The Dying Hours Page 26

  Thorne lifted the folder up as though he had forgotten it was there and looked at it. It was clear that Hackett knew something, but as yet there was no way of knowing how much. For a second or two, Thorne wondered if he should just casually open the folder up and show Hackett its contents. There was no compulsion to explain them and it would be helpful to see whether or not Hackett recognised the people in the photographs. Thorne thought it might give him some idea of what he was up against. He said, ‘No, not particularly.’

  Hackett nodded, but there was tension in his face suddenly, a tightening around the mouth, eyes unblinking. ‘We should go back in,’ he said. ‘We could have that drink I was talking about.’

  ‘Better not,’ Thorne said, fastening his jacket. ‘Driving, remember?’

  ‘Course, and you need to get home.’

  ‘I want to get home.’

  ‘Be ironic though, wouldn’t it?’ Hackett said. ‘Getting nicked for drink driving, after everything else.’

  Thorne looked at the DCI, not sure what he meant. After everything that had happened to get him bumped off the Murder Squad? Or everything that was happening now? He certainly wasn’t going to ask. He started to walk away. ‘Enjoy your drink,’ he said.

  ‘She’s Child Abuse, isn’t she?’

  Thorne stopped and turned. The message being delivered was simple enough: the futility of trying to keep secrets, the non-existence of privacy. It was not something Thorne needed telling, but Hackett clearly relished doing so anyway.

  ‘Your other half?’ Hackett shook his head sadly. ‘See, I’ve always thought it was a dangerous business, shacking up with someone else who was in the Job. A nightmare waiting to happen.’ He shrugged. ‘What do I know, though?’ He turned and walked towards the bar. Said, ‘You definitely want to get that hand looked at.’

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Holland and Kitson were unable to get away from the office for too long, so Thorne drove over to Colindale. He texted to let them know he’d arrived, and at lunchtime the three of them convened in Thorne’s car, five minutes’ walk and a few streets away from the Peel Centre.

  Kitson asked Thorne what had happened to his hand, but he waved her question away. He wanted to talk about what had happened before he’d paid Frank Anderson a visit the night before.

  What he’d found in Terry Mercer’s car.

  ‘He might have needed a gun to get them where he wanted them,’ Thorne said. He remembered what Anthony Dennison had told him about Mercer buying two guns. ‘To get through the door and get everything set up… the bath, the pills, whatever. But persuading them to take that final step was easy enough in the end.’ Thorne passed the photographs to Yvonne Kitson in the passenger seat. She looked through them and then handed them back to Holland. ‘These were all the weapons he needed.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Kitson said. ‘That’s…’

  ‘They knew he’d do it, too. Kill them without a second thought if they didn’t do it themselves and then go after their families.’

  Nobody spoke for a while. Thorne lowered his window an inch or two to let some air in.

  ‘In the end, you do whatever it takes to protect your kids,’ Kitson said.

  Thorne nodded.

  ‘Simple as that. Doesn’t matter how old you are, or they are.’ She turned to look at Holland. ‘Right, Dave?’

  Thorne felt a sting of irritation seeing the two of them confer; the implication that, as the only one in the car without children of his own, he could not possibly understand.

  ‘I do get it, Yvonne,’ he said.

  Holland picked out a photograph of someone he recognised. ‘That’s Graham Daniels,’ he said. He showed them another, pointed. ‘And that’s his daughter.’ The girl who was helping out in the printer’s, earning money to go to college.

  There were plenty of other pictures, other faces. Without talking to the relatives of the dead, they could not identify all the people in the photographs. Members of the extended Cooper family, the Gibbs, the Jacobsons…

  ‘It’s fair to assume that Anderson took most of these,’ Thorne said. ‘Jeffers probably took the rest, or maybe Mercer himself.’

  Holland handed the photographs back to Thorne. ‘Well one of them took a trip up to Newcastle,’ he said. ‘To take the pictures of Edward Mallen’s kids.’

  Thorne looked at him.

