Scaredy cat tt-2 Page 20

  'Palmer…'

  The beep on the line stopped, and immediately the landline began to ring. Hendricks came through from the kitchen and picked up the phone.

  Thorne could have hung up and talked to the technicians, but he wanted to hear it now, that second, from the man it had been sent to.

  'Palmer, is there anything else? What does the message say exactly?'

  Palmer held back the sobs just long enough to tell him.

  FIFTEEN

  Date: 9 January

  Target: Male (Let's not be predictable)

  Age: You're as old as you feel

  Pickup: Immaterial

  Site: Indoors, target's home

  Method: Blunt instrument… in conjunction with a sharp mind The man had once observed the same routine every morning. Moving from room to room and getting himself ready for the day with great care and precision. These days, the effort was all too much. Where once the clean white shirt would have been laid out ready the night before, now he just grabbed another un-ironed one from the pile and often turned the previous day's socks inside out. He put on the kettle and radio, cut himself shaving, then pulled on his rumpled cardigan in front of the heavy, free-standing oak mirror that had been a wedding present, many years earlier. He placed his battered and bulging briefcase next to the front door, made himself a slice of toast and settled down to listen to ten minutes or so of Today on Radio 4.

  The knock at the door was puzzling, but nothing to be alarmed about. He checked his watch. It was too early for the post. Perhaps it was a neighbour, or the man to read one or other of the meters. He put down his toast, rose slowly from the kitchen chair, and moved towards the front door.

  His wife had always used to tease him about his passion for routine, and the way that any disruption to the order of things could put him in a bad mood. Then, perhaps, it had been true, but not any more. These days, a surprise of any sort could be an unexpected fillip. Something to be welcomed with open arms. There was a second knock, a fraction louder, just before he reached the door.

  'Just a moment…'

  When the door was opened, the man with the leather sports bag at his feet smiled, cleared his throat, and punched the man in the creased white shirt, full in the face.

  Then he picked up his bag and stepped inside. The man on the floor held his hand to his shattered nose, but the blood ran through his fingers on to his shirt and on to the carpet. The blood felt strange and warm. It was oddly smooth against his freshly shaved cheeks. He was crying, which annoyed him greatly, and he was desperately trying to clear his head just a little, so that he might reach his shattered spectacles and work out where the noise was coming from. The noise that was like a drumming, like a thumping, like a train passing beneath the floor. The noise that drowned out the sound of the sports bag being opened.

  Zzzzzzip…

  Then a gentle rustle as something was removed from the bag, and the man on the floor suddenly realised that the mysterious noise was the sound of his own heart smashing against his chest like a trapped animal. He was pleased that he'd worked it out. Now, there was just the pain in his face, and the terror… He glanced up and his body spasmed, and he cried out a girl's name as he saw the long, dark shape Coming down. His eyes screwed shut and his hands flew from his face to his head. Every one of his fingers was broken, a fraction of a second before his skull was shattered. The man with the cricket bat in his hand needed to get about his business quickly and that annoyed him. It distracted him. With him, the looking.., the considering, had always been as much a part of it as anything. After he killed, he could rarely remember the details of the act itself. His mind had been elsewhere when that was happening. Today, there wasn't much time for enjoyment. With a grunt, he swung the bat.

  The man on his knees seemed to jump then, and he screamed a name which the man with the bat knew belonged to his dead wife, and the noise of the bat making contact was like jumping on egg boxes. The man who used to be simply Stuart, lifted up the bat which came away wet and a little sticky. He hoisted the dripping wooden blade high above his head and brought it back down again with every ounce of strength in his body. He felt the shudder up his arm and across his shoulders. He closed his eyes, and the colours and shapes that swam about in the blackness were like the blood flying into the dirt, and the pulped body of the frog sailing gloriously across the blue and into the long grass…

  The man who was variously First Friend and Blast From The Past and occasionally Ghost Of Summer, lifted and swung, lifted and swung, and each time he thought would be the last, but each new contact, each vibration, shook loose some new desire in him, liberated the hunger again and he felt the urge in his head and the action down his arms…

  Finally, after many minutes, the man who had signed his most recent e-mail Night Watchman stopped and looked down at the swirls of bone and brain and blood making new patterns in what was already a somewhat garish carpet.

