CHAPTER 13

Henry buys the Mail, the Mirror, the Sun, the Independent and The Times. But not the Guardian. Henry detests the Guardian.

Then he goes to the cafe and orders a full English. He shrugs off his overcoat and scarf and, still trembling, sits at one of the red plastic moulded tables, bolted to the floor in an ungenerous manner that has become the norm.

It saddens him. But proper cafes, cafes like this, are closing by the dozen every week, winking out of existence like fairy lights. So he’ll take what he can get.

He adds sugar to his tea, stirs it with a dirty teaspoon, stained by years of daily immersion in tannin.

Then he can’t put it off any longer. He opens the first newspaper.

They tell the story the same way: LONDON HOLDS ITS BREATH. PRAYERS SAID FOR BABY EMMA. THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE PLEDGED LAST NIGHT… HUNDREDS OF POLICE CANCELLED LEAVE LAST NIGHT… WE ALL PRAY… IN DARK TIMES…

Henry burns with rage and embarrassment.

He looks through the window at the damp city coming alive: the market owners setting up stalls, selling organic veg and Indian food and knock-off Caterpillar boots and cheap polo shirts. The women walking to work at the local Tesco, the taxi drivers stopping outside the newsagent to pop in for a paper and a packet of fags.

Then he turns back to the paper — to the photographs of the smiling Lamberts, the woman he sliced open like ripe fruit to remove the fresher fruit within. He’d slit the throbbing blue umbilicus with a folding knife he’d owned since he was a boy.

He’d been sure the Lamberts were ideal; he stuck with them through the years of IVF because he never doubted their fertility. They were too exquisite not to be. Two bodies like that, they were breeding machines.

Simple genetic principles implied their child would be ideal, too. But it wasn’t. It was a mewling little runt.

It’s not Henry’s fault she died. And at least London knows that now. People know that the man who took Baby Emma wasn’t a pervert.

Zoe goes downstairs and turns on the TV, sees the affable morning newsreader pulling her grave face.

‘… an update on this still-developing story,’ she says. ‘Acting on a tip-off from the man who claimed to have kidnapped baby Emma Lambert, visibly devastated police officers reportedly found the body of a baby at St Pancras Old Church in central London early this morning. Simon Maxwell- Davis is at the scene.’

Zoe watches live footage of a London churchyard. A dizzying zoom — and there’s John, stomping away from an evidence tent. Rose Teller is a beat behind him, like a terrier at his heels.

It’s followed by helicopter footage of John leaning against a wall and apparently weeping.

Zoe’s hand goes to her throat.

Cut back to the young man with the microphone. Blond and ruddily handsome, a little chubby.

‘Well, Lorna,’ he says, to the anchor, to the viewers, to Zoe, ‘this must be the moment all police officers dread. Although I should stress that we’ve yet to have official confirmation, our sources do tell us that, following the dramatic call made to a London radio station early this morning, police have indeed found the body of a baby here at St Pancras Old Church in central London. Details are very sketchy at this time-’

Zoe snaps off the TV and calls John.

She gets voicemail.

He never answers his fucking phone. It’s one of those things about him. It drives her insane. He says if you go around answering your phone, all it does is ring.

‘John,’ she says, ‘it’s me. I don’t know what time it is. It’s early. I’ve just seen the news. Give me a call as soon as you can. I just want to know you’re okay. Please. Just — y’know.’

She hangs up. Tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She puts her face in her hands. She says her own name like a mantra: Zoe, Zoe, Zoe.

Then she cranes her neck and looks at the ceiling.

Her phone rings. She snatches it up. It’s Mark. He says, ‘Have you been watching the news?’

‘I’m watching it now.’

‘Jesus Christ, Zoe. Are you okay?’

She doesn’t know.

Mark says, ‘Have you heard from him?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think he’s okay?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says, testily. ‘I really don’t know who’s okay and who’s not.’

‘Listen,’ he says, not rising to the bait. She loves him for it. ‘Whatever you need me to do, I’m here. If you want me to come over, I’ll be right over. If you want me to stay away, I’ll stay away. Just let me know.’

She says, ‘Look. Thanks. I appreciate it. I really do. But we had a row last night. A pretty bad one. And then, here he is on TV, crying. That’s not like him. And… I just don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve got to go.’

‘Go where?’

‘To work.’

After a moment he says, ‘Is that a good idea?’

