The Calling (3 page)

Howie gathers herself, takes a breath, holds it for a second. Then she leads Luther back along the stepping boards, past the SOCOs and the uniforms and into the house.

It’s a prosperous, middle-class home: family photographs, occasional tables, stripped wood flooring, vaguely ethnic rugs.

There’s a hot, black zoo stink that doesn’t belong in this bright clean place.

He walks upstairs. Doesn’t want to go, but hides it. Trudges down the hall.

He enters the master bedroom.

It’s an abattoir.

Tom Lambert lies naked on the seagrass matting. He’s been opened from throat to pubis. Luther’s eyes follow an imbroglio of wet intestines.

Mr Lambert’s eyes are open. There are forensic bags on his dead hands. His penis and testicles have been sliced off and stuffed into his mouth.

Luther feels the ground shift beneath him. He scans the blood spray, the blood-glutted carpet.

He stands with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets and tries to see Tom Lambert, thirty-eight, counsellor, husband. Not this cluster of depravities.

He’s aware of Howie at his shoulder.

He takes a deep, slow breath, then turns to the bed.

Upon it is spread the carcass that until recently was Sarah Lambert.

Mrs Lambert had been eight and a half months pregnant. She’s been popped like a tick.

He forces himself to look.

He wants to go home to his clean house, to shower and slip under a crisp duvet. He wants to curl up and sleep and wake up and be with his wife, in sweats and T-shirt watching TV, amiably bickering about politics. He wants to make love. He wants to sit in a sunny, quiet room reading a good book.

Mrs Lambert still wears the remains of a baby-doll nightie, probably bought as an ironic gift from a young female workmate. Her ballooned belly must have stretched it comically before her, lifting that high hem even higher.

She had good legs, traced with pregnancy-linked varicose veins.

Luther thinks of Mr Lambert’s fingertips tracing the soft brown stripe that had run from Mrs Lambert’s pubic hair, over the hemisphere of stomach, right to her protruding belly button.

He turns from the enormity on the bed, buries his hands deeper in his pockets. Makes fists.

On the floor not far from his feet, marked out with yellow evidence flags, lies Sarah Lambert’s placenta. He stares at it. ‘What happened to the baby?’

‘Guv, that’s the thing,’ Howie says. ‘We don’t know.’

‘I prefer Boss,’ he says, frowning, mostly absent. ‘Call me Boss.’

He turns from Howie and makes his way downstairs.

In the kitchen, his attention is caught by a magazine page that’s been torn out and stuck to the fridge with a magnet in the shape of a teddy bear dressed as a Grenadier Guard.

He looks at this list for a long, long time.

The door that leads to the little back garden is open, letting in the cold and the wet.

Eventually he steps through it, ducking his head as he goes.

Teller’s outside, sitting on the low garden wall and sipping a large takeaway coffee. She looks tired and raddled. Pale morning sunlight gleams through her spectacles; he can see a thumb-print on one of the lenses.

She finishes the coffee and calls out, ‘
Oi!
’, catching the attention of a young detective constable. ‘Bin this, Sherlock.’ She tosses over the empty cup.

Luther sits next to her, hunched up in his coat. Looking down on the crown of her head, he feels a rush of tenderness. He loves Rose Teller for the defiant stride she takes through the world.

She says, ‘So what did you want to ask me?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You sure?’

‘It’ll keep.’

‘Good.’

She stands, grinds a fist into her lower back. Then she leads him to find the medical examiner.

Fred Penman’s a hayrick of a man in a three-piece pinstripe. Grey mutton-chop sideburns, white hair in a ponytail.

He should be puffing on a Rothman’s, but isn’t allowed, not any more. Instead, he’s chewing on a plastic cigarette, rolling it round his mouth like a toothpick.

Luther’s feeling the cold as he shakes Penman’s hand and nods hello. It’s the adrenaline wearing off. He needs to eat soon or he’ll start trembling.

