Death Message Page 5

  Thorne dug out some chewing gum from his jacket pocket. ‘Not a lot of mercy shown in here…’

  The body had been removed from its final position between the sofa and the fireplace, and it was clear that the dead man had not fallen at the first blow. Aside from the blood, spattered in scratches across the sofa cushions, there were patterns in the other direction, thrown against the glass front of a tropical fish tank and, lower down, finely sprayed across a large wooden bowl filled with smooth stones, black and grey.

  A passing SOCO/CSE followed Thorne’s eyeline. He nodded towards the rectangle of bare boards where the carpet beneath the body had been cut away and removed. ‘Central heating was cranked up, so he probably started leaking like a bastard after less than a week,’ the officer said. ‘Almost as much of him in the carpet as there was anywhere else. Gone right through.’ He pointed, keen as mustard. ‘Look, can you see?’

  Thorne and Holland did, and could. The caramelcoloured blotch on the dusty boards was like damp behind a cistern.

  ‘Are you sure you want this one?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Already got it,’ Thorne said. ‘Brigstocke called when I was on the way over from Hornsey.’ He talked Holland through the PM, focusing on the headlines, finishing on Hendricks’ notions of what constituted a standard number of tattoos on an average used-car salesman.

  Holland was unconvinced. ‘Hendricks has got a few more tattoos than your average pathologist.’ He counted them off, pointing to the appropriate point on his body as he did so. ‘That Arsenal thing on his neck. The Celtic band or whatever you call it on his wrist. That weird symbol on his shoulder. There’s probably a couple more that only his very good friends have ever clapped eyes on.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Thorne said. He stared hard at a SOCO working near by, a smart-arse he’d come across before who’d glanced over with something like a smirk.

  They walked into Tucker’s kitchen. There was washing-up stacked next to the sink and the sheen of Luminol across the work surfaces. On their way out through the hallway they casually stepped over a fingerprint specialist working on a stretch of flaking skirting board.

  ‘Maybe it means something,’ Holland said. ‘That he waited before sending you that picture.’

  ‘Maybe it just slipped his mind.’ Thorne took the stairs two at a time. ‘You know what it’s like. You batter someone to death, take their photo, forget all about it…’

  ‘It might be significant, you know? Something about the day he chose.’

  ‘What? His birthday?’ Thorne turned to Holland, palms raised. ‘First Monday in the month? Let’s not forget how close it was to November the fifth. Maybe this bloke’s got a thing about bonfires.’

  ‘I was only thinking aloud.’

  Thorne stopped at the door and took a breath. ‘Sorry, mate.’ There had been more anger than upset in Holland ’s tone, but Thorne still felt like a twat for being snappy. ‘Maybe he’s just another fucking mentalist, Dave. You know?’

  Outside, Thorne stopped to talk to the video cameraman who was packing away his equipment, while Holland reached for cigarettes. A young couple with a pushchair appeared from between two unit vehicles and marched up to the crime scene tape.

  The man leaned across and shouted to Thorne: ‘What are you filming?’

  Holland opened his mouth, but Thorne beat him to it. ‘It’s a new TV show about a maverick, gay pathologist.’ He put a hand on Holland ’s shoulder, as if to introduce the star of the show. ‘You know the sort of thing. Fuzzy black-and-white bits, half a dozen serial killers in every episode…’

  The clocks going back seemed to have brought the rush hour forward, and the North Circular was already starting to snarl up as Thorne nosed the car towards Finchley.

  ‘Things seem to be going well with DI Porter,’ Holland said. ‘It’s a few months now, isn’t it?’

  Thorne searched Holland ’s face, but saw only honest curiosity. ‘Five, give or take a week. That’s a long time for me.’

  ‘It’s good…’

  Thorne wasn’t about to argue. ‘How’s Chloe?’

  Holland grinned. His daughter had turned three years old a couple of months earlier. ‘Can’t shut her up,’ he said. ‘Coming out with all sorts of weird shit. Stuff she’s picking up at nursery, whatever. She’s going a couple of days a week now. I told you that, didn’t I?’

  It was the first Thorne had heard of it, but he nodded anyway.