‘What else am I supposed to do?’ she says. ‘Hang around the house all day, watching the news? If I did that every time John was up to his neck in something horrible, I wouldn’t have a job to go to.’

Howie gets in about two minutes before the police courier arrives from Bristol. She hasn’t even taken off her coat when he hands over the Kintry and York files, taped up in a second-hand Jiffy bag.

Howie thanks him, lays the Jiffy bag on her messy desk.

The courier is a young PC with a heavy West Country accent. She offers him a cup of tea. He prefers one of the Cup a Soups he sees next to the water-spotted kettle. He’s been up all night and he’s hungry.

He drinks the soup. They chat about the case in very general terms. Then he rinses the cup, wishes her good luck and leaves.

Howie takes a coffee to her desk, slips on a pair of noise-reducing headphones, opens the Jiffy bag and digs out the files.

Luther’s barely through the heavy doors of the buzzing unit when Benny grabs his elbow and drags him into the office, Ian Reed’s dry cleaning still hanging there behind the door.

Benny’s twitchy, wide-eyed, washed-out.

Luther says, ‘Christ, Benny. How much sleep did you get?’

‘Not that much. It was niggling at me. It’s difficult to sleep when you know you could be doing something useful — in case things didn’t work out.’

‘Well, things didn’t work out.’

‘I heard that. You okay?’

‘Tickety-boo. What’ve you got?’

‘Facebook.’

‘I thought we’d done that.’

‘Well, yes and no,’ Benny’s rushing now, eager to tell him something. He reins himself in, takes a breath and says, ‘What’s the golden rule of social networking?’

Luther hangs up his coat. ‘Don’t do it?’

‘No. The golden rule is — only put up information or images you’re happy for everyone to see and are happy to put your name to. And the Lamberts seem to have done that, by and large.’

‘But?’

‘But the problem is, when I say happy for anyone to see, it really does mean anyone. The problem with social networking, the internet in general, is it’s easy for someone to pretend to be someone they’re not. For instance,’ he stands, ‘do you mind?’

Luther gets out of Benny’s way, lets him access the old beige computer with 15-inch monitor he’s got tottering on his desk — brought here when Traffic had a refit, got themselves some nice flatscreens.

Benny logs on to Facebook, taps a few keys.

Then Luther’s looking at his own Facebook page. Except Luther doesn’t have a Facebook page.

Benny says, ‘I set this up in your name last night.’

Luther looks at it. ‘How?’

‘Easy. I know your birthday, right? I know where you went to school, uni, blah blah blah. You can easily get these details online. What I didn’t have to hand was a photograph of you. But I happen to know you like David Bowie, right? And I know your favourite album.’

‘ Low.’

‘Right. So I dig up the cover image for Low. Use that as your profile picture. Anybody who knows you, sees it and thinks: Typical John Luther! Bowie fanatic! So nobody’s got any reason to think this isn’t you. Now all I have to do is look up a few old friends of yours. Again, that’s easily done because I know where you went to school. I send out a bunch of friend requests.’

‘Tell me you haven’t done that,’ says Luther.

‘No way. I value my ability to walk. But listen, the point is, I knocked up this page in ten minutes — for educational purposes only. Just to show you how easy it is, to be someone else online.’

‘Okay. Point made. Internet bad. So?’

‘So I combed through all the Lamberts’ online “friends”. Sarah Lambert’s got 250-odd, Tom Lambert’s got 70. He’s a very occasional user. So let’s put him to one side for the moment, come back to him if we need to. Let’s concentrate on Sarah. She’s got 253 friends: of those 253 friends, 185 post once a week or more. Of the remaining 68, most are occasional users. What happens a lot is, people start up a new account and go posting happy: what they had for breakfast, funny things the kids have said. But that loses its appeal pretty quickly, and their postings get fewer and fewer as the weeks go by. Some people sign up, make one or two postings, decide it’s not for them and are basically never seen again.’

‘How many of those we got?’

‘About half a dozen: Tony Barron, Malcolm Grundy, Charlotte Wilkie, Ruby Douglas, Lucy Gadd, Sophie Unsworth.’

Luther nods, feeling something now — something coming down the line at him.

‘I contacted them all this morning,’ Benny says.

‘What do you mean? Officially?’

‘No chance. I rang round, pretending to be from a charity. Phoned their workplaces. That kind of thing.’

‘You’re in the wrong job, mate. So how’d it play?’

