The Calling (2 page)

He hands Luther a buff folder.

Luther leans against the wall and flicks through the file. Sees arrest sheets, mugshots, surveillance reports.

The top sheets detail the kids who were arrested, remanded and released for harassing Bill Tanner: dead-eyed ratboys, English white trash.

Beneath the arrest sheets are more detailed reports on Lee Kidman, Barry Tonga and their boss Julian Crouch.

Luther slips the folder into a carrier bag and checks his watch.

It’s late. He thinks about going home. But what would be the point? He thinks about the dead and can’t sleep. He lies there boiling like a star about to explode.

So he drives to Crouch’s place, a townhouse overlooking Highbury Fields.

He parks and sits at the wheel. He wonders what he’s going to do to Julian Crouch and how he’s going to get away with it.

At length, he pops the boot, walks round the Volvo and pulls out a hickory wood pickaxe handle. He feels its satisfying weight.

He marches across Highbury Fields and waits in darkness, the pickaxe handle clenched in his fist.

Shortly after 4.30 a.m., an immaculate, vintage Jaguar pulls up.

Julian Crouch gets out. He’s got riotously curly hair, thinning on top. Suede coat, paisley shirt. White Adidas.

He opens his front door and hits the lights – but lingers on the threshold, backlit by the chandelier. He sniffs the air like prey at a waterhole. He knows someone’s out there, watching him.

He frowns and shuts the door, squeaks across marble tiles.

Luther stares at the house, breathing.

Lights come on.

Crouch comes to his bedroom window. He looks down like a troubled king from his high castle, peering into blackness. Then he draws the curtains and turns off the light.

Luther stands sentinel. His heart is a furnace.

At length, a fox scurries down the centre of the empty road. Luther can hear the quick, prim click of its claws on tarmac.

He watches the fox until it disappears, and he heads back to his car.

He waits until the winter sun begins to rise and the first joggers pass by. Then he drives home.

Luther walks through the red door before 6 a.m.

Zoe’s already up. She’s in the kitchen making coffee, bed-headed and lovely in silk pyjamas. She smells of sleep and home and that scent behind her ears, the scent of her skin.

She takes a carton of orange juice from the fridge, pours herself a glass. ‘So did you tell her?’

‘Babe,’ he says, taking off his coat. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t get the chance.’

She drinks almost a whole glass of juice, then wipes her mouth with the back of a hand. ‘What does that mean, exactly?’

Luther nods at the floor. It’s his tell, a signal that he’s lying. He knows it. He says, ‘It’s just, the timing was wrong.’

‘The timing’s always wrong.’ She puts the juice back in the fridge. Then she crosses her arms, silently counts down from five. ‘Do you actually want to do this?’

‘I do,’ he says. ‘I absolutely do.’

‘Because you look like death, John. You actually look ill. When’s the last time you slept?’

He doesn’t know. But he knows his mind’s not right. At night his skull cracks open and spiders crawl inside.

‘When’s the last time you did anything,’ she says, ‘except work?’

Zoe’s a lawyer, specializing in human rights and immigration. She earns good money; they’ve got a nice Victorian house with a red door. A little shabby inside. Scuffed skirting. 1970s heating. No kids. Lots of books.

She turned to him in bed one morning, propped her head on the heel of her hand, her hair mussy and chaotic. Winter rain peppered like gravel against the window. The central heating was on the fritz: they’d slept in their socks. It was too cold to get out of bed.

She said, ‘Sod it. Let’s go somewhere.’

He said, ‘Go where?’

‘I don’t know. Anywhere. Wherever. When did we last have a holiday?’

‘We went on that boat thing.’

He was referring to a holiday they’d taken with Zoe’s colleague and her husband. Photographs showed four smiling people propped near the rudder of a barge, raising wine glasses. But it had been a disaster: Luther alienated and withdrawn, Zoe brittle and blithely make-do.

Luther said, ‘That can’t have been the last holiday.’

‘Where then? Where have we been?’

He didn’t know.

‘We made all these promises to each other,’ Zoe said, ending his silence. ‘About how it would be. We’d travel. We’d spend time together. So how come none of it happened?’

He lay on his back and listened to the icy rain. Then he turned, propping himself up on an elbow. He said, ‘Are you happy?’

‘Not really, no. Are you?’

