‘He’ll need to leave London,’ Luther says.
‘You think the son can help us, tell us where he’s likely to go?’
‘Madsen didn’t tell him anything.’
He frowns.
He looks at the dog corpses dotted like fungi all over the wet lawn.
He cups his mouth.
He wanders to the nearest dog corpse.
He kneels.
He has a flash of something — a memory of kneeling at the corpse of a dog, a yellow dog, a retriever in a strange hallway. And then the memory, if it was a memory, is gone.
This dog, a pit bull terrier, has been shot in the shoulder. Then one of the ARV mob has walked over and put a bullet through its head, an act of mercy.
The bullet has passed through the dog’s skull and into the soil.
A chunk of the dog’s upper lip on one side is missing. But it’s an old scar, long-healed. Her nose is mutilated.
Luther reaches out an index finger and draws it along her fur. She’s still warm. He feels it through the latex gloves.
Her chest and flanks are heavily criss-crossed with old scars.
He pats the dog, fondly. He brushes against the nap of her fur. Feels the slight, pleasing resistance.
Then he walks across the garden to another dog: pale brown with a white flash. The bullet has blown away half its face. It’s impossible to see any scarring there. But there are ropes of scar tissues on its back and ribs. Heavy damage to its hind legs.
The third dog has more Staffordshire than pit bull in it. Luther is sentimental about dogs, the way Reed is about old soldiers. Especially Staffies. Staffies have qualities that Luther admires. A Staffy will fight to the death to defend a child. It will bite down and it won’t let go.
He trudges round to the back of the house, to the double garage. He enters. Finds cages full of panicking, white-eyed dogs. They leap at the wire. They bare their teeth. They roll insane and murderous eyes.
They do not bark.
Luther watches them. He’s perversely tempted to slip a hand through the bars of the cage. Just to see what they’d do with it.
Then he turns and strides away.
Teller’s waiting in the square of light at the end of the garage. He walks past her.
He says, ‘Let me know if anyone finds anything.’
He shoves through the crowds outside, through the people and the media.
He looks around and finds Howie. She’s grabbing a coffee with an EMT crew and a couple of uniforms.
He leads her away by the elbow.
She says, ‘What’s up?’
‘Isobel,’ he says. ‘I’m giving you a choice now.’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘Madsen knows we’re just behind him,’ Luther says. ‘It’s going to get messy.’
‘Messier than it already is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Boss, I don’t get what you’re asking.’
‘Come with me,’ he says, ‘and there could be repercussions for you. Stay and there won’t be. It’s up to you. But if you come, we’re in it together. Come what may. You with me?’
Howie hesitates. But only for a moment. She ditches her coffee and follows Luther to the car at a half- jog.
Henry drives her somewhere quiet: there are trees and no traffic sounds. He pulls over to the side of the road. There is the sound of tyres in wet leaves.
He presses Mia further down into the passenger footwell and leans over to open the glove box. He takes out a notepad and begins to scribble something. He writes faster than Mia can believe.
He writes, crosses out, writes again, more neatly.
When a lot of time has passed, he says, ‘Sit up.’
Mia looks at him through her hair. She is shaking.
‘Sit here,’ he says. ‘Next to me.’
She sits up, next to him.
He lays the notepad in her lap and flicks on the interior light. ‘Can you read that? Can you read my writing?’
Mia nods.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Now. We’re going to play a trick on someone. Is that okay?’
Mia nods.
‘It’s a kind of joke. What I’m going to make you say isn’t true. But if you don’t do as I say, I’m going to have to punish you, okay? I don’t want to, but I will.’
Mia sniffs and nods.
‘Excellent,’ he says. ‘Ready?’
She nods again.
He produces a mobile phone. Mia knows it’s her dad’s. It’s her dad’s iPhone and it’s full of photographs of her and her brother and her mum. Her dad embarrasses her by showing them to everyone, all the time.
Henry dials a number from memory, then puts the phone to Mia’s ear.
Mia hears the ringing phone down the line, then a nice voice is saying, ‘Hello?’
Mia glances sideways at the man, who nods.
‘My name is Mia Dalton,’ says Mia, reading the note.
She has to hesitate before she reads the rest. Her voice catches in her throat and she looks fearfully at the man.
But he doesn’t seem to mind.
The more scared she sounds, the more he seems to like it.
CHAPTER 27
Howie pulls up close to Milton House. She kills the engine, glances at Luther. ‘You okay there, Boss?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘You don’t look right.’
‘When we’ve got Mia Dalton back,’ he says, ‘I’ll go to bed for a week.’
‘I’ll join you,’ says Howie. Then she blushes from her sternum to her hairline. She’s a redhead, so it shows. ‘By which I don’t mean-’
‘I know what you mean,’ Luther says. ‘Wait here. Keep an eye on things.’
She watches him swagger towards the morose grey columns. She wonders if this display is in inverse proportion to his confidence; the shakier the man, the bigger the walk.
Luther passes a skeletal, rusting children’s playground. No kids playing. A skinny dog trots in a delirious circle. Broken glass on the happy, cracked mosaic.
He chin-nods to a group of hoodies who loiter like crows on the stationary roundabout. Then he ducks his head and enters the permanent twilight of Milton House.
Luther takes the stairs three at a time. They stink.
He’s breathless and ill-tempered when he bangs on Steve Bixby’s door. ‘Steve. DCI Luther. Open up.’
No answer.
He beats on the door. It jolts in its frame. Luther can feel the resistance of heavy-duty deadbolts and mortice locks.
