‘Steve,’ says Luther.
Bixby’s eyes flare with shame and fury. ‘He said he had a girl to sell me. All right?’
‘To sell you?’
‘He wanted ten grand. I said, I haven’t got ten grand. He said, okay seven grand. I said, I haven’t got it.’
‘Why does he want the money?’
‘To get out of London.’
‘And were you tempted? To buy her?’
‘What do you want me to say? Yes? Do I look totally mad to you?’
‘What did he say to you? Exactly. Exact words. What did he say?’
‘That she’s very pretty. And loving.’
‘Loving. Jesus.’
‘And she could be all mine.’
‘Did you see her? Did you actually set eyes on her?’
‘No!’
‘But she was alive?’
‘She’d have to be.’
‘How well do you know him, Steve?’
‘Not that well. I’d just see him at the fights. He was always there.’
‘Dog fights?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And that’s where he first approached you — at a dog fight.’
‘Yeah.’
‘He told you he wanted to buy a child.’
‘Not straight away. Months later. But eventually, yeah.’
‘So you were friends?’
‘No. I just saw him at the fights.’
‘And after a few months, you put him in contact with Vasile Sava. Then with Sweet Jane Carr.’
Bixby nods.
‘What about since then?’
‘Nothing really. I see him now and again at the fights. We say hello.’
‘What’s he doing at all these fights? Is he a punter, an owner, what?’
‘He’s a breeder. And he’s a vet. He works mostly for a bloke called Gary Braddon.’
‘So let me get this right. You’re not friends.’
‘No. He’s always been pretty clear that he hates people like me. People with my problem.’
‘So if he came to you, he must’ve been desperate, right?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so.’
‘Don’t suppose. Tell me where else he can go to sell the girl?’
‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. But even if there was someone, which I doubt, they’d be mad to get involved with him right now, wouldn’t they? With him all over the telly. Nobody’s that stupid.’
Luther calls Ian Reed.
‘Ian,’ he says. ‘You need to pull in a bloke call Gary Braddon. Organizes dog fights. Put the strong arm on him. He’s a dog lover, right? These are sentimental people. If you tell him a little girl’s been kidnapped, he’ll sing in a second. Use photographs of Mia.’ He glances at Bixby. ‘Pretty ones.’
He hangs up, waits for backup to arrive.
Howie passes through the crowd at the tail end of a riot squad. She’s wearing a luminous police vest, baton in hand.
She watches from a distance as the riot squad pulls Bixby and Luther from the flat, which is being mobbed by irate residents.
A few bottles are thrown at a few shields. Half a dozen arrests are made. They’ll be charged with affray and given community service sentences.
Luther and Bixby are marched out under protection. Bixby is bundled into the back of a van along with his dog.
Luther and Howie make their way to the Volvo. Get in. A bottle smashes against the rear windshield.
Howie says, ‘And how often does this happen?’
Luther says, ‘I’ve never actually started a riot before.’
As Howie reverses out, eggs explode against the bodywork, the windows. She ducks instinctively with each impact. And then they’re on the road. Luther doesn’t say anything to her. Just calls Benny Deadhead.
‘Benny, mate. How’re we doing on Madsen’s adoptive parents?’
‘Jan and Jeremy Madsen,’ Benny says. ‘She was a pharmacist. He was a vet.’
‘Address?’
‘Finchley,’ Benny says. ‘Same house they’ve lived in for forty years.’
CHAPTER 28
Reed sits himself down in Luther’s chair and calls the Status Dogs Unit. The call is taken by Sergeant Graham Cooke. Reed introduces himself, briefly outlines the situation.
Cooke says, ‘Does this have anything to do with that little girl?’
‘It may do, yeah.’
‘Then let me sit down a minute. Close the door, get a pen.’
Reed waits. Then Cooke comes back to the phone and says, ‘What do you need to know?’
‘Let’s start with, who is he?’
‘Gary Braddon. Born Caerphilly, 1963. History of association with the far right.’
‘And he likes dogs, does he?’
‘Well, it depends what you mean by “like”. He’s got previous: keeping a dog for fighting, causing unnecessary suffering to a dog by failing to seek veterinary care for its wounds. Also convicted of possessing equipment associated with training dogs to fight. Five counts of illegally owning pit bull terrier-type dogs for the purposes of fighting.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning, he’s not allowed to keep dogs. So he keeps them off site. We never established where.’
‘Well, I think I might be able to help you out there. The name “Henry Madsen” mean anything?’
‘Not off the top of my head, no.’
‘He’s Braddon’s vet. And corner man.’
‘Braddon’s vet goes by the name of Henry Mercer.’
‘That’ll be our boy.’
‘Allegedly runs the best training yard in London, although we never tracked it down. He’s a very secretive boy, Mr Mercer.’
‘He is that,’ Reed says. ‘So is there money in this game? Because money’s an issue right now.’
‘There’s plenty. Your dog wins three fights, it’s a champion. Five, it’s a grand champion — that’s what they aim for. So they put the dogs through a training regime, get them down to an agreed fighting weight, just like a boxer. That means treadmill work, diet, stamina, running around. And steroids, so you can get them completely lean, no fat.’
‘Do you think Henry could go to Braddon for money?’
‘You think he’s the man who kidnapped Baby Emma and that other little girl?’
‘We’re pretty sure, yeah.’
‘Then not in a million years. Braddon’s a right-wing nutcase. And he’s a dog lover. Two inches to the right of Mussolini. That’s a dangerous combination for a man who kidnaps children. Mercer, Madsen, whatever his name is, Braddon would cut his balls off and feed him to the dogs if he ever showed his face.’
‘All right,’ says Reed. ‘So this is the problem we’ve got: our man’s gone to ground somewhere in London. And you’re right, he’s very secretive. He’s got no friends to speak of, and he’s got no money. He needs somewhere to hole up.’
Cooke hesitates a moment then says, ‘Braddon’s dog fights tend to be held in any one of a number of vacant properties. Mercer, or Madsen, he’d have keys to them all.’
‘You know the locations?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Can you send us a complete list, soon as? And any other material you might have to hand that’s going to help expedite a warrant to search.’
‘Plenty of that,’ says Cooke.
Reed says, ‘What do you drink?’
‘I don’t mind a whisky.’
‘There’s a bottle on the way,’ Reed says. ‘We owe you one.’
Cooke asks Reed to give him a little time.
Fifteen minutes later he comes back with a list of five properties used by Gary Braddon as venues for holding dog fights.
Within the hour, Search Team One, with DS Justin Ripley acting as Police Search Adviser, arrives at the first address on the list.
It’s an abandoned kitchen interiors shop in Lewisham.
They find cupboards have been removed and converted to make a dog-fighting pit, much like a boxing ring.
A comprehensive search proves the property to be unoccupied. Search Team One finds no indication that Mia Dalton or Henry Madsen have been present.
Search Team Two, headed by DS ‘Scary’ Mary Lally, stumbles upon an extemporized dog fight in progress behind a tyre-replacement garage in Deptford.
Watched by a dozen men, two pit bull terriers quietly maul each other in a pit fourteen feet square and three feet high.
Diagonal ‘scratch lines’ are drawn on opposite corners of the pits. These are the lines behind which the dogs must remain until the referee commands them to be released.