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  Hendricks spoke about death and its intimacies with considerably less passion than he demonstrated for Arsenal Football Club. Being from Manchester and not supporting the dreaded Manchester United was far from being the only finger he stuck up at convention. There were the clothes in varying shades of black, the shaved head, the ludicrous number of earrings. There were the mysterious piercings, one for each new boyfriend….

  He might have spoken dispassionately, almost matter-of-factly, but Thorne knew how much Phil Hendricks cared about the dead. How hard he listened to their bodies when they spoke to him. When they gave up their secrets.

  “Asphyxia due to ligature strangulation,” Hendricks said. “Plus, I think it happened on the floor. He had carpet burns on both knees. I think the killer put the body on the bed afterward. Posed it.”

  “Right…”

  “Unfortunately, I still can’t tell for sure whether or not he was strangled before, after, or during the sodomy.”

  “So, you’re not perfect, then?”

  “I know one thing. Whoever did it has a big future in gay porn. Our killer’s hung like a donkey. He did quite a bit of damage up there….”

  Thorne knew he’d been right to get rid of the sandwich. He’d lost count of the conversations like this he’d had with Hendricks over the years. His head was used to them, but his stomach still found them tricky.

  Thorne called it the H-plan diet…

  “What about secretions?”

  “Sorry, mate, bugger all. Only thing up there that shouldn’t have been was a trace of spermicidal lubricant from the condom he was wearing. He was careful, in every sense…”

  Thorne sighed. “Where’s Holland? He still with you?”

  “No chance, mate. He shot away first chance he had. Why did you send him down anyway? Actually, I’m hurt you didn’t want to watch me work…”

  These conversations, the ones that followed bodies, always ended on something lighthearted. Football, TV, anything…

  “DC Holland hasn’t seen you work nearly enough, though, Phil,” Thorne said. “It still gives him the heebies. I’m doing him a favor, toughening him up…”

  Hendricks laughed. “Right…”

  Right, Thorne thought. He knew very well that when it came to slabs and scalpels you never toughened up. You just pretended you had…

  Standing in the Incident Room, preparing to brief the team, Thorne felt, as he often did on these occasions, like a teacher who was feared but not particularly liked. The slightly psychotic PE teacher. These thirty or so people in front of him—detectives, uniformed officers, civilian and auxiliary staff—might just as well have been children. There were as many different types as could be found sitting in any drafty school hall in London, even as Thorne was speaking.

  There were those who appeared to be listening intently but would have to check with colleagues later to find out exactly what they were supposed to be doing. Some, on the other hand, would be overkeen, asking questions and nodding eagerly, with every intention of doing as little as possible when the time came. There were the bullies and the picked upon. The geeks and the morons.

  The Metropolitan Police Service. Service, note, with the emphasis on caring and efficiency. Thorne knew very well that most of the people in the room, himself on some occasions included, were happier back when they were a force.

  One to be reckoned with.

  It was four days since that first postmortem conversation with Hendricks, and if the pathologist had been quick, the team at Forensic Science Services had outdone him. Seventy-two hours for DNA results was really going some, especially when the crime scene was as much of a DNA nightmare as that hotel room had been. One notch up from a homeless shelter, it had yielded hair and skin samples from upward of a dozen individuals, male and female. Then there were the cats and dogs and at least two other animal species as yet unidentified.

  And yet, incredibly, they’d found a match.

  They were no nearer finding the killer, of course, but now they were at least certain who his victim had been. The dead man’s DNA had been on file, for a very good reason.

  Thorne cleared his throat, got a bit of hush. “Douglas Andrew Remfry, thirty-six years of age, was released from Derby Prison ten days ago, having served seven years of a twelve-year sentence for the rapes of three young women. We’re putting together an accurate picture of his movements since then, but so far it looks like a pretty consistent shuttle between pub, betting shop, and the house in New Cross where he was living with his mother and her…?” Thorne looked across at Russell Brigstocke, who held up three fingers. He turned back to the room. “Her third husband. We’ll hopefully have a lot more in terms of Remfry’s movements and so on later today. DCs Holland and Stone are there at the moment with a search warrant. Mrs. Remfry was somewhat less than cooperative….”