  It took him thirty seconds or so to regain his breath, and then he was moving, quickly. He removed the gloves, wiped down the bat and put it back into the bag, having already taken out the fresh set of clothes. He stepped away from the body, taking care to mind his shoes. He didn't want to be walking bloody footprints all round the place for the rest of the day.

  In less than ten minutes he was changed and ready to go, with plenty of time left to get to work. As he closed the front door behind him he checked his wristwatch. He tut-tutted at his carelessness. The face of the watch was flecked with blood. Someone, he wasn't certain who, had once said something Thorne was particularly fond of. A phrase he'd heard and never forgotten. Knock hard, life is deaf

  It was a sentiment he did his best to live by, but there were occasions, many of them in fact, when those around him might have been happier had he tried to keep the noise down a little. Times when they seemed unwilling to discover what might be on the other side of the door.

  Usually, this would only make Tom Thorne knock harder, bang louder. Today, even he was not sure he wanted to see that door opened. Today, a man was going to die a violent death. A man who, but for Thorne, but for the course he had chosen to follow, might otherwise live. It was pretty much that simple, and it was not a pleasant thought to be bouncing around in your head from the second you opened your eyes in the morning.

  Thorne rushed into work like a madman, but if he had imagined it might be… easier, with people around him, among the team – at the heart of things – he was wrong.

  It was as if his colleagues, no, not just his colleagues – the woman in the newsagent, the postman, every driver he'd cut up on the North Circular on the way into work – all of them, could see his guilty thought, his dark admission. It was as though it had become visible, like a tiny spot floating across his eyeball. They all saw the terrible thought and processed it, and instantly, they all produced their own thought to keep it company.

  You're right. It was, is, will be your fault… Wednesday, 9 January. A wet and windy and godforsaken fucker of a Wednesday, when it was easy to see why its children were full of woe. A shitty, dreary, dry wank of a day. A day for watching clocks and losing tempers, and listening for phones.

  A day for talking about it.

  Thorne, Brigstocke, Holland and McEvoy. Sitting around a table, the rain beating against the windows. Talking about it.

  'A man, this time. Is that important?'

  'Like he said in the mail, ringing in the changes.'

  'It feels like he's playing a game.'

  'With Palmer, or with us?'

  'What the fuck does "Night Watchman" mean anyway?'

  'Like a security guard…'

  'Or in cricket, you know? Someone they send in late on. Someone who's dispensable.'

  'Sounds a bit odd. Does he think he's dispensable?'

  'I doubt it…'

  'I'm not sure how seriously we should take any of it.'

  'Any of it,' Thorne said, 'except for the killing.'

  Talking about it, because that's all they co
uld do. Everybody keen to make their contribution.

  Jesmond on the phone to Brigstocke: 'This will probably be our only chance, Russell. Make sure you don't blow it.'

  Steve Norman, who Thorne was disliking more and more each time he encountered him, on a cheery visit from the press office, annoyingly only spitting distance away above the station at Colindale:

  'Well, everything's geared up at our end, Tom.' He laughed then.

  'Bloody press have been making up stories for years anyway, about time we had a go.' Thorne neglected to laugh along, but Norman seemed not to notice. 'Just to let you know, ready and waiting when it goes off…'

  Waiting.

  To an extent of course, they were always waiting: Thorne, Brigstocke and the rest of them. Those at the shitty end of it. Waiting for the next call, the next case. Waiting for the one that would do their heads in, or fuck their lives up. Waiting to open the wrong door or pull over the wrong motor – the one with the mad fucker in it. Waiting for the knife or the bullet, or if they were clever and lucky, just waiting it out. Waiting for the pension.

  This was a different kind of waiting though. This was far crueler. Now they had been given.., parameters.

