The Calling l-1

by Neil Cross

  The baby is in his arms, still bite-sucking his thumb. ‘Are you hungry?’ he says. ‘Are you hungry, baby girl? Yes you is! You is a hungry liddle girl.’

  He takes her up to her room, the nicest room in the house. Inside is a brand new cot from John Lewis, a brand new changing table and mat from Mothercare. Her new clothes, many still displaying price tags, hang from a chrome rail. (There is a second rail, which contains boy’s clothes, but Henry pretends not to see it. When Emma’s asleep, he’ll take the boy’s clothes away and quietly burn them. There’s a wood-burning furnace in the basement. It comes in handy.)

  On the wall are prints of Pooh Bear and Piglet. Henry has waxed and polished the oak floor and laid down pretty rugs. The only item that isn’t new is a manky, one-eyed teddy bear, bald in patches. She’s called Mummy Bear. She’s Henry’s.

  He lays the baby on her back. Her loose purple skin is streaked with blood and other ochres. But Henry’s read that babies don’t like to be clean: the smell of sweat and shit and sebum comforts them. So he tucks Emma tight under the blanket and gazes down upon her with tear-pricked eyes.

  She opens and closes her mouth like an animatronic alien. And she has a curiously extra-terrestrial look of absolute wisdom in those ebony eyes. She has a perfect nub of a nose with finely etched little nostrils so pink they seem faintly illuminated. There’s the trembling, downturned rage and sorrow in her mouth, the balled fists on spindly arms. And her bowed legs! It’s funny, that her mother should have such good legs, while the baby’s should be like a wishbone! He expects they’ll straighten.

  The baby begins to mewl as Henry steps back from the cot. Her cry is low and warbling, wet in the throat and not as loud as he’d feared it might be. But it’s piercing, a depleted sound that seems to cut through walls like a wire through cheese.

  ‘Don’t worry, iddle baby,’ he says. ‘Don’t oo worry.’

  He leaves the room. His heart is thin and anxious in his chest. He hurries down to the kitchen. It has recently been scrubbed down so thoroughly the stink of bleach stings his eyes and he’s forced to open a window.

  He reaches into the fridge. Inside are lined up twelve or thirteen sterilized bottles containing formula milk.

  Henry takes a bottle and warms it slightly in the microwave. He tests its temperature against his forearm, then hurries upstairs through the faltering but gathering squall of his new daughter’s crying.

  Luther goes to find Benny, who’s set himself up at Ian Reed’s desk.

  Reed’s spare suit jacket, tie and shirt hang from the back of the door, still in dry-cleaner’s cellophane. In Reed’s desk drawer is a wash and shave kit: soap, disposable razors, deodorant, moisturizer for sensitive skin.

  Benny’s already surrounded by empty cans of energy drink, takeaway coffees, bottles of multivitamins, half-eaten protein bars.

  Luther says, ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Slowly,’ Benny says. ‘I’ve been checking the Lamberts’ phone accounts, work email accounts. No extra-curricular flirting that I can see. Nothing of real interest.’

  Luther pulls up a chair. ‘No old loves popped up on Facebook?’

  ‘We’re checking out all the friends,’ Benny says. ‘Right now.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s what…’

  ‘Nearly three hundred people.’

  ‘Nearly three hundred people. We need to find this baby today.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘If we’re looking at a sex crime, normally we’d look for precursor offences in the area, right? An uplift in peeping Toms, knicker-sniffers, underwear thieves, flashers. But there’s been no uplift.’

  ‘Okay…’

  ‘So somebody this sexually confused,’ Luther says, ‘somebody who did what this man did to the Lamberts, you’d expect him to be known to us already, most likely a local schizophrenic. But that doesn’t feel right, does it?’ He fiddles with the beige keyboard of his computer. Types QWERTY. ‘People put so much of their lives out there. On Facebook and wherever. There’s so much information on who we are, how we’re feeling, what we’re doing. I don’t know. I just want to be sure.’

  Benny nods, turns to his screen.

  Two seconds later, Howie knocks and enters, a folder in her hand.

