‘Stop now, Poppy,’ says Tonga, almost kindly. ‘Stop now.’
Bill flails and windmills, he tries to stamp on Tonga’s feet. He howls again.
Kidman looks down at Paddy, then looks at Bill and winks.
‘You fucker,’ says Bill. ‘You mean fucker. You horrible fucker.’
Kidman cackles. Then he draws back his great foot and kicks Paddy fifteen feet down the alley.
Paddy’s still alive when he lands. Bill can tell because his wet eyes are looking at him with adoring incomprehension, as if Bill could stop this happening with just a stern command and a point of the finger. Because Bill is God to little Paddy, his Dot’s Yorkshire terrier.
Kidman saunters down the alley, grinning and self-conscious. He puts his big, handsome, horrible face to Bill’s and says, ‘Where’s your wife buried?’
Bill doesn’t understand.
‘I said, where’s your wife buried?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘It is if I want to dig her up and fuck her.’
Bill struggles, but Tonga holds him until all the strength is gone. When Tonga lets go, all Bill can do is sag to the ground, sit with his back to the alley wall, his legs out before him.
Kidman and Tonga watch for a bit without speaking. Kidman is grinning ear to ear. Tonga looks a bit more sombre. But then, he’s got a sombre face.
Then Tonga checks his watch and chin nods. Places to be.
They walk away.
Zoe leaves work the second she can. She takes the glass lift to street level and steps outside, belting her coat.
She walks. She takes a right, then a left. There’s a little road at the bottom, a crooked lane. And that’s where Mark’s car is waiting; a tired-looking Alfa Romeo. Mark is at the wheel. Her heart swells to see him.
She slides in next to him, the smell of old vinyl and leather and roll-ups. The ashtrays overflow with crushed cigarettes.
They drive to his place, a big double-fronted Edwardian in Camberwell. They light candles and sit at his kitchen table in the remodelled basement. The table is scarred, antique, beautiful.
He pours them each a glass of wine, then concentrates on skinning up a joint.
She sips her wine and says, ‘What am I going to do?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I could take you there. To the police station.’
‘If he’s not answering his phone, it’s because he doesn’t want to talk.’ For half a minute, she concentrates on tearing a cigarette paper to shreds, flattening the pieces in front of her, making them neat. ‘This is it, see? This is what happens. When things are fine, it’s fine. But when things go bad, he just ups and disappears. Surely if he’s going through all this, surely this is the time he should need me around?’
‘Maybe he doesn’t want to worry you.’
‘I’m worried enough. I’m frightened for him. I’m tired of being frightened for him. I don’t know.’ She looks at her lap, the shreds of paper. ‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s pretty intense,’ says Mark. ‘Everything he’s going through.’
‘So you’re defending him now?’
‘Christ, no. But I didn’t come here to bury him, either. I feel for the man. I watched him cry over a dead baby today. And here I am, sleeping with his wife.’
She gives him a flirty smile. ‘Don’t be presumptuous.’ She moves her wine glass around on the table like a planchette on a Ouija board.
She bites her lower lip, thinking it over. Then she says, ‘Can I tell you something?’
‘Anything you want.’
‘My worst confession? It’s pretty bad.’
‘Is it something you did?’
‘Shit, no. I’ve never done anything. I’ve been good my entire life.’
Mark doesn’t comment in the way that most men would, working in a double meaning, an undercurrent of sex. He just holds her gaze for a moment, scratches at his short beard, lights the joint.
‘Do you ever get these thoughts,’ Zoe says, ‘these feelings, that go round and round your head at three in the morning and you’re ashamed of feeling them?’
‘Everyone does.’
He takes a few puffs, then passes the joint to Zoe. She hesitates before accepting it.
‘Sometimes I actually wish he was dead,’ she says. ‘I lie in bed and fantasize about him actually dying. Because it just seems so much easier that way. My problems would be solved – I could mourn John, and be free, and not hate myself for it. And everyone would feel bad for me, instead of thinking I’m a total bitch.’
She inhales, holds her breath for as long as she can, then exhales a thin plume of smoke. Passes the joint to Mark.
‘Thoughts like that don’t make you a bitch,’ he says. ‘They’re just an escape fantasy. We all have them. The same thing happens with the spouses of terminal patients. It doesn’t make them bad, either. It’s just one of the ways we cope.’