‘Tony Barron, Malcolm Grundy, Charlotte Wilkie, Lucy Gadd, Sophie Unsworth — all of them check out — or seem to at a first pass. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a bit more due diligence on them, belt and braces.’

‘All right, consider it done. But the last name?’

‘Ruby Douglas.’

‘Who’s Ruby Douglas?’

‘Ruby Douglas went to the same prep school as Sarah Lambert. Moved away when she was thirteen. So you’re talking about a very loose, very old acquaintance — if you can even call her that. Someone Mrs Lambert may remember, but hasn’t actually seen for more than twenty-five years.’

‘Okay.’

‘This “Ruby Douglas” joined Facebook three years ago, befriended the Lamberts and a few others the same day. Then didn’t make one post. Not a single post, until-’

‘Until?’

‘Until Mrs Lambert announced she was pregnant.’

Luther’s heart is loud in his chest now.

He says, ‘Let me see the post.’

Sarah Lambert:

We’ve been on tenterhooks for weeks and weeks, dying to tell you. Tom and I are pregnant! Four months gone!

‘There are fifty-nine comments and thirty-eight “likes”. One of those “likes” was posted by Ruby Douglas. That’s the only posting she ever made. To anyone. Ever.’

At length, Luther says, ‘You tried to contact her? Ruby Douglas?’

‘Oh yeah. No deal.’

‘We don’t think this is actually her, do we?’

‘Not a chance.’

‘So we’re saying Pete Black stalked the Lamberts on Facebook?’

‘It’s so easily done,’ Benny says. ‘Seriously. People have no idea of the kind of person who’s out there, watching them.’

Luther’s sense of triumph fades. He sits. Thinks about it. ‘So the announcement of the pregnancy is what got them killed? He was waiting for it.’

Benny says nothing. Knows there’s nothing to say.

‘Can we trace the user back?’ Luther says. ‘‘‘Ruby Douglas”, find him that way?’

‘Whoever it was used a free webmail address to sign up. Not traceable. Posted from different public ISPs.’

‘The ISPs any use?’

‘One of them’s a public Wi-Fi hotspot. The other’s a cafe in East London.’

‘The chances of getting security camera footage?’

‘After all these months? Pretty small.’

‘Worth a try, though. I’ll get someone on it.’

But there’s more. He can see it in Benny’s eyes.

He forces himself to sit still.

Benny says, ‘The thing about cyber-stalking, it’s not like the real-world equivalent. To someone like this, the internet is like a dessert trolley. He could be watching any number of people. I mean, he could be watching dozens of people. Or hundreds. He’d know when they were sick, when they’re well. When they were on holiday. When they’re at meetings, out of town. He’d know what their kids look like, what their pets are called, what they watch on TV. He might as well be in their house.’

Luther thinks of Pete Black, out there, omniscient, full of jealousy and hatred.

Waiting for the next child. And the child after that.

Then Teller comes to the door.

He says, ‘Boss?’

‘The day’s not getting better,’ she says.

She leads him to her office, where the news is playing on her computer.

On a rolling news channel, Maggie Reilly is being interviewed by a slim young Anglo-Indian woman in Armani and killer heels.

Maggie looks severe and focused, a solemn presence; not at all like she spent a sleepless night waiting for a madman to call and make her famous again.

‘Whatever the facts of the matter may be,’ she says, ‘the man who calls himself Pete Black, the alleged killer of Tom Lambert, Sarah Lambert and now baby Emma Lambert, very clearly blames the police for the tragedy that took place overnight.’

The interviewer leans forward. She has a thin sheaf of papers in one hand. ‘But surely no one can blame the police for doing their job?’

‘No one’s blaming the police,’ Maggie says. ‘They were doing a difficult job in what were clearly very difficult circumstances. It’s just that, in this once instance, perhaps blindly following procedure wasn’t the optimum strategy.’

‘Are you suggesting the police should have met “Pete Black’s” demands and guaranteed not to stake out the hospitals?’

‘Of course, it depends on the police service’s operational priorities: catching a killer or saving the child. All I’m saying is, perhaps it’s an option they could have explored.’

‘But as you know, police are refusing to comment on operational details. They simply won’t say whether they had officers posted at hospitals and churches.’

Maggie Reilly laughs. ‘I’ve been a journalist too long to trust a “no comment” from the police, no matter how prettily it’s dolled up.’

