Death Message Page 16

  His indignation had only increased the hilarity of his colleagues.

  ‘Bit early for that one, isn’t it?’ Thorne said, lifting the lid of the copier and gathering his papers.

  Karim grinned. ‘I don’t know. I reckon once they switch on the lights in town we should be allowed to start taking the piss.’

  That suggestion met with general approval, and when, a minute or two later, Stone started whistling ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’, there was scattered applause to go with the laughter. Thorne smiled, but found himself heading out of the Incident Room shortly afterwards.

  Tuesday morning, thirty-six hours since they’d gathered as a team, as a force, at the scene of Paul Skinner’s murder, and Thorne was finding it hard to see too much humour in anything. Along with everyone else, he’d thrown himself into the work, but that hadn’t proved an especially helpful distraction. Brooks was still making a good job of keeping himself hidden, and their best bet – until such time as he popped up on some credit-card check or CCTV camera – remained the cell-sites.

  Another message might help; might narrow down his location from several square miles of west London to a few streets in which to concentrate their efforts.

  Another message like the one Thorne had chosen to keep to himself.

  He had taken a step which might open up a channel of communication between himself and a man who had killed at least twice. The implications of his actions were growing more terrible as time passed, but it was too late to do anything about it. He couldn’t go back and admit what he’d done. Try to explain why he’d done it.

  Killed at least twice…

  If Brooks hadn’t killed Skinner, then who had? The same man who had killed Simon Tipper? The same police officer?

  Ever since he’d sent the text to Brooks, the repercussions had begun to gather at the back of his mind. Elbowing their way forward and crowding out the good stuff. Fucking up any moment when he began to look forward to something; any encounter that should have been pleasant.

  Louise had finally called the morning before. Early, when he was still thick-headed, when what had happened at Skinner’s place had seemed, for a few precious seconds, like a dream that was refusing to fade.

  ‘You’re not a nutter.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You sound like shit, though. Were you on the piss last night?’

  It felt like it. Except that he could remember exactly what he’d been doing. ‘I wish,’ he said.

  ‘We going to see each other later?’

  ‘Can I call you in a bit?’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  ‘I’m just on my way out the door.’

  He’d been standing in the kitchen wearing nothing but underpants, waiting for the kettle to boil; on his way nowhere. His only thought had been to keep the conversation short. He could hardly say, ‘This phone’s being monitored, so for Christ’s sake don’t say anything embarrassing. Anything that might drop me in the shit…’

  He’d decided that he’d tell her later on, in person.

  Not that he would tell her everything.

  As it was, Louise had been the one to cry off the previous evening, when the wife of an Albanian gangster had been hauled into a car outside Waitrose just before the end of the day.

  Now, in his office, Thorne thought about Louise; about the look on her face when she stared at him and unhooked her bra. He decided that was definitely something worth looking forward to. And that unless Marcus Brooks decided to step up his game and slaughtered the Mayor, the Commissioner and their families, he was going to see her, and that look, later.

  The look on Marcus Brooks’ face was harder to read. For the umpteenth time, Thorne opened the file on his desk and stared down at the man who’d received the shocking message that had started it all – the death message – five months before. Who had come out of prison, made his plans and begun sending messages of his own.

  The hair was dark, short. The eyes were darker; ‘brown’, according to the information printed below the picture. This was all that Thorne could tell for certain. It wasn’t just the blank expression that might equally have been masking simple boredom or murderous fury. Or that the picture itself was six years old, and that prison, as Thorne had seen only too well with Nicklin, could change a person’s appearance as radically as any surgery.

  Thorne was simply unable to get a handle on who Marcus Brooks was, and his picture did not tell the whole story. Common sense told him he was dealing with a man who knew how to take care of himself; who might watch a man die and not blink. But the man Nicklin had described, the man Thorne had heard in the silence down a phone line, had also been destroyed by grief. Had been hollowed out by it.

