The Killing Habit Read online

  On top of which, he knew exactly what Brigstocke was talking about.

  It had long been received wisdom that the corpse-littered career path of the common or garden serial killer – despite the fact that there was no such thing – more often than not began with the killing or torture of animals. Cats, dogs, birds. Together with fire-starting and persistent bed-wetting beyond the age of five, it was one of the telltale traits that made up the so-called Macdonald triad: a set of three behavioural characteristics suggested by an American psychiatrist in the early sixties that might help to identify nascent serial offenders. A common or garden copper, and there were plenty of those about, might be lucky, or unlucky, enough to come up against such an unusual killer once in a career.

  Thorne had certainly dealt with more than his fair share.

  He thought about a man who had suspended his victims in comas, incapable of movement and trapped, helpless within their own bodies.

  He thought about a man who had targeted the children of those murdered many years earlier.

  He thought about a man called Stuart Nicklin, whom he had eventually seen convicted of the most depraved murders imaginable, but whose whereabouts were now unknown.

  He thought about Stuart Nicklin a great deal.

  Thorne let out a long breath. ‘So, you think there are going to be murders?’

  ‘There’s always murders, Tom.’ Brigstocke was beginning to sound a little irritated. ‘It’s what pays the mortgage, isn’t it?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Well, we hope not, obviously, but we have to consider it a strong possibility. We need to be prepared for it.’ Brigstocke took off his glasses and began to clean them. The smile was icy, a warning. ‘So, why don’t you stop complaining and go and do your job?’

  Thorne held out his arms, a picture of wronged innocence. ‘I’m raring to go, Russell. In fact, I’m already thinking that maybe we should try to trap whoever’s doing this. We could set bait.’

  Brigstocke put his glasses back on and folded his arms. He said nothing, but his expression made it clear that he knew, more or less, what was coming.

  ‘It’s genius, now I come to think about it.’ Thorne got to his feet. ‘I know a great fancy dress shop where I could get the perfect outfit. Then all I need is a collar with a little bell on…’

  Brigstocke shook his head and held out a piece of paper; waved it until Thorne stepped across to take it. ‘Make sure you know what’s been happening. The SIO on it right now is based at Kentish Town, so when you’ve finished being a smartarse, get down there and introduce yourself, because I’ve already told him you’re coming. Your old stamping ground, isn’t it?’

  Thorne winced a little at the ‘old’. He was still spending ninety-nine per cent of his time with Helen and her son in Tulse Hill, but he was not entirely comfortable in south London and doubted he ever would be. He hated the daily commute to Hendon. He missed what he still thought of as his local pub and curry house. He missed running into fellow Spurs fans on match days. Yes, the living arrangements were ideal for his other half in terms of work and childcare, and the rental income on his old flat came in more than handy, but he still lived in hope that Helen would one day see sense and the three of them could decamp to God’s side of the river.

  ‘Tom?’ Brigstocke had his phone to his ear, having already put a call through. ‘Anything else you want to give me a hard time about?’

  Thorne shook his head and stepped away. He folded the piece of paper into the pocket of his leather jacket, lighter on his toes than he had been half an hour before. He felt excited suddenly, not just because of the back and forth with his boss and the welcome opportunity to pick up a takeaway from the Bengal Lancer, but because common or garden was not what got his blood jumping. Never had been. Because there was always the chance, slim but still compelling, that his cat-killer might just turn out to be something altogether more appalling.

  He mumbled a ‘sir’ as he walked to the door.

  But he could not resist a murmured ‘miaow’ as he opened it.

  The remark had been characteristically cynical, but Russell Brigstocke was telling the truth. It was murder that paid the mortgage, that brought Thorne and his colleagues into work every day. More often than not, though, it was the humour, dark as all hell, that kept them there. Oiling a machine that was fuelled by violence and loss; the bad jokes and the banter that were necessary to quiet a brimming fury, or hold despair at bay.

