‘So what do you want?’
‘To tell our bosses that you’ve been working for us. Off the books.’
‘As what?’
‘A grass.’
‘I’m not a grass.’
‘No. But you’ll pretend to be.’
‘And if I do that, what then?’
‘We protect you,’ Luther says.
‘What does that mean, though, protect me? Protect me from what?’
‘From us.’
‘How?’
‘You admit to harassing the old man,’ Reed says. ‘You say you were acting on Julian Crouch’s instruction.’
Tonga watches as two Scenes of Crime Officers emerge from his flat. One of them passes an evidence bag to a uniformed sergeant.
‘Okay, I can do that,’ he says. ‘I don’t have a problem with that. Crouch is a prick. But the gun. A gun’s a big deal. You can’t magic a gun away.’
‘Well, there’s the beauty of it,’ Luther says. ‘You say Crouch supplied the gun. You’d never seen it before yesterday.’
‘Yeah, but why would he do that?’
‘Because he wanted you to get rid of the old man.’
‘Get rid? As in, kill him?’
Luther nods.
‘The old geezer?’
Luther nods.
‘Crouch?’
Luther nods.
‘He hasn’t got the bottle. The man’s a pantywaist.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘And you’re seriously doing this for him? For that old geezer?’
‘Yep,’ says Reed.
‘Planting guns, planting drugs, perjuring a witness?’
‘Yep,’ says Reed.
‘Fair play to you,’ says Barry Tonga. ‘I can respect that.’
‘That’s nice,’ says Luther. ‘Hurry up. Yes or no.’
‘You can’t get away with shit like this, though. It can’t be done.’
Luther cries out in fury and slams his hand onto the dashboard.
The glovebox pops open, spills out old papers and crushed wax cups.
Tonga cringes.
Luther starts the engine.
‘Wait!’ says Tonga. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Over there,’ Reed says, pointing to the police outside Tonga’s flat.
‘What? Why?’
‘To hand you over, Barry. You’re a wanted man. And we’re in a rush. We can’t hang around all day, waiting for you to make up your mind.’
‘Whoa,’ says Tonga. ‘Slow down.’
Luther doesn’t kill the engine, but he doesn’t pull away either. He says, ‘What? I haven’t got time to piss about.’
‘If I help,’ Tonga says, ‘that’s it? No comebacks.’
‘No comebacks,’ Reed says.
‘What about Kidman?’
‘Will you testify against him?’
‘To what?’
‘Conspiracy.’
‘Shit, yeah. The man’s a dick. There was no need to hurt the little dog. My nanna had a dog like that.’
‘Mine too,’ Luther says. ‘So where are we? Yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ says Tonga.
Henry marches round the house, closing curtains and locking doors.
He knows that, soon enough, he and Mia will have to decamp, find a new house and begin again. That’ll mean leaving London, maybe even the country.
But to do that, Henry’s going to need to make some money. There’s less than five hundred pounds in the strongbox, and less than a hundred in the ancient bank account he maintains in the name of Henry Jones.
But more than anything, for the next week or two it means gritting his teeth, holding his nerve and staying put.
Henry’s got diarrhoea. He paces the floor. He keeps vomiting into the kitchen sink.
But he’s done this kind of thing enough before to know the house is safe; it’s a safe place. There’s nothing to lead anyone back here. Not now he’s killed Patrick.
You never get used to it, not really. You never relax. But Henry doesn’t mind it, living on his nerves like this. It makes him feel alive.
He knows he’ll miss Patrick. He wonders if he should have exerted more parental discipline in the early days. Perhaps that would have intensified the emotional imprinting.
But that’s exactly the problem with adopted children — ultimately, you don’t know what you’re getting.
That’s why far more children are murdered by step-parents than birth parents. And step-parents obviously means step-fathers. (To be fair, step-mothers often exact their own toll — less murderous, perhaps, but no less barbarous.)
All Henry ever wanted was to be a good dad. It would’ve been easier if he’d been able to have his own kids, but he gave up trying for that years ago.
Nothing was wrong with him. Not physically. He just got so fucking tense. While a woman lay next to him, keening and moaning like a dog in pain, his cock would shrink to an inch of inert gristle, like connective tissue in a pork chop.
She’d kiss it, tug it, do whatever else she thought might work. But nothing did.
The second she left the room, however, or the minute Henry crouched outside her window or crept round her house without her knowing it, boom! there it was, rising first like a daffodil then an iron rod. She was a perfect idea. No matter her cellulite arse, her saggy tits.
Of course, Henry quickly realized it was all about who was boss. So his first attempt at starting a family was with Joanne.
He could fuck Joanne, all right. She knew who was boss. He could fuck her for hours, until his cock was red raw. He kept her chained in the basement in the old house, the one in the West Country.
But pretty soon, despite keeping her fit and well and despite her whimpering protestations of undying love, it became clear that Joanne would never conceive a child.
For a while, Joanne cohabited with Lindsay — same basement, same house.
Henry ate lots of vitamins and protein, stuff that was good for sperm production. But neither woman would quicken. They were both hookers, so probably there was something wrong with their wombs. It was all the abortions, all that scraping out of their insides.
And it turned out, there was an optimum time they could be kept in the basement. He moved sunlamps down there, gave them a decent diet, lots of greens and red berries. But that didn’t stop them becoming depressed and listless.
That was when he bought his first dogs. The dogs ate Joanne and Lindsay.
By the time Oona moved in (she was chosen for her hips, as much as her availability, stumbling back alone