  They knew when, sort of. They knew the sex of the victim. Christ they even knew how he was going to be killed – the death to which this man, whoever he was, had been doomed. They had been shown what few have seen, and yet, at the same time they were powerless to change the picture. It was like being some not quite all-knowing, not quite all-seeing force, hamstrung by the missing pieces of the jigsaw. Omnipotent and impotent.

  Like being God with Alzheimer's.

  It was just a matter of exactly when and exactly where. Then, yes, then, they would move. Then, the springs tightened beyond endurance would be released and they would move like streaks of fucking lightning, blazing to wherever this man's violent compulsions led them, praying that it would turn out to be worth it. Thorne sat at his desk wondering whether anything could be worth this, remembering the conversation he'd had a few short hours earlier. He stared out through the rain-streaked windows into the glowering, grey sky. Into the face of Phil Hendricks, those dark eyes lit up. Make it a warm one, will you?

  At lunchtime, a fleet of mopeds delivered a mountain of pizzas. Thorne and Brigstocke shared an extra large Spicy Meat Feast, but not equally. Brigstocke's reply when this fact was pointed out, was not one Thorne felt like arguing with, even if the DCI did have a broad grin plastered across his greasy chops as he spoke.

  'If I'm going to sit on fences, I'll need a fatter arse, won't I? So stop moaning.'

  Thorne wasn't very hungry anyway.

  The small talk didn't feel forced or awkward, just a little inappropriate. Like a bad joke at a funeral where everyone's turned up way too early and they're standing around waiting for the body to arrive. Which was, of course, exactly what they were doing.

  'How're the kids?'

  Brigstocke's eyes widened as he slurped up a string of red-hot mozzarella. He had four kids under six and was often to be found spark out at his desk in the middle of the afternoon. Often, but not during this case.

  'Little bastards,' Brigstocke mumbled. 'Glad to be here if I'm honest, whatever the circumstances.'

  Thorne knew what he meant. He'd come into work more than once for pretty much the same reason, except that in his case, the only person he was escaping from was himself.

  'Everybody reckons it gets easier, but fucked if I can see when. The time they're old enough to start making their own breakfasts and sticking on Cartoon Network, so you can stay in bed for a bit longer, is just about the same time they start bunking off school and doing crack. Just a different set of things to worry about. Do you want that last bit?'

  Thorne shook his head and watched as Brigstocke pushed the entire slice of pizza into his mouth. He grunted with satisfaction, then started looking around and waggling his oily fingers.

  'I'll grab some paper towels from the Gents,' Thorne said. He could hear Holland and McEvoy laughing about something in the adjacent office as he moved across to the door.

  He stopped and turned, his hand on the metal door handle. His palm slippery with sweat and grease. 'I know this was what I wanted. Flushing him out.' He took a deep breath. 'It still feels shit though.'

  Brigstocke swallowed the last of the pizza, pushed up his glasses with a clean knuckle. 'Course it does, and you're not the only one feeling bad.'

  'I know, but…'

  'I'm the only DCI in this room, Tom. Nobody's got a gun to my head on this one. Jesmond gave me the chance to say no.'

  'Why didn't he just say no himself?.'

  Brigstocke stood, jammed the pizza box into the wastepaper basket and crushed it down hard with a size eleven brogue. 'Fear.'

  Thorne opened the door. 'I'll get us a couple of coffees while I'm out there…'

  All day at work he thought about what the police might be doing. He imagined them in their offices, in their incident room. Some of them staring at the carpet, waiting for the news to come in. Others reacting differently, scurrying about the place, trying to feel useful, keeping themselves busy. Just another day on the investigation. He pictured them in their toilets. The joshing, pudgy types at the stinking urinal, heads bowed and cocks out. Other less experienced, alone in cubicles, elbows jammed on knees and legs going to sleep after too long on a warm lavatory seat. Staring at a cracked tile floor, breathing heavily. The shit pouring out of them like water. Arseholes red, raw.

