LUTHER: The Calling

by Neil Cross

  Mr Alexander, returning from a dinner party, crashes his Ford Mondeo into a central reservation near Manor Fields in Putney.

  Spotting Mr Alexander’s baby son strapped into a car seat, the group – led by Graeme Kershaw, 23 – begin asking Mr Alexander questions about ‘Baby Emma’.

  Mr Alexander’s protestations about the gender of his child are ignored by the gang, who become violent when Mr Alexander suggests they confirm what he’s saying by checking inside the child’s nappy.

  Mr Alexander sustains moderate but not life-threatening injuries.

  Police are accused of being heavy-handed after four officers storm a young couple’s house at 3.54 a.m. because a 999 caller claims their baby is ‘crying non-stop, like something’s wrong.’

  Lab Assistant Sean Scott and his girlfriend Becky Walker, wake up to find two police officers in their bedroom demanding to see their two-month-old daughter, Frankie.

  Police reduce Becky to tears by threatening to call social services, but leave after confirming Frankie is safe and well.

  At 5.12 a.m. a man is seen approaching Homerton Hospital carrying ‘a suspicious bundle’.

  He is apprehended and set upon by a large group of young men and teenagers. The youngest of the attackers is three weeks short of his thirteenth birthday.

  The victim is Olusola Akinrele, a hospital worker on his way to an early shift. The ‘bundle’ was his gym bag.

  Fortunately for Mr Akinrele, who loses the sight in one eye, the attack takes place less than a hundred metres from the Homerton Accident and Emergency department, which is where he works as a nurse.

  At 5.47 a.m., Maggie Reilly comes to the microphone and announces that Pete Black has at last called back to London Talk FM.

  ‘Pete,’ she says. ‘Is that you?’

  Luther stops pacing. He snatches up the portable radio and holds it close to his ear.

  ‘I’ve driven all over London,’ says Pete Black, tearful with self-pity. ‘There’s police everywhere. I just want London to know that. I want London to know what the police are doing. I try to help, and this is what I get.’

  ‘You can’t blame the police for doing their job.’

  ‘Yes I can. Because if it wasn’t for them, Emma would be with the doctors now. But she’s not, is she?’

  ‘So where is she, Pete? Where’s Baby Emma?’

  ‘I’ve put her where I could. I hope she’s safe.’

  ‘Where is she, Pete?’

  ‘If she’s not safe, it’s not my fault. I wanted you all to know that. I tried my best. I was only trying to help.’

  ‘Pete, where is she? Where’s Baby Emma?’

  ‘They’re tracing my call,’ says Pete Black. ‘They’ll know.’

  Luther turns off the radio and shrugs on his coat. He dials Teller.

  He says, ‘Where?’

  She says, ‘King’s Cross.’

  Luther’s already out the door.

  CHAPTER 12

  They seal off a two-kilometre area around King’s Cross, concentrate the search on the Joy Christian Centre, at Saints Church of England, St Aloysius Convent, the Crowndale Health Centre on Crowndale Road, the Killick Street Heath Centre, the New Horizon Youth Centre.

  Luther elects to join the squad searching the grounds of St Pancras Old Church, on the edge of the search perimeter.

  It’s the largest green area in the parish, and one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in London. Ancient trees. Ancient graves.

  He arrives at an archaic ash tree ringed by a rusty fence. Around the tree’s root-base, timeworn gravestones have been crammed together. They stand like weird fungi. Over the years the roots of the tree have grown between the stones, knocked them off-true, seem to be in the process of consuming them.

  A baby has been jammed between two of the stones, sprinkled with handfuls of soil and leaf humus.

  Luther reaches down.

  He takes the baby from the earth.

  Then he lays her back. She’s cold.

  Luther steps outside the evidence tent. Eyes pass over him. Coppers, onlookers, paramedics.

  Outside the gates, misery lights flash blue. Uniformed officers erect crowd barriers.

  The media are here, of course: there is a scrum of faces, all colours and ages, the mass homogenized by their eagerness to catch a glimpse.

  There’s a helicopter overhead.

  He buries his hands deep into his pockets and strides through wet grass to a far, secret corner of the churchyard.