  He thought that most faces gave it all away. Was sure that almost anyone presented with a photograph of him would not have needed more than one quick look. Would say: Copper. Lives alone. Doesn’t mix too well with others.

  But Marcus Brooks’ picture was a lot less revealing. Thorne could only hope that if and when it came to it, he could look into the man’s eyes and understand what they were telling him. Lives, his own included, had depended on a lot less.

  Meantime, try as he might, he couldn’t see the person behind the picture.

  It was like looking at one of the cartoons around his online poker table.

  DS Adrian Nunn had called earlier in the day for a quick chat. He’d moaned about his workload, about caps on overtime, and had asked Thorne what time his shift was ending.

  When Thorne walked out of Becke House a little after six, Nunn was waiting for him. He was wearing his Gestapo coat again.

  ‘Tube or car?’ Nunn asked.

  ‘I’m on the Tube.’

  Nunn fell into step with him. ‘Suits me. I can get the Northern Line straight down to Embankment. District from there all the way to Putney.’

  ‘Going back to work?’

  ‘No, but I only live round the corner from the office. It’s pretty handy.’

  ‘That’s still a three-hour round trip,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m guessing you want more than just a quick chat. Mind you, you wanted more than that when you rang, didn’t you?’

  They walked quickly through drizzle up Aerodrome Road, and left towards the Tube station. Past Colindale Park and the British Newspaper Library. Thorne had used the place several times, trawling through the back copies and the microfiche in search of some crucial piece of information. He’d always ended up spending longer in there than he’d needed. Losing himself in stories and pictures that had no relevance to the case he was working; enjoying the feel of the crisp, yellowing pages of the old editions. Pre-Page Three. When Spurs had a team, and celebrities were famous for doing something.

  ‘I just wanted to stress that everything we talked about the other day remains confidential,’ Nunn said.

  ‘Go on then.’

  Nunn smiled, but only with his mouth.

  ‘It seems a bit bloody odd,’ Thorne said, ‘that you should be so adamant about it. Considering Skinner’s dead, I mean.’

  ‘Nothing’s changed.’

  ‘Try telling that to Mrs Skinner.’

  ‘Things don’t just stop, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘“T”s to cross and “i”s to dot, right?’

  ‘Little things like whether Mrs Skinner gets her husband’s police pension if it turns out there would have been sufficient evidence to press charges against him.’

  Thorne almost laughed for the first time in a day or more. ‘Is that what this is all about?’

  ‘I’m just making a point. This has got to run its course.’

  ‘Look, I know you lot love all this cloak-and-dagger shit,’ Thorne said. ‘But the fact that Skinner may not have been completely kosher has probably got quite a lot to do with why he’s dead. Why several people are dead. So it’s not like we can keep this a secret. I’ve already spoken to my DCI about it. It’s part of our case.’

  Nunn looked up at the information board; thinking about it. ‘As l
ong as you really try to keep out of our way,’ he said.

  They didn’t have to wait long for a southbound train, and Thorne was grateful. Standing on the platform was conducive to nothing more than small talk and he was fresh out of it. The train was more or less empty: they had a carriage to themselves. It was surprisingly hot once the doors had shut and they were moving, and Nunn stood to take off his coat; folded it across his knees.

  ‘Is that really true?’ Thorne asked. ‘That nothing’s changed?’ He was desperate to know exactly what Nunn had meant. Was the status of the investigation still active for such prosaic reasons as Nunn had suggested, or was there something else going on? Were they actively pursuing a second officer?

  ‘Nothing substantial,’ Nunn said.

  ‘Well, thanks for sorting that one out for me.’ Thorne wondered if DPS recruits did courses in remaining amicably non-committal. If they shared classroom space with politicians and certain women he’d been involved with. ‘Good result, or bad?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Skinner being murdered.’