  ‘Sophie’s trying to do some work part time, you know? That’ll be good for everyone, I reckon.’

  ‘Right…’

  Holland had been nodding while he spoke. He carried on after he’d turned to look out of the window, as though he were trying to convince himself.

  ‘Definitely,’ Thorne said.

  It was natural that he hadn’t seen quite so much of Holland outside the Job since Chloe had come along. But even when they spent time together at work, Thorne thought that he and Holland weren’t connecting in a way that perhaps they once had. He could see that his colleague – was he a colleague now, as opposed to a friend? – had a lot more on his plate since being made up to sergeant the year before, but Thorne wondered if it didn’t also have something to do with the more subtle demands of a family. With the grinding drive to become the sort of police officer Holland had once professed to despise: the head-down and shut-the-fuck-up kind of copper his father had been. The copper that sometimes, when he’d upset one too many of the wrong people, Thorne wished he had it in himself to be.

  Pulling away from the lights at Henley ’s Corner, something beneath the BMW’s bonnet began to complain, and as Thorne wondered just how hard the complaint was going to hit his wallet, the jokes began. However uncertain things might be, however far they shifted, there would always be Holland ’s shtick about the car: the fact that it was yellow and almost as old as he was, and that Thorne could have bought a new one for what it cost him in repairs every year.

  And it was all fair enough.

  Coppers solved crimes or they didn’t. They laid down their lives to protect others and they shot innocent men for looking swarthy in the wrong place at the wrong time. But smart or stupid, honest or bent, they all took the piss. Took it, and had it taken.

  And you didn’t need a psychology degree to figure out why.

  Some were better at it than others. The likes of Andy Stone had a drawer stuffed with photocopies of colleagues’ warrant cards, so that when and if the time came, they could place embarrassing personal ads on their behalf in the back pages of The Job and Metropolitan Life. Bogus lonely-hearts stuff and requests for mail-order brides. When Samir Karim had split up with his wife a few years before, an ad had appeared the following week with his contact details offering: ‘Double bed for sale. Hardly used.’

  Karim had laughed along with the rest of them, obviously.

  ‘Vorsprung, durch… utterly fucked,’ Holland said, getting into his stride.

  Thorne steered the car slowly through the mess of traffic at the Brent Cross flyover, then turned north towards Hendon, waiting until Holland had hit him with his best shots.

  ‘Say what you like.’ Thorne stroked the steering wheel theatrically. ‘Still my baby.’

  ‘Listen to yourself,’ Holland said. ‘It’s a clapped-out piece of German scrap. It’s not Herbie…’

  Thorne sighed and stared ahead, refusing to dignify the comment with a response. The blocks of single-storey warehouses and furniture superstores crawled by along the length of the A406: Carpet Express; Kingdom of Leather; Staples. His eye was caught by the Carphone Warehouse logo across a set of grey, metal shutters, and it suddenly struck Thorne that the reason for the killer’s delay in sending the photograph might have been altogether simpler yet more bizarre.

  ‘Fritz, maybe…’ Holland said.

  Was it possible that, after committing the murder, the killer had kept a watch on Tucker’s flat? On seeing that the body was going undiscovered, had he simply decided to give the police a helping hand
?

  Ordered or disordered?

  Perhaps he wanted someone to go to the trouble of finding out…

  Next to him, Holland was saying something about a running joke that ran a damn sight better than the car did, but Thorne was already elsewhere. Thinking that the dead were never decorous. That death itself was rarely dignified, whether you were tottering towards collapse on a mixed ward or rotting into a carpet. But that for the most unfortunate, what was left could barely even be called ‘remains’.

  Thinking that, when people talked about leaving something of themselves behind, they usually meant more than just a stain on a floorboard.

  FIVE

  Back at Becke House, the news was mixed. But then, life itself was perfectly capable of taking the piss…

  From Kitson, the familiar two-steps-forward-threesteps-back routine. The blood on the knife retrieved from the litter bin had been identified as belonging to Deniz Sedat. They had also managed to pull a decent set of prints from the handle. Sadly, though, these failed to match with any held on record.

