Scaredy Cat Page 20

  ‘She got into a car . . .’

  Urging the Mondeo back towards Hendon, along the bizarrely named Honeypot Lane, Thorne pictured a girl in a white dress – he had no idea what Karen McMahon had really been wearing, but it had been a summer’s day – pulling open the door of a blue car, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear and climbing in.

  At the edge of the picture stood a boy called Stuart Nicklin, blurry, with his head slightly bowed, but with those dark eyes taking in every detail. Absent, but very much there, like a phantom image or a double exposure, was a man named Martin Palmer, still utterly fucked up nearly twenty years later.

  There was something wrong with the picture . . .

  ‘So, nature or nurture?’ McEvoy said, as they got near to Becke House.

  Thorne smiled. ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘A lot like the old woman then . . .’

  Thorne had to agree. ‘I’ve known armed robbers, rapists . . . I’ve interviewed axe murderers who gave it up easier.’ McEvoy laughed, but Thorne was being deadly serious. ‘If Nicklin’s got a fraction of that determination, or that . . . cunning, we’re in trouble.’

  ‘What about Palmer’s parents?’

  Thorne shook his head. There was really no need, and besides, they would know what was happening soon enough. One phone call from Palmer, a day or two after he’d given himself up, had established how Nicklin had tracked him down. ‘Oh yes, a nice boy you were at school with called, trying to get hold of you . . . didn’t leave his name . . . wanted it to be a surprise, I think.’ Beyond that, there was nothing useful to be had out of them. Eventually, it would just be about giving them the bad news.

  He was intrigued, but also a little relieved that Annie Nicklin had shown no interest in news of any sort about her son or his whereabouts. That would have been decidedly tricky.

  ‘Oh yes, he’s turned up . . . But . . .’

  At the Peel Centre, they pulled up to the security barrier and Thorne fished around for his ID. McEvoy leaned across him and showed hers to the officer on duty. After a moment, the barrier lifted and Thorne nudged the car towards the parking bays.

  ‘Got plans this evening?’ Thorne asked.

  McEvoy turned away and stared out of the window. There were a dozen or so recruits working with dogs on the far side of the compound. ‘Not really. Early night, I think. You?’

  ‘Myself and Mr Philip Hendricks have a hot date with Sky Sports and a Chinese takeaway.’

  ‘Sounds good . . .’

  ‘Yeah, if you don’t mind being a relationship counsellor when you’re trying to watch the match.’ He pulled a face for ­McEvoy’s benefit, but really he was looking forward to Hendricks coming over.

  Unwinding. Letting a little of it go . . .

  Thorne guided the car into a space next to Brigstocke’s Volvo estate and killed the engine. He stared up at the dun-coloured walls and peeling olive paintwork of the three-storey sixties’ monstrosity they had the misfortune to work in. If management had any sense, and a desire to maintain levels of recruitment, they would have instructed the film crew to make sure they kept the cameras well away from Becke House.

  ‘It’s a phenomenally ugly building,’ McEvoy said, after a few moments.

  Thorne nodded, thinking: We’re in it, trying to catch people who do phenomenally ugly things.

  McEvoy pushed in the button to release her seat belt. ‘What’s on this afternoon?’

  Thorne took a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m going to make a few calls, try and find out what’s going to cost more, fixing the heater or replacing the car.’

  ‘About bloody time. I’ll be spending the next half an hour trying to get some feeling back into my feet . . .’ Thorne laughed. ‘It’s ridiculous. Why don’t you use the car you’ve been assigned?’

  Thorne shrugged. ‘I don’t know . . . it’s brown.’

  McEvoy was gobsmacked by Thorne’s answer, and by how much he suddenly looked like a confused and sulky teenager. ‘So, get another one . . .’

  ‘I like this car,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s got all my tapes and stuff.’

  ‘Oh right, yeah. Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette.’

  Thorne sighed and opened the door. ‘I’m going to kill Holland. No, I’m going to make him listen to some proper country music and then I’m going to kill him . . .’

  McEvoy climbed out of the car, snickering like the cartoon dog in Wacky Races. ‘It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t say . . .’

  ‘Actually, fuck that, the music would be wasted on him anyway. I’ll just kill him.’ Thorne turned the key in the lock, looked at McEvoy across the Mondeo’s roof. ‘While I’m busy killing Detective Constable Holland, I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘I think I’m already doing quite enough keeping Derek Lickwood away from you. He knows you’re avoiding him.’

  Thorne smiled. ‘Don’t worry, it’s a lot easier than that.’ ­McEvoy waited. ‘Get on the phone for me, and find out who was in charge of the Karen McMahon case.’

  Alf from Stoke-on-Trent: ‘Hanging’s too good for these bastards. I’d happily pull the lever myself . . .’

  He shook his head and broke off another big piece of the chocolate bar, thinking: Come on, Alf, you can’t have it both ways. Still, he knew that this was how a fair proportion of the British public thought that he, and others like him, should be dealt with. This was what they considered an appropriate response.

  The phone-in host, who was normally there to play devil’s advocate, agreed wholeheartedly with Alf, and the two of them began to gleefully discuss whether or not, if we ever came to our senses and brought back capital punishment, we should stick to the noose or perhaps move into the twenty-first century and go for lethal injection.