  ‘Hang on a minute…’

  ‘I’m serious. We both know Skinner was as bent as a nine-bob note, even though nobody’s come out and said it, so what do the powers-that-be make of his getting knocked off? Are they happy enough to be rid of a corrupt officer without having to go to the trouble of actually doing it themselves? Saves embarrassment, I would have thought.’

  ‘Nobody’s embarrassed.’

  ‘And what about you? You’ve lost the chance to nick him. Don’t you feel a bit… robbed?’

  ‘More than a bit,’ Nunn said, enjoying how much his answer took Thorne aback. ‘That’s a shock, right? Don’t you think that getting shot of a seriously corrupt officer is every bit as rewarding as catching a killer, or a gang of armed robbers, or nicking a drug dealer? I’ve done all those things, and I can promise you that it is. Every bit.’

  Thorne could only shrug, but he wasn’t sure he believed Nunn. At least, he wasn’t certain he would feel the same way; would get the same satisfaction from nabbing a bent copper as he would from catching a murderer.

  Until he remembered they could be one and the same thing.

  There wasn’t too much conversation from then on. People joined the train at Brent Cross and Golders Green, and it was full by the time they pulled away from Hampstead. Thorne and Nunn had been raising their voices to be heard above the noise of the train, but with passengers sitting around and standing above them, lurching as the train rocked and juddered, neither man was very keen to talk any more.

  ‘This is me,’ Thorne said as the train approached Camden.

  Nunn had been sitting on the flap of Thorne’s jacket, shifted slightly to let him stand up. ‘You know where I am if anything else comes up.’

  ‘Right. Same here, for what it’s worth.’

  Nunn looked at his watch. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy a quick drink?’

  The invitation seemed genuine enough and it took Thorne completely by surprise. He looked at his own watch while he thought about what to say, but Nunn’s expression as he’d asked the question had revealed a thumbnail snap of the man that he hadn’t expected to see. That was sad, for all manner of reasons.

  Copper. Lives alone. Doesn’t mix too well with others…

  ‘Sounds like a great idea,’ Thorne said. ‘But my girlfriend’s cooking me dinner…’

  The Bengal Lancer’s home delivery was as reliable as always, and the two of them made short work of rogan gosht and chicken tikka, with mutter paneer and a sag bhaji, pilau rice and nan bread. Thorne fetched two more bottles of Kingfisher from the fridge, then carried the plates out to the kitchen.

  He shouted through to the living room: ‘I meant to say, about my mobile…’

  Louise called back, asked him to say it again. His words had been lost in noise from the TV as she flicked through the channels.

  Thorne came to the doorway and Louise turned down the volume. ‘Just about my mobile,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing important, but you need to call me on the prepay phone from now on.’

  ‘I thought you had your old Nokia back.’

  ‘I do, but that line is being… monitored. You know, in case Brooks sends another message, in case he decides to call, whatever. So best if you use the prepay. You’ve got the number, right?’

  She told him that she had. He said he could go to prison for what he’d just told her. She promised to visit.

  ‘You think he might, then? Get in touch again?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘I presume they’ve set up a trace on it, right? Silly fucker rings, you’ve got him. Simple as that.’

  ‘Yeah, be nice,’ Thorne said. He drifted back into the kitchen and Louise turned the sound back up on the TV. He finished loading the dishwasher then leaned back against the draining board. From where he was standing he could see her in the living room. She had found some cable channel showing eighties music videos and began humming along with an old Depeche Mode track.

  Thorne glanced over at his leather jacket, hung across the back of a kitchen chair. His Nokia was in one of the inside pockets; the prepay phone was in the other. He’d programmed distinctive ringtones into each, so there would be no confusion.

  He polished off his beer and started an argument with himself.

  He’d been straight with Louise about the phone being monitored when she didn’t strictly need to know, hadn’t he? So, maybe that excused his not telling her about the message he’d sent to Marcus Brooks. Or went some way towards excusing it, at least. Wasn’t she better off not knowing about it? Not being involved? Not getting dragged through the steaming trail of shit he was busy creating?

