The Calling l-1

by Neil Cross

  He’s gone for a long time.

  Mia begins to climb again.

  She grazes her fingers and her toes, and once her leg slips; she barks her shin to the knee. But she makes it. She heaves and struggles and pulls herself onto the roof of the old outhouse.

  Then the young man comes back to the kitchen. He opens the door and steps into the garden.

  Mia freezes on the roof of the outhouse. She squats there like a cat. She is higher than the man’s head. If he doesn’t look up, it’s possible that he won’t see her.

  He pokes around the garden, probing the corners with the beam of a torch. When he turns in her direction, she sees that his face is different: it’s scrunched up as if he’s been crying. There’s black stuff all over one side of his face, in the vague shape of a human hand. Except Mia knows it’s not really black stuff, it’s red stuff.

  She gasps — and the man looks up.

  He and Mia stare at one another, perfectly still.

  Then Mia scrambles over the remaining few feet of wall between her and next-door’s garden. She drops to the other side of the wall.

  Her ankle twists and it hurts. She should be screaming, but she doesn’t even think about screaming. She just sprints, hardly registers the damaged ankle.

  She doesn’t look back until she’s crossed the wide garden, waded into the rose bushes where thorns scratch her.

  There he is, scrambling onto the garden wall. He jumps down, a lot better than she had. He doesn’t look like he’s hurt his ankle at all.

  He lowers into a crouch and scampers towards her.

  Mia tries to climb but there’s nothing to grab; the ivy the Robertsons used to cultivate before they moved away is too tangled and loose, it just spools away in her hands. She gets tangled and panicky. She risks one more look, just one more look over her shoulder.

  There he is, the sad-faced young man with the red handprint over his face. He’s just looking at her.

  She doesn’t know how long he’s been there.

  She’s scared to see the young man is scared, too, because that means there’s something even worse in her house — and whatever it is, it’s in there with her parents. Mia wants to cry. Her knees are knocking together.

  The man is breathing funny. He looks away, at the empty house the Robertsons used to live in, which is now for sale.

  He says, ‘Come on.’

  ‘No,’ says Mia, although her voice is small.

  The man says, ‘Listen. We don’t have time. We don’t. My dad’s in that house and he’s sent me out to get you.’

  Mia begins to cry. She says, ‘What does he want?’

  ‘To make you his little girl.’

  ‘I don’t want to be his little girl.’

  ‘Then come with me.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Patrick.’ He thrusts out his hand. ‘This way.’

  When Mia doesn’t take the hand, he simply strides to the kitchen door of the empty house and tries it. It’s locked of course. So he takes off his hoodie and wraps it round his fist.

  He puts his fist through the window, brushes loose glass from the frame. Then he wriggles like a worm through the broken window. He appears at the kitchen door and opens it. And still, Mia doesn’t scream.

  She thinks she shouldn’t go with this man, but she hurries on bare feet to the Robertsons’ kitchen door. She and the man hurry through the monstrous, echoing darkness of the empty house. The ghosts of all the families who lived here before watch from the black corners.

  They come to the front door. Patrick opens it. They sneak out, back into the cold night.

  And then they’re running.

  Henry finishes smearing the word on the wall. He calls out, ‘Patrick?’

  There’s no answer.

  Then he hears a noise.

  It’s a pane of glass shattering. And Henry knows. Just like that.

  He looks at the mess in the room. The mess on his clothes and in his hair.

  He jogs to the kitchen. The door is open. No glass is broken.

  He thinks of the empty house next door.

  He returns to the living room and hurries to pack. It takes too long. His things are wet and his hands are busy with rage.

  Then he slings on the backpack and rushes out the front door.

  He sprints for the car.

  They run silently. Patrick has told her to be quiet as a mouse, not to make a noise, because if they do, his dad will know where they are.

  Patrick is faster than Mia, whose feet are bare and tender on the hard pavement.

  Now he turns, hopping up and down on the spot.

  Hurry up! Come on! Please!

  She tries. But there’s a green bottle of lager in the gutter and Mia steps on a shard of glass.

