’
‘As the moment that the pod went pop.’
She gives him a neutral look. ‘But of course that’s difficult for you, isn’t it. Seeing as you’re banned from working with or anywhere near the dead.’
‘I’m not practising,’ he says. ‘I’m not a morgue rat any more.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘I’ve got no interest in being a political prisoner.’
‘It’s a political stance, is it, raping corpses?’
‘A corpse is an object. You can’t rape an object.’
‘And what about the families?’
‘The dead don’t belong to them.’
‘It’s all the same to you, isn’t it, Malcolm? You take what you want from the dead. Forget about the families and how they might feel. You live rent-free. All this peace and love bollocks you print on your T-shirts-’
‘It’s not bollocks.’
‘Peace and love is about mutual respect. And you’ve got no respect for anybody.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘So you’re not a morgue rat any more. What are you? I mean, I don’t think the counselling’s helped you one little bit, has it? I think you know enough to say the things they want you to say. But all the time, you were still fantasizing. Masturbating to the thought of dead girls.’
‘Of course I fantasize, Mein Herr. I’m allowed to think about what I want when I wank. This isn’t a police state. Not yet.’
‘That’s true,’ says Howie. ‘As long as no one gets hurt.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘What are your feelings about Dr Tom Lambert?’
‘What, my counsellor?’
‘Yes,’ says Howie. ‘Your counsellor.’
‘He’s a sanctimonious prick. Why?’
‘Sanctimonious in what way?’
‘A hundred years ago, fascists like him were lobbying to castrate homosexuals.’
‘Is that why you threatened to kill him?’
‘Is that what this is about?’
‘I don’t know. Is it?’
‘Because I didn’t say that. He’s lying.’
‘See,’ Howie says, ‘I’m not sure that’s actually true.’
‘Did he tell you this? Because if he did, he’s a fucking liar.’
‘What about his wife?’
‘What about her?’
‘Did you ever meet her?’
‘No.’
‘That’s not true either, is it?’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘We’d show you the crime-scene photos,’ says Luther, his first words since the interview began, ‘but we don’t want you getting excited.’
Malcolm’s eyes flit from Luther to Howie. ‘What crime-scene photos?’
‘So what was it?’ Luther says. ‘You’ve had enough of him? He doesn’t believe all the crap you give him during your sessions?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What about the baby?’ Luther says. ‘What does a man like you do with a baby?’
‘Honestly,’ says Malcolm, much more quickly, ‘what has he said? Because he’s a lying prick.’
‘Where’s the baby, Malcolm?’
‘What baby?’
‘Do you have any idea what prison will be like for you?’ Luther says. ‘Being a weirdo’s one thing. Hurting kids is another. They’re a sentimental lot in Wandsworth. They’ll do to you what you did to Mr Lambert.’
‘Wait. What did I do? What are we talking about?’
‘Where’s the baby?’
‘What baby?’
‘Where is it?’
‘He’s lying about the baby. It wasn’t a baby.’
There is a moment.
‘What wasn’t a baby?’
‘He’s not supposed to fucking tell you this stuff. He’s not. He’s a fucking hypocrite.’
Luther doesn’t move. Neither does Howie.
At great length, Luther says, ‘Malcolm, what wasn’t a baby?’
‘I’d never touch a baby. If he told you I did, then he’s a fucking liar. I like girls. Women.’
Outside the interview room, Howie makes a disgusted face, shakes her hands as if she’s touched something contaminated.
Luther claps her on the back, tells her well done.
Then he approaches Detective Sergeant Mary Lally: thirty, curly hair kept short and practical.
Lally’s a methodical and insightful detective, creative in interrogations. But she’s also gifted with a particular, scornful look. Sometimes Luther applies her as a secret weapon, just to sit there and employ that peerlessly judgemental stare.
They call her Scary Mary.
She looks up from her computer, sets down her phone. Gives Luther a look, like she knows what’s coming.
Luther says, ‘How d’you feel about getting out into the fresh air?’
‘Scary’ Mary Lally meets the Dog Section van outside the squat at Hill Park Crescent. She greets Jan Kulozik, a uniformed patrol handler.
A stately German Shepherd waits at the leash. Kulozik encourages Lally to kneel and greet the dog.
Then Lally pulls all personnel out of the squat, leaves them hunched and carping in the drizzle.
She follows Kulozik and the dog inside, Kulozik droning words of encouragement. The animal’s obvious joy makes Lally smile despite herself.
In the farthest, dark corner of the farthest, darkest flat, the dog becomes agitated. It scrabbles and paws at the floor under Malcolm Perry’s grey mattress.
Kulozik pulls the dog back and murmurs low encouragement, pats it, as Lally kicks the skinny mattress aside.
Her foot finds a loose floorboard. And then another. Lally scowls, then kneels and pulls aside the loose boards, exposing a small cavity.
In the cavity is a black bin liner.
She removes the bin liner.
In the bin liner is a grey woollen blanket.
Wrapped in the grey woollen blanket is a woman’s head.
CHAPTER 7
Henry is surprised by how well the baby slept on the way home.
She is in the back seat of the car, wrapped in the soft blanket with satinette lining. The street lights pulse above her as Henry’s son, Patrick, drives fastidiously under the limit.
Every now and again Henry glances at her over his shoulder and feels a warm surge of fulfilment. A tired, ha
ppy grin spreads across his chops.
Patrick pulls over near the park; he wants to pick up some rabbits. So Henry slides over and gets behind the wheel.
Soon, he is chasing the headlamps through the electric gates at the end of the long gravel drive.
The house is very large. It overlooks the park. It’s worth somewhere in the region of two and a half million pounds, but Henry has far too many secrets buried in the garden to consider selling it.
He’s lived here for twelve years. Elaine, his elderly landlady, has been five feet down in the garden for eleven and a half of them. He catches himself talking to her sometimes. Doesn’t really know why.
The neighbour to his left is a banker with a young family; they moved in two years after Elaine died. As far as they’re concerned, Henry is Elaine’s son. That’s fine by Henry.
Elaine’s real son is another of the secrets buried in the garden.
The neighbours to the right are foreign, Arabs probably; he sees them rarely and has never spoken to them.
Henry parks, gets out of the car, looks around at the morning, then opens the back door and reaches inside. The baby turns her black eyes upon him.
She’s surprisingly warm. She’s scrawny and has that weird, dark purple colour, almost beetroot in places.
Henry’s hand is dirty, still carrying traces of blood, but he didn’t think to bring a pacifier. So he offers his thumb to the baby. She accepts it into her hot, gummy little mouth. Under a soft rubbery layer, the gums are surprisingly hard. The sensation is not displeasing.
He’s decided to call her Emma.
He bundles her into his arms, lifts her gently from the car seat and tucks the blanket around her, nice and tight. This is called swaddling.
‘Welcome home,’ he says. ‘Welcome home. Would you like to see your bedroom? Yes, I bet you would. I bet you would, baby girl.’
Henry is interested and strangely moved to note that although he’s speaking quietly, and although there is no danger of being overheard, he speaks to the baby in the babbling, glissando intonation known as motherese.
‘Youwannaseeyourroom?’ he says, delighting in it. ‘Do you do you do you? Yes you do! Yes you do want to see your room! You do!’
He carries her through the front door into the wood-panelled hallway. It’s old fashioned, of course; Elaine was in her eighties when Henry suffocated her. She hadn’t remodelled for at least a generation. But Henry quite likes it. He thinks of it as timeless.