  He puts his back to the Victorian brick wall. It crawls with evergreen climbing plants. It’s shockingly wet.

  He puts his head in his hands and cries.

  When he’s finished, Teller’s there, half sitting, half leaning on a gravestone.

  Luther’s eyes are raw and wet. He wipes them with the back of the hand. He’s embarrassed.

  Teller doesn’t say a word.

  For something to do, they walk to the church.

  Inside, they find cool stone and heavy silence. The sweet, dusty fragrance of old incense.

  Teller sits on the pew in front but turned to face him, resting her chin on her forearm. She watches him.

  He says, ‘Fuck.’

  ‘I know,’ she says.

  Outside is the crime scene, the tape, SOCO, the medical examiners, and beyond them the church gates that lead back into the city, the crush of people, the cameras, the journalists, the mobile phones, the love songs on the radio of passing cars.

  At the entrance to the church, a recently added marble stone is inscribed: And I am here/in a place/beyond desire or fear.

  She touches his forearm.

  He nods at his lap. Then he dry-washes his face to massage some life into it. He stands. Claps his big hands.

  She watches him walk outside, through the big doors and into the morning. A big man with a big walk. The world turning like a wheel beneath him.

  CHAPTER 13

  Henry buys the Mail, the Mirror, the Sun, the Independent and The Times. But not the Guardian. Henry detests the Guardian.

  Then he goes to the café and orders a full English. He shrugs off his overcoat and scarf and, still trembling, sits at one of the red plastic moulded tables, bolted to the floor in an ungenerous manner that has become the norm.

  It saddens him. But proper cafés, cafés like this, are closing by the dozen every week, winking out of existence like fairy lights. So he’ll take what he can get.

  He adds sugar to his tea, stirs it with a dirty teaspoon, stained by years of daily immersion in tannin.

  Then he can’t put it off any longer. He opens the first newspaper.

  They tell the story the same way: LONDON HOLDS ITS BREATH. PRAYERS SAID FOR BABY EMMA. THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE PLEDGED LAST NIGHT . . . HUNDREDS OF POLICE CANCELLED LEAVE LAST NIGHT . . . WE ALL PRAY . . . IN DARK TIMES . . .

  Henry burns with rage and embarrassment.

  He looks through the window at the damp city coming alive: the market owners setting up stalls, selling organic veg and Indian food and knock-off Caterpillar boots and cheap polo shirts. The women walking to work at the local Tesco, the taxi drivers stopping outside the newsagent to pop in for a paper and a packet of fags.

  Then he turns back to the paper – to the photographs of the smiling Lamberts, the woman he sliced open like ripe fruit to remove the fresher fruit within. He’d slit the throbbing blue umbilicus with a folding knife he’d owned since he was a boy.

  He’d been sure the Lamberts were ideal; he stuck with them through the years of IVF because he never doubted their fertility. They were too exquisite not to be. Two bodies like that, they were breeding machines.

  Simple genetic principles implied their child would be ideal, too. But it wasn’t. It was a mewling little runt.

  It’s not Henry’s fault she died. And at least London knows that now. People know that the man who took Baby Emma wasn’t a pervert.

  Zoe goes downstairs and turns on the TV, sees the affable morning newsreader pulli
ng her grave face.

  ‘. . . an update on this still-developing story,’ she says. ‘Acting on a tip-off from the man who claimed to have kidnapped baby Emma Lambert, visibly devastated police officers reportedly found the body of a baby at St Pancras Old Church in central London early this morning. Simon Maxwell- Davis is at the scene.’

  Zoe watches live footage of a London churchyard. A dizzying zoom – and there’s John, stomping away from an evidence tent. Rose Teller is a beat behind him, like a terrier at his heels.

  It’s followed by helicopter footage of John leaning against a wall and apparently weeping.

  Zoe’s hand goes to her throat.

  Cut back to the young man with the microphone. Blond and ruddily handsome, a little chubby.

