He thinks of a small piece of plastic he once found behind the bin in his bathroom.
‘I can’t go into details,’ he says, ‘but there are special circumstances surrounding this case. This was a crime of rage. And about as personal as you can get. The best lead I have right now is this support group.’
‘Then I really can’t help you.’
‘I know. But perhaps you’d be willing to ask members of the group to come forward, allow themselves to be eliminated from the enquiry?’
‘I can do that,’ she says. ‘Absolutely. Happy to.’
He makes as if to leave. Then he says, ‘There’s just one more thing.’
She waits.
‘There may have been a couple you didn’t feel right about?’ Luther says. ‘They could have been regular attendees. Or one-offs.’
‘Didn’t feel right about in what way?’
‘Well, that’s something you can tell us. I’m not asking you to judge. But you’re familiar with every kind of behaviour that goes hand in hand with infertility. So did one couple maybe strike you as being, I don’t know – atypical? Outliers? Was there anyone, maybe you couldn’t put your finger on it, but they were wrong somehow?’
‘That’s not really for me to say, is it?’
‘Just for once, it might be.’
‘Well, there was Barry and Lynda,’ she says.
Luther sits back. He crosses his legs. Smooths his trousers over his knee. He knows this is a tell, the sign of a man trying not to show agitation. He’s working on it. ‘Who are Barry and Lynda?’
‘They came once or twice. Didn’t say much.’
‘When was this?’
‘I don’t know, three or four months ago?’
‘So – during Sarah Lambert’s pregnancy?’
‘I suppose so, yes. It must have been.’
‘And what about them made you feel uncomfortable?’
‘They were just – wrong. As a couple. He was very trim. Wiry. Like a marathon runner. Suit and tie. Overcoat. Short hair, worn very neat. Side parting.’
‘And the woman? Lynda?’
‘Well, this is what struck me as strange. She was obese.’
Luther nods. Waits for more.
Howie says, ‘We know it goes against the grain to judge people in any way but this is so important. If this couple had nothing to do with what happened, they’ll never know that you pointed us in their direction. If they did then believe me, you want us to catch them.’
Pope laughs. She’s uncomfortable. ‘We have so many training courses,’ she says. ‘So many awareness sessions.’
‘Us too,’ Luther says.
Pope laughs, a bit more openly. ‘I suppose you must.’
‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Luther says. He smiles and tells her, ‘They want to put a tea vending machine in the station because they think we’ll electrocute ourselves if we’re allowed to have a kettle in the workplace.’
Pope opens her drawer, takes out a mint and unwraps it.
‘They just seemed wrong,’ she says. ‘For one member of a couple to be that fit and the other . . . Well, the other to be that fat. It struck me as odd, like a couple on a saucy postcard. Besides which, if you’re obese and having problems with conceiving, you’re told to lose weight. A lot of IVF clinics refuse treatment to obese patients until they’ve reduced their body mass index.’
‘So you were surprised by this woman’s size?’
‘I think we all were.’
Luther makes a note to check all applications to the IVF programme, see who’s been rejected for obesity. It’ll be a long list, but it could take them somewhere.
He says, ‘What was their story?’
‘In what sense?’
‘I mean, what did they tell you about themselves?’
‘This isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous. We’re a drop-in centre. We don’t pressure new couples. For a lot of them, just coming along is a giant step. If they want to sit in silence, fine.’
‘So how did they behave, Barry and Lynda?’
‘She was . . . sweet.’
‘When you say sweet,’ Luther says, ‘you say it with certain emphasis.’
‘She was . . . she was very pretty, in a strange way. But there was something grotesque about her. I don’t mean in terms of her weight. I mean there was something – Shirley Temple-ish. She wore very girly clothes, pinks and ribbons. Knee-high socks. And she had this teeny, tiny, little mousey voice.’
Luther’s heart is hastening. He says, ‘And him?’
‘He was—’
‘Dominant? Submissive?’
‘Neither. He was distant. They just didn’t feel like a couple.’
‘So he wasn’t paying attention to his partner?’
‘No. They sat next to each other. She was smiling at everyone. Little rosebud lips.’
‘And he was . . .’
‘Smug and over-assertive. Sat there like this, with his legs splayed.’
‘I’m sorry to be vulgar,’ Luther says. ‘But a crotch display like that, a certain kind of man thinks it’s a turn-on. He’s sitting with his legs wide apart, advertising the goods. So were there any innuendos, any double-meanings, off-colour remarks? Joking offers to get women pregnant, maybe?’