They smoke for a while. The candles flutter, throw black dancing shapes on the wall.
‘I’m leaving him,’ she says. ‘I’ve had enough of this bullshit. I’m leaving him.’
‘Good,’ Mark says.
He reaches out, takes her hand. They finish the joint and go upstairs.
Vasile Sava, the baby broker, rents a basement apartment in Maida Vale.
Howie and Luther take the short steps down to the front door, check out the grilled windows.
Howie knocks. She’s got a good police knock.
They wait.
It’s 5.37 p.m.
At 5.38, Howie knocks again.
At length, Sava comes to the door. He’s barefoot in an old muscle T-shirt and faded Levis, a little ragged at the cuffs. He’s pumped up like a bouncy castle, brown hair waxed into a vaguely military flat-top. He looks like he should be forcing ethnic minorities to kneel before shooting them in the base of the skull and rolling their bodies into a ditch.
Actually, he runs a company called Primo Minicabs.
Luther and Howie badge him, ask if they can come in and talk.
They spend a few moments doing the dance:
What about
? W
e’d just like to ask you a few questions
. Then Sava gestures with his head:
Follow me.
Sava looks like he’s doing okay. It’s a nice flat, somewhat gloomy with dark wood and Turkish-looking rugs. A 46-inch widescreen with hi-gloss bezel.
The open-plan living room and kitchen has a humid smell, not quite unpleasant. Across the longest wall are arranged a number of large glass terrariums.
Luther digs his hands in his pockets, ducks down to look. ‘What’ve we got here?
‘Death’s head cockroaches,’ Sava says. His English is good, just the hint of an accent. He’s been here for eighteen years.
‘Blimey,’ says Luther. ‘They’re big sods.’
‘Scary big. But easy to care for.’
‘What’s this?’
‘Chilean centipede.’ Sava kneels, points out a segmented, multilegged blue horror the length of Luther’s hand. ‘These over here, they’re red-kneed tarantulas. Over here, that’s a Mexican black king snake.’
Luther meets the impassive yellow eye of the black snake. He casts a glance at Howie.
She’s over in the kitchen, arms crossed, trying not to look grossed out.
Luther considers the iguana in the largest tank: a sand-coloured creature, dewlapped and spiny, on a bone-pale branch. Then he ambles over to join Howie while Sava fusses like an old maid round the kitchen, making coffee. He says, ‘So why are we here?’
‘Because we need advice.’
‘On what?’
‘Stolen babies.’
Sava’s busy grinding coffee beans. The machine makes a high dentist noise.
‘We’re not here to go digging up old allegations,’ Luther says. ‘We honestly just need some guidance.’
‘So I guess this’ll be the baby that was taken. The crazy radio guy. The dead lady, whatever.’
Luther nods.
‘Then you’re talking to the wrong man,’ Sava says. ‘The baby trade goes in the
other
direction. Babies move from Eastern Europe to England. Not the other way round.’ He reads Luther’s expression, the curled lip. ‘What? You don’t like that?’
‘Not much.’
‘Of course! Human rights activists are outraged! It’s
wrong
to buy or sell a person! Traffickers are interested only in money. They’re scum. Where were you born, DCI Luther?’
‘London.’
‘Right. Your parents?’
‘London.’
‘Their parents?’
‘What’s your point?’
‘My point is: if there’s one thing worse than a bad home in a rich country, it’s no home in a poor country. So an unwanted child finds a happy home in London or Barcelona—’
He’s building up quite a head of steam. Luther wonders briefly about roid rage, the aggressive hypomania associated with steroid abuse. He fingers the pepper spray in his pocket, moves it round and round in his palm.
‘Is it such a bad thing,’ Sava says, ‘to find out your parents want you so badly they’re willing to pay money for you? To break the law? Put themselves at risk to give you a loving home? How can that be a bad thing? I don’t understand. Please explain.’
‘You don’t sell people,’ Luther says. ‘They’re not cattle.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Twenty years ago,’ Sava says, ‘the news in England shows terrible conditions in Romanian orphanages. Kids are naked, starving, covered in shit. Dying. So thousands of Western families decide to adopt these orphans, okay? Save them from these terrible shit lives. But alongside the legal market, a black market springs up. Romania’s a failed communist state, remember. Everywhere you look, pockets are being lined, palms are being greased. The usual story. So because of this corruption, the European Union puts pressure on the Romanian government. Not to sort out the illegal adoptions but to
stop foreign adoptions altogether
.