  An acnefied trainee detective near the front shook his head, his face screwed up in distaste for this woman he’d never met. Thorne gave him a good, hard stare. “She’s just lost a son,” he said. Thorne let his words hang there for a few seconds before continuing. “If the landlady is to be believed, Remfry, unless his killer happens also to be his double, booked the room himself. He didn’t feel the need to give a name, but he was happy enough to hand over the cash. We need to find out why. Why was he so keen to go to that hotel? Who was he meeting…?”

  Thorne, in spite of himself, was smiling slightly as he recalled the interview with the hotel’s formidable owner—a bottle blonde with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp and a sixty-fags-a-day rasp.

  “And who pays for the replacement of those sheets?” she’d asked. “All them pillows and blankets that this nutter nicked? They were one hundred percent cotton, none of ’em was cheap…” Thorne had nodded, pretended to write something down, wondering if her memory was as good as her capacity to talk utter shite with a straight face. “And the stains on the mattress. Where do I get the money to get that lot cleaned?”

  “I’ll see if I can find you a form to fill in,” Thorne said, thinking, Will I fuck, you hatchet-faced old mare…

  In the Incident Room, the trainee detective Thorne had stared at before poked a single finger up. Thorne nodded.

  “Are we looking at the prison angle, sir? Someone Remfry was in Derby with, maybe. Someone he got on the wrong side of…”

  “Someone he got up the backside of!” The comment came from a mustached DC sitting off to Thorne’s left toward the back of the room. Thorne did not know the man. He’d been brought in, like many in the room, from different squads to make up the numbers. His “backside” comment got a big laugh. Thorne manufactured a chuckle.

  “We’re looking at that. Remfry’s sexual preference was certainly for women before he got put away…”

  “Some of them develop a taste for it inside, though, don’t they?” This time the laugh from his mates felt forced. Thorne allowed it to die away, let his voice drop a little to regain attention and control.

  “Most of you lot are going to be tracing the most likely group of suspects we’ve got at the moment…”

  The trainee nodded knowingly. One of the clever ones. He thought this was some kind of conversation. “The male relatives of Remfry’s rape victims.”

  “Right,” Thorne said. “Husbands, boyfriends, brothers. Sod it, fathers at a push. I want them all found, interviewed, and eliminated. With a bit of luck we might eliminate all of them except one. DI Kitson has drawn up a list and will be doing the allocations.” Thorne dropped his notes onto a chair, pulled his jacket from the back of it, almost done. “Right, that’s it. Remfry’s were particularly nasty offenses. Maybe someone wasn’t convinced he’d paid for them…”

  The DC with the porno mustache smirked and muttered something to the uniform in front of him. Thorne pulled on his jacket and narrowed his eyes.

  “What?”

  Suddenly he might just as well have been that teacher, holding out a hand, demanding to see whatever was being chewed.

  The
DC spat it out. “Seems to me that whoever killed Remfry did everyone a favor. Fucker asked for everything he got.”

  It was far from being the first such comment Thorne had heard since the DNA match had come back. He looked across at the DC. He knew that he should slap the cocky sod down. He knew that he should make a speech about their jobs as police officers, their need to be dispassionate, whatever the case, whoever the victim. He should talk about debts having been paid and maybe even drag out stuff about one man’s life being worth no more and no less than any other.

  He couldn’t be bothered.

  Dave Holland was always happiest deferring to rank or, if he got the chance, pulling it. When it was just himself and another DC, things were never clear-cut and it made him uncomfortable.

  It was simple. As a DC, he deferred to a DS and above, while he was able to play the big man with trainee detectives and uniformed officers. Out and about with a fellow DC, and things should just settle into a natural pattern. It was down to personality, to clout.

  With Andy Stone, Holland felt outranked. He didn’t know why and it peeved him.

