by Neil Cross
She tells Zoe about Madsen’s adoptive parents. His mother slaughtered in the family kitchen. And about DS Howie, stabbed under the breast, fighting for her life in the back of an ambulance.
Zoe is at Mark’s.
They’re in the living room, cuddled up naked under a soft blanket. They’ve been watching a DVD, sharing a bottle of wine and smoking a joint.
Now Mark sits with the DVD remote in hand, thumb hovering over the pause button as Zoe listens to Teller.
Her eyes widen and her hand goes slowly to her throat.
She looks fragile and lovely and for a moment Mark pities Luther for loving this woman and losing her.
Zoe says, ‘I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me?’
‘As far as I can see,’ says Teller, shouting above the noise of her less cosy surroundings, ‘we’ve got two options. Option one: little Mia’s dead and John’s quietly taken Henry Madsen away to kill him.’
She gives Zoe a moment to process this.
‘What’s option two?’
‘We don’t know what option two might be.’
When Zoe’s able to speak, her voice is very small. She says, ‘Rose, I haven’t heard from him. I absolutely swear.’
‘You’ll have to speak up. It’s noisy here.’
‘ He hasn’t called! ’
‘All right,’ Teller says. ‘But not a word to anyone, okay? Because this could be really bad.’
‘Not a word.’
‘And if he does get in contact…’
‘I’ll call you. Straight away.’
‘Straight away.’
‘Absolutely. The moment. Rose?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Is he okay?’
‘To be honest with you — no, I don’t think he is.’
There’s nothing more to say. Zoe mumbles thanks and hangs up.
She stares at the phone.
Mark doesn’t ask. He just puts a warm arm around her bare shoulders. They huddle there, naked on the sofa, under a blanket that smells faintly of sex, in this good house with its air of weed and sharp green plants and books and leather.
Luther drives onto Colney Hatch Lane, turns at speed.
Madsen pounds at the windows, mouths to the other cars, people on the streets.
Luther speeds past. He turns onto Hampden Road, using two wheels, then Sydney Road.
By degrees, the streets become quieter. Luther does not slow down.
He turns onto Alexandra Road. It’s silent, but for the clamouring engine of the old Volvo. The street is lined with 1930s redbrick flats, functional and neat.
Then the flats run out and the road reveals itself to be a cul-de-sac — except for a pathway which leads, via a primary-coloured fence, off the street to a park.
Luther stops the car with a skid. He and Madsen sit for a moment.
Luther says, ‘Get out.’
‘No.’
Luther laughs.
‘You can’t do this,’ says Madsen.
Luther drags Madsen from the car. Madsen cries out. He screams and begs. His voice cracks. But Luther knows that nobody will come to Madsen’s assistance, because Luther knows that nobody ever does.
He locks his elbow round Madsen’s carotid artery and squeezes. In a few moments, Madsen’s legs go weak, threaten to fold from under him.
Luther frog-marches him, dazed, into the park.
There is a stark, white hunter’s moon. Across it, clouds blow, loose as cannon smoke.
He shoves Madsen past the playground, the red swings, the jaunty roundabout, into the darkness beyond; an urban wasteland whose borders are marked by feral birch and ash saplings.
Madsen’s head is clearing. He draws in a lungful of air; ready to bawl for help. Luther throws him to the ground. Drags him along.
This area used to be a sewage works, then a rubbish tip. It’s been derelict since 1963. Five years ago, Luther attended the scene of a murder here. A prostitute called Dawn Cadell.
He drags Henry through the pale, wild saplings onto a tussocked grassland colonized by invasive rhododendrons, buddleia, Japanese knotweed. He navigates the waist-high foliage by moonlight.
He hauls Madsen to his feet and shoves him into the trees, a heavy young forest of oak and ash.
Under that whispering canopy, it’s quiet. The moon’s eye winks out. There’s just the ragged sound of their exerted breathing, the night wind through invasive weeds. The faint ambient radiance of electric light pollution.
Human feet have created a system of paths through the trees. They’re called desire paths.
Luther always liked that.
He marches Henry down the largest of them.
They pass into a clearing. The white moon shines bright on a thick, weedy meadow that’s littered with the rusty corpses of cars. No wheels. No windows. No glass. A bone yard of Metros, Beetles, an upended post-office van, scattered like the husks of giant insects.
And nestling close to the treeline, half swamped with foxglove and lupin and briar, is the rotting corpse of a caravan.
Luther marches Henry to the caravan and shoves him inside.
It smells strongly of damp and decomposition.
Luther forces Henry to sit on the U-shaped bench surrounding the dining table, which is still bolted to the floor. The bench’s vinyl is ripped, exposing the foam beneath. It crawls and ticks with invertebrates.
They sit in darkness and silence.
Madsen shudders, monkey-grinning.
When he’s got his breath back, Luther says, ‘So where is she, Henry?’
Madsen hugs himself for warmth. ‘What time is it?’
‘Eleven thirty-two. Where is she?’
‘Kill me, you’ll never know.’
‘Well, that’s true. But it doesn’t end well for you either, does it?’
A long moment of silence.
‘Half an hour,’ Madsen says. ‘Can you stand it?’