  Plenty of lame jokes to ease the tension. The bog door kicked as their colleagues took the piss, the echoing sound of jeers and hollow laughter to chase away the feeling of dread. Hopefully, yes, a feeling of dread…

  He saw the pale and puffy faces of these men and women who were so very desperate to catch him. These police officers – fat and unhappy, skinny and dried-up, soft as puppies or hard as house bricks. He saw them all, as they sat at their desks and stared out of windows, and spoke into the grubby mouthpieces of grey telephones. As they passed in corridors and shared illicit cigarettes by open windows. The smell of the fags never quite managing to cover up that sour smell of sweat, trapped, rich and rank in the weave of cheap shirts and rumpled jackets. "

  All day at work he imagined it, alone or with colleagues, at his desk or about the place. Each new thought, each fresh image, entertaining the hell out of him.

  He couldn't quite conjure up an image of Thorne, though. His face, yes, but not its expression. Not the set of him. Thorne was definitely not the headless chicken type, but neither was he the sort to brood and wait, powerless and hog-tied. He knew that Thorne would be the one to feel it the most when the body was found. When the call came through and the sparks started to fly.

  That certainly couldn't be too far away.

  For him, the day was just rushing by. He doubted that it was passing quite as quickly for Tom Thorne.

  'Fuck fuck bollocks fuck…'

  On the way back to his office with two steaming cups of coffee, Thorne had been ambushed by the lethal corner of the desk that hated him. The pain of a bloody graze across an already existing bruise along with the scalding to both hands was intense. For a second, he felt as though he was going to be sick.

  'Hand me that fucking Sellotape.'

  The passing uniform did as he was told while Thorne grabbed a handful of paper from the desk and sank grimacing to the floor. Brigstocke, alerted by the industrial-strength exclamations, emerged from his office to find Thorne on his knees, screwing up wads of A4 and taping them clumsily across the corner of the offending desk.

  'I'll get my own coffee then, shall I?'

  'Bollocks!'

  Brigstocke laughed. This was a piece of slapstick that would probably do them all a lot of good. 'I hope you've checked that isn't important…'

  'What?'

  Brigstocke pointed to the corner of the desk. 'That paper. Six months from now we don't want the prosecution case collapsing because a vital witness statement is taped to the
corner of a desk in Hendon.'

  'I don't care…'

  There was more laughter, this time from Holland and McEvoy, who stood giggling like children in the doorway of the smaller office. Thorne stood up and threw them a filthy look. He rubbed his leg.

  Christ it hurt…

  Thorne realised abruptly that this pain, laughable though the cause of it might be, was actually the first thing he'd really felt in hours. The agonising stab woke him up and reminded him where he was. All at once, the sting of the graze, the tingle of the burn, shook something loose in his brain and shoved it roughly into focus. A jumble of indistinct words and blurred images formed themselves into a question. Something slippery became graspable and he seized upon it.

  Suddenly, Thorne was knocking hard.

  'Keeping Palmer on the outside, keeping him visible, was so as the pattern wouldn't change. So that the other killer wouldn't panic and bolt. So that he might carry on as normal. Now he's changed the way he does things. Why?' Gritting his teeth, Thorne marched back into his office. Brigstocke, Holland and McEvoy followed him.

  'He hasn't changed it really,' Brigstocke said, shutting the door behind them. 'I mean the details have always changed, from one killing to the next. The murder weapons, the locations…'

  Thorne crossed to the far side of the office. He leaned back against the window, looked hard at the other three. 'Always a woman though.'

  Holland shrugged. 'Three times, yeah. I suppose that's always.'

  'Yes, Holland, that's always.' He spoke slowly, emphatically, his next sentence as complete a description of the man they were after as he needed or cared about. 'He kills women. He got Palmer to kill women. So why a man suddenly?'

  McEvoy sniffed, then replied, her voice casual, her answer much the same as it had been earlier. 'I think he likes to vary things, keep them fresh. He makes that stupid joke about being predictable in the email…'

  'That's another thing. The joke feels wrong. The tone of the whole thing is forced. None of what he's doing is casual. He wants us to think it's random, like it's whimsical, like it doesn't matter to him who he targets. He doesn't want us to know that maybe, for the first time, he's got an agenda.' He made eye contact with each of them. 'I think there's a good reason for this, for today…'