female workmate. Her ballooned belly must have stretched it comically before her, lifting that high hem even higher.
She had good legs, traced with pregnancy-linked varicose veins.
Luther thinks of Mr Lambert’s fingertips tracing the soft brown stripe that had run from Mrs Lambert’s pubic hair, over the hemisphere of stomach, right to her protruding belly button.
He turns from the enormity on the bed, buries his hands deeper in his pockets. Makes fists.
On the floor not far from his feet, marked out with yellow evidence flags, lies Sarah Lambert’s placenta. He stares at it. ‘What happened to the baby?’
‘Guv, that’s the thing,’ Howie says. ‘We don’t know.’
‘I prefer Boss,’ he says, frowning, mostly absent. ‘Call me Boss.’
He turns from Howie and makes his way downstairs.
In the kitchen, his attention is caught by a magazine page that’s been torn out and stuck to the fridge with a magnet in the shape of a teddy bear dressed as a Grenadier Guard.
Ten Mistakes That Stop You Being Happy 1) If you really want to do something, don’t wait ‘until there’s time.’ If you wait, there never will be! 2) When you’re unhappy, don’t seclude yourself. Pick up the phone! 3) Don’t wait for things to be perfect. If you wait until you’re thin enough or married enough you could be waiting for ever! 4) You can’t force someone else to be happy. 5) But you can help them along.
He looks at this list for a long, long time.
The door that leads to the little back garden is open, letting in the cold and the wet.
Eventually he steps through it, ducking his head as he goes.
Teller’s outside, sitting on the low garden wall and sipping a large takeaway coffee. She looks tired and raddled. Pale morning sunlight gleams through her spectacles; he can see a thumb-print on one of the lenses.
She finishes the coffee and calls out, ‘ Oi! ’, catching the attention of a young detective constable. ‘Bin this, Sherlock.’ She tosses over the empty cup.
Luther sits next to her, hunched up in his coat. Looking down on the crown of her head, he feels a rush of tenderness. He loves Rose Teller for the defiant stride she takes through the world.
She says, ‘So what did you want to ask me?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You sure?’
‘It’ll keep.’
‘Good.’
She stands, grinds a fist into her lower back. Then she leads him to find the medical examiner.
Fred Penman’s a hayrick of a man in a three-piece pinstripe. Grey mutton-chop sideburns, white hair in a ponytail.
He should be puffing on a Rothman’s, but isn’t allowed, not any more. Instead, he’s chewing on a plastic cigarette, rolling it round his mouth like a toothpick.
Luther’s feeling the cold as he shakes Penman’s hand and nods hello. It’s the adrenaline wearing off. He needs to eat soon or he’ll start trembling.
He says, ‘So what are the baby’s chances? Worst case.’
Penman takes the fake cigarette from his mouth. ‘What does “worst case” mean, in a situation like this?’
Luther shrugs. He doesn’t know.
‘You’ve got a healthy, late-term foetus,’ Penman says. ‘You’ve got a nutjob with an idea what he or she’s doing: they cut through Mrs Lambert’s belly layer by layer. He used clean, sharp instruments. So I’d say the baby may have been extracted successfully.’
‘By “successfully”…’
‘I mean “alive”, yes.’
‘So how long does it live?’
‘Assume it’s given adequate nourishment and warmth. This is finger in the wind, you do know that?’
Luther nods.
Penman looks mournful. He’s a grandfather. ‘We think of babies as weak,’ he says. ‘Because of the instincts they evoke in us: preconscious, very powerful. Actually, they can be tough little buggers. Fierce little survival machines. Much tougher than you’d think.’
Luther waits. Eventually, Penman says, ‘Give it eighty per cent.’
Luther stands without speaking or moving.
Penman says, ‘Ding-dong. Anyone home?’
‘Yeah. Sorry.’
‘Thought we’d lost you for a minute.’
‘I’m just trying to work out how I feel about that answer.’
‘Just pray to God the child was taken by a woman.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Because if a woman took it, at least she wanted to care for it.’
He trails off. Can’t finish.
‘It wasn’t a woman,’ Luther says. ‘Women don’t target women at home in bed with their husbands.’
Penman lets out a long, slow whistle. ‘We’ve seen too much,’ he says. ‘We shouldn’t have room in our heads for thoughts like this.’
Then he pops the plastic cigarette back in his mouth, chews on it, passes it from side to side. He claps Luther on the arm and says, ‘You’ll be in my thoughts.’
Luther thanks him, then goes to join DS Howie.
She’s waiting for him at the tape.
They pass through the thinning crowds, the people at the back reduced to standing on tiptoe.
They reach the tatty Volvo. Luther throws Howie his keys.
The car is cold inside, smells a bit of fast food and rotten upholstery.
Howie starts the engine, works out how to operate the heater. Sets it to full blast. It’s loud.
Luther belts himself in. ‘Any dirt on the victims?’
‘It’s early days yet, but no. From what we know, they seemed to have been devoted. The only dark cloud seems to have been a problem with fertility.’
‘So, what? They used IVF?’
‘That’s the funny thing, Guv.’
‘Boss.’
‘That’s the funny thing, Boss. Five years of IVF. No luck. Then they give it up as a bad lot, start thinking about adoption. Mrs Lambert stops the IVF twelve or thirteen months ago. And then — bingo. She’s knocked up.’
‘They religious?’
‘Mrs Lambert’s C of E, meaning no. Mr Lambert seems to have had some interest in Buddhism and yoga. Tried out a macrobiotic diet for a while.’
‘His dad die young?’
Howie checks the paperwork. ‘Doesn’t say.’
‘Men get close to the age their dad was when he died, they start thinking about diet and exercise. Mr Lambert was in pretty good shape.’
‘Better than pretty good. Played tennis. Squash. He liked to fence, ride mountain bikes. Ran a marathon or two. He was pretty ripped.’
‘Anything else?’
‘We looked into the alarm,’ she says. ‘Tom Lambert used it extensively the first year it was fitted, then gradually his usage dropped off. That’s a pretty typical behaviour pattern, probably applies to four out of five people who’ve had them fitted. His usage drops off almost to zero. Then four or five months ago, he starts using it again.’
‘That might not mean anything,’ Luther says. ‘Mrs Lambert was pregnant. Sometimes men get extra vigilant when their partner’s expecting. It brings out the caveman in us.’
‘Or,’ Howie says, ‘maybe he was nervous about something specific. Something he’d seen or heard.’
