Lifeless Thorne 5 Read online

  The day before, an officer had been trying to question a group of older rough sleepers by the Embankment. When they’d become what he deemed to be overaggressive, he’d panicked and handcuffed one of them to some railings. The old man’s caseworker had contacted the team at Charing Cross, and although the mess had eventually been sorted out, some bright spark had called the Evening Standard and the old man had cheerfully re-created the incident for a photographer.

  Russell Brigstocke had spent an hour on the phone the night before, having his ear chewed. He looked up at the four in front of him. “This is not how we deal with this community. Especially not now.”

  “It was a one-off,” Holland said. “I know it looked bad …”

  Brigstocke shook his head, unimpressed, and looked over at Kitson. “Spread the word, will you, Yvonne? These people were vulnerable enough before some nutter started killing them. We’re starting to look like fucking idiots.”

  He leaned back in his chair, exhausted at a little after ten in the morning. Hendon and beyond were the color of oatmeal outside his window.

  Thorne had spent most of the morning begging. Sitting against a wall at the top end of Regent Street, with a blanket across his legs and his rucksack laid out in front to catch the coins. He’d picked a spot nice and close to a cash point, and while he wasn’t expecting too many banknotes to come his way, people did already have their wallets out, so he’d done fairly well.

  He had also turned down a fairly lucrative offer of work …

  A man in Timberland boots and designer casuals had squatted down and asked if Thorne would be interested in making some real money. It was messy work, as it turned out, but certainly paid better than begging. All Thorne had to do was catch a tube up to Camden or Hampstead—a travelcard would be supplied—and spend a few hours going through the bins at the back of one or two big houses. Thorne could guess how it worked. He’d be paid a few quid an hour and then anything useful he dug up and handed over—credit-card slips, bank statements, whatever—would be sold on for a very healthy profit. You could get fifty notes for someone’s credit-card details; passport documents and the like were worth even more. The homeless were perfect for the job, of course. They were smelly and shitty already, so why would they object to rooting through someone’s garbage?

  Thorne had told the man that he’d think about it and the man had given him the name of a pub where he could be contacted. Someone would certainly be making contact with him once Thorne had passed the details on …

  When a five-pound note fluttered down onto his rucksack, Thorne looked up and saw Hendricks looming above him.

  “A cup of tea’s bloody extortionate these days,” Hendricks said. “And coffee’s just ridiculous. You won’t see a lot of change out of that if you go to Starbucks …”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “So, how’s it going?”

  Hendricks squatted down next to him, much as the bin man had done earlier. They spoke in low voices, but Thorne was relaxed enough. If any rough sleeper were to see them talking, it would not look out of the ordinary. Most of them knew Hendricks from the surgery work he did at the Lift.

  “If anyone comes by, I’ll have to start examining you,” Hendricks said.

  “Did you actually want something?”

  “I just wanted to run this idea by you … Well, I’ve done it anyway, but I wanted to let you know.”

  “Is this the bee in your bonnet that Brendan was on about?”

  Hendricks rolled his eyes. “He’s a wanker sometimes …”

  “Are you two not getting on?”

  Hendricks was about to say something, but stopped himself. He took a moment and the irritation seemed to disappear. “He’s very down about what’s happening, which is understandable. A lot of his clients are obviously upset, so things are tense all round.”

  Thorne knew that Maxwell was right to be worried. For anyone left behind after a murder, life was changed, was blighted forever. The others sleeping rough on the streets were the closest thing these murder victims had to friends and family. Even if the man responsible was caught, readjustment would not be easy. Maxwell and others like him would be the ones who had to deal with the fallout …

  “So, run it by me,” Thorne said.

  “It’s this tattoo thing. We know that the tattoo on the first victim isn’t unique anymore, right? Susan Jago thinks the one her brother’s got is a bit different, but it’s got to be fairly close to identical or she wouldn’t have thought it was him. So we can look for it. We can try and find another one. I mean, all this is dependent on her brother being dead, so it might be a waste of time, but …”

  “Have you talked to Brigstocke about this?”

