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.