  ‘We did a bit of digging this morning,’ Kitson said. ‘That’s where he was living until recently.’

  ‘We any the wiser about what connects Mallen to the Mercer trial?’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s the thing.’ Holland looked at Kitson. They had come with news of their own. ‘Edward Mallen wasn’t his real name. His real name was Barry Mercer.’

  Thorne looked at Kitson. ‘Brother?’

  Kitson nodded. ‘Younger brother,’ she said. ‘He was given a new identity thirty years ago. After he helped the police catch Mercer. They moved him and his family to the north-east under a witness protection scheme. Set them all up with new identities, new lives.’

  Thorne nodded, putting it together. It had been Mercer’s own brother who had provided the ‘intelligence’ Ian Tully had mentioned. The information about the armed robbery.

  ‘It’s why Mercer left that one until last,’ Holland said.

  ‘But why the hell would his brother come back to London, if he knew Mercer had been released from prison?’

  ‘God knows,’ Kitson said. ‘Guilt, or something? A death wish?’

  ‘Well he got what he wished for,’ Holland said.

  ‘More to the point, if he was part of a WP scheme, why did anyone let him?’ It was a question to which inside experience provided an answer even before Thorne had finished asking it. He knew very well that few programmes of witness protection could be maintained at the highest level of security for thirty years. There simply wasn’t the money, or the will. It was perfectly possible that nobody had even bothered to inform ‘Edward Mallen’ that his brother had been released. Equally, they could have approved Mallen’s move back to London and set him up in a WP scheme here, but that begged the question of how Mercer had found the address.

  ‘It does mean we need to draw a line under all this very quickly,’ Holland said.

  ‘Well, I think Terry Mercer’s already drawn a line under it.’

  Kitson said, ‘Seriously, Tom.’

  ‘Seriously, what?’

  ‘We’re out,’ Holland said. ‘Me and Yvonne. We can’t do anything else, nothing at all.’ He looked at Kitson and Thorne could see that they’d spent time talking about this, working out what to say between them.

  ‘That’s fine,’ Thorne said, holding up his hands. ‘Look, you know how grateful I am for what you’ve done already and I don’t see why I’d be asking you to do any more anyway. Now Mercer’s dead, I can’t see there’s a lot more needs doing.’

  ‘I’m sure you would have thought of something,’ Holland said. ‘So, as long as you understand that I’m done.’ He flashed another look to Kitson. ‘That we both are.’

  Thorne looked at Kitson, but she was facing front. He sat back. ‘You’ve made your point, Dave, but I don’t think there’s any need to panic. I mean, they haven’t put it together so far.’

  ‘I kind of think they might put it together now though.’ It was clear that Holland was worried and was unhappy about it. ‘Even supposing we’ve got away with it so far, you’d have to be as thick as mince not to work it out now, wouldn’t you? Soon as they find out who Edward Mallen really was and who he grassed up. Soon as some genius points out that his brother was released from prison a few months back, I’ve got a feeling they might have a sneaking suspicion who strung him up.’ He slammed a palm against the headrest. ‘The whole lot’s going to unravel.’

  ‘Dave—’

  ‘I know, you said. “How much more shit can we be in?”’

  Seeing the look on Holland’s face, Thorne once again found himself wondering how Neil Hackett seemed to know so much more than he had any right
to. Where he was getting his ‘intelligence’ from. There was certainly enough anger, enough resentment at what Thorne had asked of him to give Holland cause to go running to the brass.

  And if not Holland…⁠?

  Even considering the alternatives was enough to send bile rising into Thorne’s throat, but at the same time he had to be realistic. He knew that the number of suspects was limited.

  ‘Look, it’s over,’ he said. ‘One way or another. We should at least be grateful for that.’

  ‘I’m sorry we didn’t catch him, Tom,’ Kitson said.

  ‘So am I. But that’s not always the most important thing, is it?’ Thorne looked at Kitson and could see that she didn’t believe it any more than he did.

