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.’