  She doesn’t make much of a noise, and Patrick is proud of her.

  But these are quiet streets.

  Henry hears a child cry out.

  A girl.

  He runs faster. He pumps his arms. In his hand is a carpet knife.

  Patrick runs to Mia. His tears have thinned the blood on the side of his face.

  ‘I know it hurts,’ he whispers. ‘I know it does. But please.’

  She limps to him, fast as she can.

  Patrick kneels. He and Mia are face-to-face. ‘Please let me carry you.’

  She hesitates, balancing on one foot. But when she sees the way his eyes glance fearfully over her shoulder, she says, ‘Okay.’

  Patrick scoops Mia into his arms, the cold skin and warm core of her. She’s all rods and knobs, heavier than she looks.

  He runs.

  The car isn’t far.

  Henry turns a corner at speed and sees them.

  There’s Patrick, hobbling along with the girl in his arms.

  Her foot is blood black.

  Henry laughs, but it doesn’t sound like a laugh.

  He runs faster still.

  Patrick reaches the car and sets Mia down.

  ‘Wait just for one minute. Watch the road for me.’

  She leans against the car, watching the long straight avenue.

  Patrick searches in his pockets for the keys. His hand is shaking.

  Mia whimpers, deep in the back of her throat.

  ‘What?’ Patrick says. He’s trying to get the key into the lock.

  ‘He’s coming.’

  Patrick looks up to see Henry sprinting down the road. Lunatic, blood smeared. He’s got a carpet knife in his hand.

  Patrick knows he won’t get the car started in time.

  ‘Mia,’ he says. ‘Run now. Scream. Make as much noise as you can.’

  Mia sees the look in his eyes. Then she bolts.

  As she runs, she screams.

  What she screams, again and again, is Please.

  Patrick waits, keys in hand, as Henry descends upon him.

  He isn’t scared.

  He’s thinking of his bike. A BMX.

  Henry doesn’t slow. He just keeps coming and coming.

  Patrick braces himself.

  Henry punches his shoulder into Patrick’s solar plexus. Patrick smashes into the bonnet of the car.

  Henry grabs his throat, stretches him out. Rips and lacerates with the carpet knife.

  As Patrick slips from the bonnet of the car, Henry runs in pursuit of the screaming child, knife in hand.

  She’s only little. She won’t have gone far.

  And Henry is very, very fast.

  CHAPTER 21

  Luther drives to Highbury Fields and parks across the square. He knits his hands on the steering wheel and watches Crouch’s red Jaguar.

  He waits for a long time. He doesn’t know how long. His mind is blank with hate.

  Then he grabs the pickaxe handle from the front passenger footwell and gets out of the Volvo.

  He marches across the park and smashes the driver’s side window of the Jaguar.

  The car begins to beep and shriek in panic.

  From his pocket, Luther takes a brand
new can of lighter fluid. He squirts it through the car’s broken window, over the dashboard and the leather upholstery.

  A car’s interior contains the parts that are easiest to ignite: carpets, seating foam, soft plastic. And a fire in a car’s interior spreads quickly.

  He watches the car blaze. He’s not scared of an explosion; petrol tanks are made of thick metal. It’s unlikely the car will explode with concussive force. And if it does, then so be it. He’d welcome it.

  He stands upwind, but the smoke still makes his eyes water.

  He waits and waits. Flames singe his eyebrows.

  He hears distant sirens.

  And then Crouch emerges from his house. He’s sockless in slip-on shoes, shock-headed, hurriedly dressed.

  He approaches Luther with a strange, crazed expression.

  Luther waits.

  Crouch’s hands and voice are shaking. He says, ‘And who the fuck are you?’

  Luther grabs Crouch’s wrist, twists it, wrenches it between his shoulder blades. He frog-marches Crouch towards the burning car.

  ‘If I break your neck and throw you into this car,’ he says, ‘by the time an ambulance gets here, you’ll be a pool of melted fat.’

  Crouch weeps.

