‘Henry what?’
‘Clarke. Nicholl. Brennan.’
‘But always Henry?’
The kid makes a gesture. It’s almost a nod.
‘But you must know,’ Luther says. ‘After all these years, you must know his real name.’
‘Madsen.’
Henry Madsen.
Luther’s hands itch to do something. He wants to grab a pencil, take out his notebook, write it down, circle it, underline it.
He bites the inside of his mouth. Makes himself wait.
‘Adrian,’ he says. ‘Patrick. Where do you and Henry live?’
CHAPTER 26
Henry Madsen lives in a large, rambling old property that stands on a quarter-acre of grounds, isolated from its neighbours by high hedges and a screen of trees. It overlooks Richmond Park.
The house is already on fire when the first responders arrive.
The blaze has picked up by the time the fire crew shows up, a few minutes later. They are closely followed by an Armed Response Unit and the EMTs.
A number of pit bull terriers run loose in the grounds. They attack the first responders, then the fire crew. This slows the operation.
The order is given to shoot the dogs.
By then, the fire has taken a firmer hold.
En route to Richmond Park, Luther calls Benny.
‘Going back twenty-five years,’ Benny tells him. ‘We’ve got six Henry Madsens. Four we can dismiss outright: white-collar criminals. Traffic offences, that sort of thing.’
‘No one on the sex offenders register?’
‘Oh yes. Henry John Madsen. String of juvenile offences: burglary, vandalism, theft, assault, arson.’
‘Arson?’
‘Attempted murder of his adoptive parents.’
‘What’s the story?’
‘He broke into their house and set fire to their beds.’
‘That’s our boy,’ Luther says. ‘What happened to him after that?’
‘He does his time. Comes out at eighteen. Has some counsel ling. He re-offends at nineteen — GBH during a pub conversation about abortion. Apparently he’s anti. He’s remanded into psychiatric care. Comes out at twenty- one. After that he drops off the radar.’
‘Which isn’t to say he hasn’t been busy. You got photographs?’
‘Old ones.’
‘How’s he look?’
‘Short hair. Very neat.’
‘Parted?’
‘On the left.’
‘No glasses, no beards, no moustaches?’
‘No.’
‘Excellent. Let’s get this prick’s face all over the news.’
‘Won’t that make him panic?’
‘It’ll drive him to ground,’ Luther says. ‘Make him hole up somewhere. Stay in London.’
‘Yeah, but where?’
‘Well, mate. That’s the question.’
Twenty minutes later, Luther reaches the scene. He’s wearing a high-viz jacket over the parka he keeps in the trunk of the Volvo. He had to ditch the overcoat. It smelled of petrol and smoke.
He approaches Teller. Nods at the burning building. ‘How long to make this place safe?’
It can take days for a building to cool properly and structural damage to be assessed. Normally, it would be tomorrow at least before Luther was granted access to the house.
But Teller makes some phone calls. She shouts and wheedles and pleads. She claims exigent circumstances, the threat to Mia Dalton’s life.
The fire-fighters are still darkening the glowing embers when Luther slips on a Cromwell 600 helmet and breathing apparatus, then walks past the corpses of the dogs, through the high spray of the dampening hoses and into the charred house.
The hallway is blackened with soot, ash, and smoke. The windows are blown out. Everything’s wet. He hadn’t expected so much water. It’s still raining down on his head. Holes in the wall expose pink insulation material. The swollen ceiling threatens to collapse.
Upstairs, he finds a child’s bedroom. A cot, a changing mat. Clothes on a rail: boys’ and girls’. Many still display price tags. On the wall are hung burned prints of Pooh Bear. In the cot is an ancient, water-sodden teddy.
Luther looks at the teddy bear.
He checks out two adult bedrooms. Water-drenched beds, burned clothing. Everything doused in accelerant and set alight.
Downstairs, a torched library. Nazis. Eugenics. Dog-rearing. Biology. Burned portraits of prominent National Socialists. Speer and Hitler. Noble dogs.
All of it forensically useless.
The kitchen has been touched less by the fire. It’s wet and badly smoke damaged, but one or two of the windows, although streaked black, haven’t blown.
Luther looks in the pantry. Canned goods. He looks in the cupboards. Pots and pans. He looks in the tall cupboard nearest the kitchen door. A bottle sterilization kit.
Several bottles. All of them blackened now.
He opens the fridge. And there, essentially undamaged, are ranks and ranks of children’s milk bottles.
He takes one of the bottles from the fridge. Shakes it. Puts it close to his face. But he’s seeing it through a screen.
His heart is beating.
He searches the fridge. At the back, he finds a bar of chocolate, half eaten. Teeth prints.
A fire-fighter leads him through a reinforced door down to the basement. Luther feels the weight of the house above him. They edge along a dark, earth corridor, heavy with smoke. He concentrates on his breathing, worried he might panic down here.
They arrive at what might have been a vegetable storage room. Another reinforced door.
The fire-fighter opens it.
A bed. A bookcase.
Luther looks at the books. Water damaged. He knows he wouldn’t like to touch them with an ungloved hand. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but it seems to him that objects soaked in human misery retain traces of it.
He leaves that terrible basement, his breath quick and loud in his ears. He goes upstairs and outside. The water from the dampening hoses is a mist over his head. There are slick patches of mud. A helicopter overhead.
Behind a rainbow in the mist stands Rose Teller. ‘Anything?’
‘He’s gone. Mia’s with him.’
‘Well, thank God for small mercies.’
He grunts at that. Looks at the plumes of smoke that rise from the house, spread thinner and thinner against the pale dome of London sky.
