The Killing Habit Read online

  ‘I seriously doubt it,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I didn’t think so.’ Tanner looked at him. ‘One more reason we need to find this woman fast. The Duchess… and the people who are employing her.’

  Thorne slid back a wardrobe door, every bit as aimlessly as the estate agent had opened the kitchen cupboards. The teenage clutter had not been very carefully hidden. ‘I’m not convinced that Evans would be bringing a great deal of money home even if we didn’t have him. He’d have pissed away anything he managed to scrounge up on gear. You ask me, we’re doing him a favour.’

  Tanner ignored him, or wasn’t listening. She said, ‘I know I need to downsize, so somewhere like this is probably ideal. But I’m going to miss having stairs.’

  ‘Really?’ Thorne closed the wardrobe door. ‘Good move if you ask me. A few more years and you won’t be able to get up them anyway.’

  ‘Cheeky sod. I’m a damn sight younger than you are.’ Tanner nodded towards the kitchen where the estate agent was presumably still lurking. ‘You should be flattered that he thought —’

  Thorne’s phone rang.

  By the time he had ended the call, Tanner was on her feet and waiting eagerly to be told. It was clear that her mind was no longer on this or any other flat.

  ‘We know where Alice Matthews went the night she died,’ Thorne said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘The manager of an Italian restaurant in Amersham recognised her picture. There’s no CCTV, but we’ve got a good description of the man she was eating with and the surname that was used to book the table. They’re working up an e-fit now.’

  Tanner grinned and made a fist. She said, ‘Get in.’

  Buzzing with it himself, Thorne was nevertheless surprised at the energy he could see, could feel coming off his partner. He grinned back at her, knowing that he’d almost certainly be dead and buried long before Nicola Tanner ever needed a stairlift.

  THIRTY-ONE

  He had always rather enjoyed shopping, even when, like today, it was just for necessities. Shopping for special things, though, that was a real treat, and he especially liked hunting out smart clothes and shoes, which he knew was not something common to a lot of men. He liked to look good; to look like a man should look. He relished the buzz that came with a compliment or an admiring glance, even better if it was from another bloke, and who in their right mind wouldn’t? There were the types, he knew, who claimed that they weren’t bothered by that stuff, that being too concerned about your outward appearance was somehow trivial or shallow and what really counted was what was inside. He thought they were idiots, or liars. He could never understand the mindset of anyone who didn’t care about what they wore or take pride in the way they presented themselves.

  Though, for obvious reasons, the way he appeared to others mattered rather more to him than it did to most people.

  He preferred to keep what was inside to himself.

  He pushed the enormous trolley down the wide aisle of the cash and carry, stopped to load in a few boxes. He smiled, humming along with the tune that was echoing round the place, and thinking that if one or two of those he spent so many hours searching for had taken a little more care about the way they looked, they might not have needed to advertise.

  Too late by then, of course.

  Like turning a manky piece of fruit over to hide the rotten patch.

  Ahead of him, a young woman was bending to heave up pallets of tinned goods, beans and tomatoes. He stopped to help and they talked for a minute or two, but he had immediately clocked the absence of adornment on her ring finger and, as he smiled and nodded and listened to her sing the praises of bulk buying, he mentally composed the kind of advertising campaign a manky piece of fruit like her would need.

  Billboards, that might do the trick. He smiled again. Whatever might draw the attention of a man with eyesight problems and low standards.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You can pull a bloody muscle lifting these things.’

  Only thing you’re likely to pull, he thought.

  He watched her walk away and thought about how very much he loved women, how he adored them. It was ironic, he was well aware of that, considering what people would say about him if they knew what he’d been up to. That was the point, though. He loved women who looked and behaved as women were supposed to; proper women who made the necessary effort, the sacrifices, just as proper men like him did. It certainly wasn’t easy being a woman in this world, but that was only because it took time and effort.

  Wasn’t it worth it, though, being wanted?

  The unwanted ones, the discards, well… they were something else entirely. Silk purse, sow’s arse, simple. You could tart it up all you liked, but nothing made the rot spread faster than desperation.

  The man at the till had seen him here plenty of times before and was as friendly as always, but that was all right, because he was happy enough to chat while his boxes and bottles were being scanned.

  ‘Busy?’

  ‘As always.’

  ‘Good to be busy.’

  He nodded, thinking about Alice Matthews, eyes like dinner plates underneath him.

  ‘Been away anywhere?’

  ‘Nowhere exciting.’

  How she’d probably looked her very best, right at the end.

  ‘Doesn’t matter where you go, does it? Just good to get away, sometimes.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I love it.’

  Once he’d loaded the last of the boxes back into his trolley and handed over his credit card, he reached for a Standard.

  He stared at the front page. A Met police e-fit and the name of the man whose face it was supposed to be. He read the appeal for information.

  ‘Just pop in your pin when you’re ready.’

  He leaned slowly across. His finger hovered above the keypad.

  ‘You all right?’

  He let out a breath and stabbed in the number. ‘Never better.’

  At the same time, an elderly woman was shopping elsewhere for very different items. A local grocer’s, round the corner from the flat she was now living in full time. Just a basket, in and out.