His heart hammered in his chest.

‘We go days and days,’ she said. ‘We hardly speak. I just want to see a bit more of you. I want it to actually be like we’re married.’

‘Me, too,’ he said. ‘But look – if our biggest problem is that we’d like to spend more time together then, well . . . that’s not so bad, is it? Not when you look at other people.’

She shrugged.

Luther loves his wife. She’s the straw at which he clutches. It mystifies him that he needs to tell her this. When he tries, she gets embarrassed: she laughs and makes a humorously appalled face.

Propped up in bed on that cold morning, he banished thoughts of the dead kid and said, ‘So what are you thinking?’

‘We take a year off,’ she said. ‘Rent out the house to cover the mortgage.’

‘I don’t want strangers living in my house.’

She batted his upper arm, impatiently. ‘Let me finish? Can I at least finish?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Well, actually there’s not much more to say. We just, we pack and we travel.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere. Where do you want to go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘There must be somewhere.’

‘Antarctica.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to Antarctica. You can fly there from South America or New Zealand. I don’t even think it costs that much. Not really. Not in the scheme of things.’

‘Can you actually do that?’

‘Apparently.’

He sat up, scratched his head, suddenly taken with the idea. ‘I’ve always fancied New Zealand,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘Turkey’s on my list,’ she said. ‘Turkey’s good. Let’s do Turkey.’

‘I’m not big on beaches.’

He didn’t like to sit in the sun, having people nose at what he was reading.

‘You can read in the hotel,’ she said. ‘We could meet for lunch. Have a siesta. Make love. Theatre in the evening.’

‘You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?’

‘Yep. We’d need to update your passport.’

‘Do we?’

‘It ran out.’

‘Seriously? When?’

‘Two and a half years ago.’

He rubbed his head. ‘All right. Fuck it. Let’s do it.’

She laughed and hugged him and they made love like they were already on holiday.

That was nearly a year ago.

Now he’s standing exhausted in the kitchen at just gone six in the morning, dazed by lack of sleep, placing two bowls of muesli on the breakfast bar; a late night snack for him, breakfast for her. He says, ‘I was going to ask her today.’

He means his boss, Detective Superintendent Teller.

Zoe makes a mouth with her fingers and thumb: yada yada yada. Heard it before.

Luther picks up a bowl of muesli, turns his back to her, shovels cereal into his mouth. ‘The thing is, Ian got hurt.’

He allows her a moment. Ashamed of himself.

‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘How bad?’

‘Not too bad. I picked him up from A and E, took him home.’

‘What happened?’

‘He was cornered somewhere. We’re not sure by who. But they gave him a pretty good kicking. So we’re a detective down.’

‘Okay,’ she says, relieved that Ian’s all right. ‘But that doesn’t mean you can’t tell her, does it? Whatever happens, she’ll need a few weeks to arrange cover for you. You know that. Ian being in hospital is not an excuse.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s not. You’re right.’

‘So tell her?’

‘I will.’

‘Seriously,’ she says. ‘Tell her.’

She’s imploring him. But it’s not about the holiday. It’s about something else.

Zoe sometimes has flashes of what she believes to be psychic insights. Many involve him. Two nights ago, she cried out in her sleep. ‘Marked!’ she said.

He’d meant to ask what that meant. What was marked? What had she been seeing in that secret time behind her eyes?

He says, ‘I will. I’ll ask her. I promise.’

‘Or else, John,’ she says. ‘Seriously.’

‘Or else what?’

‘You can’t go on like this,’ she says. ‘You just can’t.’

He knows she’s right.

He’s trudging upstairs to the shower when his phone rings. He checks out the caller display:
Teller, Rose
.

He answers, listens.

Tells her he’ll be there as soon as he can. Then he washes his face, brushes his teeth, puts on a clean shirt. He kisses his wife.

‘I’ll ask her today,’ he says, meaning it. ‘I’ll ask her this morning.’

Then he heads out to the crime scene.

He’s forced to park some way off and walk to the scene.

The morning is damp and chilly; he feels it in his knees. He thinks it’s all the bending over, all the ducking through doors and under tape; half a lifetime spent cramming himself into spaces that aren’t quite big enough for him.