  They’d got on well enough so far, but Stone could be a bit “up himself.” He had a coolness, a flashiness, Holland reckoned, that he turned on around women and superior officers. Stone was clearly fit and good-looking. He had very short dark hair and blue eyes, and though Holland wasn’t certain, when Stone walked around, it looked as though he knew the effect he was having. What Holland was sure of was that Stone’s suits were cut that bit better, and that around him he felt like a ruddy-cheeked boy scout. Holland would probably still get the vote as housewives’ choice, but they all wanted to mother him. He doubted they wanted to mother Andy Stone.

  Stone could also be overcocky when it came to bad-mouthing their superiors, and though Holland wasn’t averse to the game himself, it got a bit tricky when it came to Tom Thorne. Holland knew the DI’s faults well enough. He’d been on the receiving end of his temper, had been dragged down with him on more than one occasion…

  Yet, for all that, having Thorne think well of him, consider that something he’d done was worthwhile, was, for Holland, pretty much as good as it could get.

  He’d been on the team a lot longer than Andy Stone, and Holland thought that should have counted for something. It didn’t appear to. It had been Stone who’d done most of the talking when they’d shown up bright and early on Mary Remfry’s doorstep with a search warrant.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Remfry.” Stone’s voice was surprisingly light for such a tall man. “We have a warrant to enter and…”

  She’d turned away then and, leaving the door open, had trudged away down the thickly carpeted hallway without a word. Somewhere inside a dog was barking.

  Stone and Holland had entered and stood at the bottom of the stairs deciding who should start where. Stone made for the living room, where, through the partially opened door, they could see a silver-haired man slumped in an armchair, lost in morning TV trivia. As Stone leaned on the door he hissed to Holland, nodding toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Remfry had seemed to be heading.

  “Cup of tea likely, you reckon?”

  It wasn’t.

  It seemed odd to Holland, needing a warrant to search a victim’s house. Still, like Stone had said, Remfry was a convicted rapist and the mother’s attitude hadn’t really given them a lot of choice. It wasn’t just the grief at her son’s death turning to anger. It was a genuine fury at what she saw as the implication in one particular line of questioning. Considering the manner and circumstances of her son’s death, it was a necessary line to pursue, but she was having no truck with it at all.

  “Dougie was a ladies’ man, always. A proper ladies’ man.”

  She was saying it again, now, having suddenly appeared in the doorway of her son’s bedroom, where Holland was methodically going through drawers and cupboards. Mary Remfry, midfifties, tugging a cardigan tightly over her nightdress, watched, but did not really take in what Holland was doing. Her mind was concentrated on talking at him.

  “Dougie loved women and women loved him right back. That’s gospel, that is.”

  Holland was considerate going through the room. He would have been whether Mrs. Remfry had been watching or not, but he made the extra effort to be respectful as he sorted through drawers full of vests and pants and thrust a gloved hand into pillowcases and duvet covers. In the short time since his release, Remfry had obviously not acquired much in the way of new clothing or possessions, but there seemed to be a good deal still here from the time before he went to prison. There was plenty from before he ever left school…

  “He never missed out where birds was concerned,” Remfry’s mother said. “Even after he came out, they was still sniffing round. Calling him up. You listening to me?”

  Holland half turned, half nodded, and, as if on cue, pulled out a decent-size stash of porn magazines from beneath the single bed.

  “See?” Mary Remfry pointed at the magazines. “You won’t find any men in them.” She sounded as proud as if Holland were dusting off a degree certificate or a Nobel Prize nomination. As it was, he squatted by the bed, flicking through the pile of yellowing Razzles, Escorts, and Fiestas, feeling his face flush, turning away from the proud mother in the doorway. The magazines all dated from the mid to late eighties, well before Dougie began his days at Her Majesty’s pleasure, banged up with six hundred and fifty other men.

  Holland pushed the dirty mags to one side, reached back under the bed, and pulled out a brown plastic bag, folded over on itself several times. He let the bag drop open and a bundle of envelopes, bound with a thick elastic band, fell on to the carpet.

