Briefly, Henry had considered giving up and just buying an orphan from Eastern Europe. But there was still that question of breeding, of what you get in the package. Caveat emptor.
Which had been the point of Baby Emma. Her breeding was perfect. The Lamberts were perfect. But that fiasco had nearly left everyone in London thinking he was a child killer or a pervert.
So now Henry’s arrived at a place that, in a perfect world, he’d have chosen to avoid.
By the time Mia becomes ready to breed she’ll love him as a father, which makes what Henry’s planning a creepy kind of incest.
That makes Henry uncomfortable, but it makes him excited too. He won’t touch Mia that way until she wants him to. But the thought of it, the extra level of transgression, is stimulating. It’ll be exciting. Father and daughter, lovers, parents.
As these thoughts run through Henry’s head he’s obliged several times to masturbate into a cotton handkerchief.
This has more to do with survival than pleasure. Henry knows that sexual desire muddies logical thought. Being sexually aroused is like being chained to a madman.
So he sits with his fly unzipped and the sodden handkerchief clasped like a flower-head in one hand. He strokes his belly and watches the blank TV and makes plans.
He imagines that from downstairs he can hear sobbing, but he knows he can’t. He and Patrick tested the basement enough times, with tape recorders and sound meters. You think you can hear crying in an empty house, but you play back the tape and all you get is silence.
The sobbing is just Henry’s imagination. There’s just him and the blank TV, the feel of his taut belly under the palm of his hand. He turns on the TV, flicks from channel to channel. Keeps the volume down. Enjoys the pictures.
The house in Chiswick. Pasty-faced police. Eager onlookers. The tape, the lights, the rain. Earnest reporters.
A hospital. A gaggle of police.
And passing through it, a face he recognizes.
A woman. Much older than the last time he saw her. Her face taut and exhausted, pale under the rain lights.
Police lead her through the automatic sliding doors of the London hospital.
Henry’s penis shrinks. His balls retreat into his body.
He has a feeling of lightness, like he’s leaving his body.
Julian wanders in a slight daze up and down the congested, confusing Chapel Market; past the fruit and veg stalls, the fishmongers, the cheap clothes, the transistor radios, multipacks of batteries. There’s even a computer-repair stall, which would strike Julian as quirkily interesting, if he wasn’t so fretful.
Half an hour ago, Barry Tonga called to say they had to meet urgently. Soon as possible. Somewhere public. He mustn’t tell anyone. Least of all Lee Kidman.
Tonga wouldn’t say why.
That’s got to be bad, doesn’t it?
So he squeezes up and down the congested road, past the smell of fish, then the whiff of banana, trying to get a glimpse of Tonga’s huge frame somewhere in the tides of people.
But it’s not Barry Tonga he sees. It’s Reed and Luther.
Julian briefly considers running away, but what would be the point? They’d chase him and arrest him and use it as an excuse to give him a quiet beating.
If he doesn’t run, what can they do with all these people around?
‘Wotcher,’ says Luther.
‘Hello, you car-burning fucking psychopath,’ says Julian.
Luther laughs, twitchy and wired.
Luther and Reed hustle Julian into Manze’s pie and mash shop: wooden benches, tiled walls, marble counters.
They order three large mince beef and onion. The waitress scoops the mash onto the plates with a spatula, spreads green liquor down the middle.
They collect their cutlery and find a quiet, high-backed booth. Luther sees that Julian sits nearest the wall, then squashes himself in beside him.
He frowns, beetle-browed and distracted. He fidgets with salt and pepper shakers. Radiates an urgent desire to be elsewhere.
Reed is very liberal with the chilli vinegar. Then he tucks into his pie with gusto.
He looks at Luther. ‘You not eating?’
Luther shrugs, distracted and fretful.
Crushed against the wall, Julian looks at them both in terror.
Luther says, ‘Sorry to rush you, Julian. But we haven’t got much time.’
‘I can imagine,’ says Julian. ‘London must be absolutely full of cars you haven’t set fire to yet.’
Luther swivels his face. Gives Julian a monumental, brutal stare.
Julian wants to piss. He looks longingly at a passing customer, a builder with a newspaper tucked under his arm. But the builder walks past, oblivious, texting.
‘So,’ Luther says, ‘you’ve got friends in the police, yeah?’
‘My lawyer does. Why?’
‘I just wondered why Complaints were so quick off the mark. I’ve got a bloke sniffing round me. Martin Schenk.’
‘Yeah, I met him. Are we being recorded?’
‘No,’ says Luther. ‘No, this is off the record.’
‘Are you going to hit me?’
‘What, in here? Do I look stupid?’
‘You did set fire to my car.’
‘Good point. The thing is, though, Julian, we do need to have a chat.’
‘I don’t see what about.’
Reed grins through a mouthful of pie.
‘We know you’re in trouble,’ Luther says. ‘Financially.’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘I bet. And do you know what else I bet?’
‘No,’ says Julian Crouch. ‘What else do you bet?’
‘I bet you’re not the complete prick you appear to be. Intimidating old men. War heroes. I bet you’re actually pretty ashamed of yourself. Deep down.’
Crouch says nothing, all huddled against the wall while Reed tucks into his lunch and Luther scowls, fidgeting with the salt and pepper like he can’t wait to get away, be somewhere else.
‘Trouble is,’ Luther says, ‘everyone knows you’re in deep financial shit. Deep enough to really, really want that old man out of your way.’
‘So?’
‘So there’s a very short list of motivations for murder,’ Luther says. ‘Sex and money being the two odds-on favourites. You’ve got a nasty divorce going on. There’s your sex. And as for your business portfolio — well. There’s your money. What a mess you’re in, eh? What a mess.’
Julian frowns, juts out his lower lip. He mentally rewinds. Then he says, ‘What do you mean, motivations for murder?’
‘I mean,’ says Luther. ‘You’re about to be indicted.’
‘For what?’
‘Conspiracy to murder.’
Julian makes to stand. Luther says, ‘Calm down. And sit down.’
Julian sits down.
‘We found the gun,’ Luther says.
‘What gun? What do you mean?’
‘Oh, I think you know what gun.’
‘No, I don’t know what gun. What gun? I don’t have a gun. Do I look like I’ve got a gun?’
‘Thing about this gun,’ Luther says. ‘They found it in Barry Tonga’s flat. Do you know Barry Tonga?’
‘I don’t think I do, no. Barry who?’
Luther gives him a bright, predacious grin. ‘That’s the spirit. If in doubt, lie.’
Julian changes tack. ‘What about Tonga? What’s he got to do with this?’
‘Well. Between me, you and the gatepost, Barry works for us. He’s what you’d call a confidential informant. Has been for years. And he’s going to testify that you paid him five grand to stage a burglary at the old man’s house. And shoot him dead.’
‘But that’s not true. That’s fucking outrageous. It’s not true. He can’t say that.’
‘He’s saying it.’
‘How can he say that if it’s not true?’
‘We found the gun.’
‘What gun? There isn’t a gun. What gun?’
‘The gun you gave him,’ Reed says. ‘The gun that ballistics will discover has been used in any number of other crimes. Including a shooting.’
‘Two shootings,’ Luther says.