It’s sunrise, but already plain clothes and uniform are conducting a house to house. Curious neighbours stand blinking in doorways, huddled in sweats and nightgowns. Some will ask the police inside; none will have heard or seen anything. But all will sense their deliverance from something sombre and profound, something that passed them by like a hunting shark.

The house is behind tape. Two and a half storeys, double-fronted Victorian semi. Probably a million and a half.

Luther shoves through the rubberneckers, the citizen journalists hoisting iPhones, not drowning but filming; he shoulders aside the real, old-fashioned journalists. He badges the Log Officer, who signs him in, then he ducks under the tape.

Detective Superintendent Rose Teller steps up to greet him. Five foot four, fine-boned, hard-faced. Teller’s grown into the pinched expression she first adopted as a younger woman who sought to accommodate superior officers, men who saw frivolity in grace. She’s wearing a forensic suit, bootees.

He says, ‘Morning, Boss. What’ve we got?’

‘Nasty piece of business.’

Luther claps his hands, vigorously rubs them. ‘Can you give me a minute, first? I need to ask a favour.’

She gives him the look. They don’t call her the Duchess for nothing.

She says, ‘You really choose your moments, don’t you?’

‘Later,’ he says, taking the hint. ‘Whenever you’ve got a minute. Won’t take long.’

‘Okay. Good.’

She clicks her fingers and DS Isobel Howie hurries over, trim in her white forensic bunny suit; strawberry-blonde hair worn short and spiky. Howie’s a second-generation copper, doesn’t like to talk about it. Some issue with her dad.

She nods good morning to Luther, hands him a manila file.

‘Victims are Tom and Sarah Lambert. He’s thirty-eight, she’s thirty-three.’ She shows him photographs: Mr Lambert dark, handsome, fit-looking. Mrs Lambert blonde, athletic, freckled. Stunning.

‘Mr Lambert’s a youth counsellor. Works with troubled kids.’

‘Which means a lot of people with emotional and mental problems,’ Luther says. ‘Mrs Lambert?’

‘She’s an events manager; organizes weddings and parties, that sort of thing.’

‘First marriage?’

‘First marriage for both of them. No jealous exes that we know of, no restraining orders. Nothing like that.’

‘Point of entry?’

‘Front door.’

‘What? He just let himself in?’

Howie nods.

Luther says, ‘What time is this?’

‘The 999 call came in around 4 a.m.’

‘Who made the call?’

‘Male, walking his dog, didn’t leave his name. Claimed to hear screams.’

‘I need to hear the recording.’

‘We can do that.’

‘Neighbours? They didn’t report any screams?’

‘Didn’t hear a thing, apparently.’

‘No cars? No slamming doors?’

‘Nothing.’

He turns back to the open door.

‘So who’s got spare keys? Neighbours, babysitters, mothers, fathers, cousins? Dog walker, house-sitter, cleaner?’

‘We’re looking into all that.’

‘Okay.’

Luther nods to the interior of the house. Howie follows the line of his gaze, sees a plastic keypad set into the wall. A small red light is flashing. Yapping like a silent dog. A burglar alarm.

Howie beckons Luther with a nod, leads him along the stepping plates that SOCO have placed along the side of the house.

Near the drainpipe, Luther shoves his hands deep into his overcoat pockets; it reduces the temptation to touch things. He squats heel to haunch, nods at the point where the phone line has been snipped. Then he takes one hand from his pocket and mimes a pair of scissors. The cut is close to the ground, half hidden by the spindly city grass that grows round the bottom of the drainpipe.

‘So he’s got a key. He also knows they’ve got an alarm. And he knows how to disable it.’ He stands, rotating his head to loosen a stiff neck. ‘Let’s find out who installed the alarm. Start with the contractor, the actual bloke who fitted it. I’ve seen that before. If you don’t get any joy with him, go to the security company that employs him. Check out everyone. Invoicing department, IT department, the boss, the boss’s PA. The sales force. All of them. If you don’t get anywhere, go wider. Look at employee spouses. And hope that comes up trumps. Because if it doesn’t . . .’

He lets that dangle, looks at the snipped wire in the pallid grass, feeling that feeling.

Howie tilts her head and looks at Luther in a strange way. She’s got a smattering of freckles across her cheeks that make her look younger; her eyes are green.

He looks over her shoulder and there’s Teller, giving him the same look.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Let’s have a look inside.’