‘Maggie Reilly, we’ll leave it there. Thank you.’

Luther rubs the flat of his hand in slow circles around the crown of his head.

He says, ‘This is all such bullshit. The baby was long dead. She’s been dead since yesterday. He’s mortified by that. The baby dying wasn’t part of his plan, whatever his plan was. He can’t accept the blame, so it must be someone else’s fault. He’s passing the burden of guilt on to us.’

‘I know that. You know that. Whether people out there,’ she gestures, meaning the wider world, ‘actually want to believe it. That’s a different matter.’

Luther tugs at his ear, considering. He says, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’

‘Do what?’

‘This.’

She gives him the Duchess look.

‘Things aren’t good,’ he says. ‘At home. Between me and Zoe.’

‘I see. She’s being a madam, is she?’

‘It’s not that.’

‘It’s always that. You’re not the first copper to marry a spoiled cow. You won’t be the last.’

‘Boss, that’s not fair. She just-’

Teller gestures with open palms: Just what?

Luther rubs his face, exhausted. He needs to shave and change his shirt. ‘I’m not right,’ he says. ‘In myself.’

‘So what are you suggesting we do?’

‘I’ve been meaning to ask about leave of absence. Stress leave. Whatever you want to call it.’

‘And whose idea was this? Yours, or Princess Tippietoes?’

‘Both of ours.’

Teller removes her spectacles, blinks at him like an owl. ‘If we take you off this now, it looks like an admission of guilt. It’s like declaring we did something wrong.’ She puts the glasses back on, shoves them up the bridge of her nose. ‘They’ll crucify the fucking lot of us.’

Luther practically folds in on himself. Crossed arms, hunched shoulders. ‘We shouldn’t react to this bullshit anyway,’ he says. ‘You can’t run a case via the media.’

‘You can’t run a case like this any other way,’ she says. ‘That’s the truth of it. If Pete Black controls the story, he controls everything. We look like the Keystone fucking Cops. That’s why we’ve called a press conference, and that’s why you’re going to front it.’

He can’t speak.

‘Welcome to the world of modern policing.’ She points to the TV, the endlessly cycled image of Luther in the graveyard, weeping. ‘Like it or not,’ she says, ‘this little Kodak moment makes you the caring, sharing face of the Metropolitan Police Service. People might be quick to stand in judgement where the Met’s concerned. But everyone loves a big, tough man who can cry over a baby. Which makes you the public face of the investigation. Congratulations.’

‘I’m not competing with this psychopath to make people see who cares the most.’

Teller pinches the bridge of her nose as if she’s got the worst migraine in history. ‘You need to get out there,’ she says, ‘and do whatever needs to be done.’

‘What else?’ he says. ‘You want me to cuddle a puppy?’

‘This isn’t my idea.’ She looks pointedly at the ceiling. ‘And it’s not for negotiation. And don’t suggest the puppy thing to Cornish, because he might go for it.’

She means her boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Russell Cornish.

Teller hands him a printed statement. He folds it and slips it into his pocket.

‘Doing this,’ he says, ‘all it’s going to do is feed his ego. To see us running around like headless chickens.’

‘His ego’s not our concern right now.’

Luther thanks her automatically, and shoves the press conference to the back of his mind. It’s another thing to deal with later. He crosses the bullpen, finds Howie at her desk.

‘Anything in the York or Kintry file?’

Howie swivels on her chair, massaging her neck. She passes him the Adrian York file. It’s pitifully thin. ‘Not really.’

She tells him that Adrian was out riding his new BMX while his mother, Chrissie, watched from the bedroom window. Chrissie had a clear and uninterrupted view of the park.

The phone rang, a landline. Mobile phones weren’t that common in 1996. The caller was Adrian’s grandmother, asking when she could bring round his birthday cake. When Chrissie got back to the window, no more than three minutes later, Adrian had gone. She saw his bike lying in the grass and went out to look for him. Ten minutes later, she called Avon and Somerset Police. Attending officers immediately began to search for Adrian’s father, David York. The senior investigating officer was Detective Chief Inspector Tim Wilson.

As far as Howie can see, no serious attempt was ever made to rule out a stranger abduction.

Luther glances over the file. ‘Where’s David York now?’

‘In Sydney, Australia.’

‘And the Kintry abduction?’