  She had work to be getting on with.

  It would all get back to normal eventually, the woman knew that, but she was still a little discombobulated by the change in routine, at having had to up sticks and get away so quickly. In this line of work, people got nicked all the time, course they did, and it wasn’t usually a problem. Just a question of everyone keeping their heads down for a day or two. Putting business on hold. This was a bit more serious, though; she could tell that, even if nobody was saying very much. Andrew Evans was someone she had delivered to inside and out, and he’d been working for her bosses directly after he’d been released. She didn’t know exactly what kind of thing they’d asked him to do, but she could hazard a damn good guess. I mean, if you were just being nicked for possession, supplying even, there weren’t usually detectives banging on your door.

  It was hard not to feel sorry for him, but she had to take care of herself.

  The word had come down straight away and it was more than a polite suggestion. Time to shut up shop and move on. A pain in the backside, but at least she’d had somewhere to go.

  She counted off the items in her basket, wandered towards the till.

  A bolt-hole, that’s what this place had always been, somewhere to take a break, but now it looked like she might be here a while, so she’d need to make the best of it. It wasn’t going to be too much of a problem. The people she worked for did business all over, more branches than Starbucks, so someone like her was always going to come in useful, wherever the hell she ended up.

  Someone as good at the job as she was.

  As a kid, she’d always liked dressing up, playing make-believe. Only way to get through things, the sort of shithole she’d grown up in. There were still bomb sites around back then, she could remember playing in them. They still had rationing when she was a toddler for God’s sake, so it was easier to pretend
she lived the life of a little princess than deal with what she actually was. What she’d been born into. Watery stew went down more easily if you told yourself it was oysters or caviar, whatever they were, and she could always kid herself those piss-stinking balconies were the battlements of her father’s castle; that puddles were moats and that it was probably a handsome prince banging on the door in the middle of the night.

  Not like she ever got rescued, mind you.

  Same sort of game she was playing now, acting the part in all those visiting halls, though she’d managed to put a bit of real treasure away over the years. Nice and safe in the bank. Enough to look after herself when the time came and to take care of her own little princess.

  Her stomach tightened as she laid down her basket and thought about her daughter. The state of her when they’d last spoken. A girl with plenty of her own problems to deal with, who’d never been quite as convincing as her mother when it came to playing make-believe.

  Lies were not the same thing.

  The young man on the till stared down at the contents of her basket, then at her. He took out one item and scanned it repeatedly.

  ‘Someone likes Mars bars.’

  She smiled and shook out the plastic bag she’d brought with her. ‘Sweet tooth,’ she said.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Thorne checked his watch again.

  ‘That won’t make him get here any quicker,’ Tanner said.

  ‘How much longer, do you think?’

  ‘Depends on traffic.’

  ‘They’ll have blues and twos, surely?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Tanner looked entirely calm and unruffled, seemingly immune to the excitement and apprehension that had been crackling around the building since he’d arrived. It was as though the energy Thorne had felt coming off her two nights earlier had been internalised somehow; stored to be drawn upon later.

  It was a trick Thorne knew he would do well to master. He had been told often enough.

  ‘Trouble with you, you’re flat-out or fuck-all,’ Hendricks had said once. ‘That’s your problem, mate. Well, that’s one of your problems. You need to pace yourself…’

  ‘Cooper’s coming in voluntarily,’ Tanner said. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Jesus.’ Thorne got up and walked quickly to the far end of the incident room. He stepped out into the corridor and pushed through the door into the Gents. A young DC who’d been seconded from Kentish Town was on his way out.

  ‘All set?’

  Thorne nodded and moved past, trying to look as though he had barely thought about it.

  ‘Reckon it’s him?’

  ‘There’s every chance,’ Thorne said.

  Though the call of nature had not been urgent, he made use of the facilities anyway, then stared at his reflection as he washed his hands. He leaned close to the grimy mirror and decided he’d looked better, then realised it was more or less what he thought whenever he caught sight of himself these days.

  Better, younger, happier…

  Perhaps there was something that would very soon be done about one of those things, anyway.

  Reckon it’s him?

  Every chance of a quick result. Every chance he was about to come face to face with the man who’d murdered Alice Matthews and at least three other women. Or at any rate, as quickly as it took a squad car to get here from Luton. When Thorne glanced at his watch again, he saw that it was only three minutes later than it had been the last time he looked.

  He got back to his office, where Tanner was poring over paperwork, a few seconds before Chall stepped in.

  ‘I finally got hold of Leila Fadel’s little brother,’ the DS said. ‘He confirmed that he’d inherited Leila’s computer and taken it with him to university, but he says there’s nothing on it.’

  ‘OK, tell him not to touch it again,’ Thorne said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter —’

  ‘We’ll send a car for it and let the geek squad have a look. Get into the email archives, whatever.’

  Chall shook his head. ‘No, there’s literally nothing on it. He said the hard disk had been wiped clean by the time he got it. He thought his dad had done it before giving it to him.’