  He knew she wouldn’t buy that for a minute.

  It came from the same well-worn bag of tricks as, ‘I didn’t tell you I was sleeping with someone else because I knew you’d be upset, and I didn’t want to hurt you’. Thorne knew, deep down, that it had more to do with cowardice than it did with compassion. That the lie by omission was usually worse in the long run than the terrible truth.

  He still wasn’t going to tell her, though. Not if he could avoid it…

  When Thorne went back into the living room, they made themselves comfortable. They sat together on the floor in front of the sofa; broke up the last of the poppadoms and watched Yvonne Kitson do her turn on Crimewatch.

  In a five-minute round-up slot at the end of the programme, Kitson fronted an appeal for more information about the murder of Deniz Sedat. Wearing a well-chosen, charcoal business suit, she said that the incident had ‘shocked a community’ and urged anyone with information to get in touch. Assured them that calls would be treated in confidence. She finished with a special plea to the young woman who had called once already; who had seemed eager to tell them something and whom they were extremely keen to talk to again.

  ‘Knowing that lovely part of north London as I do,’ Louise said afterwards, ‘I think it would take more than some gangster getting knifed to shock anybody.’

  Thorne smiled. ‘We can’t let anyone know that though, can we?’

  With millions lavished each year on improving the city’s image, it wasn’t clever to highlight those places where policing came close to warfare. The Olympic Games were only a few years away and already there were jokes. About how well Great Britain would do in the shooting this time round, and the marathon runners straying into parts of Hackney and Tottenham and never being seen again.

  Louise began searching through the channels again. ‘She came across well, I thought. Kitson,’ she said.

  Thorne shrugged, like he hadn’t really thought about it.

  Louise and Yvonne had got on well enough when they’d met; for the few weeks when they’d been working together. But Thorne had sensed a problem developing since, had heard it in Louise’s tone just then, when she was seemingly being complimentary. He’d suggested to her, once, that she might be jealous, and she’d bitten his head off, told him not to flatter him
self. He hadn’t been sure what she’d meant. Was he flattering himself to think that Kitson would be interested? Or that Louise would give a shit? He certainly wasn’t going to push his luck by asking.

  ‘Is there anything else on?’ Louise asked. Thorne leaned over and snatched Time Out from the low table in the window. ‘Anything worth staying out of bed for?’

  Thorne flicked through to the TV pages. There were Champions League highlights on ITV after the news. They were showing The Usual Suspects, which he never missed, on Channel Four. There was late-night poker on at least three different cable stations.

  ‘Absolutely fuck all,’ he said.

  There was very little light. Barely enough to see faces thirty feet away, and he couldn’t move too much for fear of making a noise. This was hardly going to be winning any Oscars.

  He only had fifteen seconds to play with anyway. But he did what he could to make the clip more interesting: started on the canal and moved across until he had the bloke in the middle of the picture; until he had both of them. ‘Developing the shot’, that’s what it was called.

  He lowered the phone, looked at the woman on her knees. His big hands on the top of her head. The grunting and the sucking noises.

  There was plenty to develop to…

  Him and Angie hadn’t been big on the cinema before; just once or twice probably, before Robbie’d come along. But he’d seen a lot of films over the years inside, got quite a taste for them. Once a week on the big screen and DVDs from the prison library. Nothing like this, of course, they wouldn’t allow that, but there’d been the occasional flash of tit to get excited about now and again. Plenty of prison movies, obviously; they were fond of showing those to wind everybody up. Stir Crazy, Escape from Alcatraz, he’d seen all of them more than once. The Shawshank Redemption when the screws really wanted to take the piss…

  He tried to shift his leg an inch or two, could hear something moving in the long grass behind him. It was uncomfortable, crouching in the shadows to keep out of sight, but it wasn’t like he’d planned it this way. He’d had no idea where the fucker was going when he’d started following him. What he’d got planned for the evening.