Sleepyhead Read online

  Anne would be looking for someone to blame.

  It was probably best, then, to avoid confrontation for a while. To stay out of the line of fire. It still might all turn to shit anyway. He’d known plenty of cases, a lot more straightforward than this one, where a result had slipped away from them at the last minute. A fuck-up or, God forbid, a legal technicality was waiting around every corner to bury cocksure detective inspectors. Thorne wasn’t counting any chickens. However, he was buoyant enough to be here in the first place, stepping into the lift and wondering exactly how he was going to explain everything.

  Because it wasn’t Anne he had come to see anyway.

  Going into Alison’s room was a shock. Anne hadn’t told him she was back on a ventilator, even though he’d known how susceptible she would always be to infection.

  The room was noisier again, more cluttered, but the girl at the centre of it still drew his eye and his heart as she had done from the first time he’d seen her. She’d had her hair cut since the last time he’d been here. That was the day he’d brought Bishop’s photo in, just before he’d been told about the ‘anonymous’ accusations and things had spiralled out of control.

  Everything was under control again now.

  He moved slowly towards the bed, walking past the blackboard, now folded away and lying against the wall covered in a white sheet. Had Alison heard him come in? He knew how limited her field of vision was and didn’t want to make her jump.

  He caught himself. Jump? Silly bastard. He knew so little about what her life was like. What it had become. He’d promised himself he’d look into it and hadn’t. He’d heard about people who’d had amputations and could still feel the limbs that had gone. Was it like that for Alison? Could she still feel or even imagine she was feeling what it was like to jump or run or kick or kiss?

  He stopped at the end of the bed where he knew she could see him. Her eyeball skittered back and forth for a few seconds. She blinked.

  Hello.

  He moved to the side of the bed, reaching for the plastic orange chair and looking around the room, casually, as if he were just another visitor fumbling for a suitable bedside pleasantry. He could see no flowers anywhere.

  There was nothing to do but begin talking.

  ‘Hello, Alison. I hope you don’t mind me just turning up but there are a few things I wanted to explain. Because nobody else has, really, and I think you have a right to know. Dr Coburn will have given you all the medical stuff . . . the medical side of things, but I wanted to try and tell you what happened to you. After you left the club that night. Obviously we don’t really know how much you remember. Probably nothing.’

  He helped himself to a much-needed drink from the water jug on the bedside table. He wondered why there was a water jug when Alison couldn’t drink.

  ‘Exactly what happened between you leaving the nightclub and getting home is guesswork, really, but it doesn’t matter. You can tell us about where you met the man with the champagne when you get off this ventilator and get a bit better, but we know that he came into your house, and that the drug in the champagne would have been taking effect, and that there’d have been nothing you could do when he . . . put his hands on you.’

  There was a loud crash from the corridor outside. He saw Alison react. A momentary tension in the skin around the eyes. Sounds were obviously so important.

  He just needed to get to it now. Stop pissing about. He’d told parents how their children had died. Why should this be so difficult?

  ‘Anyway, Alison, here’s the thing. You didn’t survive. I mean . . . yes, of course you did, but that was actually what he wanted.’

  He patted the edge of the bed, cast an eye towards the machines, the monitors, the tubes, and back to Alison’s face.

  ‘This . . . is what he wanted, what he was trying to achieve.

  ‘It sounds mad, I know it does, and that’s because it is. He wasn’t trying to kill you. He might easily have killed you because what he did to you is actually incredibly difficult. He’s tried before and since, and not been successful . . . and other women have died. So . . .’

  So what? Thorne wondered whether he should ever have started this. What should he tell her now? How lucky she’d been?

  ‘That’s it. I won’t tell you that you were fortunate not to die. That’s really something only you can . . . have feelings about. But you were strong enough . . . not to die, so I’m sure you’re strong enough to get yourself out of here.

  ‘I have no idea why he did this, Alison. I wish I could tell you I did. I could make something up, but the truth is I haven’t got a bloody clue.

  ‘I can tell you one thing, though, and I suppose that’s why I’ve come if I’m honest. He’s going to tell me why he did it very soon. I want you to know that. Very soon. He’s going to look me in the eye and tell me.’

  He took her hand. Squeezed.

  ‘Then I’m going to put the fucker in prison for the rest of his life.’

  Really? I see. Well, thanks for popping by and dropping that little snippet into the conversation.

  He did this to me deliberately. Wants me like this. Wired up, fucked up.

  Right . . .

  It’s hard to take news any other way than calmly when you’re like this. My reactions always tend to look a bit similar. On the outside anyway. I might seem a bit placid. Anybody looking at me would be thinking, Ooh, didn’t she take it well?

  Inside’s another matter.

  Raging. Understanding what it means when your blood boils, because I can feel it bubbling. I can feel it moving through my veins like lava. Because I know now. I know for certain.

  I’d sort of worked it out anyway.

  I’ve been thinking it had to be something like that.

  Something fucking twisted.

  I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and you don’t have to be a genius to work out that something strange was going on.

  There wasn’t a mark on me.

  There was nothing sexual. Anne told me.

