‘But what if he’s telling the truth? What if there’s a family out there tonight, the Daltons or whoever? And he’s going to cut them up?’
‘Cate, I understand how you feel.’
‘All the respect in the world, Matt, but I’m not sure you do.’
Matt tells her about a time he answered a call from a woman who’d taken an overdose. She just wanted someone to be there on the phone with her as she died. Matt had to respect that. So he sat and listened as she slipped away.
Years later, the suicide troubles his dreams. In his dreams he sees her clearly, although in life he never saw her face. He sees her so clearly that sometimes he thinks she’s actually a ghost. In the dreams, he asks her name. She tells him a different name every time.
‘If you break one confidence you break them all,’ he says. ‘And then being a Samaritan stands for nothing.’
Caitlin nods.
Then Matt says, ‘Would you like to speak to somebody?’
She laughs because — well, because that would be ironic.
She says no, she’s fine. And by then her shift’s over, so she puts on her coat and says goodbye to everybody.
She pops to the loo and fiddles with her make-up. Then she goes to get drunk.
CHAPTER 17
The Hallissey estate was built in 1964. The design was influenced by Le Corbusier, who admired ocean liners and believed them to be the perfect model for housing estates.
The estate went up quickly and not well. Shabby concrete citadels are accessed via dank passageways, dark stairwells and concrete walkways. Grimy curtains hang at rotten window frames.
Steve Bixby lives on the fifth floor of Milton Tower. He’s a lanky man in a Hawaiian shirt and combat trousers. Small eyes, heavily bagged, and thinning hair in a fuzzy crew cut.
He lingers in the doorway, stuttering slightly, asking why Howie and Luther want to come in.
It’s 5.51 p.m.
Howie tells him they just want to ask some questions.
She glances down. At Bixby’s ankle lurks a tan-and-white pit bull terrier. It looks at her with close-set, moronic eyes.
Bixby clocks her wariness. ‘Don’t worry about Lou,’ he says. ‘He’s a sweetheart, aren’t you, boy? Aren’t you?’
Luther says, ‘Do you mind?’
Bixby doesn’t. So Luther drops to one knee and summons the dog by sucking his teeth and rubbing his thumb across his fingers. Lou lumbers warily towards him. Luther pats its bony, muscular head, mutters to it in a low, comforting voice. He looks up at Bixby. ‘Nice dog.’
‘You a dog person?’
‘The more I learn about people, the more I like dogs,’ Luther says, straightening. ‘Lou’s got scars down his flanks. He been fighting?’
‘He’s been in a lot of fights,’ Bixby says. ‘They found him down by Waltham Forest. They reckon he’d been a bait dog.’
‘Bait dog?’ Howie says.
‘Old dogs that’ve lost the will to fight,’ Luther says. ‘They chain them down. Let other dogs practise on them.’
Howie looks at the dog’s wide triangular head, its beady little eyes, its absurdly muscular chest. She feels a twinge of pity for it. Its hot tongue lolls in the corner of its mouth.
‘Are we okay to come in?’ Luther says. ‘He’s not going to bite, is he?’
Bixby shakes his head and steps aside. ‘He’s got no bite left in him, have you, boy?’
He means it literally. Most of the dog’s teeth have been removed.
They enter a cramped flat; floral curtains and psychedelic carpet that surely belonged to the previous occupant; the kind of armchair usually destined to be garnished with antimacassars, now blackened and greasy. A fat TV on a spindly coffee table. Canine kitsch: porcelain dogs, plastic dogs.
Bixby sits with his hands writhing between his bony knees. He asks why Luther and Howie are here.
Luther says, ‘Your name’s been mentioned in connection with an investigation. And we’d like to speak with you about it.’
‘What investigation?’
‘What investigation do you think?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.’
Luther watches Bixby’s fretful hands. ‘You must be thinking something, Steve. It’s difficult not to think something.’
‘I haven’t done a thing.’
‘Well, like I say. Your name came up.’
‘Then someone’s lying to you. Speak to my supervisor, go see my probation officer. Speak to my shrink; I’m in counselling — group counselling and voluntary one-to-one. I accept full responsibility for my previous offending. I stay away from high-risk situations. I’m really trying here.’
‘Trying to what?’
‘Get better.’
‘Do men like you actually get better?’
‘Do you know what it’s like, being me? Do you think I like it?’
His eyes search Luther’s face, then Howie’s. See nothing. No judgement. No pity.
‘I used to drink,’ Bixby says. ‘To blank it out. I’d see a picture of a girl who’d been kidnapped and all I could think was yeah, I could see why he took her. She’s lovely. I’d go to family birthday parties and I’d be singing happy birthday and the whole time I’m thinking: I’d love to take your daughter away and fuck her. What do you think that feels like?’
Howie looks at the shelf of DVDS. Top Gear. Bear Grylls. The Matrix Trilogy.
‘I don’t know,’ Luther says.
‘I’ll tell you. It makes you hate yourself and want to die.’
‘Yet somehow, here you are. Not dead.’
Bixby looks at Luther as if he’s been slapped. ‘Fuck you,’ he says. ‘Fuck you.’ He wrings those skinny hands at the end of bony wrists. ‘Have you ever tried to be someone you’re not? Hating every thought in your head, having them go round and round and round like a fucking train, and you can’t stop them?’
‘I know exactly what that’s like, Steve. But you don’t have to act on those thoughts, do you?’
‘I didn’t,’ he says. ‘I never even touched a child. Not once. Are you gay or straight?’
‘Straight, if it matters.’
‘Then can you imagine what it would be like, never to touch a woman? To have craved it since you were ten or eleven years old, to see women every day, beautiful women, sexy women? And never, ever, be able to lay even a finger on them, let alone make love to them? Not ever. To die a virgin. To know that your most loving touch would ruin them.’
‘No,’ Luther says. ‘I can’t imagine that. But then, I can’t imagine trading in child pornography either.’
‘I did that, yeah.’
‘So you hurt kids second-hand. Did it ever occur to you that the kids in those photos would never have been hurt if there wasn’t a market of people like you waiting to buy the pictures?’
‘I think the people who took those pictures might have thought twice about selling them,’ Bixby says. ‘Not taking them.’
‘So,’ Luther says. ‘You ran a network. People would come to you. You’d put people in contact with other