‘No. Can you?’
Madsen laughs.
Luther sits back. Regards him through the rich, fungal darkness. Reek of leaf humus, rotten plywood. Rubber gone to rot.
Madsen leans forward. ‘You can hurt me all you like,’ he says. ‘But you’ll do life for it. And I won’t tell you a fucking thing.’ His quaking begins to subside as dominance and control pass back to him. ‘Still,’ he says. ‘At least you’ll know she died a virgin.’
They breathe the same fetid air.
Madsen breaks the silence. ‘What time is it now?’
‘Eleven thirty-eight.’
‘Just over twenty minutes.’
Luther shudders with cold.
‘If you wanted to kill me,’ Madsen says, ‘the place to do it was back at Mum’s house. Who’d ever know if it was self-defence or not, eh? So here’s what I think. I think you want little Mia back more than you want anything in the world.’
‘Yes,’ says Luther.
‘So there’s got to be a way out of this, hasn’t there? There’s got to be a way I get what I want and you get what you want.’
Rats creep in the cancerous frame of the squalid caravan. Reptilian tails drag over blisters of rust.
‘It’s not going to happen,’ Luther says, at length. ‘If I let you go and you’ve lied, I’ve got nothing. And you’re a liar, Henry. That’s your problem. You’re a liar.’
They sit.
Madsen says, ‘How long?’
Luther looks at his watch. He doesn’t answer.
He stands. He goes to the caravan door.
Madsen says, ‘Where are you going?’
‘To call my wife.’
Luther steps into the moonlight. Wet grass to his knees. Rosebay willowherb. Bits of pram extend from it, the arc of a corroded oil drum. Low-hanging trees, heavy with recent rainfall. The pale, oxidizing caravan with its corrupt human cargo.
He watches the beam of a distant helicopter as it probes the streets. Searching for him. Searching for Madsen.
He turns on his phone and calls Zoe.
Her phone rings and rings and rings.
He waits.
Zoe jumps when her phone rings.
She grabs it. It’s John.
She looks at Mark before answering. He makes a gesture: Do what you have to.
So Zoe stands naked in the middle of Mark’s living room, wrapped in the blanket like a Roman statue.
Mark sits bollock-naked on the sofa, places a Moroccan cushion over his lap, rolls a calming joint.
In a better world, on a happier night, it would be funny.
Zoe takes the call. ‘John?’
He hears her voice saying his name. Twenty years of love in it.
‘Zoe,’ he says. His voice is rendered a near murmur by the solitude and the darkness.
He says, ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Where are you? Everyone’s looking for you.’
He sees the helicopter searchlight poking the gardens, the allotments, the suburban sheds.
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘We’re frightened for you,’ she says. ‘Everyone’s really scared. Come home.’
‘I can’t. I’m lost. I don’t know where I am.’ He wants more than anything in the world to be with her now; to have her naked and warm and in his arms. ‘I need help,’ he says. ‘I need your help.’
‘Whatever I can do,’ she says. ‘Whatever it is.’
‘I’ve got him,’ says Luther. ‘The man who did this. All these terrible things. I’ve got him.’
‘John, that’s-’
‘But the little girl he took. He buried her somewhere. Buried her alive. I don’t know where she is. She’s only got a few minutes left. She’s terrified. Right now. She’s in a box in the ground and she’s terrified. She’s dying. But he won’t tell me where she is. He’s enjoying it. The pain he’s causing. The power he’s got. He’d rather let her die.’
He waits for a reaction. But there’s only silence on the line.
He says her name.
And still, that silence.
‘I could hurt him,’ he says at last. ‘If I did that, I think I could find her.’
Her can hear her sobbing now. Trying not to.
‘But I’d have to really hurt him,’ he says. ‘I mean, really hurt him. So I need you to tell me what to do. What’s the right thing to do? I need you to tell me. I need your help.’
Zoe is weeping. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she says. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. I don’t know.’
‘No,’ says Luther. ‘No, of course not.’
He hangs up. He turns off his phone.
He looks at the moon until his heart has slowed and his voice has regained some strength. Then he turns the phone on again and calls Ian Reed.
Henry doesn’t hear the content of that first call. But he reads body language well.
He sees that Luther is resigned to something. His head weighing heavy on his chest.
Henry turns to the caravan window, tries to slide it open.
He can’t.
It’s rusted shut.
Then he runs a hungry finger around the window seal. The rubber has hardened and cracked. It’s brittle and crumbles to the touch.
Henry braces himself against the dining table. He presses the window with the palms of his hands.
He heaves and heaves.
The window frame squeals.
He doesn’t care.
With a long screech, the window pops from its frame.
Henry squeezes through the gap. He jumps into the nettles and the brambles.
He picks a desire path and runs.
Luther listens to Henry battering his way out of the caravan.
He looks at his watch.
Finally, Reed answers. ‘John, for fuck’s sake. Where are you?’
‘Have you found her?’
‘We searched all five properties on the list. They’d been at one, briefly. By the time the search team got there, they’d moved on.’
‘What kind of property?’
‘House. They were converting it.’
‘Where was it?’
‘Muswell Hill.’
‘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.
Purb
lind 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?’