  I thought early on that maybe he was trying to break my neck but there wasn’t even a bruise. I reckon it’s really quite easy to kill somebody if you want to and I’ve been wondering why he didn’t want to.

  Trying to work out what he did want.

  So I’m the one he got right? I’m a living and almost breathing testament to this bloke’s . . . skill?

  While other women died.

  Hearing the blood sizzle and hiss through the arteries. Steam coming off my skin.

  Thorne sounded pretty confident about getting him. Something in his voice made me think that whoever did this is going to be sorry when Thorne gets hold of him.

  Said he was going to make him tell him why he’d done it. I’m not sure that knowing why’s going to make me feel better, really. Getting him will, though. Thorne said he didn’t know how much I could remember. Neither do I.

  But if it’s going to help catch this bastard, I’m going to fucking well find out.

  EIGHTEEN

  12 February 1999. His mother died.

  3 September 1994. Jan left him for the first time.

  18 June 1985. Calvert . . .

  As Thorne drove towards Camden this Tuesday lunchtime, he had no idea that the following day, 2 October 2000, would be another date to add to the list. Perhaps the most significant day of them all. Days that he would choose to forget, but that he would have little choice about remembering.

  Days that formed him. Long, long days. Painful days. Days that had taught him something about who he’d been up to that point, and dictated who he was going to be from that point on.

  What he was going to be.

  This day, the eve of it all, had not begun well and would only get worse. The ring had arrived from Edinburgh the night before and had gone straig
ht to the forensic-science laboratory in Lambeth. Thorne was on the phone to Edgware Road first thing wanting an update on progress. There had been none, and was unlikely to be before the following day. All he’d received for his trouble had been another earful from Keable, who was getting very nervous. Jeremy Bishop had rung, demanding to know what was going on. James Bishop had done likewise. As yet, with Rebecca Bishop remaining silent, it looked as though Thorne and Holland had got away with the trip to Bristol.

  Thorne smiled to himself now, as he steered the car through Regent’s Park, past the unfeasibly grand houses of diplomats and oil billionaires. He smiled at his cockiness with Keable, his bluff-calling, his fuck-you attitude with Tughan.

  He knew that he was on safe ground. All of it, the calls, the carpet fibres, the visits to Bishop’s house, would be forgotten as soon as Thorne had got what he was after.

  As soon as he’d proved that Jeremy Bishop was a multiple killer.

  Then Keable would be too busy accepting the congratulations of the commander (who’d be smiling for the press and getting patted on the back by a thoroughly delighted commissioner) to worry about a few late-night phone calls. A slap on the wrist, perhaps. A word about procedure, probably. A warning about his methods at the very worst.

  As long as the vital evidence was collected cleanly, Thorne knew that he would get a conviction. He knew that the evidence was there. In Jeremy Bishop’s house in Battersea. He just needed the warrant.

  Thorne had passed a very dull morning in what a football manager (the one at Spurs was still clinging on to his job) would call a free role. In practice, this meant answering the phone a lot, handing bits of paper to Nick Tughan, and resisting the temptation to drive down to the forensics lab and oversee the examination of Bishop’s wedding ring himself. Being part of this ponderous machine again was hugely frustrating, but he was happy to do whatever was necessary. And it wasn’t going to be for long.

  In Camden, Thorne parked the car beneath the enormous Sainsbury’s next to the canal. There was no charge for customers and buying a few cans of own-brand lager was a fair exchange for free parking in the middle of the day.

  He walked up past the old TV-am building where a crowd of youngsters was gawping at the recording of a show for MTV inside a tiny glass-fronted studio in the car park. He stopped and watched for a few minutes. The presenters, a girl and a boy, were young and good-looking, and for a second he thought they might be the young couple he’d seen in Waterlow Park a few days before.

  Ignoring the strange looks from the teenagers around him, he watched them for a while, jigging and posturing in dumbshow behind the glass. Then he ambled away, supposing that he probably knew more about the music they were introducing than they did and headed towards Parkway where he was meeting Hendricks.

  The café was cheap and miserable, which Thorne far preferred to expensive and cheerful. It was a place where, over a number of years, the two of them had talked about work and football, while indulging their shared passion for fry-ups and stodgy puddings.

  When Thorne arrived Hendricks was already there, nursing a cup of tea and looking somewhat less than pleased to see him. Thorne had news that he knew would cheer the miserable bugger up. He signalled to the woman behind the counter for a tea and slid into the booth, picked up a menu and started to read it. Wanting to make it sound casual.

  ‘I think we’ve got him.’ Hendricks looked up but without real interest. Thorne went on, ‘I know we have, and as soon as we get the forensic tests done I can get a warrant and—’

  ‘Save it, will you?’

  Thorne put down the menu. What little appetite he had was vanishing rapidly.

  ‘Well?’ Thorne stared at Hendricks. The pathologist looked at his tea, carried on stirring it. ‘You’ve obviously got something to say?’