‘None of that,’ Pope says. ‘Besides which, I know how to tread on that pretty quickly and pretty efficiently.’
Luther bets she does. He nods, once, in professional recognition. ‘So I wonder – did Barry pay any particular attention to any member of the group?’
Pope’s eyes head up and to the right. She searches her memory.
Then she looks at Luther.
She considers her answer for a long time.
‘He sat there,’ she said, ‘leering at Sarah Lambert like she was a ripe peach. He made them both uncomfortable. Tom and Sarah. I think that’s the last time they came to the group.’
Luther and Howie walk into the blaring London noise, the grit and filth.
Luther says, ‘You ever think about it? Kids?’
Howie shrugs. ‘What about you?’
‘Nah,’ he says. ‘My wife and I had a pact. When we got together.’
‘Seriously?’ Howie says. ‘Whose idea was that?’
‘Both of ours, I think.’
‘And it still stands?’
‘Apparently.’
She flashes him an enquiring look.
‘Who knows,’ he says. ‘The stupid things you say when you’re twenty-one.’
Howie says, ‘Are you okay, Boss?’
He snaps out of it. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘miles away.’
Detective Sergeant Justin Ripley, curly hair and a trusting face, has been seconded to the Lambert investigation. He drives to Y2K Cleaning. He’s partnered with Detective Constable Theresa Delpy.
Y2K Cleaning is run out of an office between a newsagent and a dry cleaners on Green Lanes.
Ripley badges the elderly receptionist. He and Delpy wait for ten minutes, sipping cups of water from the cooler and reading trade magazines –
Cleaning and Hygiene Today
,
Cleansing Matters
– until the owner appears: a short, bearded, fat man in a plaid tank top.
He shakes Ripley’s hand, asks what the problem is.
Ripley asks about Tom and Sarah Lambert’s current cleaner.
The owner comes back in five minutes. ‘Her name’s Sheena Kwalingana. I can show you a file copy of her visa if you like.’
Ripley declines. ‘How long has Sheena Kwalingana been working for the Lamberts?’
‘Three years, four months. No complaints.’
Ripley thanks the owner and drives to Finsbury Park Road, where Sheena Kwalingana has a weekly appointment to clean a graphic designer’s basement flat.
He parks on the corner of Queen’s Drive.
The hookers are still out, pale girls with corned-beef legs offering blow jobs to men on their way to work.
Ripley and Delpy walk to the door of number 93, ring the bell and wait. Inside, they can hear the sound of vacuuming.
Delpy rings the mobile number the Y2K owner gave them.
No answer.
They wait until the vacuuming’s stopped, then ring the doorbell again. There’s a change in the quality of the silence; a sense that someone inside the flat has become aware of their presence.
There’s more silence, then footsteps in the hallway, the shiny black door opening.
Behind the door is Sheena Kwalingana, a short, elderly black woman with very high hair. She wears an old-fashioned nylon tabard with her firm’s logo embroidered on the breast. She’s wearing flip-flops; she’s laid her shoes outside the flat, neatly arranged next to the welcome mat.
She’s brought the vacuum cleaner to the door with her. She stands in the doorway holding the hose.
Ripley badges her. ‘Sheena Kwalingana?’
‘I don’t live here, son. I’m just working.’
She’s got an accent, pleasantly sing-song. Ripley has to strain a little in order to understand it.
‘I know you don’t live here,’ he says, endlessly polite. He badges her again. ‘I’m DS Ripley, from the Serious Crime Unit at Hobb Lane. This is DC Delpy.’
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘I wonder if we might step inside?’
Sheena Kwalingana looks at Ripley with great anxiety, glances back over her shoulder. ‘It’s not my house,’ she says. ‘So no. No, you can’t come in. It’s not my house.’
‘Well, we could talk out here . . .’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘Mrs Kwalingana, you’re not in any trouble.’
This only seems to increase her vigilance.
Delpy sighs. Less polite than Ripley. ‘We’re investigating a burglary—’
‘I don’t burgle people.’
‘We’re not suggesting you do. You’re honestly not in any trouble here, Mrs Kwalingana. Really.’
Sheena Kwalingana nods, but says nothing. Her hand is palpating the ridged tube of the vacuum hose; squeezing it, loosening it.