  As soon as he saw the address, neatly typed on the topmost envelope, Holland felt a tingle of excitement. Just a small one. What he was looking at would probably mean nothing, but it was almost certainly more significant than fifteen-year-old socks and ancient stroke mags.

  “Andy…!”

  Mary Remfry wrapped her cardigan a little tighter around herself and took a step into the room. “What have you got there?”

  Holland could hear Stone’s feet on the stairs. He slipped off the elastic band, reached inside the first envelope, and pulled out the letter.

  “So we can definitely rule out autoerotic asphyxiation, then?” DCI Russell Brigstocke, a little embarrassed, looked around the table at Thorne, at Phil Hendricks, at DI Yvonne Kitson.

  “Well, I’m not sure we can rule anything out,” Thorne said. “But I think the ‘auto’ bit implies that you do it yourself.”

  “You know what I mean, smart-arse…”

  “Nothing erotic went on in that room,” Hendricks said.

  Brigstocke nodded. “No chance it was an extreme sex game that went wrong?” Thorne smirked. Brigstocke caught the look. “What?” Thorne said nothing. “Look, I’m just asking the questions…”

  “Asking the questions that Jesmond told you to ask,” Thorne said. He made no secret of his opinion that their detective chief superintendent had sprung fully formed from some course that turned out politically astute, organizationally capable drones. Acceptable faces with a neat line in facile questions, a good grasp of economic realities, and, as it happened, an aversion to anybody called Thorne.

  “They’re questions that need answering,” Brigstocke said. “Could it have been some sort of sex game?”

  Thorne found it hard to believe that the likes of Trevor Jesmond had ever done the things that he, Brigstocke, or any other copper did, day in and day out. It was unimaginable that he had ever broken up a fistfight at closing time, or fiddled his expenses, or stood between a knife and the body it was intended for.

  Or told a mother that her only son had been sodomized and strangled to death in a grotty hotel room.

  “It wasn’t a game,” Thorne said.

  Brigstocke looked at Hendricks and Kitson. He sighed. “I’ll take your expressions of thinly disguised scorn as agreement with DI Thorne, then, shall I?” He pushed his glasses up his nose
with the crook of his first finger, then ran the hand through the thick black hair of which he was so proud. The quiff was less pronounced than usual, there was some gray creeping in. He could cut a vaguely absurd figure, but Thorne knew that when Brigstocke lost it, he was as hard a man as he had ever worked with.

  Thorne, Brigstocke, Kitson, Hendricks the civilian. These four, together with Holland and Stone, were the core of Team 3 at the Serious Crime Group (West). This was the group that made the decisions, formulated policy, and guided the investigations with—and even on occasion without—the approval of those higher up.

  Team 3 had been up and running a good while, handling the ordinary cases but specializing—though that was not a word Thorne would have used—in cases that were anything but ordinary…

  “So,” Brigstocke said, “we’ve got everybody out chasing down all the likely relatives of Remfry’s victims. Still favorite with everybody?”

  Nods around the table.

  “A long way from odds-on, though,” Thorne said. There were things that bothered him, that didn’t quite mesh with the vengeful relative scenario. He couldn’t picture an anger carried around for that many years fermenting into something lethal, corrosive, then manifesting itself in the way it had in that hotel room. There was something almost stage-managed about what he had seen on that filthy mattress. Posed, Hendricks had said.

  And he was still troubled by the early morning call to the florist…

  Thorne thought there was something odd about the message. He couldn’t believe that it was simple carelessness, so the only conclusion was that the killer must have wanted the police to hear his voice on that answering machine. It was as if he were introducing himself.

  “What came up at the briefing,” Kitson said, “the stuff about Remfry turning queer inside? Worth looking into…?”

  Thorne glanced toward Hendricks. A gay man who was choosing to ignore the word Kitson had used, or else genuinely didn’t give a fuck.

  “Yeah,” Thorne said. “Whatever he might or might not have got up to when he was inside, he was definitely straight before he went in. Don’t forget that he raped three women…”