  The short silence that followed was broken by the ringing of Thorne’s mobile. He saw that it was Hendricks calling, so answered and said, ‘Hang on, Phil, I’ve got Yvonne and Dave here, so I’m going to put you on speaker.’

  He pressed the button on the phone then laid it down between the seats.

  ‘Phil…⁠?’

  ‘The gang’s all here then, is it?’ Hendricks’ voice was tinny through the handset’s small speaker. ‘Everyone all right?’

  Holland and Kitson muttered their hellos.

  ‘Bloody hell, you lot sound cheery.’

  The atmosphere in the car was tense, subdued; a far cry from the raising of glasses privately in the Oak, as they might have been doing had an official investigation ended in the same way.

  ‘We’re listening, Phil,’ Thorne said.

  ‘OK, so I’ve just finished the PM on the body in the Astra. Nothing you wouldn’t expect. Male of approximately seventy years of age, hypoxia due to the inhalation of carbon monoxide, blah blah. Now, I have got one question.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re positive that Mercer was responsible for the hanging in Woolwich, yeah?’

  ‘It was his brother,’ Thorne said. ‘Grassed him up thirty years ago.’

  ‘Ah… in which case we do have a bit of a problem. Unless Mercer did it from beyond the grave.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I checked with the pathologist who did the PM on the Woolwich body and we’ve got a slight issue with time of death. There’s not much in it, maybe no more than an hour or two, but the fact is, our man in the car died before the man who hung himself.’ Hendricks paused. It sounded as though he was eating crisps. ‘You see where I’m going with this, boys and girls?’

  Holland and Kitson looked at Thorne.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Hendricks said.

  Thorne closed his eyes and remembered putting fingers to the dead man’s face. Remembered something else that kid Dennison had said: ‘I told you, he was old. White hair and wrinkles and all that.’ There could only be two explanations for what Hendricks was telling them and Thorne was in little doubt as to which of them to believe.

  Holland leaned forward between the front seats. ‘So assuming Mercer did kill his brother, it can’t have been his body in the car.’

  Kitson lowered her head, swore quietly.

  ‘It wasn’t Mercer in the car,’ Thorne said. ‘It was George Jeffers.’

  PART FOUR

  NOT SO VERY FAR TO FALL

  FIFTY-SIX

  Mercer walks by the river; taking his time and staying as close as he can to the water, from Rotherhithe on the south side towards Greenwich. He thought about doing this a lot when he was inside. Not that he’s ever been one for ‘views’, as such. The countryside, sunsets, all that picture postcard nonsense. You look at something, you think: Yeah that’s nice, whatever, and you move on. He’s never seen the point in hanging around. It’s the same as looking at paintings. Is it good or is it rubbish? Who wants to stare at anything for ten minutes?

  He’s always loved the river though, loved the movement of it. Not so much the flow, but the whole tidal thing. The way it rises and falls like it’s breathing. The dangerous bits, the way you never quite know where you are with it. Funny that they call it Father Thames, because to him it’s always seemed moody, like a woman.

  Moody, like she was.

  He turns off Creek Road then cuts down along the edge of Dreadnought Wharf to the riverbank and thinks, that’s not strictly fair. He didn’t have to like what his wife had done, but once he’d understood why she’d done it, he’d been able to live with it for the most part. There’d been a moment with Barry too, right at the end. When the begging had started and he’d almost been able to see why. He’d always thought there had to have been a good reason for his brother to have done what he did, because he must have known what it would mean. Years spent hiding away like an insect in some shithole, lying every minute of the day and pretending to be somebody you’re not, so that even your own kids don’t know.

  I did it for you, Barry had said; crying like a girl and clawing at the washing line round his neck. Something like that, anyway. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Taking you out of harm’s way? Protecting you from yourself?

  He’s known for a long time that people need to take care of themselves and now that’s exactly what he’s going to do. That’s his new project. As soon as the job was done and that last name was crossed off the list, he knew straight away that would be the way to go.

  There had to be something, after all.