  ‘Well, Lorna,’ he says, to the anchor, to the viewers, to Zoe, ‘this must be the moment all police officers dread. Although I should stress that we’ve yet to have official confirmation, our sources do tell us that, following the dramatic call made to a London radio station early this morning, police have indeed found the body of a baby here at St Pancras Old Church in central London. Details are very sketchy at this time—’

  Zoe snaps off the TV and calls John.

  She gets voicemail.

  He never answers his fucking phone. It’s one of those things about him. It drives her insane. He says if you go around answering your phone, all it does is ring.

  ‘John,’ she says, ‘it’s me. I don’t know what time it is. It’s early. I’ve just seen the news. Give me a call as soon as you can. I just want to know you’re okay. Please. Just – y’know.’

  She hangs up. Tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She puts her face in her hands. She says her own name like a mantra: Zoe, Zoe, Zoe.

  Then she cranes her neck and looks at the ceiling.

  Her phone rings. She snatches it up. It’s Mark. He says, ‘Have you been watching the news?’

  ‘I’m watching it now.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Zoe. Are you okay?’

  She doesn’t know.

  Mark says, ‘Have you heard from him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think he’s okay?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, testily. ‘I really don’t know who’s okay and who’s not.’

  ‘Listen,’ he says, not rising to the bait. She loves him for it. ‘Whatever you need me to do, I’m here. If you want me to come over, I’ll be right over. If you want me to stay away, I’ll stay away. Just let me know.’

  She says, ‘Look. Thanks. I appreciate it. I really do. But we had a row last night. A pretty bad one. And then, here he is on TV, crying. That’s not like him. And . . . I just don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘To work.’

  After a moment he says, ‘Is that a good idea?’

  ‘What else am I supposed to do?’ she says. ‘Hang around the house all day, watching the news? If I did that every time John was up to his neck in something horrible, I wouldn’t have a job to go to.’

  Howie gets in about two minutes before the police courier arrives from Bristol. She hasn’t even taken off her coat when he hands over the Kintry and York files, taped up in a second-hand Jiffy bag.

  Howie thanks him, lays the Jiffy bag on her messy desk.

  The courier is a young PC with a heavy West Country accent. She offers him a cup of tea. He prefers one of the Cup a Soups he sees next to the water-spotted kettle. He’s been up all night and he’s hungry.

  He drinks the soup. They chat about the case in very general terms. Then he rinses the cup, wishes her good luck and leaves.

  Howie takes a coffee to her desk, slips on a pair of noise-reducing headphones, opens the Jiffy bag and digs out the files.

  Luther’s barely through the heavy doors of the buzzing unit when Benny grabs his elbow and drags him into the office, Ian Reed’s dry cleaning still hanging there behind the door.

  Benny’s twitchy, wide-eyed, washed-out.

  Luther says, ‘Christ, Benny. How much sleep did you get?’

  ‘Not that much. It was niggling at me. It’s difficult to sleep when you know you could be doing something useful – in case things didn’t work out.’

  ‘Well, things didn’t work out.’

  ‘I heard that. You okay?’

  ‘Tickety-boo. What’ve you got?’

  ‘Facebook.’

  ‘I thought we’d done that.’

  ‘Well, yes and no,’ Benny’s rushing now, eager to tell him something. He reins himself in, takes a breath and says, ‘What’s the golden rule of social networking?’

  Luther hangs up his coat. ‘Don’t do it?’

  ‘No. The golden rule is – only put up information or images you’re happy for everyone to see and are happy to put your name to. And the Lamberts seem to have done that, by and large.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But the problem is, when I say happy for anyone to see, it really does mean anyone. The problem with social networking, the internet in general, is it’s easy for someone to pretend to be someone they’re not. For instance,’ he stands, ‘do you mind?’

  Luther gets out of Benny’s way, lets him access the old beige computer with 15-inch monitor he’s got tottering on his desk – brought here when Traffic had a refit, got themselves some nice flatscreens.

  Benny logs on to Facebook, taps a few keys.

  Then Luther’s looking at his own Facebook page. Except Luther doesn’t have a Facebook page.

  Benny says, ‘I set this up in your name last night.’

  Luther looks at it. ‘How?’