  Luther can feel the heat charring his tweed coat, drying his eyes.

  ‘Stay away from the old man,’ he says.

  Then he drops Crouch to the pavement and strides away, across the park.

  The sirens are closer. He knows they’re for him. He doesn’t care.

  He returns to the Volvo. He sits and waits.

  He watches fire-fighters extinguish the merrily burning car.

  Crouch is still there. A woman Luther takes to be a hooker hangs around in the background.

  Police take statements. One of them is a careworn, older detective in a rumpled suit and an overcoat.

  Luther can’t be sure, not from this distance, but he thinks it’s Martin Schenk. Schenk works out of Complaints.

  If he’s right, it means Crouch has reported him as a police officer.

  Luther doesn’t care. He sits with hands on the steering wheel, fighting the urge to get out and stride over there, badge the officers and the fire-fighters out of the way, shove Crouch in the sternum, grab his neck and squeeze.

  He’s still thinking about it when the call comes in.

  It’s Teller. It’s after 2 a.m. so he pretty much knows.

  He picks up the phone.

  ‘Sorry to wake you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I was up.’

  There’s a pause. Teller wanting to say something. He helps her out. ‘Where?’

  ‘Chiswick.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Four at the scene. Mother. Father. Son. Au pair. The daughter’s missing.’

  He sits back and watches the fire-fighters douse the burning Jaguar with retardant foam. He enjoys the blackened skeleton of it, the melted plastic. ‘How old’s the daughter?’

  ‘Eleven. Name’s Mia. Mia Dalton.’

  He wonders how bad it is. He says, ‘Send me the address. I’ll be there as quick as I can. t

  ‘Before you do that,’ she says, ‘there’s something else.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘We think we got one of them. The son.’

  There’s a long moment, like waiting for a second hand to tick. He says, ‘What?’

  ‘Multiple wounds,’ she says. ‘Two hundred metres from the scene. Witness heard an altercation; two men seemed to be fighting over a little girl. The little girl was bleeding.’

  He grips the steering wheel harder, to stop himself floating away. ‘This witness,’ he says. ‘He didn’t think to go out and help?’

  ‘“He” was a she. Sixty-five years old.’

  ‘But not everyone who heard it was a sixty-five-year-old woman living alone, were they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The son?’

  ‘Alive. On his way to operating theatre as we speak.’

  ‘Will he live?’

  ‘I don’t have the latest. It’s a bit tonto round here. The jury’s out, apparently.’

  ‘So there’s no way I can interview him?’

  ‘Not right now.’

  ‘No ID?’

  ‘Nothing on him. Wallet, cash, pre-paid credit card.’

  ‘Pre-paid where?’

  ‘We’re looking into that.’

  ‘It won’t be traceable,’ he says. ‘They’re too careful for that. You buy one of these cards for cash somewhere. Even better, you slip some hoodie a few quid to go in and buy one for

  you. You running his DNA?’

  ‘It’s being expedited.’

  He unwinds the window, slips the magnetic bubble light on the roof. He sets the satnav and turns onto Fieldway Crescent, unseen by everyone.

  Except possibly Schenk, who turns in his direction, puts a hand to his brow as if shielding it from the sun and squints across the darkness of the park.

  When there’s enough distance between Luther and Schenk, he puts the misery lights and the sirens on. He follows their lament all the way to Chiswick.

  He’s the last clown to arrive at the circus. He badges the log officer, ducks under the tape and into harsh lights that throw the night into sudden flat, high definition.

  No one looks like they’ve slept for a week.

  Teller says nothing. Just nods.

  Luther digs his hands into his pockets. He thinks of his wife, wonders what she’s doing.

  He steps over the threshold and into the hallway.

  He smells it.

  SOCO are in here, men and women in jumpsuits, breathing masks, blue bootees. They’ve got cameras and rulers and tape.

  Before Luther sees the remains, he sees the upturned furniture, the blood on the walls. The word.

  He looks at it. He looks at the word on the wall, blood smeared on there with a human hand, thick as oil paint.