  “It’s probably a stupid idea. I was just thinking about how I could do something to help Susan Jago.”

  Thorne pulled up his knees, hugged them to his chest. “Let’s hear it, then.”

  “It’s not complicated. I just went to a few Web sites. The Pathological Society of Great Britain, the Association of Clinical Pathologists, the Royal College of Pathologists …”

  “How many bloody pathologists are there?”

  “I went on to the message boards and described the tattoo. Asked anyone who’d come across anything similar to get in touch. The RCP’s got an online database which I can access because I’m a member, so I basically sent out a mass e-mail to pretty much every pathologist in the country. If Chris Jago is dead, this might be a way to trace him. Like I said, probably a waste of time …”

  “Worth a try, though,” Thorne said.

  “Actually, it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I managed to sign up for a course on stem-cell differentiation and I applied for a credit card.”

  “There you go, then.”

  They looked up and watched as a gaggle of jabbering American teenagers hurried past in a frenzy of clean hair and perfect teeth. When the group had cleared, Thorne found himself staring across the pavement, exchanging blank looks with a man wearing a sandwich board. Thorne had earned enough in the morning to treat himself to the £4.95 all-youcan-eat Chinese buffet being advertised …

  “Why didn’t you go home to have a shower?” Hendricks said.

  “You and Brendan really do tell each other everything.”

  “Seriously, though …”

  Thorne looked at him as if he were losing his mind. “I’m supposed to be working undercover, Phil. I can hardly just pop home when I’m feeling a bit grubby.”

  “That’s crap. This is a transient community, you know it is. People come and go all the time. No one’s keeping tabs on you, are they? Nobody’s going to bat an eyelid if you disappear for an afternoon. You could jump on a tube and go home for a few hours. Recharge your batteries. You could watch a game and get a decent bloody curry if you felt like it.”

  “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “It’s mental …”

  “Have you finished?” Thorne leaned forward, began to scoop up the coins from his flattened rucksack. A ten-pence piece fell to the pavement and rolled toward the man with the sandwich board. “Haven’t you got any bodies waiting for you?”

  The young trainee detective constable would have found conversation on just about any topic more interesting than the work he was supposed to be doing, but the salacious detail was coming thick and fast.

  “I swear, I’m knackered, mate,” Stone said. “She

  wants a good seeing to every lunchtime. I’ve hardly got time to squeeze in a sandwich.”

  Karim leered. “What? She’s kinky about food, as well?”

  Stone, Karim, and Holland were gathered around an L-shaped arrangement of desks in the incident room. The TDC, whose name was Mackillop, sat at a computer, his mouth hanging slightly open.

  “You can keep your eighteen-year-olds,” Stone said. “This woman’s divorced, in her forties …”

  Karim lifted his backside onto the desk, slapped out a complex rhythm on his thighs. “Single and up for it.”

&nbs
p; “She’s fit, she knows what she’s doing …”

  “She’s obviously desperate,” Holland said.

  Stone nodded, laughing. “She’s fucking grateful, is what she is. And she goes like a bat in a biscuit tin.”

  The reaction from the other three was predictably noisy. The laughter began to die down quickly when Kitson was spotted coming across. Mackillop was tapping at his keyboard again by the time she arrived at the desk.

  “What am I missing?” she said.

  Stone didn’t miss a beat. “Not a lot, guv. Just talking about that pair of plonkers with the horse …”

  “Right.” She didn’t buy it for a minute.

  Holland saw her flush slightly as she picked up a piece of paper from the desk and pretended to read it. He knew very well that Kitson had once been used to this. That the sudden descent of awkward silences onto groups of her colleagues had been an everyday occurrence for her. He felt bad, but there was little he could do. She was one of the boys only up to a point, and even if they were happy to tell her what they’d been talking about, the lie had already made it impossible. What could he possibly say, anyway: It’s okay, guv, we were talking about Stoney’s sex life, not yours?