  Hendricks cleared his throat. He’d been rehearsing it. ‘Did it not occur to you, even for a second, that when that slimy jobs­worth in the forensics lab called up your boss to tell him that a pathologist had just happened to stroll in carrying a plastic bag with carpet fibres in it –’

  ‘Phil, I was going to—’

  ‘– that he might also be calling my boss as well? Did that not occur to you?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Deep shit is what happened. Because I was stupid enough to do you a favour. And you didn’t even have the courtesy to pick up the fucking phone to see what was going on.’

  He’d meant to, more than once, and hadn’t. ‘I’m sorry, Phil, there was another killing and—’

  ‘I know there was. I did the PM, remember? And considering what the two of us do for a living I hardly think a body is much of a fucking excuse, do you?’

  It wasn’t, and Thorne knew it. Hendricks had every right to be angry, but to try to explain to him exactly what he’d been thinking . . . feeling . . . after Margaret Byrne’s murder wouldn’t have been easy.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘The wanker of a clinical director, who’s been looking for an excuse anyway, ’cos I don’t look like his idea of a pathologist, hauled me up in front of the chief executive and the personnel director.’

  ‘Fuck . . .’

  ‘Yeah, fuck is right. I was given a verbal warning about inappropriate behaviour and they’re still talking about the fucking General Medical Council so don’t try asking for any more favours, all right?’

  Thorne’s tea arrived and he took it gratefully, but Hendricks had no intention of letting him off the hook. ‘You’re completely self-obsessed, do you know that?’ Thorne tried to laugh but nothing came out. ‘I’m not talking about this case, I mean all the time. You’ve got no fucking idea what’s going on around you, have you?’

  Thorne fixed a defiant smile on his face. ‘Am I supposed to be answering these questions or is this a lecture?’

  ‘I couldn’t give a toss, I’m just telling you. I’m probably the nearest thing to a friend you’ve got and we talk about fuck all.’ Thorne started to speak but Hendricks cut him off. ‘Football and work. That’s it. Talking shop or talking shit. We play pool and eat pizza and have a joke and talk about sweet fuck all.’

  Thorne decided he should fight his corner. ‘Hang on a second. What about you? I spoke to you about Jan when we were splitting up, I know I did. You never confide in me about anything.’

  ‘What would be the point?’

  ‘You’ve never said a word about family, or girlfriends.’ Hendricks laughed harshly. Thorne looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m gay, you dickhead. Queer as fuck. OK?’

  For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, Thorne blushed deeply.

  Half a minute passed. He looked up from his tea. ‘Why the hell not tell me then? Worried I’d think you fancied me?’

  Hendricks laughed again but neither of them was finding anything funny. ‘I couldn’t tell you. Not . . . you. Everybody else knows.’

  ‘What? Why didn’t they say something, then?’

  ‘Not at work.’ Hendricks’s voice was raised. Thorne stared past him, ashamed, to the woman behind the counter who smiled at nothing in particular. ‘I mean everybody I care about. My family, my real friends . . . Christ, it’s fairly obvious to most people. What do I look like, for fuck’s sake? You’re so . . . shielded. You couldn’t­ see it because it doesn’t affect you. You’ve got blinkers on and I’m fucking sick of it!’

  Anne had slammed down the phone and smoked three cigarettes, one after the other. Now she felt nauseous as well as furious. She marched towards the coffee machine in main reception, going over and over it . . .

  She’d called Thorne on his mobile, and although she had no idea where he was or what he was doing, it was obviously putting him in an awful mood.

  Now he’d passed it on to her.

  They hadn’t spoken since Sunday. She’d known then that
something important was happening on the case and this feeling had distilled into something else when she’d seen him on the televised press conference.

  Something like dread.

  She could sense something coming. She could feel the chill, as if a vast shadow were beginning to creep over them. Over all of them – herself, Thorne, Jeremy. She’d reached for the phone needing some reassurance, a tender word. She’d wanted to give those things to him too, knowing that he might need them.

  And all she’d got was a diatribe. He’d told her, no . . . he’d ordered her to stay away from Jeremy Bishop. He assured her it was for her own protection, not that he really believed that she’d be in any physical danger. It was just . . . best. Best, he’d said. He explained how he’d tried to keep off the whole subject until now to spare her feelings and to avoid a possible conflict of interests, but now things were coming to a head so he’d decided to get everything out in the open.

  Bollocks!

  He’d avoided the subject until he’d got into her knickers and now he was laying down the law. She was having none of it and had told him so in no uncertain terms.

  The coffee machine was repeatedly rejecting a twenty-pence piece. She carried on putting in the coin, picking it out and putting it in again.

  Things had got pretty heated, especially when she’d heard the tell-tale sound of a can being opened. Wherever he was, he was drinking. This, bearing in mind the supposed gravity of what he was telling her – the seriousness of the situation he was trying to make her aware of – annoyed her beyond belief. How fucking dare he?

  Then he’d asked her if she could come over tonight.

  She smashed the heel of her hand against the front of the coffee machine . . .

  It was then that she’d hung up.

  Giving up on the coffee, Anne turned and walked back towards the ITU. She had a good mind to go round to Jeremy’s tonight. She wouldn’t, of course. She’d spend the evening at home with Rachel, if she was in, and drink too much wine and watch something mind-numbing on television, and wonder what Tom Thorne was doing.