The Calling by Neil Cross Page A

shocked women, grieving for children who would never be conceived, would never be born, would never die. Sad people in Gap jeans and Marks and Spencer’s blouses sitting in a circle on plastic chairs. The shabbiness of the room. The hairs on their forearms, the freckles. The intimacy of their sex organs. Hair sprouting from unbuttoned collars. Men seeking to lose weight, lose their guts to increase their fertility, looking one to the other, pondering who was potent and who was not, cuckolding each other in the imagination.
    And Sarah Lambert, terrified to tell of her good fortune in case the baby didn’t latch on to existence but instead let go, allowing itself to be carried downstream by time: a bundle of cells, a tumbling ball of life.
    He thinks of a small piece of plastic he once found behind the bin in his bathroom.
    ‘I can’t go into details,’ he says, ‘but there are special circumstances surrounding this case. This was a crime of rage. And about as personal as you can get. The best lead I have right now is this support group.’
    ‘Then I really can’t help you.’
    ‘I know. But perhaps you’d be willing to ask members of the group to come forward, allow themselves to be eliminated from the enquiry?’
    ‘I can do that,’ she says. ‘Absolutely. Happy to.’
    He makes as if to leave. Then he says, ‘There’s just one more thing.’
    She waits.
    ‘There may have been a couple you didn’t feel right about?’ Luther says. ‘They could have been regular attendees. Or one-offs.’
    ‘Didn’t feel right about in what way?’
    ‘Well, that’s something you can tell us. I’m not asking you to judge. But you’re familiar with every kind of behaviour that goes hand in hand with infertility. So did one couple maybe strike you as being, I don’t know – atypical? Outliers? Was there anyone, maybe you couldn’t put your finger on it, but they were wrong somehow?’
    ‘That’s not really for me to say, is it?’
    ‘Just for once, it might be.’
    ‘Well, there was Barry and Lynda,’ she says.
    Luther sits back. He crosses his legs. Smooths his trousers over his knee. He knows this is a tell, the sign of a man trying not to show agitation. He’s working on it. ‘Who are Barry and Lynda?’
    ‘They came once or twice. Didn’t say much.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘I don’t know, three or four months ago?’
    ‘So – during Sarah Lambert’s pregnancy?’
    ‘I suppose so, yes. It must have been.’
    ‘And what about them made you feel uncomfortable?’
    ‘They were just – wrong. As a couple. He was very trim. Wiry. Like a marathon runner. Suit and tie. Overcoat. Short hair, worn very neat. Side parting.’
    ‘And the woman? Lynda?’
    ‘Well, this is what struck me as strange. She was obese.’
    Luther nods. Waits for more.
    Howie says, ‘We know it goes against the grain to judge people in any way but this is so important. If this couple had nothing to do with what happened, they’ll never know that you pointed us in their direction. If they did then believe me, you want us to catch them.’
    Pope laughs. She’s uncomfortable. ‘We have so many training courses,’ she says. ‘So many awareness sessions.’
    ‘Us too,’ Luther says.
    Pope laughs, a bit more openly. ‘I suppose you must.’
    ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Luther says. He smiles and tells her, ‘They want to put a tea vending machine in the station because they think we’ll electrocute ourselves if we’re allowed to have a kettle in the workplace.’
    Pope opens her drawer, takes out a mint and unwraps it.
    ‘They just seemed wrong,’ she says. ‘For one member of a couple to be that fit and the other . . . Well, the other to be that fat. It struck me as odd, like a couple on a saucy postcard. Besides which, if you’re obese and having problems with conceiving, you’re told to lose weight. A lot of IVF clinics refuse treatment to obese patients until they’ve reduced their body mass index.’
    ‘So