‘If this is the same man, you’re right. It looks like a first attempt, and a bit of a botch job. There were many more witnesses. Mr Pradesh Jeganathan, a local shopkeeper, apparently witnessed a white male leading a black child towards a small white van. He challenged the driver. There was an altercation during which the alleged abductor actually bit Mr Jeganathan on the ear and cheek.’

‘Bit him? They get DNA?’

‘Mr Jeganathan suffered a heart attack at the scene. They rushed him to the Bristol Royal Infirmary before he could be forensicated.’

‘Bite imprints?’

‘Poor quality, but on file.’

‘That’s something. But teeth can change a lot in fifteen years. Other eyewitnesses?’

‘One more. Kenneth Drummond, freelance illustrator. Claimed to have seen a small white van cruising past the Kintry boy a few minutes before the attempted abduction.’

‘He give a description of the driver?’

‘Nothing that contradicts what we’ve already got.’

‘But nothing to add to it either?’

‘Sorry, Boss. It’s pretty slim pickings.’

‘Fifteen-year-old cold case,’ he says. ‘It’s going to be a long shot.’

‘It’s more than a cold case. Maggie Reilly was right, actually. It’s a scandal.’

‘What about the senior on the Kintry case? Pat something. Did we contact her?’

‘Inspector Pat Maxwell. Retired. I made a few calls. She died a couple of years back.’

Luther takes that in. Old cases close up like wounds, knit together.

He thanks Howie and heads towards the door.

He hesitates, thinks again, turns back to her. ‘Pete Black,’ he says. ‘Obviously that’s not his real name. So why’d he choose it? Of all the names available to him, why that one?’

Howie shrugs. ‘It’s a pretty blah name,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t give much away. There must be a million Pete Blacks in London. They’re being eliminated as we speak.’

‘Did it mean anything to you, when you heard it?’

Howie shakes her head.

‘It did to me,’ he says. ‘It meant something.’

‘Like I say. It’s a pretty common name.’

‘Yeah,’ Luther says. ‘But he chose it. And our choices reveal us, don’t they? So do me a favour, look into it. Not at the files. Go a bit wider.’

‘Wilco, Boss.’

Howie sets aside the cold case files and turns to her computer.

Luther doesn’t know what he’s expected to say at the press conference until he’s sitting flanked by Teller and her boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Russell Cornish, addressing the media.

‘The murder of the Lambert family and the kidnap of baby Emma Lambert is a tragedy for all concerned,’ Luther recites. ‘For the victims, for their families, for the police, for the country as a whole. The Metropolitan Police would like to extend a plea to the man who has identified himself as “Pete Black”,’ he pauses, and his eyes take in the room: the journalists, the cameras, the lights, ‘to please contact us on the number listed below. Pete, we know you’re in a great deal of emotional turmoil, and we want to help you. We want to talk to you and we will make every effort to do so. But we cannot communicate via the mass media. So please, call the number listed below. Be assured that we’ll know it’s you we’re talking to.’

He looks at the desk, fighting his embarrassment and shame.

‘We would also like to appeal to the family of the man who calls himself Pete Black. His voice is being made available to you on many news websites, on the police’s own website, and also on a Facebook “tip” page we’ve established for this purpose. Somebody out there knows who Pete Black is. He’s a husband or a son, a brother, a friend, a colleague. So we’re asking members of the public to please listen to the recording of his voice. Is this someone you know?

‘We urge you to bear in mind that “Pete Black” is in a great deal of pain and that by helping us you will not be betraying him, but helping him.

‘Once again I say to the man calling himself Pete Black: we urge you, for your own sake, to please get in contact.’

As he reels off the phone numbers one more time, he surveys the crowd. Then he says, ‘No questions at this time. Thank you very much.’

He gathers up his papers and leaves the clamouring journalists, the shifting HD cameras. The void compound eye.

In the corridor he leans against the wall and closes his eyes.

He waits for his heart to slow, the nausea to pass, the anger.

All Julian Crouch wanted to be was a rock and roll star.

His dad, George, was the entrepreneur — property and secondhand cars, mostly. He made all the money; married an ex-Miss UK when he was fifty-eight.

That was Julian’s mum, Cindy.

George had the rugged Brilliantine looks of a B-movie hero. George had a Soho tailor and wore handmade shoes. He claimed to have played cards with the Krays and exchanged Christmas cards with Nipper Reed. He drank whisky and smoked cigars and fucked Soho hookers and was apparently loved by all who ever set fucking eyes on him.