  It was like these idiots who make a bundle and retire too early with sod all to do. Rattling around in big houses. Pots of cash and wives with tit-jobs, but going mental, with nothing to get out of bed for.

  He can’t just walk away. Fade away…

  So, now it’s all about doing whatever it takes to stay safe, for however long he’s got left. Might be twenty years, might be hit by a bus tomorrow, but there’s no way on God’s green earth he’s going back inside. He knows that much.

  He comes to the glazed dome which is the entrance to the Greenwich foot tunnel and walks through. Five minutes across to the Isle of Dogs. It’s cool inside; exciting too, knowing that all the weight of that moody old river is right above your head. He watches a woman and two kids coming towards him, the children whooping and shouting, enjoying the echoes. He supposes that some people would find it spooky down here; the dim, amber light and the way the sound bounces off the tiles. Mercer can’t understand it. He has dreamed the Dead Man’s Walk and has spent far too long hearing the echoes of heavy doors slamming shut and keys turning in locks. Still, he smiles at the woman and her wide-eyed children as they pass.

  On the other side of the river he turns east, walks past Island Gardens then stops when he sees the tower of Christ Church. His knees are hurting, so he sits on a bench to take a breather and thinks about going inside. He wonders if there’s a vicar or someone in there he can have a chat with. They can’t say anything anyway, can they? Can’t pass on anything they hear. Not that he’s planning to walk in there and confess, nothing like that, but it would be nice to just sit and have a natter.

  It was always useful to talk to someone who was actually in the game. Ask them what they thought came after. He’s heard that these days there are priests who don’t even believe in God, but surely they must all have some idea of what’s going on.

  He’d talked to the chaplains at Gartree a fair bit. There was always a cup of tea in there and a hand on your shoulder, and it was certainly nicer talking to them than the psychologists, because all they ever wanted to hear was how sorry you were. He told them he was of course, told them loads of times, because he isn’t stupid. He knew they were the ones the parole board listened to. It wasn’t hard, because he was sorry, even if it wasn’t necessarily about the right things.

  Sorry I got caught.

  Sorry I’ve spent thirty years locked up.

  Sorry I don’t know what my kids look like.

  He sits and rubs his aching knees. There’s a pub opposite and the church is behind him and he tries to make his mind up.

  What he would like to do is talk to someone about the Bible and ask why the God in the new bit is s
o different to the original one. Later on, it’s all forgiveness and cheek-turning, but the first one’s always coming down on people like a ton of bricks and getting his afters on anyone he thinks isn’t toeing the line.

  Mercer knows which one he prefers.

  That first God – the angry God – has no problem at all getting rid of his enemies.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  ‘It’s not broken,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Something, I suppose.’

  ‘Obviously must have been a bit of a pussy-arsed punch.’ Hendricks squeezed Thorne’s hand once more before releasing it and laughed at the yelp of pain from across the table. ‘How’s things with Helen?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Just saying, because if you’re not getting any action from her, you won’t be able to rely on that hand for a while.’

  Thorne smiled, rubbing his knuckles. ‘A man’s best friend.’

  ‘Mrs Fist and her five lovely daughters.’

  ‘Daughters? You?’

  ‘OK, sons in my case. Actually, I’ve always thought of them as the five members of Take That.’

  ‘Which one’s Robbie?’

  Hendricks stuck his middle finger up. ‘That one…’

  The staff at the Bengal Lancer on Kentish Town Road knew Thorne and Hendricks well and, as usual, had brought them over a plate of complimentary poppadums to go with the pints of Kingfisher while they were waiting for their food to be cooked. Hendricks applied a delicate karate chop to the pile and they got stuck in.

  ‘I presume your day got better,’ Hendricks said, ‘after I pissed on everyone’s strawberries.’

  Thorne grunted. ‘Yeah, well finding out our killer wasn’t quite as dead as we’d thought didn’t exactly go down a storm.’ He smeared lime pickle across a fragment of poppadum. ‘Dave and Yvonne were out of the car and on their way back to work pretty sharpish, before I could think of anything I might want them to do.’