  It didn’t work for everyone, of course.

  Thorne had spent the rest of the morning working through a backlog of paperwork, but by the time he returned from lunch, word of his latest assignment had clearly spread around the office and been gratefully seized upon. There were the predictable smirks on the faces of those walking past him and a few off-colour remarks about ‘pussy’. He casually raised two fingers at DI Yvonne Kitson, who he guessed was responsible for the can of Whiskas left on his desk. It became one finger when the ‘who, me?’ expression confirmed his suspicions. Had their roles been reversed, it was the kind of thing Thorne might have done himself, but he didn’t think he would be finding it funny for very long.

  He read through the notes Brigstocke had given him and the email attachment that had quickly followed.

  The details were suitably horrific.

  Looking at what had been done to so many helpless and innocent animals, Thorne could only hope that, terrible as these killings were, they were not merely a curtain-raiser. That he wasn’t reading the early chapters of some trashy true-crime book waiting to happen.

  He looked across at Yvonne Kitson and her smile died when she saw the expression on his face.

  He ignored the grin from a pimply DC on a coffee-run.

  If a killer this brutal decided that he was ready to expand his repertoire, he would not be the only one shifting gears. The machine in which Thorne was one tiny cog would need to race instead of merely turning over; flat out and fast enough to do some damage.

  Then, any number of jokes might not be enough.

  TWO

  When the man he’d been sent to see opened the door, Andrew Evans waited a second or two before slowly taking his motorbike helmet off. It was what he’d been told to do. What they’d told the Duchess and the Duchess had told him.

  ‘Scares them before you even start,’ she’d said. ‘Then you take it off, so they get a good look at that big ugly mug of yours. Puts them on the back foot, so they don’t try and do anything stupid.’

  The woman clearly knew what she was talking about. He watched the man take half a step back and saw the colour drain from his sunken cheeks, having realised that Evans wasn’t there to ask directions or deliver a package.

  ‘There’s no need for this,’ the man said. ‘To come round.’

  ‘Yes, there is.’

  ‘I’m paying, aren’t I?’

  Evans glanced along the landing, then back over the balcony towards the street below to check that nobody was watching. ‘Don’t want busybodies,’ the Duchess had told him. ‘In and out before anyone can stick their beak in.’ He took off his leather gloves and pushed them inside his helmet.

  ‘Not fast enough,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t even cover the interest.’

  ‘You winding me up?’

  The shocked expression was probably much the same as Evans’s had been that day at his coming home party, but it was replaced a few seconds later by something else. A drop of the head. A setting of the jaw, when the man realised just how stupid he’d been to think it would be any other way.

  Evans recognised that reaction as well.

  ‘You need to give me whatever you’ve got in the house,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  He had no idea how large the man’s debt was. Bigger than his own, or smaller? It was drugs, he figured – the man on the doorstep had that look about him – but he thought the people he was now working for probably dealt in all manner of merchandise. He still wasn’t sure why there weren’t people knocking on his d
oor, why they’d chosen to let him work off what he owed, but he already knew better than to ask any questions. Just keep his head down and get the job done. It wasn’t as though he’d been given a great deal of choice in the matter, but whatever his employer’s reasons, he guessed he was better off being the one doing the knocking.

  Though, looking at the man on the doorstep, he wasn’t sure which of them was the more afraid.

  ‘I’ve got nothing in the house,’ the man said. ‘A few quid, you know? What’s left of my benefit money. Food for the kiddies.’

  ‘You’re a liar.’

  ‘I swear to you. You think I wouldn’t give it you if I had it? You think I want this?’

  ‘I think you’ve probably spunked most of what you’ve got on buying more of whatever got you into this, but that’s not my problem.’ Andrew leaned closer to him and dropped his voice. ‘I’m just here to collect some cash and if I don’t, then I’m the one that’s in trouble. I don’t like being in trouble.’

