‘How far from Madsen’s parents’?’
‘I don’t know. Two miles? A bit less?’
‘She’s there.’
‘John, she’s not.’
‘He was going to sell her to his parents. So he needed to keep her close. She’s there.’
‘We searched. We used dogs. There’s nothing there.’
‘You checked the garden?’
‘Garden, outbuildings, garage. Everywhere.’
‘Have you been there? You personally? Have you seen the house?’
‘No.’
‘So get there, Ian.’
‘John, mate. Slow down.’
‘She’s there. She’s somewhere at that house. He’s buried her and she’s there. You’ve got about ten minutes. She’s suffocating.’
Reed wavers. Then says, ‘On my way.’
‘Good.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Following a lead. I’ll call you.’
Luther hangs up.
He turns off his phone.
He can see Madsen, black on black, sinuous as an urban fox flitting through the trees.
He follows.
Henry races through the trees.
He’s fast, and he’s scared. His feet barely contact the wet compacted mud. The winter moon lights his way.
Every now and again he turns and sees the big man coming for him. Not hurrying.
The lane parallels a thin, muddy stream. But the bank is steep and dense with nettles and briar on the far side. Impossible to cross.
So he keeps running, headlong.
At a long curve in the path, Henry reaches a thick bush of nettles and rhododendron. Behind it, garlanded with litter, spiked railings give onto a railway cutting.
Across the glinting black and silver river of railway line is an industrial park.
Henry wades through the nettles, tracing the line of the fence. He’s looking for a weapon, or a way out. There’s always a way out.
Twenty or thirty metres along, he finds a gap in the fence and slips through.
He slides down the embankment, then races across the railway lines.
He glances over his shoulder. And there’s Luther. Squeezing himself through the gap in the fence, sliding down the embankment. Implacable.
Henry scrambles up the other side of the cutting. Arrives at a chain-link fence. He scales the fence, throws himself over the top bar. Drops onto tarmac.
It’s littered with seeped-in patches of oil, fat circular pads of moss, broken glass.
He turns, fingers hooked in the links of the fence and, backlit by orange distant sodium light, he squints into the darkness.
For a moment, he can’t see Luther. Not until his eyes are dark-adapted.
And then he sees him.
Luther is running across the railway lines.
Henry turns, puffs out his chest, runs.
Luther scrambles up the embankment, using tufts of grass as handholds. At the top, he peers through the fence. Sees Madsen disappearing into the shabby industrial estate.
Luther climbs the fence, throws himself over the top, drops onto tarmac.
Henry doesn’t know the way out.
The industrial park is deserted and seemingly infinite. Full of dark corners, discarded engine parts, broken glass. Dented oil drums lie dead on their sides.
Most of the buildings are in a state of dereliction, loading docks barricaded with sheet metal and plywood. Concrete access ramps thick with thistle and willowherb.
An old security light winks on, exposing Henry as starkly and perfectly as a helicopter searchlight.
He runs for the darkness, sprints down a wide desolate avenue, flanked by dead buildings.
The wind buffets the unsecured corner of a sheet of corrugated iron. It covers the entrance to a vast redbrick brewery, long since abandoned.
Purblind by the security light, Henry makes for it. He feels the rust on the iron like sugar on a tabletop, the crumbling sharp edges beneath his fingertips.
He pulls back the corner and slips into the immense damp blackness of the old loading bay.
Luther loses sight of Madsen. But then, round a corner, he sees a light blink on.
He glances sharply away, to preserve his night vision. Stands with eyes closed, a soft disc of moss beneath his foot. He counts to thirty.
As he’s counting, he hears the shriek of metal on concrete.
When he opens his eyes, the security light has shut off.
He follows in Henry’s footsteps, but ducks right where Henry had gone left. Skirts the fringes of the Worldwide Tyres warehouse, turns left and left again.
He doesn’t activate the security light.
He turns the corner onto a wide avenue. On the other side is an old tower brewery.
He stands there for a long time, catching his breath. Watches clouds scud across the blank eye of the moon.
He waits.
Sees movement. The wind catching the loose corner of a sheet of corrugated iron.
Luther walks.
He reaches the corrugated iron, pulls it aside. It screams in pain.
He enters the loading dock.
The darkness smells of brick dust and mildew, a hundred years of brewing. The ammonia stink of pigeon shit.
In the corner, abandoned, he passes a spillage of ancient LPs. A teetering pile of magazines, swollen and fungal with age. Pike Fishing. Grinning 1970s men hold foot-long fish.
He hears a ringing echo. Metal on concrete.
It emanates from a far, dark corridor.
Luther is calm. He follows the echo.
Teller and Reed pull up to a tumbledown, 1920s semi in Muswell Hill.
The search team’s still here, a full squad of emergency vehicles.
A uniformed constable stands posted at the gate. Teller leaps from the car and runs to her.
‘Nothing?’
‘No, Ma’am.’
‘According to John, her oxygen ran out about two minutes ago.’
Reed is moments behind her. He hurries past. ‘If John says she’s here, she’s here.’
He enters the house.
It smells of new plaster and old rising damp. It’s full of police, arc lamps, exaggerated shadows. He passes through into the floodlit garden, finds Lally. She’s wearing Gore-Tex and heavy boots.
He says, ‘You went over it all again?’
She nods. ‘Garden, basement, garage, outbuildings. There’s nothing. No sign the ground was disturbed. He’s lying, Guv.’
Reed checks his watch.