  ‘Easy. I know your birthday, right? I know where you went to school, uni, blah blah blah. You can easily get these details online. What I didn’t have to hand was a photograph of you. But I happen to know you like David Bowie, right? And I know your favourite album.’

  ‘Low.’

  ‘Right. So I dig up the cover image for Low. Use that as your profile picture. Anybody who knows you, sees it and thinks: Typical John Luther! Bowie fanatic! So nobody’s got any reason to think this isn’t you. Now all I have to do is look up a few old friends of yours. Again, that’s easily done because I know where you went to school. I send out a bunch of friend requests.’

  ‘Tell me you haven’t done that,’ says Luther.

  ‘No way. I value my ability to walk. But listen, the point is, I knocked up this page in ten minutes – for educational purposes only. Just to show you how easy it is, to be someone else online.’

  ‘Okay. Point made. Internet bad. So?’

  ‘So I combed through all the Lamberts’ online “friends”. Sarah Lambert’s got 250-odd, Tom Lambert’s got 70. He’s a very occasional user. So let’s put him to one side for the moment, come back to him if we need to. Let’s concentrate on Sarah. She’s got 253 friends: of those 253 friends, 185 post once a week or more. Of the remaining 68, most are occasional users. What happens a lot is, people start up a new account and go posting happy: what they had for breakfast, funny things the kids have said. But that loses its appeal pretty quickly, and their postings get fewer and fewer as the weeks go by. Some people sign up, make one or two postings, decide it’s not for them and are basically never seen again.’

  ‘How many of those we got?’

  ‘About half a dozen: Tony Barron, Malcolm Grundy, Charlotte Wilkie, Ruby Douglas, Lucy Gadd, Sophie Unsworth.’

  Luther nods, feeling something now – something coming down the line at him.

  ‘I contacted them all this morning,’ Benny says.

  ‘What do you mean? Officially?’

  ‘No chance. I rang round, pretending to be from a charity. Phoned their workplaces. That kind of thing.’

  ‘You’re in the wrong job, mate. So how’d it play?’

  ‘Tony Barron, Malcolm Grundy, Charlotte Wilkie, Lucy Gadd, Sophie Unsworth – all of them check out – or seem to at a first pass. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a bit more due diligen
ce on them, belt and braces.’

  ‘All right, consider it done. But the last name?’

  ‘Ruby Douglas.’

  ‘Who’s Ruby Douglas?’

  ‘Ruby Douglas went to the same prep school as Sarah Lambert. Moved away when she was thirteen. So you’re talking about a very loose, very old acquaintance – if you can even call her that. Someone Mrs Lambert may remember, but hasn’t actually seen for more than twenty-five years.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘This “Ruby Douglas” joined Facebook three years ago, befriended the Lamberts and a few others the same day. Then didn’t make one post. Not a single post, until—’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until Mrs Lambert announced she was pregnant.’

  Luther’s heart is loud in his chest now.

  He says, ‘Let me see the post.’

  Sarah Lambert:

  We’ve been on tenterhooks for weeks and weeks, dying to tell you. Tom and I are pregnant! Four months gone!

  ‘There are fifty-nine comments and thirty-eight “likes”. One of those “likes” was posted by Ruby Douglas. That’s the only posting she ever made. To anyone. Ever.’

  At length, Luther says, ‘You tried to contact her? Ruby Douglas?’

  ‘Oh yeah. No deal.’

  ‘We don’t think this is actually her, do we?’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘So we’re saying Pete Black stalked the Lamberts on Facebook?’

  ‘It’s so easily done,’ Benny says. ‘Seriously. People have no idea of the kind of person who’s out there, watching them.’

  Luther’s sense of triumph fades. He sits. Thinks about it. ‘So the announcement of the pregnancy is what got them killed? He was waiting for it.’

  Benny says nothing. Knows there’s nothing to say.

  ‘Can we trace the user back?’ Luther says. ‘‘‘Ruby Douglas”, find him that way?’

  ‘Whoever it was used a free webmail address to sign up. Not traceable. Posted from different public ISPs.’

  ‘The ISPs any use?’

  ‘One of them’s a public Wi-Fi hotspot. The other’s a café in East London.’

  ‘The chances of getting security camera footage?’