  Luther looks at Teller. He sees pity in her eyes and the pity scares him because it’s a reaction to the look on his face.

  When he stumbles from the house, he knows that everybody is looking at him, casting sidelong glances.

  Outside, the air’s not cold enough. He wants to dive into icy water. He wants to hold his breath until it hurts.

  Teller takes his elbow, gestures with her head.

  They walk into that liminal time when night is passing into day.

  She says, ‘Do you want off?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I want off.’

  ‘Then you’re off.’ She lets him think about it for a moment, then goes on. ‘But you should know, if you come off the case, then that’s it, that’s who you are. It doesn’t matter what you did before or what you do in the future. In their minds, you’ll be the copper who let this happen and walked away. I know that’s not fair. And I know it’s not true. But this bastard said he’d do this if you didn’t apologize to him. And although that could never happen, that’s not the story the media’s going to tell. The story is you and him. We made it you and him. It’s our fault. And if you back off now — which I would if I were you, God help me — but if you do, this is who you become. The man who let what happened in there, happen.’

  There are choppers in the sky. Their searchlights sweep the streets.

  ‘It’s not…’ he says, after a long pause. She doesn’t hear him; his voice has gone. He coughs into his fist to clear his throat, starts again. ‘It’s not unusual for a man like this to humiliate his victims post mortem. We’ve all seen it. He’ll leave a woman with her legs spread, something inserted into her vagina. He’ll mutilate her breasts and her face. He’ll dump a hooker by a “no dumping” sign. But I’ve never seen anything like this.’

  Pete Black has removed the victim’s heads and swapped them around.

  The son’s head grinning from the mother’s body.

  The au pair has been posed in the armchair with her own head in her lap.

  ‘Like someone playing with toys,’ he says.
‘Like a fucked-up, petulant toddler ripping his sister’s dolls to pieces. Putting Barbie’s head on the teddy hear. The teddy’s bear’s head on the baby doll.’

  He shudders in his coat. He wonders if he smells of smoke. Supposes he must. He scuffs his feet. ‘Who’re the victims?’

  ‘Stephanie Dalton, Marcus Dalton, Daniel Dalton. Gabriella Magnoli. As far as we can tell, they’re pretty much perfect. Mrs Dalton’s a businesswoman. Used to be a model. He’s an architect, wins awards, teaches, mentors. Students love him, apparently. The son’s good-looking, wants to be an actor. The daughter-’

  ‘What about her?’ Luther says.

  ‘What am I supposed to say?’ Teller barks, forgetting herself. She has a daughter not much older than the missing girl. ‘She’s eleven. What else is there to say?’

  ‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’ Luther says. ‘They’re perfect. He watches them. He’s jealous. He’s resentful. He covets what they’ve got. Happiness. Family. Normality.’

  Luther’s finding energy now. Warmth in his blood. He says, ‘Pete Black’s son. Patrick. How old is he?’

  ‘Twenty? Twenty-one?’

  ‘Fingerprints on record?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Luther’s smiling. He paces. He rubs the crown of his head.

  Teller says, ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes you do.’

  Luther’s laughing now. If he stopped for a moment, he’d see the look on Teller’s face. But he’s swaggering in carnivorous delight, clapping his hands.

  ‘John,’ says Teller.

  He rubs his head, walks in a circle. ‘Boss,’ he says. ‘I need to do something.’

  ‘So go on then,’ she says. ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  He waits it out. You don’t rush her.

  ‘On a theoretical scale of one to ten,’ she says, ‘how much do I not want to know about this?’

  ‘Twenty.’ He steps in before she can protest. ‘If I went through proper channels, waited for you to cross the Ts and give me the official nod, it would take weeks. And I need to do it now. As in this morning. And if it turns out I’m wrong, which I’m not-’

  ‘But if you are?’

  ‘If it turns out I’m wrong, there’ll be hell to pay. You’ll have to sack me. There’ll be an outcry.’

  There’s a second, longer wait. At the end of it, she says, ‘Is it going to help us find that little girl?’