  He closed his eyes, tuned out the chat.

  Others like him . . .

  He couldn’t say that he’d ever actually met anybody else like him. Not really. He’d run into his fair share of those for whom respect for the law was a luxury, and some whose moral framework had never existed or had been eaten away. He’d known plenty of men desperate enough to consider anything, but never an individual who was happy to consider everything. This fact didn’t disturb him, but neither did it give him any great comfort. He just accepted it as the way of things. He wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that he was completely unique. He accepted that one day he might stare across a street, or along a station platform, or even at a television screen and recognise a look in someone’s eye.

  It was a look he’d certainly never seen in Martin Palmer’s eye. Now it was time to get in touch with his old friend again.

  He got up from the armchair and crossed the room to where the laptop computer, bought for cash in Dixons the day before, lay on the dining table. He switched it on, and while it was booting up, he fetched the freshly cloned mobile he’d picked up in south London on the way home. He’d ditch the computer and the phone the next morning on the way in to work.

  He had always been careful to vary his methods. Opening up any one of a hundred free email accounts was easy, and he always took care to make the hardware as near to untraceable as possible. The first few times, he’d simply walked into an internet cafe. He preferred the smaller places – converted greasy spoons that advertised cheap photocopying, and had a couple of grubby, first-issue iMacs lined up in a back room. These places were tucked away, almost invisible between massage parlours and dodgy minicab firms: places that even the backpackers didn’t know about, where no-one served cappuccino or gave a toss about what porn sites you accessed. These were places without CCTV.

  He’d moved on to laptops which were, of course, ideal for his purposes, and then it had just been a case of where to plug the things in. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d used a stolen ­mobile – he had a contact who knocked them out for next to nothing – but i
n the past, he’d also enjoyed the telecommunications facilities offered by a number of shitty hotels in and around central London. Just a matter of checking in, logging on and fucking off. If, and it was a very big if, the place was ever traced, nobody would have any memory of the anonymous businessman with the small leather carrycase.

  He connected the phone to the laptop and sat down in front of it. He began to give some thought to what he was going to write. He always liked to get the wording right.

  It was funny, he’d almost predicted that something like this would happen, that in some strange way his hand would be forced, his mind made up for him. Now, he had no choice but to respond. The response, appropriate or not, was pretty much the only one he could make.

  He logged on and the computer began to dial. In a matter of minutes he’d opened a new account, invented a name and created a password. He enjoyed assuming fresh identities whether they lasted many years or just a few hours in a dingy hotel room. He even relished those which, like this one, he would only ever need to assume in cyberspace for the few short minutes it took to send a handful of words across the city.

  Pretty much the only response he could make . . .

  He wasn’t sure exactly what Thorne had been hoping to gain by going to the school, but there it was. He snapped off another chunk of chocolate. The Detective Inspector was clearly not a man whose actions were predictable or immediately explicable. That was all right.

  Neither was he.

  He laid out his instructions in the email with the usual care. There was to be no misunderstanding. He had always strived to make it straightforward for Palmer, to make everything clear. Martin had always needed that.

  Do this, now. Do that, only when I tell you.

  What was less clear, at least right now, was exactly why he was bothering to do this at all. Why was he sending these details to Palmer in the first place? Why was he issuing instructions which would never be followed, except in the creation of a newspaper story about a murder that had not taken place? Mind you, once the murder that would be taking place was discovered, they wouldn’t bother making up any more stories anyway.

  So why was he going through the motions like this? Why was he playing their game?

  Palmer had chosen to remove himself from the equation and in doing so had taken away with him some of the . . . mustard. Dulled that extra buzz. Maybe he could get a little of it back this way. He needed to get it back, to go along with their not-so-clever bit of let’s pretend, and see where it led all of them.

  But that wasn’t the only reason.

  If he was being honest, he liked his routines and only he would decide when they changed. So, yes, it was a refusal . . . an absolute refusal to relinquish control, but it was also, he had to admit, because of a perverse desire to . . . carry on as normal. Business as usual, at least for the time being. He’d always had a sneaking admiration for that very British breed of nutcase who treated flood, fire or pestilence as no more than a minor inconvenience and refused to adapt. There was never any need to move house, or see a doctor or make a scene. Stubborn and stupid. Brave and barking mad. It worked the other way round, of course. It was only ever in this country that people could win millions on the lottery and decide to carry on working in a factory. Of course, in the end, those morons always did adapt, and so would he, when he absolutely had to. It wasn’t rocket science, after all. Go with the flow, or rot where you stood. Adapt or get caught.

  For now though, he’d suck it and see.

  He heard Caroline coughing in her sleep upstairs. Poor thing had been feeling rough for a couple of days. As he checked his typing for spelling errors, he made a mental note to pick up some Benylin for her the following day.

  He popped the last square of chocolate into his mouth and pressed ‘send’.

  They rolled apart from each other and lay there, sweating, exhausted.

  Holland leaned up on one elbow and whispered mock-­seductively into the ear of the woman next to him.

  ‘So, come on, tell me about this mysterious Biscuit Game.’

