She probably doesn’t know it, but she’s pacing.
The pacing is the tell.
Luther knows he’s in trouble.
He ducks into the deeper shadows of the estate and hurries away.
In five minutes he’s on Lavender Hill Road.
Three minutes after that he’s in a taxi, en route to Holloway prison.
Caitlin doesn’t know the bar, Cafe Piccolo. She’s never been here before. It’s got an untrendy, Italian vibe; less retro than cheesy. It’s full of the early evening, after-office crowd.
She sits at a corner booth and works her way through a bottle of wine. By the third glass, she’s thinking about calling Carol, dragging her out and having a laugh. But she knows that if she actually sets eyes on Carol, she’ll break down. And she won’t be able to tell Carol why. And that won’t be good.
She puts her phone away.
She considers popping upstairs, buying a packet of Silk Cut, sitting on a bench and smoking them all. She decides against it. It’s cold outside and warm in here, even a little humid.
The waiter is giving her inquisitive looks when the first tosspot hits on her, asks if she’s waiting for someone, or just had a bad day.
It sounds like there’s going to be a punchline but there isn’t. He’s just testing the water, trying to establish if she’s been stood up, if she’s some kind of psycho bitch.
She gives him a hard look and he fucks off back to his mates.
Caitlin seethes as she drinks, then makes an effort to feel a Samaritan’s compassion. She glances over and gives him a rueful half-wave. It’s supposed to say ‘sorry’, but it doesn’t come across like that; it comes across as a victory wave.
Caitlin burns with embarrassment and takes a sip of wine. She can feel it heavy in her stomach now, sloshing around.
She thinks about the Daltons, who have a daughter who is eleven years old.
She shoves that to the back of her mind.
She scrolls through her contacts, knowing she’s about to make a cardinal error. But she has to do something. She has to talk to somebody. So she calls Gavin.
He says, ‘Hey, Cate. What’s up?’
She hates the way he says it. Already, she regrets making the call. But what else is she supposed to do?
She says, ‘Hey, Gav.’
‘So,’ says Gav.
‘So,’ she says. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘Pretty mental. Work and whatever. You?’
‘Pretty mental.’
‘Right,’ says Gavin. ‘So…’
‘So I’m in this bar,’ she says, ‘a Trattoria.’
She enunciates fastidiously, as if the word ‘Trattoria’ was some kind of private joke between them. It’s not.
‘Right,’ he says.
‘And I’m a bit tipsy,’ she says, ‘a little bit woo-hoo, and I thought I’d ring and say hello. So hello!’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘It’s just…’
She doesn’t want to hear what comes next because it involves Gav feeling bad for her; he’s got his mates round, or some girl, or both. Gav’s having a laugh, because Gav loves having a laugh.
She wants to say something bitchy and cutting, but she honestly can’t think of anything. So she just sits there with her Greek-goddess hair piled on her head and the iPhone in her hand and she wants to share with him the enormity of the secret to which she is privy. The things that might be going on right now, right this second, to a family called the Daltons, who have an eleven-year-old girl.
She’s got enough control to say, ‘Cheers!’ and hang up, leaving him genially baffled and secretly happy about the nervous breakdown she seems to be enduring in the wake of their breakup.
She drains her glass and gets the bill. Can’t remember her PIN. She has to ask the waiter to hold on a moment, it’ll come to her. In the end it does. She leaves a stupidly big tip, scrawls a signature, drops her purse in her bag, puts on her coat and staggers out.
She walks to the bus stop and waits, stamping her feet and shivering. It’s really, really fucking cold.
She doesn’t mind because it should sober her up. But all it does is make her want to pee.
She digs out her phone again. She thinks about calling Matt, back at the Samaritans office. But she already knows everything he’s going to say.
So she puts the phone back in her pocket and waits for the bus.
She watches cars and taxis and minicabs.
A bus coughs and rumbles past on the other side of the road, a long bright bubble full of people.
A car stops at the lights. An ordinary car. There’s a man at the wheel and his wife is next to him. They’re chatting about whatever. In the back seat are two kids, a girl who must be about five, and a sleeping baby in a car seat.
Caitlin is close enough to take a single step forward, gently rap on the window and say, Don’t go home, it’s not safe.
But these aren’t the Daltons. They can’t be. London is too big and too abundant.
But even in a city this teeming and this ravenous, lives cross and touch one another. Caitlin imagines reaching out her hand, rapping on the safety glass, saving these people.
The woman, the wife, can feel Caitlin staring. She turns her head and looks Caitlin in the eye with an unbroken lioness challenge — the face of a woman whose young children are asleep in the back of the car, and who would kill for them in an instant.
Caitlin wells up. She smiles.
The woman gives her an odd look, softer round the eyes. Then the lights change and the car pulls away and is gone, sucked round the veins of London, and Caitlin knows she will never see those people again.
She thinks about Megan, the friend who committed suicide. And she thinks about her moron of an ex. She thinks about her mum and her dad and her sister and her nieces and her nephews.
She thinks about her grandparents, the good smell of them and their infinite belief in the unqualified wonder of her.
Caitlin walks to a phone box.
She inserts a two pound coin.
She uses her iPhone to access the telephone directory. Then dials the first Dalton in the London directory.
The phone is answered on the ninth ring. A foggy voice, the voice of a family man woken from sleep. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello,’ says Caitlin. ‘This is going to sound really weird, and I’m sorry if I’m wrong. I’m really sorry. I hope I’m wrong. But I think somebody might be planning to hurt you and your family.’
There are one hundred and sixty Daltons in the London phone book.
Caitlin calls them all.
CHAPTER 18
Luther hates prisons. Hates Holloway in particular. It feels like a badly designed hospital.
He waits in the half-lit, after-hours visiting hall, as two wardens lead Sweet Jane Carr into the room.
She’s so pretty it’s almost obscene. She makes him think of Victorian erotica. But her frame is disproportionately gross.
He tries not to stare as she sits and crosses great ham forearms under massive breasts, regards him through