  After a minute or two of stilted shoptalk, Kitson drifted away. Soon afterward, Holland did the same.

  The coffee machine had been on the blink for months now, and had been replaced by a cheap kettle, mugs from home, and catering-size packs of tea and coffee from the cash-and-carry. With Sam Karim in the office, only the foolish or the desperate brought in biscuits.

  While Holland waited for the kettle to boil, he considered the way he reacted these days to the racy tales of Stone’s love life. He was generally hugely disapproving or insanely jealous; either way, his reaction was more extreme than it would have been before the baby. He’d decided that, although Andy Stone liked himself a little too much, he was basically all right. He could be flash and lazy and prone to getting only half the job done, but he was a lot better than some.

  It was hard to work with someone for a while and then watch them promoted above you, but Holland had been impressed by the generosity of Stone’s reaction when he’d made sergeant. Much to his own surprise, Holland had been hungry—at first, anyway—for the “sirs” and the “guvs.” For the deference to rank. Though it didn’t kick in properly until you made inspector, Holland made sure he got it where he could. But with Stone he was never really bothered one way or another. Perhaps it was similar to the working relationship he normally had with Tom Thorne: the lack of emphasis placed on seniority, which Holland hoped said something pretty decent about both of them …

  “Make one for me, would you, Dave?”

  He turned to see Brigstocke beside him. Everyone pulled rank when they wanted a cup of tea making.

  Holland tossed a tea bag into his own mug and another into one with world’s greatest dad emblazoned on the side.

  “How was DI Thorne when you spoke to him last night?” Brigstocke asked. “I know he must have been pissed off when you told him about Susan Jago.”

  “Very pissed off.”

  “Apart from that, though?”

  “Okay, I suppose …”

  “I passed that stuff about the different groups on to Paul Cochrane, by the way.”

  Holland nodded. Cochrane was the profiler Brigstocke had brought in via the National Crime Faculty. “Good.”

  “He was already taking it into account, in fact.”

  “Right …” Holland unscrewed the top off the milk. He raised the plastic bottle to his nose and took a sniff.

  “I should have had a coffee,” Brigstocke said. “I’m half-asleep.”

  Holland poured hot water into the mugs, then the two of them stood for a minute, prodding at their tea bags with stained teaspoons.

  “So, how d’you really think Thorne’s getting on?”

  Holland thought about it, but not for long. “Not brilliantly,” he said.

  They might have been talking about the case, about Thorne’s undercover role. But neither of them was.

  The lights from the South Bank lay as ragged blades of color on the water, while the river breathed, black beneath them. Thorne stared out across the Thames from the wide, concrete platform above Temple Gardens. The area had once been popular with prostitutes, but was frequented these days by those with nothing worth selling. At the other end of the bench, Spike and Caroline sat cuddled up. It was somewhere near midnight, and chilly. Thorne cradled a beer: the 2 percent stuff in a Special Brew can. Spike and Caroline were swigging from cans of Fanta. They were both in their early twenties, but when he glanced at them, Thorne thought they looked like they had barely made their teens. They hadn’t spoken for a few minutes and suddenly Thorne became aware that Caroline was crying softly. Spike had put his head against hers, begun to murmur and shush.

  When Thorne asked what was wrong, Caroline turned and demanded to know why anyone could be sick and cruel enough to hurt the likes of them. People who wouldn’t, who couldn’t, hurt anyone themselves. She spat, and wiped snot from her nose with her palm, and Spike explained to Thorne—as he’d done the day after they’d found the body—that she had been fond of Radio Bob. That he’d made her laugh and stuck up for her sometimes. Caroline kept asking why, and shouted for a time, while for Thorne, there was little to do but wait for it to stop.

