dressed.
He approaches Luther with a strange, crazed expression.
Luther waits.
Crouch’s hands and voice are shaking. He says, ‘And who the fuck are you?’
Luther grabs Crouch’s wrist, twists it, wrenches it between his shoulder blades. He frog-marches Crouch towards the burning car.
‘If I break your neck and throw you into this car,’ he says, ‘by the time an ambulance gets here, you’ll be a pool of melted fat.’
Crouch weeps.
Luther can feel the heat charring his tweed coat, drying his eyes.
‘Stay away from the old man,’ he says.
Then he drops Crouch to the pavement and strides away, across the park.
The sirens are closer. He knows they’re for him. He doesn’t care.
He returns to the Volvo. He sits and waits.
He watches fire-fighters extinguish the merrily burning car.
Crouch is still there. A woman Luther takes to be a hooker hangs around in the background.
Police take statements. One of them is a careworn, older detective in a rumpled suit and an overcoat.
Luther can’t be sure, not from this distance, but he thinks it’s Martin Schenk. Schenk works out of Complaints.
If he’s right, it means Crouch has reported him as a police officer.
Luther doesn’t care. He sits with hands on the steering wheel, fighting the urge to get out and stride over there, badge the officers and the fire-fighters out of the way, shove Crouch in the sternum, grab his neck and squeeze.
He’s still thinking about it when the call comes in.
It’s Teller. It’s after 2 a.m. so he pretty much knows.
He picks up the phone.
‘Sorry to wake you.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I was up.’
There’s a pause. Teller wanting to say something. He helps her out. ‘Where?’
‘Chiswick.’
‘How many?’
‘Four at the scene. Mother. Father. Son. Au pair. The daughter’s missing.’
He sits back and watches the fire-fighters douse the burning Jaguar with retardant foam. He enjoys the blackened skeleton of it, the melted plastic. ‘How old’s the daughter?’
‘Eleven. Name’s Mia. Mia Dalton.’
He wonders how bad it is. He says, ‘Send me the address. I’ll be there as quick as I can. t
‘Before you do that,’ she says, ‘there’s something else.’
‘What else?’
‘We think we got one of them. The son.’
There’s a long moment, like waiting for a second hand to tick. He says, ‘What?’
‘Multiple wounds,’ she says. ‘Two hundred metres from the scene. Witness heard an altercation; two men seemed to be fighting over a little girl. The little girl was bleeding.’
He grips the steering wheel harder, to stop himself floating away. ‘This witness,’ he says. ‘He didn’t think to go out and help?’
‘“He” was a she. Sixty-five years old.’
‘But not everyone who heard it was a sixty-five-year-old woman living alone, were they?’
‘No.’
‘The son?’
‘Alive. On his way to operating theatre as we speak.’
‘Will he live?’
‘I don’t have the latest. It’s a bit tonto round here. The jury’s out, apparently.’
‘So there’s no way I can interview him?’
‘Not right now.’
‘No ID?’
‘Nothing on him. Wallet, cash, pre-paid credit card.’
‘Pre-paid where?’
‘We’re looking into that.’
‘It won’t be traceable,’ he says. ‘They’re too careful for that. You buy one of these cards for cash somewhere. Even better, you slip some hoodie a few quid to go in and buy one for
you. You running his DNA?’
‘It’s being expedited.’
He unwinds the window, slips the magnetic bubble light on the roof. He sets the satnav and turns onto Fieldway Crescent, unseen by everyone.
Except possibly Schenk, who turns in his direction, puts a hand to his brow as if shielding it from the sun and squints across the darkness of the park.
When there’s enough distance between Luther and Schenk, he puts the misery lights and the sirens on. He follows their lament all the way to Chiswick.
He’s the last clown to arrive at the circus. He badges the log officer, ducks under the tape and into harsh lights that throw the night into sudden flat, high definition.
No one looks like they’ve slept for a week.
Teller says nothing. Just nods.
Luther digs his hands into his pockets. He thinks of his wife, wonders what she’s doing.
He steps over the threshold and into the hallway.
He smells it.
SOCO are in here, men and women in jumpsuits, breathing masks, blue bootees. They’ve got cameras and rulers and tape.
Before Luther sees the remains, he sees the upturned furniture, the blood on the walls. The word.
He looks at it. He looks at the word on the wall, blood smeared on there with a human hand, thick as oil paint.
Luther looks at Teller. He sees pity in her eyes and the pity scares him because it’s a reaction to the look on his face.
When he stumbles from the house, he knows that everybody is looking at him, casting sidelong glances.
Outside, the air’s not cold enough. He wants to dive into icy water. He wants to hold his breath until it hurts.
Teller takes his elbow, gestures with her head.
They walk into that liminal time when night is passing into day.
She says, ‘Do you want off?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I want off.’
‘Then you’re off.’ She lets him think about it for a moment, then goes on. ‘But you should know, if you come off the case, then that’s it, that’s who you are. It doesn’t matter what you did before or what you do in the future. In their minds, you’ll be the copper who let this happen and walked away. I know that’s not fair. And I know it’s not true. But this bastard said he’d do this if you didn’t apologize to him. And although that could never happen, that’s not the story the media’s going to tell. The story is you and him. We made it you and him. It’s our fault. And if you back off now — which I would if I were you, God help me — but if you do, this is who you become. The man who let what happened in there, happen.’
There are choppers in the sky. Their searchlights sweep the streets.
‘It’s not…’ he says, after a long pause. She doesn’t hear him; his voice has gone. He coughs into his fist to clear his throat, starts again. ‘It’s not unusual for a man like this to humiliate his victims post mortem. We’ve all seen it. He’ll leave a woman with her legs spread, something inserted into her vagina. He’ll mutilate her breasts and