He says, ‘So what are the baby’s chances? Worst case.’

Penman takes the fake cigarette from his mouth. ‘What does “worst case” mean, in a situation like this?’

Luther shrugs. He doesn’t know.

‘You’ve got a healthy, late-term foetus,’ Penman says. ‘You’ve got a nutjob with an idea what he or she’s doing: they cut through Mrs Lambert’s belly layer by layer. He used clean, sharp instruments. So I’d say the baby may have been extracted successfully.’

‘By “successfully” . . .’

‘I mean “alive”, yes.’

‘So how long does it live?’

‘Assume it’s given adequate nourishment and warmth. This is finger in the wind, you do know that?’

Luther nods.

Penman looks mournful. He’s a grandfather. ‘We think of babies as weak,’ he says. ‘Because of the instincts they evoke in us: preconscious, very powerful. Actually, they can be tough little buggers. Fierce little survival machines. Much tougher than you’d think.’

Luther waits. Eventually, Penman says, ‘Give it eighty per cent.’

Luther stands without speaking or moving.

Penman says, ‘Ding-dong. Anyone home?’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’

‘Thought we’d lost you for a minute.’

‘I’m just trying to work out how I feel about that answer.’

‘Just pray to God the child was taken by a woman.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘Because if a woman took it, at least she wanted to care for it.’

He trails off. Can’t finish.

‘It wasn’t a woman,’ Luther says. ‘Women don’t target women at home in bed with their husbands.’

Penman lets out a long, slow whistle. ‘We’ve seen too much,’ he says. ‘We shouldn’t have room in our heads for thoughts like this.’

Then he pops the plastic cigarette back in his mouth, chews on it, passes it from side to side. He claps Luther on the arm and says, ‘You’ll be in my thoughts.’

Luther thanks him, then goes to join DS Howie.

She’s waiting for him at the tape.

They pass through the thinning crowds, the people at the back reduced to standing on tiptoe.

They reach the tatty Volvo. Luther throws Howie his keys.

The car is cold inside, smells a bit of fast food and rotten upholstery.

Howie starts the engine, works out how to operate the heater. Sets it to full blast. It’s loud.

Luther belts himself in. ‘Any dirt on the victims?’

‘It’s early days yet, but no. From what we know, they seemed to have been devoted. The only dark cloud seems to have been a problem with fertility.’

‘So, what? They used IVF?’

‘That’s the funny thing, Guv.’

‘Boss.’

‘That’s the funny thing, Boss. Five years of IVF. No luck. Then they give it up as a bad lot, start thinking about adoption. Mrs Lambert stops the IVF twelve or thirteen months ago. And then – bingo. She’s knocked up.’

‘They religious?’

‘Mrs Lambert’s C of E, meaning no. Mr Lambert seems to have had some interest in Buddhism and yoga. Tried out a macrobiotic diet for a while.’

‘His dad die young?’

Howie checks the paperwork. ‘Doesn’t say.’

‘Men get close to the age their dad was when he died, they start thinking about diet and exercise. Mr Lambert was in pretty good shape.’

‘Better than pretty good. Played tennis. Squash. He liked to fence, ride mountain bikes. Ran a marathon or two. He was pretty ripped.’

‘Anything else?’

‘We looked into the alarm,’ she says. ‘Tom Lambert used it extensively the first year it was fitted, then gradually his usage dropped off. That’s a pretty typical behaviour pattern, probably applies to four out of five people who’ve had them fitted. His usage drops off almost to zero. Then four or five months ago, he starts using it again.’

‘That might not mean anything,’ Luther says. ‘Mrs Lambert was pregnant. Sometimes men get extra vigilant when their partner’s expecting. It brings out the caveman in us.’

‘Or,’ Howie says, ‘maybe he was nervous about something specific. Something he’d seen or heard.’

‘At work, you mean?’