‘All these babies, all these young kids. They’ve been approved for adoption to rich Western families! Officially approved! Rubber stamped! They’re living in filth and squalor, like dogs, but soon they’re going to get out, get away, move to Brighton, Amsterdam, Madrid. But no. This ban means they have to stay in Romania. They don’t get a family. They don’t get nothing. They’re left behind to freeze and starve and be fucked in the ass and in the mouth. Have you ever seen one of these places?’
‘No.’
‘But you think you’ve seen some pretty bad things, right? All coppers say that. It’s part of the image.
Oooh, the things we’ve seen
. Well, fuck you. And do you know the real irony?’
Luther ponders the malignant pets in their muggy glass tanks, their unblinking eyes under pale grey rocks. One tank is full of crickets. They struggle to crawl over each other like passengers escaping an underground fire. Hundreds of them.
He says, ‘I don’t know. Tell me.’
‘Who goes on to abuse, eh? Who goes on to fuck kids in the ass? People who were fucked in the ass when
they
were kids! On and on it goes. So fucking high-minded pricks like you with all your morals and all your distaste, telling me it’s wrong to sell people. It’s
you
who leaves these kids in these terrible shitholes because it’s so
dirty
to buy and sell a human being. Well, when you go to bed tonight I want you to think about all those kids who didn’t get adopted back in 2001. I want you to think of them being fucked in the ass by men in blue uniforms. Then I want you to imagine those kids going on to rape the kids who were born
since
2001. And in ten, twenty years, I want you to imagine the kids born since 2001 raping the kids being born today. And on and on it goes. Because of assholes like you.’
He takes a breath. His hands are shaking. Cables of vein running up his arms. He drains his dainty little coffee.
‘The people who want to do this,’ he says, gesturing to the air above him. ‘English people desperate to adopt children. They’re not monsters. The people they buy the children from aren’t monsters either – not for the most part. And people like me, people whose only crime is to introduce supply to demand, I’m not a monster either. So if you’re looking for someone who’d indulge a man who wanted to cut a baby from its mother’s womb, then fuck you for looking in the wrong place.’
‘Okay,’ Luther says. ‘I can see this means a lot to you. But you need to calm down, okay?’
‘I’m calm.’
He’s not.
‘We’re not looking at you,’ Luther says. ‘But we may be looking for someone you turned away. Somebody who came to you, made the mistake you think I’m making. A monster who thought he was coming to see a monster. Maybe used the name Torbalan.’
‘These men, I don’t deal with them. Not ever.’
‘But you know of them. These men.’
‘If I did, what would happen?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘The reward. I saw it on TV. A hundred thousand. Is it still available?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do I have to sign anything?’
‘You’d have to make an official statement and put your name to it, yes. If the information you give leads directly to a successful prosecution, the money’s yours.’
‘But there must be other channels, right? Faster ways.’
‘I’m not playing this game. Two minutes ago, it was all about the kids.’
‘No. Two minutes ago it was all about hypocrisy. People like you, who pretend to care – but who don’t really give a shit.’
‘I’m asking nicely,’ Luther says. ‘If you have a name, give me a name. Please.’
‘No.’
Luther looks at Howie and laughs. He says, ‘‘No”?’
‘Bring me money, I’ll give you a name.’
‘What name?’
‘The name of the man who sent Mr Torbalan to me.’
‘You could be saving lives,’ Luther says. ‘Instead, you’re going to do this?’
‘I could have spent the last six years saving lives. And making childless people happy.’
‘I know you’re bitter.’
‘I’m not bitter. I’m poor.’
Luther thinks. He says, ‘Okay. I’ll see what I can do. DS Howie, would you mind stepping outside and calling our commanding officer? Please enquire if it’s possible to arrange an urgent cash payment to Mr Sava?’
Howie produces her mobile, waves it. ‘Will do, Boss.’
Luther and Sava wait in silence until Howie’s gone.
Then Luther loosens his tie.
‘The worst of it is,’ he says, slipping the rolled-up tie into his pocket, ‘you made a pretty good argument back then. Not one I’d agree with, but one I’d be obliged to think about if I was trying to refute it. You’re obviously a smart man.’