  ‘Womb raiders,’ she says, closing the door. ‘Women who snatch other women’s children from the womb.’

  ‘Yeah, but this was a man.’

  ‘Just bear with me, Boss.’

  Luther makes a gesture: Sorry.

  ‘Usually, womb raiders are female. Average out at thirty years old. Generally no criminal record. Emotionally immature, compulsive, low self-esteem. Looking to replace a lost infant or one she couldn’t conceive.’

  ‘Right,’ says Luther. ‘But they also go for low-hanging fruit. Vulnerable and marginalized women. Not middle-class event organizers.’

  ‘Totally. But I’ve been going through Mr Lambert’s work diary. Every Thursday night, 7.30 p.m., they had an appointment at, quote, ISG.’

  ‘What’s ISG?’

  ‘Well, we know Mrs Lambert was taking fertility treatment for a long time. Mr Lambert’s a counsellor, so we also know they’re into therapy and whatnot. So I’m thinking — ISG: Infertility Support Group? So I go back to the first instance, call the number he listed-’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I get through to the Clocktower Infertility and IVF Support Group. I’ve googled it. It’s less than a mile from the Lamberts’ home.’

  ‘So we’re saying what?’

  ‘You look at the catchment area, it’s well above national-average income. That’s probably true of the support group, too. But an infertile woman can undergo a psychotic episode if she’s middle-class or not.’

  ‘I still don’t think it was a woman.’

  ‘Totally,’ says Howie. ‘But it’s a group for couples. Plenty of men.’

  Luther reads her smile and knows there’s more.

  She passes him a photocopied printout, taken from Tom Lambert’s diary.

  He scans it. ‘What am I looking for?’

  She takes the printout from his hand, points to a blocked-off appointment. ‘They last attended the group three months ago.’

  Luther grins, seeing it.

  ‘She kept attending the support group,’ Howie says. ‘Even when she was visibly pregnant. Imagine it. All these desperate couples-’

  ‘And here are Tom and Sarah Lambert,’ Luther says. ‘Gorgeous. Well off. In love. Blooming with it. Good work. Get your coat.’

  Beaming, Howie leaves the office.

  Luther grabs his overcoat. Pauses halfway through putting it on.

  Benny looks at him.

  ‘Lust for power,’ Luther says. ‘Lust for money. Jealousy. All the things we do to each other. It all comes down to sex in the end. But sex comes down to babies. You look at a baby, it’s the purest thing in the world. The best thing. Totally innocent. So how do you square that? All this wickedness, in the name of creating innocence. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?’

  Benny looks at him for a long time. Then he says, ‘If you don’t mind, I’m going to make myself forget what you just said.’

  ‘Good,’ says Luther. ‘Good.’

  Buttoning his coat, he walks out to meet Howie.

  The Clocktower Infertility and IVF Support Group is run from a small private hospital in North London.

  The group is led by a GP called Sandy Pope. It seems to Luther she’s a little forbidding and severe to be running a group like this. But what does he know?

  Luther and Howie sit in her surgery; it has a faint camphor smell.

  ‘The group’s run on a drop-in basis,’ she tells them. ‘So there’s no database, no list of phone numbers. Some people come for years. Some come once and find it’s not for them. Most are somewhere in between.’

  ‘But on average?’

  She’s reluctant to answer. Luther knows her type: well-educated, middle-class, left-leaning liberal. A good-hearted r
oundhead. Doesn’t care for the police, not least because she’s never had cause to need them.

  ‘There’s no such thing as average,’ she says. ‘But often they’ll stay for a year or two. Which doesn’t mean they come every week. It’ll be every week for three or four months. Then twice a month, then once a month. Then they just stop.’

  ‘And there’s no list of attendees?’

  ‘People don’t even have to give their real names.’

  Howie takes the baton. ‘How did Sarah Lambert’s pregnancy go down with the group?’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand where you’re heading with this.’

  ‘We’re trying to establish why the Lamberts kept attending the group, even after Sarah was pregnant. It seems unusual.’

  ‘Not really. It can be difficult; a couple comes to identify themselves as infertile, then suddenly they face this whole new challenge. They turn to a support group.’