  ‘Come back on Monday when I get the next benefit cheque.’ The man tried to fabricate a smile. ‘Before it’s gone.’

  ‘I won’t be nearly as nice if I have to come back,’ Evans said.

  The man just shook his head and kicked a training shoe softly against the door jamb. ‘I’ve got bugger all, mate, and that’s the truth.’ He raised his arms then let them fall against his sides. ‘It’s gone. There’s a couple of tenners or something in my girlfriend’s purse and that’s it, but like I said, we need it.’

  Evans said, ‘You need to shut your mouth now and give it to me,’ because he had to. He said it with the necessary amount of menace, but even as he narrowed his eyes and reached into his jacket pocket, he was fighting back a surge of sympathy for the man in the ratty sweatshirt, with skin like old plasterboard and a swarm of spots around his mouth. Mistakes made that he didn’t need to guess at and tics he recognised only too well. Someone who, in all respects except the one that counted, was exactly where he had been not very long ago.

  The man opened his mouth to say something and then he saw the gun in Evans’s hand.

  The gun that had been delivered to him the night before. Handed over on the corner of the street by someone dressed much the same as he was now, while his wife was putting their son to bed.

  Food for the kiddies…

  The man raised his hands and shouted ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ or something, but Andrew struggled to hear clearly above the buzzing in his head. The tinnitus of panic and terror.

  He grasped the butt of the gun a little tighter and pointed it, as casually as if it were a finger. He somehow managed to say, ‘Money.’

  ‘All right, mate.’ The man stepped back further. ‘No need for that.’

  ‘Not if you stop pissing about and get me some money —’ Evans froze as a young woman appeared behind the man in the doorway. It was only when she saw the gun and screamed that he became aware of the toddler whose hand she was holding, staring up at him, wide-eyed.

  ‘Shut up, all right?’ the man shouted.

  ‘Please,’ the woman said.

  The man rounded on her. ‘Go and get your purse.’

  The woman just stared and pulled her child, who had begun to cry, closer to her.

  ‘Get the fucking purse.’

  When the woman had shrunk back into the house, Evans and the man he had been told to frighten stared at one another for a few too many awkward moments. Evans saw fear in the man’s face, certainly, but he saw something else, too. Something like disgust. It was the look of someone who knew a fellow victim when he saw one and was quietly appalled. The look one prisoner might give to another who is earning brownie points by rounding up his comrades and marching them away to be punished, or worse.

  Andrew Evans was still thinking about that a few minutes later as he climbed on to his bike. As he tucked what turned out to be forty pounds into the same pocket as the gun and pulled his helmet on.

  He wrapped his hands tight around the throttle and clutch levers. As much to stop them shaking as anything else.

  He put his son to bed while his wife, Paula, made dinner. Once they’d eaten, they sat in front of the TV together and Evans told her lies. The fictitious job interviews he’d been to that afternoon, the trips to various building sites to see if they were hiring.

  ‘You’ll get something,’ Paula said. ‘You’re a hard worker, someone’s going to see that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Evans said. ‘Hope so.’

  ‘We just need to be a bit careful with money, that’s all, but it’s working out OK.’ She had struggled while he was inside, he knew that. He hated the fact that she still was, that she was working two part-time jobs to top up his benefit money.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep looking.’

  While the work he was actually doing, if you could call it that, wasn’t bringing in a penny. In truth it was barely keeping his head above water.

  ‘You feeling all right?’

  He looked at her. ‘I’m fine.’

  She reached across to lay a hand on his forehead. ‘You’re still not a hundred per cent.’

  ‘I just can’t seem to shake this bloody cold.’ He picked up the remote to change the channel, and if she saw the tremor in his hand, she didn’t comment. ‘Stupid thing is, eighteen months inside, I was fit as a fiddle.’