  From Karim, a predictably frustrating technical update. With a cell-site search having been formally authorised by Brigstocke, T-Mobile had been in touch to acknowledge the request. And again later, to say that they would give it their highest priority, as soon as their virus-riddled computer system was up and running again.

  Thorne retreated to his office, but five minutes later Andy Stone was babbling at him from the doorway.

  ‘There’s a DCI from S &O on the phone.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he’s been calling every fifteen minutes since lunchtime trying to get hold of the guvnor.’

  Thorne hadn’t seen Brigstocke since his return from the mortuary. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘No idea, some meeting. Anyway, I think this bloke’s had enough, because now he’s just asking to speak to the appropriate DI.’

  ‘Kitson’s looking after the Sedat case,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I don’t think it’s the Sedat case he wants to talk about…’

  Thorne was curious, but he was also exhausted, and with more than enough to occupy his mind at that moment. He shook his head. ‘He’ll call back.’

  ‘He’s waiting for me to put him through.’

  ‘Tell him you couldn’t find me.’

  ‘He won’t be happy…’

  Thorne stared until Stone backed, muttering, into the corridor. He began to wonder if he’d inadvertently activated some kind of shit magnet, and when the phone on his desk began to ring a minute later, he just stared at it for a few seconds. Thought about sneaking down to the canteen for tea and a piece of cake, sorting out that weaselly little fucker Stone later on…

  ‘Your guvnor’s been ducking me all day. You’re not trying to piss me about as well, are you, Tom?’

  There’d been laughter, of a sort, as he’d asked the question, but it was clear enough from DCI Keith Bannard’s tone that he wasn’t joking. Thorne presumed it was rhetorical anyway, being more of a threat than a genuine enquiry.

  ‘I think DCI Brigstocke’s been stuck in meetings most of the day, sir,’ he said. ‘Have you got his mobile number?’

  ‘I’ve rung three times. Twice he’s dropped the call and now he’s turned the phone off.’

  Thorne guessed Brigstocke had got wind that S &O were on his case, presuming, as Thorne had done, that they were still trying to muscle in on the Sedat case. ‘Shall I take a message? I suppose you’ve already left one on his office voicemail?’

  ‘Tell me about your dead car salesman,’ Bannard said.

  ‘Tucker?’ Suddenly, Thorne had a lot more to occupy his mind.

  ‘Tucker. Raymond, Anthony.’ There was gravel in the voice, giving an edge to what would otherwise have been a gentle West Country burr. Get off my land, or I’ll rip your lungs out…

  ‘Tell you what?’ Thorne said.

  There was a sigh and a sniff. ‘Right. Silly buggers, is it?’

  ‘I’m not trying to be difficult…’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I just don’t have much more than you could easily get off the bulletin, you know? So, I don’t think I can really be a lot of help.’ There was a soft knock, and Thorne looked up to see one of the civilian office assistants staring in through the window in the door. She formed her fingers into a ‘T’ and held them up to the glass. Thorne shook his head.

  ‘I know a lot about Ray Tucker and his mates,’ Bannard said. ‘Fuck of a lot, matter of fact. It’s just this very recent stuff I’m a bit woolly on… the getting his head caved in and what have you.’ He laughed again, and let out a short volley of coughs, which caused Thorne momentarily to pull the phone away from his ear. ‘The “dead in his front room” stuff, see? It’s just about getting up to speed really, keeping on top of things. So, anything you can tell me will almost certainly be useful. Fair enough, DI Thorne?’

  Thorne duly told Bannard what had come to light that day. He told him about the state of the body when it was discovered, the likely murder weapon and the preliminary results of the PM, sensing, even as he did so, that he wasn’t telling the man anything he didn’t know already.

  The only thing he neglected to mention – for no very good reason he could put his finger on – was that he’d been sent a picture of the dead man two days before.

  ‘“Ray Tucker and his mates”, you said?’ Thorne heard Bannard take a drink of something on the other end of the line.

  ‘For fifteen years, Tucker, better known to us and his close friends as “Rat”, was a leading member of the “Black Dogs”. They’re one of the bigger biker gangs, OK? Swallowed up two or three other mobs over the years and nobody’s quite sure how many members there are now, but thirty-five or forty, easy. They’re dotted around, but we’ve got most of them based up towards the edge of north London and Hertfordshire these days.’