  ‘So how did Sarah deal with her pregnancy?’

  ‘During the first trimester, her anxiety levels were very high. She had bad dreams.’

  ‘What kind of dreams?’

  ‘Of something happening to the baby.’

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘She never specified. It’s actually not uncommon.’

  ‘So she wasn’t happy?’

  ‘She was non-ecstatic. That’s not the same as unhappy. She was damming up her happiness. Scared she was going to lose the child.’

  ‘And Mr Lambert?’

  ‘He was supportive. Possibly more supportive than most male partners.’

  ‘So how are most male partners?’

  She gives Howie a meaningful look and says, ‘Men who’ve come to define themselves as infertile can feel detached from a pregnancy. It’s a kind of safety mechanism. Plus, they feel the need to be strong for their wife. Just in case something goes wrong.’

  ‘So,’ Howie refers to her notes, cycles back a step or two, ‘the rest of the group. How did they take it when they learned about the pregnancy?’

  ‘I’d say the reaction was mixed. On one hand, pregnancy provides hope…’

  ‘And on the other?’

  ‘Well, obviously it can lead to envy.’

  ‘Did it make anyone in the group feel like that?’

  ‘It would be surprising if it didn’t. Women often find this aspect of it all, the apparent randomness of it, to be very difficult. They see it in terms of fairness — or unfairness, however you choose to look at it.’

  ‘And the men?’

  ‘Their response is often-’ She breaks off, looks at Luther. ‘The male reaction can be very primal. Potency and fertility can be central to a man’s sense of gender identity.’

  Luther thinks of the timid people in the support group: the shocked women, grieving for children who would never be conceived, would never be born, would never die. Sad people in Gap jeans and Marks and Spencer’s blouses sitting in a circle on plastic chairs. The shabbiness of the room. The hairs on their forearms, the freckles. The intimacy of their sex organs. Hair sprouting from unbuttoned collars. Men seeking to lose weight, lose their guts to increase their fertility, looking one to the other, pondering who was potent and who was not, cuckolding each other in the imagination.

  And Sarah Lambert, terrified to tell of her good fortune in case the baby didn’t latch on to existence but instead let go, allowing itself to be carried downstream by time: a bundle of cells, a tumbling ball of life.

  He thinks of a small piece of plastic he once found behind the bin in his bathroom.

  ‘I can’t go into details,’ he says, ‘but there are special circumstances surrounding this case. This was a crime of rage. And about as personal as you can get. The best lead I have right now is this support group.’

  ‘Then I really can’t help you.’

  ‘I know. But perhaps you’d be willing to ask members of the group to come forward, allow themselves to be eliminated from the enquiry?’

  ‘I can do that,’ she says. ‘Absolutely. Happy to.’

  He makes as if to leave. Then he says, ‘There’s just one more thing.’

  She waits.

  ‘There may have been a couple you didn’t feel right about?’ Luther says. ‘They could have been regular attendees. Or one-offs.’

  ‘Didn’t feel right about in what way?’

  ‘Well, that’s something you can tell us. I’m not asking you to judge. But you’re familiar with every kind of behaviour that goes hand in hand with infertility. So did one couple maybe strike you as being, I don’t know — atypical? Outliers? Was there anyone, maybe you couldn’t put your finger on it, but they were wrong somehow?’

  ‘That’s not really for me to say, is it?’

  ‘Just for once, it might be.’

  ‘Well, there was Barry and Lynda,’ she says.

  Luther sits back. He crosses his legs. Smooths his trousers over his knee. He knows this is a tell, the sign of a man trying not to show agitation. He’s working on it. ‘Who are Barry and Lynda?’

  ‘They came once or twice. Didn’t say much.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘I don’t know, three or four months ago?’

  ‘So — during Sarah Lambert’s pregnancy?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes. It must have been.’

  ‘And what about them made you feel uncomfortable?’

  ‘They were just — wrong. As a couple. He was very trim. Wiry. Like a marathon runner. Suit and tie. Overcoat. Short hair, worn very neat. Side parting.’