‘You said it yourself: the people he deals with every day.’

Luther gives her the nod. Pleased, she enters the coordinates into the satnav.

As she drives Luther says, ‘Can I hear the 999 recording?’

She makes a call, passes him her phone.

He listens.

Luther listens to it three times. ‘Have we traced the number?’

‘Number belongs to a mobile phone reported missing by a Robert Landsberry of Lyric Mews, Sydenham. Two days ago.’

‘Mr Landsberry have any idea who nicked his phone?’

‘We’ll re-interview this morning. But not really. He’s not even sure exactly when it was taken.’

‘So what do we think? The caller’s a burglar on the prowl, maybe? Or someone trying to put a deal together, shift a bit of weed?’

Howie shrugs.

Luther chews his lip as they drive. He says, ‘And this is our only witness?’

‘If he hadn’t called,’ Howie says, ‘the Lamberts would still be lying there. Nobody would even know.’

Luther closes his eyes and runs through the checklist: look deeper into friends and family. Extra-marital affairs. Was the child conceived with donor sperm? Were there money worries? Workplace rivalries?

If they don’t get a quick result, the problem won’t be the absence of information but an exponentially increasing super-abundance of it.

He sighs, and places a call to the best technical forensics officer he ever worked with.

‘John Luther,’ says Benny Deadhead down the line. ‘As I live and breathe.’

His real name is Ben Silver, but no one calls him that. Not even his mother.

‘Benny,’ says Luther. ‘How’s Vice?’

‘Depressing. The things people do to each other.’

Luther lets that one go by. He says, ‘Listen, how’s your workload?’

‘Insurmountable.’

‘Anything urgent?’

‘Well, that depends how urgent you mean.’

‘I mean, I need your help with a really bad one. If I get my guvnor to ask your guvnor if I can borrow you, how’s that going to go?’

Benny says, ‘I’m already packing a bag.’

Until yesterday, Anthony Needham was Tom Lambert’s partner in a small, two-man counselling practice near Clissold Park.

Needham’s in his thirties, in wine-coloured shirt, tailored, and grey trousers, neatly gelled hair. He’s tanned, fit and sporting. Expensive watch. He doesn’t conform in any way to Luther’s notion of a therapist. He makes Luther feel grubby and unhealthy.

The room is designed to be agreeable: three comfy chairs arranged in a semi-circle, low bookshelves. A desk, bare but for a laptop and some framed photographs of Needham taking part in an Ironman Triathlon – scowling in muddy agony, running with a mountain bike slung over his shoulder.

Needham opens the window; it’s stiff and doesn’t come easily. Sounds of the city insinuate themselves in here with them, the smell of traffic and the smell of winter.

Luther crosses his legs and clasps his hands in his lap; something he does to constrain nervous energy. Howie observes Needham with silent gravity. She has her notebook in front of her and a pen in her hand.

Needham opens the lowest drawer in his desk, takes out a flattened, mummified pack of cigarettes. He roots around until he finds a disposable lighter. Then he perches on the windowsill, lights a cigarette and takes a puff.

He discreetly dry retches, leans on the windowsill with the cigarette held between two fingers.

He grinds out the cigarette after that one puff, comes back queasy and moist-eyed. He sits in the third comfy chair, hands laced in his lap.

Luther lets him work it through. Turns over a page of his own notebook, pretends to consult an earlier entry.

‘Holy Christ,’ says Needham at length. He’s Australian.

‘I’m sorry,’ Luther says. ‘I know it’s a lot to take in. But I’m afraid these first few hours are critical.’

Needham gets himself together. Luther likes him for it.

Needham swallows, then unlaces his fingers and gestures, meaning:
ask away
.

‘Well,’ Luther says. ‘You deal with some very troubled young people here. Violent people, presumably.’

‘You do know this is covered by doctor–patient privilege?’

‘I do, yes.’

‘Then I don’t know what you want me to tell you.’