  Tanner nodded, as though it made perfect sense. ‘So, the killer steals them, or he erases everything and leaves them behind. He makes it look like a burglary or he doesn’t. All part of trying to conceal a pattern.’

  Thorne sighed and swore under his breath.

  ‘And I’m still chasing the various mobile providers,’ Chall said.

  Thorne looked at him. Clearly, Fulton’s offer to put pressure on had been forgotten or was simply proving useless.

  ‘Honestly, it’s easier to get information out of the Pentagon.’

  ‘So, chase harder,’ Thorne said.

  Chall nodded and moved towards the door.

  ‘Get somebody else on it with you. Last time I checked we had lots of people and lots of phones. And you need to talk to whoever’s running that website Cooper mentioned at the station in Luton.’

  ‘Sir,’ Chall said.

  ‘Nice bit of man-management,’ Tanner said, when the DS had gone. ‘He comes in here and makes it very clear how hard he’s working and you send him out feeling like he’s done bugger all.’

  Thorne wasn’t listening. He said, ‘Means nothing, this bloke coming in off his own bat.’ He sat back, thinking through some of the things Melita Perera had told him; some of the clever moves made by the killers he had come across before. ‘Could all be part of it…’

  Following the pictures that had appeared in the newspapers the previous day and been shown as part of a hastily assembled TV appeal, a man named Gavin Cooper had come forward and identified himself. With a solicitor in tow – because, he had said, it seemed like the ‘sensible thing to do’ – he had presented himself at his local police station first thing that morning. He had made a short statement and was currently being driven down to Becke House. He had told officers several times already that he was keen to help, if at all possible.

  Thorne looked at Tanner. ‘I mean, if this bloke’s as smart as you reckon he is, isn’t there every chance he’s also just cocky enough to show off a bit? To come marching in here like a good citizen, knowing that we’ve got nothing? Wouldn’t he be “keen to help”?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Tanner said.

  When the phone rang, Thorne sat forward as if a gun had gone off and watched Tanner reach across to answer, as though it might just be someone offering her a phone upgrade, or her mother calling to pass the time of day.

  She said, ‘Right,’ and when she’d hung up she said, ‘They’re at the front desk.’

  Thorne stood up.

  ‘Go steady, Tom.’ Tanner leaned down to pick up her bag. ‘I only said it was possible.’

  Thorne scowled, like a child being reminded to brush his teeth, and walked slowly to the door. He paused and, for all it was likely to be worth, took a breath.

  Flat-out or fuck-all.

  Looking very much like a man not troubled by nerves or thrown by the unusual surroundings in which he now found himself, Gavin Cooper stared expectantly across the table at Thorne. His solicitor – a young woman named Stacey Poole – was still very much in tow and appeared every bit as relaxed as her client. There was an ease between them. Had Thorne not known – for obvious reasons – that it was not the case, he might have mistaken them for a couple. He had certainly encountered a good many marrieds seemingly less content in one another’s company.

  Once the recording was underway, Thorne reminded Cooper that he was not under arrest; that he was being interviewed under caution and was free to leave at any time. Cooper said that he understood. He gave his full name and address when asked; then, after a barely perceptible nod from his solicitor, said, ‘For the record, I’ve come to this station of my own volition, having seen my name and a crude photofit of me on various television appeals and splashed across the front page of several newspapers.’ He had the kind of voice that would
have sounded good on radio, Thorne thought. It went with the sports jacket and pale pink shirt, the smile that was trying too hard. He leaned back and folded his arms. ‘I’m here to help. If I can.’

  Deciding that the man was what his father would have called a ‘spiv’, Thorne glanced across at Stacey Poole. She seemed happy enough to say very little, but he knew that she was no shrinking violet. Ten minutes before, he had spoken briefly to her alone; outlining, as he was obliged to do, the reasons they were so keen to speak to her client.

  She had raised a hand to cut him off. ‘Mr Cooper is here because he wishes to be. Simple as that. He’s here so that he can be eliminated from this inquiry as quickly as possible.’

  Thorne had pointed her towards the interview room and said, ‘Well, let’s see what we can do about that…’

  ‘We do understand that you’ve chosen to come forward,’ he said to Cooper now. ‘And we’re very grateful.’

  ‘Yes, thanks for doing this,’ Tanner said. ‘We’ll try not to keep you.’

  ‘I’ve advised you of your right to free and independent legal advice.’ Thorne glanced at Poole again. ‘But that obviously won’t be necessary. Strictly speaking, it isn’t really necessary at all… so I’m wondering why you felt the need.’

  ‘I thought it was a good idea, that’s all,’ Cooper said. ‘You hear stories, don’t you?’

  ‘What kind of stories?’

  Cooper didn’t seem keen to elaborate. Instead he looked at the woman sitting next to him. ‘Mrs Poole is my sister-in-law. So…’

  ‘That’s handy.’

  ‘Cheaper too, I should imagine,’ Tanner said. She turned a page in her notebook. ‘Could you tell us about your relationship with Alice Matthews?’

  If Cooper was shocked by the abruptness of Tanner’s question, he didn’t show it. ‘Hardly a relationship,’ he said. ‘I met her once.’