  ‘And the woman? Lynda?’

  ‘Well, this is what struck me as strange. She was obese.’

  Luther nods. Waits for more.

  Howie says, ‘We know it goes against the grain to judge people in any way but this is so important. If this couple had nothing to do with what happened, they’ll never know that you pointed us in their direction. If they did then believe me, you want us to catch them.’

  Pope laughs. She’s uncomfortable. ‘We have so many training courses,’ she says. ‘So many awareness sessions.’

  ‘Us too,’ Luther says.

  Pope laughs, a bit more openly. ‘I suppose you must.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Luther says. He smiles and tells her, ‘They want to put a tea vending machine in the station because they think we’ll electrocute ourselves if we’re allowed to have a kettle in the workplace.’

  Pope opens her drawer, takes out a mint and unwraps it.

  ‘They just seemed wrong,’ she says. ‘For one member of a couple to be that fit and the other… Well, the other to be that fat. It struck me as odd, like a couple on a saucy postcard. Besides which, if you’re obese and having problems with conceiving, you’re told to lose weight. A lot of IVF clinics refuse treatment to obese patients until they’ve reduced their body mass index.’

  ‘So you were surprised by this woman’s size?’

  ‘I think we all were.’

  Luther makes a note to check all applications to the IVF programme, see who’s been rejected for obesity. It’ll be a long list, but it could take them somewhere.

  He says, ‘What was their story?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘I mean, what did they tell you about themselves?’

  ‘This isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous. We’re a drop-in centre. We don’t pressure new couples. For a lot of them, just coming along is a giant step. If they want to sit in silence, fine.’

  ‘So how did they behave, Barry and Lynda?’

  ‘She was… sweet.’

  ‘When you say sweet,’ Luther says, ‘you say it with certain emphasis.’

  ‘She was… she was very pretty, in a strange way. But there was something grotesque about her. I don’t mean in terms of her weight. I mean there was something — Shirley Temple-ish. She wore very girly clothes, pinks and ribbons. Knee-high socks. And she had this teeny, tiny, little mousey voice.’

  Luther’s heart is hastening. He says, ‘And him?’

  �
�He was-’

  ‘Dominant? Submissive?’

  ‘Neither. He was distant. They just didn’t feel like a couple.’

  ‘So he wasn’t paying attention to his partner?’

  ‘No. They sat next to each other. She was smiling at everyone. Little rosebud lips.’

  ‘And he was…’

  ‘Smug and over-assertive. Sat there like this, with his legs splayed.’

  ‘I’m sorry to be vulgar,’ Luther says. ‘But a crotch display like that, a certain kind of man thinks it’s a turn-on. He’s sitting with his legs wide apart, advertising the goods. So were there any innuendos, any double-meanings, off-colour remarks? Joking offers to get women pregnant, maybe?’

  ‘None of that,’ Pope says. ‘Besides which, I know how to tread on that pretty quickly and pretty efficiently.’

  Luther bets she does. He nods, once, in professional recognition. ‘So I wonder — did Barry pay any particular attention to any member of the group?’

  Pope’s eyes head up and to the right. She searches her memory.

  Then she looks at Luther.

  She considers her answer for a long time.

  ‘He sat there,’ she said, ‘leering at Sarah Lambert like she was a ripe peach. He made them both uncomfortable. Tom and Sarah. I think that’s the last time they came to the group.’

  Luther and Howie walk into the blaring London noise, the grit and filth.

  Luther says, ‘You ever think about it? Kids?’

  Howie shrugs. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘My wife and I had a pact. When we got together.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Howie says. ‘Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Both of ours, I think.’

  ‘And it still stands?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  She flashes him an enquiring look.

  ‘Who knows,’ he says. ‘The stupid things you say when you’re twenty-one.’

  Howie says, ‘Are you okay, Boss?’

  He snaps out of it. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘miles away.’

  Detective Sergeant Justin Ripley, curly hair and a trusting face, has been seconded to the Lambert investigation. He drives to Y2K Cleaning. He’s partnered with Detective Constable Theresa Delpy.