  Ultimately, there was nothing he could do to disguise the shakes and the night sweats and he was only grateful she hadn’t seen the vomiting, couldn’t hear how fast his heart was beating. He had managed to hide what he was up to when she’d visited and he was doing his best to keep it that way. It was difficult, because now she was with him for more than an hour one day a week, and Evans knew his wife wasn’t stupid.

  ‘I’ll go to the chemist again tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘Make you another appointment with the doctor.’

  Aside from that first time at the party, whenever he’d got his hands on new stuff, he’d left the house to use. Suddenly he’d become the one who volunteered to take the dog across to the park, or make trips to the local shops that took far longer than they should have done. He’d got away with it so far, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep it up.

  Any of it.

  Unless he was being the stupid one and Paula knew exactly what was going on. Perhaps she had known what he was up to from the kick-off and was refusing to judge him for it; allowing him to pretend. Had such a thing been possible, each time he looked at her and those sour bubbles of guilt rose up and burst in his throat, he would have hated himself even more.

  There were moments when he felt like using that gun on himself.

  ‘You should get an early night,’ Paula said.

  ‘Actually, I might take the dog out again.’

  ‘It’s a bit late, isn’t it?’

  Evans stood up and stretched, then walked out into the hall. ‘I think the fresh air helps a bit,’ he said. There was still a little left of the last ten grams that had been delivered; an envelope at the bottom of the plastic bag the gun had been in. His wage packet. ‘Exercise is good, too.’ He came back in, pulling his coat on, and leaned down to kiss her. ‘I need to get fit again.’

  ‘Yeah, well you’ve certainly been doing a lot of walking since you got out.’ His wife smiled and turned off the TV. She reached down for the newspaper that was lying on the floor. ‘One good thing.’

  THREE

  Kentish Town station was one Thorne knew very well. Though he had never been based there, he had lived five minutes’ walk away for many years and two of the local beat officers were currently renting his old flat. Still, the familiar voice that greeted him when he entered the squad room was the last one he’d been expecting to hear.

  ‘Fuck me, sideways… look what the cat dragged in.’

  He smiled. ‘Oh, God help us.’

  Thorne had last seen Sergeant Christine Treasure a few years before, when he’d been briefly – and unhappily – back in uniform
, as inspector on a borough team in Lewisham. With a temper every bit as filthy as her mouth, Treasure was certainly capable of putting backs up, which was probably why she ended up being one of the few genuine allies he had managed to acquire at the time. At any time, come to that. She was a good skipper and one Thorne quickly came to trust, but that was not to say teaming up with the woman had been a wholly pleasant experience. The investigation Thorne had worked on back then had left him in hospital with serious injuries, but now – hearing that characteristically generous greeting and seeing Christine Treasure grinning at him – the horrific memories of those occasions when they had shared a patrol car made a gunshot wound seem like a minor inconvenience.

  Treasure, rampant, at the wheel of what she called the ‘fanny-magnet’.

  The bad impressions and the heavy-metal singalongs. The championship-level farting. The sexually explicit monologues that would inevitably follow a sighting of anything with two legs and tits, and which made Donald Trump seem positively sensitive in his appreciation of the female form.

  Now, displaying a turn of speed that was rarely seen off duty, Treasure bounded across the squad room and threw her arms around him. An officer nearby looked up from his newspaper and whistled. The radio and stab-vest and a belt adorned with baton, cuffs and mace ensured that it was not the most comfortable embrace Thorne had ever been pulled into, but it felt good, nonetheless.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Nice to know you’ve missed me.’ The last time he’d seen her, Treasure’s dyed-blonde hair had been short and teased into spikes. Now it was longer and swept back. She saw Thorne clock the new look and smiled. ‘Going for the fifties matinee idol thing,’ she said. ‘The ladies love it.’

  ‘Well you’ve always been idle, certainly.’

  The punch on his arm was a painful reminder that she was not someone to mess with. He remembered the straight jab that had laid out a drunk who’d been foolish enough to take a swing at her in Catford shopping precinct.