‘I’m not manic. I’m exhausted.’
‘But you can’t sleep.’
‘That’s not the same thing.’
‘I mean, you don’t sleep at all. Not at all.’
‘So I’ll get pills.’
‘You say they cloud your thinking.’
‘They do.’
‘People with Bipolar Two are at a high risk of suicide.’
‘I’m not suicidal.’
‘Seriously? Not ever? It never crosses your mind?’
‘It crosses everyone’s mind. Now and again.’
‘Not mine.’
‘It’s just a thought pattern,’ he says. ‘Suicidal ideation: if I had to do it, how would I do it? It’s not an intent. It’s a game. Sort of.’
‘Hypomania in Bipolar Two Disorder manifests as anxiety and insomnia,’ she says.
‘Don’t do this to me now,’ he says. ‘Please. Not now.’
‘If not now, when?’
‘Soon. We’ll talk about it soon.’
She laughs, and he catches the magnitude of her bitterness.
‘I promise,’ he says.
‘You always promise. It’s all you do.’
‘Then I don’t know what to say.’
‘Maybe there’s nothing to say. Because we’ve both said it all, a hundred times. I’m as bored of saying it as you must be of hearing it.’
He doesn’t answer.
She says, ‘Look into my eyes, John. Look at me.’
He turns. He looks at her. She’s wet. Elegant. Drenched in London rain. He loves her inexpressibly.
She says, ‘What do you see?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Just you.’
‘And there’s your problem.’
She gives him a look, years of weary love in it.
He watches her walk away; perfectly poised and perfectly lost to him.
When she’s gone, he drains the coffee and scrunches up the cup, then bins it and goes to meet Howie. She’s sitting behind the wheel on a meter, reading the Standard, late edition: Maggie Reilly on the front page looking grave and glamorous. A smaller insert shows the Lambert crime scene.
‘London awaits,’ Luther says.
Howie grunts, folds the paper and jams it down the side of her seat. She’s left the engine and the heater running. The car’s uncomfortably warm.
‘Twitter’s going mad,’ she says. ‘Facebook. Dead Tree Press is running with it on their websites. Maggie Reilly’s all over the place. She’s doing the overnight show, apparently. She wants to be,’ she checks the interview in the Standard, ‘ on hand when he calls.’
Luther leans over and tunes the car radio to London Talk FM. He and Howie listen to the lonely and the lost and the mad rage about bringing back the death penalty.
He stares ahead, at the constant snarl of traffic, the rainy lights shining red, amber, green. He looks at the people. Flitting by too fast to identify. A river of flesh, ever changing, never changing. The commuters with their briefcases and laptop bags, the kids in their jeans and urban coats.
Eventually, he says, ‘You got a boyfriend? Girlfriend? Husband? Whatever.’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Robert. Website designer. Bless him.’
‘When’s the last time you saw him?’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘When’s the last time you actually slept?’
She doesn’t answer that. Just looks at the windscreen as she drives.
‘Go home,’ Luther says.
‘I can’t, Boss. Not tonight.’
‘There are hundreds of coppers out there looking for this man,’ he says. ‘Go home. Be with Robert. Sleep. Come in early tomorrow, take a look at the York and Kintry files. You’ll need a fresh eye for that.’
Howie smiles as she drives. Looks like she wants to hug him.
CHAPTER 11
Reed sits at the table, opens the laptop, accesses Maggie Reilly’s website. He navigates to ARCHIVE, then scrolls to 1995, clicks on a file called: SOCIAL SERVICES, ‘EMOTIONAL HARM’ AND FAMILY JUSTICE.
In the clip, Maggie Reilly wanders in front of some dilapidated council houses in a place called Knowle West.
She looks pretty good, even doing a walk and talk, addressing the camera with exaggerated gravity:
‘A court-appointed psychologist, whom we cannot name for legal reasons, decided that the mother coached her son to lie, and was therefore causing her child “emotional harm”.
‘What all these cases have in common is the belief that mothers are putting their children at risk of what’s called “emotional harm”. Last year, more children were placed on the at-risk register for this so-called “emotional harm” than for sexual or physical abuse…’
The doorbell rings.
Reed pauses the footage and limps to the door.
He opens it on Zoe Luther.
He smiles. Then his face falls. Zoe’s a mess.
She says, ‘Can I?’
‘Yeah,’ says Reed, stepping back. ‘Yeah, of course.’
She steps over the threshold. Reed shuts the door. She follows him down the hall to the living room and drips on the parquet.
He says, ‘Tea?’
‘Tea would be great.’
‘I’ve got something stronger, if you’d like it?’
‘If I start drinking now, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.’
‘Tea it is, then. So what’s wrong?’
‘Bad day.’
‘For everyone, apparently. What can you do?’
‘I don’t know, Ian. What can I do?’
She hangs her head and starts to cry.
Reed steps up. He embraces her. ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘Hey, hey, hey.’
She says, ‘Can you call John?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I need you to make sure he’s all right.’
‘He’s all right,’ Reed says. ‘He’s okay. He’s stressed, but he’s okay, I think.’
‘He’s not. He’s making himself ill.’
‘Shhh,’ says Reed. ‘Shhh.’
‘Talk to him,’ she says. ‘He loves you. He’ll listen to you.’
‘He loves you, too.’
She laughs as if that were a bitter joke.