George was an old man by the time Julian went to the London College of Music, of which George volcanically disapproved. Julian and George barely exchanged a word for eleven years.

Julian was thirty when, in 1997, George had a fatal aneurysm on the toilet during a long weekend in Portugal. He was reading the Daily Mail, his dead hairy fists closed around it.

By then, Julian knew he’d never be a rock and roll star. He was too old. But his ambitions had shattered and reformed; he could still be a kind of Simon Napier Bell figure, a manager, a bon viveur, a club owner, an entrepreneur.

So he stepped in and took over the family business. The cars and the properties ticked along nicely, essentially looked after themselves. He left that side of it to his mum.

He moved into recording studios, nightclubs, dotcoms. And fair play, he made a fortune. In 1998, he invested in, then quickly sold, tookool. com, an online store and delivery service for funky urbanites.

Tookool’s primary attraction, its free delivery, also proved to be its undoing. It went bust in 2000. But by then, Julian had already sold it, making somewhere in the region of ten million pounds. Not much, as dotcom fortunes went, but not bad.

That was pretty much Julian’s entrepreneurial high point. Over the years, asset after asset turned to dust in his hands. The recording studio, Merciless Inc., failed to attract a single major artist and shut its doors in 2004. The nightclubs bumped along the bottom, did okay, never really caught on.

Julian married Natalie. She wasn’t a Miss UK and she never stopped traffic. She did, however, slow it on occasion.

Natalie’s divorcing him. Julian estimates that she’s about to cost him approximately two and a half thousand pounds per orgasm. Probably the first fifty orgasms were worth it. Probably not enough to fill a can of Red Bull.

Then Cindy died and the world economy fell over and the property empire began to subside beneath his feet.

There was a biblical metaphor in there somewhere, something about sand, but Julian had been too busy trying not to sink to look it up.

He’d been able to shrug off the failure of the nightclubs and the recording studio. His timing had been off, that was all.

The collapse of the property empire, however, was vertiginously alarming.

‘Capital,’ George had taught him, ‘is what you don’t spend.’

Julian’s capital was spent.

And now Lee Kidman and Barry Tonga stand dripping in his hallway, the hallway he is shortly to lose if he doesn’t sell that fucking terrace in Shoreditch to that flash fucking Russian from Moscow on fucking Thames.

Basically, they’re here to ask for their money. But Julian’s not really listening.

His eyes drift, as they often do, to Lee Kidman’s crotch. He finds himself contemplating the animal furled in there, that thick and lazy beast.

Julian is not by inclination homosexual, he’s seen Kidman perform in quite a few pornos, pornos of the British variety: middle-aged hookers pretending to be housewives, women who look like they’ve hastily trimmed their snatches with Bic disposables and no foam, ostensibly offered twenty-five quid for a fuck in the back of a van then — ha ha! — left stranded by the side of the road.

Julian recognizes these films for what they are, comforting fantasies of availability, they’re all whores in the end, blah blah blah. He doesn’t, in and of themselves, find them erotic or stimulating, not beyond the occasional animal twitch in his crotch for a pleasured moan or an animal groan, or a pale jiggling breast.

But Lee Kidman’s cock!

Lee Kidman doesn’t use a disposable Bic. He looks depilated and smooth as an Action Man. His cock is as thick as Julian’s wrist. Julian is fascinated by the laziness of it — the way it’s too big to point upwards. It just kind of dangles there. The women stuff it into whatever orifice like half a kilo of uncooked sausages.

Lee Kidman’s cock has started to insinuate itself into Julian’s dreams. It’s not like he wants to do anything with it, let alone have it inside him: the thought fills him with a shudder of biological terror — imagine trying to get that thing in your mouth!

And it takes Kidman so long to come. Although, to be fair, Julian expects it wouldn’t take as long with a man. But still.

Kidman is aware of Julian glancing at his crotch. There’s a kind of half-smile for it.

Julian says, ‘Is the old man still in the house?’

‘Yeah,’ says Kidman. ‘But that copper’s not hanging round any more. Which was the point.’

‘And you did it right? He got the message.’

‘He got the message.’

‘And there’ll be no comebacks?’

‘Nah.’

‘Because I don’t want to go to prison, Lee.’