Ripley says, ‘You clean for Tom and Sarah Lambert of 25, Bridgeman Road.’
‘Yes?’
Ripley says nothing for a while, waits for Mrs Kwalingana to speak.
Eventually, she says, ‘Why?’
‘As my colleague mentioned, we’re investigating a break-in at that address.’
Kwalingana squeezes the hose.
Ripley says, ‘Mrs Kwalingana, would you be more comfortable speaking to us at the police station? It’s more private there.’
She stares at Ripley for a long time. ‘Can I have two minutes to finish off?’
‘Two minutes,’ says Ripley. ‘No problem.’
Mrs Kwalingana makes a move to close the door. Very gently but very firmly, Delpy pushes out a hand to hold it open. ‘We’ll wait here.’
Sheena Kwalingana turns her back, mutters to herself.
Then she goes back inside to finish doing the bathroom.
Henry’s son Patrick is twenty years old. He’s lean and delicate-looking, half wild in jeans and a drab, olive combat jacket.
He’s caught eight rabbits in the park. They’re in his special backpack now, writhing and squealing. Leave them long enough, they’ll chew through their bags and start biting on each other like baby sharks in the womb.
Patrick passes through the electric gates and into the huge, overgrown garden. The gates close behind him.
In the quiet there’s the nice sound of drizzle on leaf-fall, fat water dropping from heavy trees, distant traffic. Under it all he can hear the low, miserable squall of a crying baby.
He walks round the back of the house, to the most sheltered part of the garden. He opens heavy corrugated iron doors and steps into the twilight of the long, concrete-floored garage.
He passes the treadmill on which they exercise the dogs, increasing their cardiovascular fitness and their endurance.
He arrives at the wire kennels. The silent dogs wait; stocky, muscular terriers with broad heads, exaggerated occipital muscles and frog-wide mouths. Each has a heavy chain wrapped around its neck. The chains build neck and upper-body strength.
The dogs greet him in excited silence. Henry has excised tissue from their vocal cords.
The dogs worship Henry as a capricious God, but they know it’s Patrick who feeds them – and that in the morning he often brings live bait; sometimes puppies or kittens advertised as ‘free to a good home’. Sometimes rabbits or rats caught in the park.
As he lifts the bag of rabbits, the dogs follow him with eager, idiot eyes.
Patrick upends the bag into a wire cage and watches the carnage that follows. The rabbits are smarter than the dogs, possessed of glinting intelligence and a self-evident desire to live.
He’s watching the dogs rip them to moist wet rags when the garage doors scrape across the concrete and Henry enters, looking baffled.
‘Emma won’t take her bottle,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Patrick follows Henry into the house and upstairs.
He washes his hands in the sink, using liquid soap that makes them smell of oranges.
Then he goes through to the infant’s bedroom. Once again, he’s struck by her toad-like ugliness.
Once, Patrick found a tangle of baby rats. This was in the days when he was a young boy and sleeping in the soundproof basement. The rats were crammed between a loose chunk of plasterboard and Henry’s bodged soundproofing; blind and mewling pups, a pink fist of them plaited and knotted by their reptilian tails, tugging each other through all points of the compass.
Patrick had wailed in panic and hammered at the solid door with his little fists. He cried and cried, but of course nobody came. Henry didn’t come down until teatime. He had Patrick’s bowl of warm milk and a couple of slices of white bread.
Seeing the rat king, even sleek, rapacious Henry stepped back in horror.
Sometimes Patrick chuckles to remember how he and Henry had reacted, that far-off day. If Patrick were to find a rat king behind the baseboard these days, he’d consider himself fortunate. They’re a rare phenomenon.
He’d scoop it up with a shovel – still blindly mewling – and deposit it into a demijohn of alcohol. He’d keep it on a shelf in his bedroom.
Part of him feels hate for this angry helpless creature wriggling on a plastic mattress decorated with teddy bears. But he feels pity, too.
‘She’s coughing,’ Henry says.
‘Then take her to a doctor.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Have you tried feeding her?’
‘Of course I’ve tried feeding her,’ Henry says. ‘For fuck’s sake.’
‘Is the milk too hot?’
‘No.’
‘Too cold?’
‘No. She’s just – she seems weak. And she’s sleeping a lot. Do you think she’s sleeping too much?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘She should wake long enough to eat, shouldn’t she? Babies get hungry.’