‘Done what?’
‘Harrington Hotel,’ she says. ‘Ten minutes.’
There’s a silence. ‘Are you sure?’ he says at the end of it. ‘Because you need to be sure about this.’
‘No,’ she laughs, ‘I’m not sure. But I’m done with it. I’m finished. I’ve had enough.’
Mark doesn’t hang up and neither does she.
She can hear her own breath feeding back down the line, ragged with anxiety and arousal.
Zoe calls Miriam and tells her to cancel her meetings until after lunch.
Miriam’s worried — Zoe’s never done this before.
‘It’s a personal thing,’ Zoe says. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see you about two.’
She walks to the Harrington, a boutique place on Tabernacle Street. She hasn’t brought a coat and it’s raining. She hugs herself for warmth.
When the hotel is in sight she breaks into a jog. Click click click go her heels.
Mark’s already booked a room and checked in.
He’s sitting in the over-designed lobby, pretending to read the Guardian. He’s holding a white key card with a black magnetic stripe.
They don’t speak. Just step into the waiting elevator.
Inside, they stand shoulder to shoulder.
Zoe can hear her heart.
CHAPTER 6
The squat consists of eight derelict council flats knocked into one. It’s occupied by artists, students, anarchists, junkies and the mentally deranged.
There’s no heating. Crumbling walls are hidden behind graffiti, tie-dyed and screen-printed bedsheets, posters.
Malcolm Perry only stirs when he hears the shouting downstairs. It’s still early, and shouting like that usually involves Random Andy, the schizophrenic often to be found huddling in one corner of the farthest flat, indulged by the dreadlocked art insurgents to whom intolerable mental anguish is a valid form of self-expression.
The shouting is louder than usual this morning, but Malcolm has been up for three days straight on a dirty form of amphetamine called Pink Champagne, washed down a few hours ago with some Temazepam.
Which is why he’s still in bed when the police kick down the door and surge into the room like spawning salmon, a big black copper in a tweed overcoat bringing up the rear, stomping into the room with a sneer of contempt for Malcolm’s posters and his screen-printing equipment.
Malcolm is a skinny man with long, fine hair and a scrubby beard. He’s naked from the waist down, his dick shrivelled by the cold and by the Pink Champagne into a nub of wrinkled gristle.
He’s wearing hiking socks on spindly legs, and one of his own T-shirts.
The big copper stalks up. He looms over Malcolm, looks like he’s about to rip his head off. Instead, he leans close and reads aloud the words printed on Malcolm’s T-shirt.
‘Work Obey Consume,’ he says.
‘That’s right,’ says Malcolm, belligerent and confused.
‘Search this place,’ says the big copper. ‘Nick everyone in here. Interview them all.’
The big copper squats with a look of distaste. With finger and thumb he tweezes a pair of greasy tracksuit bottoms from a pile of clothes near the foot of the bed. He throws them and a pair of rubber flip-flops to Malcolm, completely ignoring Malcolm’s Para boots. ‘Put these on,’ he says.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To my house,’ says the copper. ‘It’s not much. But it’s better than this shithole.’
Luther orders a search of the squats and immediate surroundings.
A second team make a number of arrests based on drugs offences, parole violations, receiving stolen goods, outstanding warrants, suspicion of this, suspicion of that.
And they rush Malcolm to Hobb Lane under blues and twos.
Howie stops off for Luther to pick up a burger. He eats it upside-down in waxed paper.
He’s wiping his mouth on one hand as they walk into the station at the corner of Hobb Lane and Abbadon Street.
The building is a brutish old monstrosity: a utilitarian 1950s construction crudely grafted onto a Victorian frame. It’s a chimera, and thus born to be a police station.
And it smells, like every police station Luther’s ever been in, of linoleum, floor polish, armpits, printer toner, dust on radiators.
Balling his paper napkin as he mounts the stairs three at a time, he passes through the doors into the Serious Crime Unit.
Furniture filched from other departments; ratty office chairs and fire-sale desks crammed into a space that demands to be three times as large.
He strides to his office, a narrow, undersized workspace he shares with Ian Reed.
Benny Deadhead’s waiting for him at the door, holding out a skinny white hand. He and Luther shake.
Luther says, ‘You all right there, Ben? Thanks for coming.’
‘Where do I sit?’
They step into the cramped, disorderly office. Luther gestures to Reed’s desk.
Benny perches his skinny arse on the very edge of it. He is gangly and bearded, wearing a washed-out Chrome T-shirt.
Luther says, ‘You’re all over the paedo forums, right, Ben?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’ Luther leans in to catch his Belfast mumble. ‘Those little corners of the internet where the kiddie-fiddlers share their vibrant fantasy lives. That’s where I spend my working day.’
‘You been briefed about this case?’
‘I’ve been told as much as there is to tell.’
Luther closes the door. ‘How are you? Really?’
Benny’s had some mental health issues, work-related. It’s not uncommon in people who do his job. It’s the things they have to see.
‘I’m all right. I’m actually pretty good. Fighting the good fight.’
‘Because I’m going to ask you to hang around until this one’s sorted. You know about this stuff.’
‘I wish I didn’t.’
‘But you do.’
‘Have you squared it with the Duchess, me being here?’
‘No, but I will.’
‘Because I’m not sure she approves of me.’
Benny tends to leather jackets and patchouli oil.
‘It’s not you,’ Luther says. ‘She hates everyone.’
‘Fair enough, then. Do we think the bairn’s alive?’
‘We’re scared it might be, Ben.’
Benny plonks his ballistic nylon briefcase on the desk, unzips it, hauls out his laptop. ‘Where do I plug myself in?’
Malcolm Perry waits in the interview room. His breath tastes rank. He can feel the cold floor, linoleum over concrete, through the thin rubber of his flip-flops.
Eventually the big copper and his pretty, green-eyed DS walk in and take a seat. They introduce themselves, go through all the rigmarole with the tapes.
The DCI sits back, spreads his legs. Just sits there, watching Malcolm, vaguely amused, as the woman begins the interview.
‘Malcolm Perry,’ she says. ‘In 2001, aged fourteen, you happened across the obituary of Charlotte James, who’d died a week previously in a motorcycle accident. You set off for St Charles’s Cemetery equipped with,’ she
