her face. He’ll dump a hooker by a “no dumping” sign. But I’ve never seen anything like this.’
Pete Black has removed the victim’s heads and swapped them around.
The son’s head grinning from the mother’s body.
The au pair has been posed in the armchair with her own head in her lap.
‘Like someone playing with toys,’ he says. ‘Like a fucked-up, petulant toddler ripping his sister’s dolls to pieces. Putting Barbie’s head on the teddy hear. The teddy’s bear’s head on the baby doll.’
He shudders in his coat. He wonders if he smells of smoke. Supposes he must. He scuffs his feet. ‘Who’re the victims?’
‘Stephanie Dalton, Marcus Dalton, Daniel Dalton. Gabriella Magnoli. As far as we can tell, they’re pretty much perfect. Mrs Dalton’s a businesswoman. Used to be a model. He’s an architect, wins awards, teaches, mentors. Students love him, apparently. The son’s good-looking, wants to be an actor. The daughter-’
‘What about her?’ Luther says.
‘What am I supposed to say?’ Teller barks, forgetting herself. She has a daughter not much older than the missing girl. ‘She’s eleven. What else is there to say?’
‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’ Luther says. ‘They’re perfect. He watches them. He’s jealous. He’s resentful. He covets what they’ve got. Happiness. Family. Normality.’
Luther’s finding energy now. Warmth in his blood. He says, ‘Pete Black’s son. Patrick. How old is he?’
‘Twenty? Twenty-one?’
‘Fingerprints on record?’
‘Nope.’
Luther’s smiling. He paces. He rubs the crown of his head.
Teller says, ‘What?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes you do.’
Luther’s laughing now. If he stopped for a moment, he’d see the look on Teller’s face. But he’s swaggering in carnivorous delight, clapping his hands.
‘John,’ says Teller.
He rubs his head, walks in a circle. ‘Boss,’ he says. ‘I need to do something.’
‘So go on then,’ she says. ‘What?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
He waits it out. You don’t rush her.
‘On a theoretical scale of one to ten,’ she says, ‘how much do I not want to know about this?’
‘Twenty.’ He steps in before she can protest. ‘If I went through proper channels, waited for you to cross the Ts and give me the official nod, it would take weeks. And I need to do it now. As in this morning. And if it turns out I’m wrong, which I’m not-’
‘But if you are?’
‘If it turns out I’m wrong, there’ll be hell to pay. You’ll have to sack me. There’ll be an outcry.’
There’s a second, longer wait. At the end of it, she says, ‘Is it going to help us find that little girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Then sod off and do it.’
He nods. ‘Where’s Howie?’
‘At the factory,’ says Teller. ‘Be gentle with her.’
As Luther walks away, Teller’s phone rings. She checks it.
DSU Schenk.
She kills the call, pockets the phone. Doesn’t want to know.
For a long time, Mia thinks she’s dead because there is darkness and silence and because she can’t breathe.
But she’s not dead. She’s in the boot of a car. She’s got stuff over her mouth. She can’t move her hands or feet.
She knows her mum and dad are dead, though, because the man told her that. Before stopping to transfer her to the boot, he just shoved her in the passenger well of the car and kept her head pressed down with the flat of his hand as he drove.
She was whimpering for her mum. She was scared and cold and she hurt all over and there was a feeling in her stomach.
Shut up about your mum and cunting dad, he said and she hated his voice.
She knows he’s dangerous, like the stray dog that followed them when they were on holiday in Greece that one time.
It was walking at a funny angle and it had a weird look. Her dad was spooked by it. He lifted Mia and put her into her mum’s arms — she’d been little then. Her dad and brother stooped at the roadside and gathered up armloads of little stones and threw them at the dog until it went away.
This man is the same as that dog. He has the same flecks of saliva round his lips, the same idiot rage in his eyes.
Mia remembers the Stranger Danger classes she took at school, that time the police lady came in to speak to them.
Know your name, address, and phone number. Avoid walking anywhere alone. If a stranger approaches you, you do not have to speak to him. Never approach a stranger in a motor vehicle. Just keep walking.
If a stranger grabs you, do everything you can to stop him or her from pulling you away or dragging you into his or her car. Drop to the ground, kick, hit, bite, scream. If someone is dragging you away, scream, ‘This is not my dad,’ or ‘This is not my mum.’
None of that had been any good. Mia had screamed and screamed and nobody had come.
But Mia knows why. He’s not a stranger. He’s the mad dog in Greece. He’s the thing that sometimes lived in her wardrobe, that peeked through the crack in the door when the lights were out, and Daniel was snoring in his feet-stinking room and Mum and Dad were cuddled up in their big bed. He’s not a stranger, how can he be? She’s known him all her life.
Mia prays. She tries to say something sensible, to ask God for something specific; Dad had talked to her about the way God answers prayers. He gave you what you needed, Dad said, which was not necessarily the same as what you wanted. You might pray for a mountain bike but that might not be what God wanted you to have. Or you might pray for Melissa James to fall over and break her ankle on her stupid inline skates, but God might not want you to have that either.
Mia can’t believe that God wants this for her.
But on the other hand, she heard her dad screaming tonight and although she’s never heard anyone die before, she knows that’s what it was. Her strong and handsome dad dying in terror and helplessness and pain. And she’s pretty sure God can’t have wanted that, either. But it happened.
So she needs to pray, but she’s confused and all that will come is Please God please God please God please.
It goes round and round her head like a train.
She lies curled up in the dark, smelling the car’s wet carpet.
Under yellowish light, the Serious Crime Unit is brim-full of uniformed and plain-clothed personnel.
Men and women in shirtsleeves, smelling sour; people who should be home but aren’t.
They watch Luther pass. He feels their eyes.
He stops at Howie’s desk. She’s hunched, red-faced. Pretending not to have seen him, praying that he’ll walk on by.
He waits until she turns her head and pulls a worried face. She says, ‘Boss…’
‘I don’t care about last night,’ Luther says. ‘You did the right thing. All I care about is, are you ready to work with me now? Right now. Or do I need to pull in someone else?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Good.’
He marches to his cramped little office, full of Benny’s energy drinks and sandwich containers.
Howie follows, shuts the door behind her.
