‘The DNA will prove it,’ Luther says, low and insistent. ‘We know what he did to you, your dad. And we know you tried to stop him. Twice. And this is what you get for it. So why don’t you help us? Why don’t you help Mia?’
Still no answer.
Nothing except spikes and barbs on the heart monitor.
Luther meets Howie’s eye.
Luther pads to the door. He opens it, puts his head round the corner. Whispers, ‘Okay. You can come in now.’
They wait a long time.
The kid’s eyes are fixed on the door when Christine James, whose married name was York, shuffles into the room.
Her face is gaunt, full of lines and fine ridges. She’s twisting the strap of her handbag between two hands. She’s shaking so hard the family liaison officer is supporting her weight.
Luther looks away from Howie’s accusing gaze.
Patrick begins to vibrate. He emits a low whine and looks away.
He’s saying, ‘Sorry, Mum. I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry, Mum.’
Adrian York got the bike for his birthday. It was a Saturday morning. Nearly lunchtime. He and Jamie Smart had been riding in the skateboard park; it was visible from the house. His mum was watching from the bedroom window.
Adrian wanted to go out alone, because he was a big boy.
Now Jamie Smart has gone home and Adrian sits on the kerb at the edge of the field, the bike propped against a lamp post. He can see the back garden. He’s drinking a can of Fanta. He’s feeling pretty good. He’s six years old.
A van pulls up. The worried-looking driver gets out and jogs across the quiet road. He said, ‘Mate — what’s your name?’
‘Adran.’
‘Adran what?’
‘Adrian York.’
‘Right. I thought it must be you.’
‘Why?’ said Adrian York.
‘I’m sorry, mate. There’s been an accident. You’d better come with me.’
The man is breathing strangely. When Adrian hesitates, the man licks his lips and says, ‘I’ve been sent to take you to your mum. You’d better get in.’
‘I’d better not,’ says Adrian York.
‘Your mum might be dying,’ says the man. ‘You’d better hurry up.’
Adrian York looks at the window. He sees that his mum isn’t there, where she’s supposed to be, watching him. He wonders if the man is right.
He begins to cry.
‘You’ll get me in trouble if I go back without you,’ says the man. ‘The police sent me to get you. You’ll get us both in really bad trouble.’
‘What about my bike?’ says Adrian York.
But the man doesn’t answer. He just scoops Adrian York into his arms and carries him to the van.
One of its brake lights is shattered.
The family liaison officer, Luther and Howie linger in the corners like undertakers.
They give Christine James a few minutes with her child. It’s a few minutes more than she can take.
She clutches Adrian’s hand, squeezes it, presses it to her face. She weeps, wretched and unhinged. She calls on God. Oh God, she says. Oh God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my boy, my boy, my boy.
Adrian lies there. All he can say is ‘Sorry, Mum. Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
At length, the family liaison officer leads a shuffling, dazed Christine James from the room, back into the hospital light.
Luther feels Howie’s eyes on him.
He burns with shame.
Then he returns softly to Adrian’s side.
‘What’s his name?’ he says. ‘What’s his real name?’
After a long time, the kid whispers, ‘Henry.’
‘Henry what?’
‘Clarke. Nicholl. Brennan.’
‘But always Henry?’
The kid makes a gesture. It’s almost a nod.
‘But you must know,’ Luther says. ‘After all these years, you must know his real name.’
‘Madsen.’
Henry Madsen.
Luther’s hands itch to do something. He wants to grab a pencil, take out his notebook, write it down, circle it, underline it.
He bites the inside of his mouth. Makes himself wait.
‘Adrian,’ he says. ‘Patrick. Where do you and Henry live?’
CHAPTER 26
Henry Madsen lives in a large, rambling old property that stands on a quarter-acre of grounds, isolated from its neighbours by high hedges and a screen of trees. It overlooks Richmond Park.
The house is already on fire when the first responders arrive.
The blaze has picked up by the time the fire crew shows up, a few minutes later. They are closely followed by an Armed Response Unit and the EMTs.
A number of pit bull terriers run loose in the grounds. They attack the first responders, then the fire crew. This slows the operation.
The order is given to shoot the dogs.
By then, the fire has taken a firmer hold.
En route to Richmond Park, Luther calls Benny.
‘Going back twenty-five years,’ Benny tells him. ‘We’ve got six Henry Madsens. Four we can dismiss outright: white-collar criminals. Traffic offences, that sort of thing.’
‘No one on the sex offenders register?’
‘Oh yes. Henry John Madsen. String of juvenile offences: burglary, vandalism, theft, assault, arson.’
‘Arson?’
‘Attempted murder of his adoptive parents.’
‘What’s the story?’
‘He broke into their house and set fire to their beds.’
‘That’s our boy,’ Luther says. ‘What happened to him after that?’
‘He does his time. Comes out at eighteen. Has some counsel ling. He re-offends at nineteen — GBH during a pub conversation about abortion. Apparently he’s anti. He’s remanded into psychiatric care. Comes out at twenty-one. After that he drops off the radar.’
‘Which isn’t to say he hasn’t been busy. You got photographs?’
‘Old ones.’
‘How’s he look?’
‘Short hair. Very neat.’
‘Parted?’
‘On the left.’
‘No glasses, no beards, no moustaches?’
‘No.’
‘Excellent. Let’s get this prick’s face all over the news.’
‘Won’t that make him panic?’
‘It’ll drive him to ground,’ Luther says. ‘Make him hole up somewhere. Stay in London.’
‘Yeah, but where?’
‘Well, mate. That’s the question.’
Twenty minutes later, Luther reaches the scene. He’s wearing a high-viz jacket over the parka he keeps in the trunk of the Volvo. He had to ditch the overcoat. It smelled of petrol and smoke.
He approaches Teller. Nods at the burning building. ‘How long to make this place safe?’
It can take days for a building to cool properly and structural damage to be assessed. Normally, it would be tomorrow at least before Luther was granted access to the house.
But Teller makes some phone calls. She shouts and wheedles and pleads. She claims exigent circumstances, the threat to Mia Dalton’s life.
The fire-fighters are still darkening the glowing embers when Luther slips on a Cromwell 600 helmet and breathing apparatus, then walks past the corpses of the dogs, through the high spray of the dampening hoses and into the charred house.
The hallway is blackened with soot, ash, and smoke. The windows are blown out. Everything’s wet. He hadn’t expected so much water. It’s still raining down on his head. Holes in the wall expose pink insulation material. The swollen ceiling threatens to collapse.
Upstairs, he finds a child’s bedroom. A cot, a changing mat. Clothes on a raiclass="underline" boys’ and girls’. Many still display price tags. On the wall are hung burned prints of Pooh Bear. In the cot is an ancient, water-sodden teddy.
Luther looks at the teddy bear.
He checks out two adult bedrooms. Water-drenched beds, burned clothing. Everything doused in accelerant and set alight.
Downstairs, a torched library. Nazis. Eugenics. Dog-rearing. Biology. Burned portraits of prominent National Socialists. Speer and Hitler. Noble dogs.
All of it forensically useless.
The kitchen has been touched less by the fire. It’s wet and badly smoke damaged, but one or two of the windows, although streaked black, haven’t blown.