  Thorne had heard the name. ‘Hell’s Angels, right?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Business rivals, as a matter of fact, but they all work along the same lines: a strict hierarchy, members sworn to secrecy, the wearing of club colours and what have you.’

  ‘And I’m guessing most of the time, when they meet up, it’s got fuck all to do with motorbikes.’

  ‘Not a great deal, no.’

  ‘What is it, dope?’

  ‘Dope, cocaine, ecstasy, whatever. They work with affiliated gangs in Europe, bring the stuff in from Holland and Scandinavia. We think they’ve just started moving into the heroin business.’

  ‘Not beating up mods on Brighton seafront any more, then?’

  ‘There’s still plenty of violence,’ Bannard said. ‘Plenty. They move around, expand into new areas, whatever, and the turf wars can get seriously tasty. Mind you, they’ve gone beyond machetes and bike chains. We found rocket launchers and assault rifles in a Black Dogs lock-up last year.’ He paused, as though he were making sure that the seriousness, the scale, of what he was describing was sinking in.

  ‘That explains the tattoos,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Thorne told him about the conversations he’d had with Hendricks and Holland. Bannard listened, then described one tattoo in particular, a pair of entwined daggers, but Thorne couldn’t recall seeing it.

  ‘It’s usually a small one, but it’ll be there somewhere,’ Bannard said. ‘Go back and have a look. That’s a “kill” symbol. Most gangs have got them, a special patch or a tattoo, and they have to be earned…’

  Another seemingly significant pause. Thorne bit. ‘So, what…? You reckon that whoever smashed Tucker’s head in has just earned one of his own?’

  ‘It’s possible. Maybe Rat got on the wrong side of somebody.’

  ‘I’ve seen him,’ Thorne said, ‘and I think it’s safe to assume he pissed off someone.’

  The S &O man’s laugh seemed genuine this time, but just when they seemed to be getting along, Thorne spoiled it by asking if there was a specific reason why Bannard had called in the first place.

 
The throat was cleared and the voice sharpened. ‘Obviously, Tucker was someone of interest to us, so his murder is hardly something we can ignore. Letting you know would seem to be a good idea, don’t you think? Would be a courtesy, that’s all.’

  It sounded very reasonable. ‘So you wouldn’t be trying to stake a claim or anything like that?’ Thorne asked. ‘Same as you’re doing with the Deniz Sedat murder.’

  ‘Nobody’s stepping on anyone else’s toes here.’

  ‘I understand that, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But surely you can understand people thinking that you were letting someone else do the donkey work, you know? So you could come in at the last minute like the heavy mob.’

  ‘The case you mentioned isn’t one of mine. And you’re being seriously fucking cheeky, Inspector.’

  It was Thorne’s turn to leave the significant pause. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Now, you’ve been helpful, so let’s not fall out, but there’s just one more thing. I wonder if you could tell me why the Tucker murder was taken away from the team at Homicide East that originally caught it, and allocated to you?’

  Thorne heard nothing he liked in the seemingly innocent enquiry. He could make out Bannard’s enjoyment at having caught him out in the lie-by-omission. And there was no mistaking the relish with which his superior demonstrated just how well connected he was in every sense of the word. He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so outmanoeuvred by another copper. So outclassed.

  With no choice, Thorne finally told Bannard about the message from Raymond Tucker’s killer: the photo that had started everything. Gave another answer which he was sure Keith Bannard had already known when he was asking the question.

  ‘How did that go?’ Kitson asked.

  ‘Do you mean the phone conversation with Serious and Organised, or the bollocking I’ve just given Andy Stone for putting the fucker’s call through?’

  ‘Well, I’m guessing the second part was more enjoyable, but I meant the phone call.’

  They were standing in the corner of the Incident Room, behind Karim’s desk, where a collection of mugs and a stone-age kettle sat on top of a small fridge. Thorne reached for the sugar. There were dried brown lumps in the bowl and caked on to the teaspoon. He turned around and let anyone within earshot know that the next person to stir their tea and then get sugar without wiping the spoon first would be rocketing straight to the top of his shit list.