  Then, all he could tell her was that the man who was doing these things would be caught. That he would be stopped and punished. He said it slowly, then repeated it until he almost believed it himself.

  Later, after Spike and Caroline had left, Thorne sat and finished his beer, and thought about what Phil Hendricks had said.

  He knew bloody well that Hendricks had been as unconvinced by that “work to do” crap as he had been himself. To the right and left of him, cars carried people out of the city center across Waterloo and Blackfriars bridges. Thorne watched them go, wondering how long it would be before he could consider going home himself. Wondering how long before he no longer felt the dread, squatting in his belly.

  Since the loss of his father, he’d increasingly begun to think of home as the house where he’d grown up: the big old place in Holloway where his parents had lived until his mum had died six years earlier. Suddenly his own flat felt like no more than a space in which to store things. A furnished turning circle he could change in before heading out of the door as someone else. A locker room with IKEA furniture.

  Maybe, when this was all over, he should move. Now there was some money …

  Down below him a large pleasure boat yawed and

  creaked against Temple Pier. Thorne watched a group of people in suits and evening gowns leave, stepping off the boat and moving carefully along the walkway. A necklace of bulbs had been strung between the gray funnels of the boat. When Thorne closed his eyes it swung and shifted; bright for a moment behind his lids, as the beads of light had been against the darkness of the river, before starting to fade.

  1991

  It’s dark still, like the smoke from burning rubber, and now there are only three men sitting on the floor.

  The fourth is standing between two of the men with guns and goggles. While one points a pistol, the other drags back the dark-haired man’s arms and walks around behind him. He takes out a length of clear, thin plastic and ties the man at the wrists. While this is going on the three men on the floor, whose wrists are already bound, look up and watch. One of them spits and shouts something, and the two other men with guns appear on either side of him. A pistol is jammed, hard against the man’s head, and one of the men wearing goggles and shamags leans down to say something. Then he steps back, raises a boot to the seated man’s chest, and pushes. The man topples backward onto the sand, which is saturated now, and solid.

  All the men, sitting and standing, are soaked through. The men with goggles raise gloved hands to clear their lenses, while those who are tied can do little but shake their heads like wet dogs.

  The dark-haired man who wa
s last to be tied is pushed down onto his knees by the two men. A gun is put to the back of his head and he closes his eyes. Nobody moves for a long time until the men who have the guns start to laugh and the barrel of the pistol is raised. The man on his knees slumps toward the floor, moaning, but is hauled back up again. He is kicked between the legs, then allowed to fall.

  Some time passes before one of the men with guns begins to wave a plastic bag around. He starts to take things out of it. Dark strips …

  The man on his knees sees what is happening and his eyes widen. His friends on the floor start to protest, try to move, but guns are smartly raised and leveled. The kneeling man is jerked hard backward by an arm around his neck.

  Then voices are raised to be heard above the noise of the rain. Words are nevertheless lost.

  “… d’you get it?”

  “Say again?”

  “Where d’you get it?”

  “Brought it with me.”

  “… reminds me … could kill a fry-up …”

  “That stuff fucking stinks, Ian …”

  Then a few muffled words. Something muttered from close by, the voice somehow far louder than the others but deep and distorted; impossible to make out clearly.

  The one holding the plastic bag stretches out an arm. There is something flopping at the end of it. He pushes it toward the man on his knees, who tries to turn his head, but his hair is seized and tightened until he cannot look away.

  Then they are placed on his face; laid across his mouth, nose, and forehead as he screams.

  Rashers of bacon.

  THIRTEEN

  A few years before, a major inquiry had been launched as to why the murderer of two young girls had been allowed to work as a school caretaker, having been investigated for serious sexual offenses on a number of previous occasions. This inquiry revealed a nationwide system that was both unwieldy and seriously flawed. The country’s police forces were supposed to be able to cross-reference, check and liaise with one another and with external bodies, yet the inquiry found that effective communication was thwarted at nearly every turn.