Julian is terrified of prison. His therapist calls it cleisiophobia: the fear of being locked in an enclosed space. But it’s not that. It’s the fear of being locked in an enclosed space with men who have cocks like Lee Kidman.

‘Seriously,’ Julian says. ‘This is an old man living alone in a shitty little house. How hard can it be?’

Kidman and Tonga have the grace to look embarrassed.

Julian says, ‘I’m not giving you a fucking penny until you’ve got that old cunt out of my fucking house. Jesus Christ. You’re unbelievable. Coming round here with the job half done. Have some pride.’

Kidman gives him a mock-innocent look.

Barry Tonga just looks blank, stands there with his massive arms crossed, judging him. And Julian doesn’t like to be judged. It makes him uncomfortable.

He dreams of just getting out from under this shit, just getting on a plane and flying away.

He’s been thinking of moving to Thailand, perhaps opening a little bar. He can see himself in cut-off jeans and flip-flops, generally hanging out.

Of course, if Julian were to get into the Thai bar business, there’d be another tsunami and he’d be left with flotsam and jetsam.

But even that seems better than this: shitty London, shitty properties, shitty old people standing between him and liquidating assets. And the shitty fucking knowledge that George, his dad, would probably know exactly what to do.

Patrick has slept in the park. He’s done it before, when Henry’s in a mood.

It’s the largest open space in London. It’s like being in a different epoch. There are bogs and bracken, archaic oak trees. There are herds of red deer, a population of badgers, even parakeets: birds with incongruous, bright feathers and rosy red beaks.

Patrick walks back to the house. He brings a sack of rabbits for the dogs.

Before moving here, he and his dad lived all over. They even lived abroad for a while, he thinks, possibly in France. But it’s difficult to be sure. Patrick was very young and not permitted to speak to anybody but Henry.

They were long years but not unhappy; there was always so much to do. And there was just him and Henry; the blinding spotlight of Henry’s love, the cold light of Henry’s rage.

Now Patrick walks through the front door and there’s Henry in the living room. Patrick can almost smell his depression.

When Henry’s unhappy you can see the thing inside him, the twisted thing that Patrick thinks of as a demon. It’s ill-knit and crooked, full of hate and wrath.

Patrick lingers in the doorway, in case another beating is imminent. He says, ‘Dad, what’s wrong?’

Henry looks up. He’s not a big man and his hair is dark and neat. His eyes are all wrong.

Henry picks up the Sky Plus remote and rewinds to a recorded news broadcast. ‘Look at this,’ he says. ‘Just fucking look at it.’

On TV, Patrick sees a black police officer with broad shoulders. He’s sitting behind a long desk, flanked by uniformed officers whom Patrick presumes to be of a higher rank.

‘Here he goes,’ says Henry. ‘Here he fucking goes. Listen.’

On screen, the policeman is saying how sorry he feels for Henry.

‘ We know you’re in a great deal of emotional turmoil, and we want to help you. We want to talk to you and we will go to every effort to talk to you.’

Patrick goes cold from his feet to his head.

‘Those cunts,’ says Henry, blinking and tearful. ‘Those fucking cunts. Look at them. Who the fuck do they think they’re talking to?’

Henry watches the press conference twice more, mouthing along with it. Patrick doesn’t move from his position in the doorway.

‘They feel sorry for me?’ Henry says. ‘They’re trying to fucking embarrass me. They’re trying to fucking show me up. Who are they, eh? Who are these cunts to feel sorry for me?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Patrick.

‘I’ll do them,’ Henry says. ‘I’ll fucking do them. The fucking cunts.’

Henry goes to the cabinet and takes out a disposable mobile phone, still boxed. He opens the box, takes out the phone, takes off the bubble wrap and fits the battery. He puts all the bits of cardboard in a Tesco Metro carrier bag, ready to be thrown in someone else’s bin.

All the while, he’s muttering to himself. I’ll do you, you cunts. I’ll fucking do you. Fucking show me up. I’ll do you.

When Henry’s got the phone, then his wallet, he stands waiting in his neat grey coat with the black suede collar, his square-toed Church’s shoes. He looks almost small, like an angry bantam. It hurts Patrick to see it.

Henry tells Patrick to drive to Hyde Park. There are few CCTV cameras there.

Henry hates CCTV cameras. He sometimes talks about moving away, moving to a country where it’s more difficult to be seen.

Patrick and Henry drive to Hyde Park and sit on a bench.

Henry calls the radio station and rages.

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