  McEvoy was still getting her breath back and marvelling at how, just an hour and a half before, she’d arrived home to find Holland on her doorstep, clutching a bottle of wine and stammering like a poor man’s Hugh Grant.

  Seven thirty: awkward exchanges as keys were fumbled for. Twenty past eight: second bottle opened, lying around like ­students. Nine o’clock: the pair of them, smiling, naked and slippery.

  She had definitely been a lot more impulsive lately.

  ‘Come on then . . .’

  Was she actually blushing? ‘It’s just this stupid— It’s probably not even true, it’s like an urban myth, about this game they play at public schools.’ She turned on to her side. He was staring at her, grinning, waiting for her to carry on. ‘OK, basically, all the boys stand in a circle wanking.’

  ‘Wanking?’

  ‘Yes, apparently. There’s a biscuit in the middle, and they all come on it, and whoever comes last has to eat the biscuit.’

  There was a pause worthy of a great comedian before Holland let out a groan of disgust. ‘You’re making it up.’

  McEvoy started to giggle. ‘I swear . . .’

  ‘Whoever comes last?’

  His look of confusion made her laugh even more. ‘I said it was stupid . . .’

  ‘So they’re actually being trained to come quickly?’

  ‘I know. Mind you, it certainly explains why all the public schoolboys I’ve ever shagged have been shit in bed.’

  They lay there for a minute, saying nothing, laughing now and again and trying to get their new, rather odd picture of the world into some sort of focus. McEvoy wondered how long he was planning to stay. Holland had just decided that he should be getting home, and was thinking about Sophie for the first time since McEvoy had put her tongue in his mouth and her hand on his cock, when she spoke.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Were you a public schoolboy?’

  Holland raised his head up off the pillow. ‘Was I fuck!’

  McEvoy’s leg slid across his, and her hand began to creep across his stomach. ‘Calm down, Holland. I’m kidding. You’ve already made that very obvious.’ She smiled as she hoisted herself across him and began wriggling into position.

  Holland put a hand on each of her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. ‘What sort do they use?’ She looked down at him, confused, so he explained. ‘The biscuit. Digestive, custard cream, bourbon . . . ?’

  She was still laughing when they’d finished.

  Thorne had been right about the relationship counsellor bit. Within ten minutes of the kick-off, he’d learned that Brendan had not, as predicted, buggered off as soon as Hendricks had given him his Christmas presents, but had actually stuck around and was now, miracle of miracles, dropping hints about moving in.

  At half time, Thorne got up and threw the remains of the Chinese takeaway into a bin-liner. There wasn’t a great deal of anything left, Elvis having licked both plates clean within moments of them putting down their forks for the final time.

  He returned with two more cold cans from the fridge. ‘So you’re happy about this, are you? Brendan staying?’ Hendricks looked decidedly unsure. Thorne handed him a can. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Phil.’

  ‘It’s just unexpected. I need to think about it a bit . . .’

  ‘Not easily pleased, are you?’

  Thorne opened his beer and slumped back into his chair. In the studio, some bald bloke who’d won three caps in the early seventies was attempting to make the previous forty-five minutes sound interesting. Aston Villa and Leeds United grinding out a nil-nil draw in the pissing rain was proving to be far from riveting.

  ‘So what does he make of this then? Brendan . . .’

  ‘He’s no
t a football fan, well, not beyond thinking Thierry Henry’s got nice legs anyway, so he’s not really bothered.’

  Thorne took a sip, stared at the TV. ‘No, I meant, you know, you coming over here . . .’

  For a minute, Hendricks said nothing and Thorne wondered if, like him, he was thinking about what had happened between them a year before.

  They had fallen out badly in the middle of a case. Hendricks had told him he was gay, at the same time as telling him what a selfish bastard he was being. Thorne had been gobsmacked by the confession and shamed by the accusation – he knew that Hendricks had a point. His friend had gone out on a limb for him and suffered for it. Thorne hadn’t been there to speak up on his friend’s behalf when he should have been.

  Back then, with the bodies piling up, Thorne hadn’t even been there for himself.

  It was the death of strangers that had eventually brought them back together, as it had brought them together in the first place.

  ‘You want to know what Brendan thinks about you?’

  Thorne shrugged, gestured with his can towards the slow-­motion replay on the screen. ‘Look, he should have scored, he was clean through. Couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. No . . . just, you know . . .’

  ‘Why is it that eventually, you always get round to asking if my boyfriends fancy you or not?’

  ‘That’s bollocks.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, you’re usually quite subtle about it, but there’s always some comment, some bit of fishing . . .’

  ‘All in your twisted mind, mate . . .’

  ‘He thinks you’re a bit chunky.’

  Thorne’s show of mock annoyance, the raised voice and wounded expression, barely masked how genuinely pissed off he really was. ‘Chunky? What does he mean, “chunky”?’

  Hendricks sniggered and reached for the remote. The teams were coming out for the second half. ‘Shut up, you tart . . .’

  They watched in silence as twenty-two thoroughly bored-looking individuals with bad haircuts jogged half-heartedly out into the rain. Hendricks picked up the remote again and pressed mute.