The Calling

CHAPTER 12

They seal off a two-kilometre area around King’s Cross, concentrate the search on the Joy Christian Centre, at Saints Church of England, St Aloysius Convent, the Crowndale Health Centre on Crowndale Road, the Killick Street Heath Centre, the New Horizon Youth Centre.

Luther elects to join the squad searching the grounds of St Pancras Old Church, on the edge of the search perimeter.

It’s the largest green area in the parish, and one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in London. Ancient trees. Ancient graves.

He arrives at an archaic ash tree ringed by a rusty fence. Around the tree’s root-base, timeworn gravestones have been crammed together. They stand like weird fungi. Over the years the roots of the tree have grown between the stones, knocked them off-true, seem to be in the process of consuming them.

A baby has been jammed between two of the stones, sprinkled with handfuls of soil and leaf humus.

Luther reaches down.

He takes the baby from the earth.

Then he lays her back. She’s cold.

Luther steps outside the evidence tent. Eyes pass over him. Coppers, onlookers, paramedics.

Outside the gates, misery lights flash blue. Uniformed officers erect crowd barriers.

The media are here, of course: there is a scrum of faces, all colours and ages, the mass homogenized by their eagerness to catch a glimpse.

There’s a helicopter overhead.

He buries his hands deep into his pockets and strides through wet grass to a far, secret corner of the churchyard.

He puts his back to the Victorian brick wall. It crawls with evergreen climbing plants. It’s shockingly wet.

He puts his head in his hands and cries.

When he’s finished, Teller’s there, half sitting, half leaning on a gravestone.

Luther’s eyes are raw and wet. He wipes them with the back of the hand. He’s embarrassed.

Teller doesn’t say a word.

For something to do, they walk to the church.

Inside, they find cool stone and heavy silence. The sweet, dusty fragrance of old incense.

Teller sits on the pew in front but turned to face him, resting her chin on her forearm. She watches him.

He says, ‘Fuck.’

‘I know,’ she says.

Outside is the crime scene, the tape, SOCO, the medical examiners, and beyond them the church gates that lead back into the city, the crush of people, the cameras, the journalists, the mobile phones, the love songs on the radio of passing cars.

At the entrance to the church, a recently added marble stone is inscribed: And I am here/in a place/beyond desire or fear.

She touches his forearm.

He nods at his lap. Then he dry-washes his face to massage some life into it. He stands. Claps his big hands.

She watches him walk outside, through the big doors and into the morning. A big man with a big walk. The world turning like a wheel beneath him.