Death Message Page 9

  Nicklin was a man, not a monster…

  ‘You had lunch?’ Nicklin asked. Thorne shook his head. ‘Very good today.’ He patted his belly. ‘Piling on the pounds, of course, but I’m hardly the type to work out all day, am I?’

  A man Thorne would be happy to see die in prison.

  In the pub the night before, Lilley had talked about there being a couple of those she’d put away on whom she’d always keep a watchful eye. Observe their progress through the system. It was the same for Thorne, and Nicklin was top of that mercifully short list.

  ‘Why is he sending the pictures to me?’

  Nicklin pretended to be taken aback. ‘Bloody hell. You don’t want to waste any time, do you?’ The voice was quieter than the one Thorne remembered, and coarser. He presumed that Nicklin, like many prisoners, was smoking heavily. ‘On a promise later on?’

  ‘You’re not as fascinating as you think you are,’ Thorne said. ‘And I get bored very easily. Why am I getting the pictures?’

  Nicklin raised a hand to his face, brushed delicately at the side of his nose for a few seconds. ‘That was a favour to me,’ he said.

  Thorne tried hard to show nothing. ‘Why does Marcus Brooks owe you any favours?’

  ‘I suppose you could say that I took him under my wing.’

  ‘I bet you did.’

  ‘Showed him the ropes when he got here.’

  Thorne had already checked. Like many prisoners, Brooks had been moved around. He’d spent time in Wandsworth and Birmingham before arriving at Long Lartin towards the end of the previous year. ‘Was that all you showed him?’

  ‘No point. I could see Marcus wasn’t interested in anything like that.’

  ‘Which probably made it even more exciting, right?’

  ‘Where are you dredging this stuff up from?’ Nicklin asked.

  At the time of his arrest five years before, Nicklin had been married for several years, but he’d lived a number of lives under assumed names, and had worked, during one of them, as a rent boy in the West End. Thorne had no idea if Nicklin had a conventional sexuality of any sort; only that he would fuck anyone, in any way necessary, to gain power over them.

  ‘We were close,’ Nicklin said. ‘Friends.’

  ‘This is all very heartwarming…’

  ‘I was around to dole out the odd piece of advice when he came in here, and he did the occasional good turn for me. There’s always someone wants to have a go at the local nutter, you know? Marcus helped me out once or twice.’

  ‘I thought you could look after yourself,’ Thorne said. ‘I heard about that poor bastard in Belmarsh.’ Thorne had been sent a full report when, two years previously, Nicklin had left a fellow inmate brain-dead after calmly but forcefully jamming a sharpened spoon into his ear.

  Nicklin beamed. ‘I’m touched that you’ve been taking an interest.’

  ‘Well,’ Thorne said, ‘I worry. We all do. Me and the families of the men and women you killed. Charlie Garner’s grandparents. We like to be double sure you’re still where we think you are. That you haven’t got creative with the bed-sheets or a bottle of smuggled painkillers.’

  Nicklin’s expression didn’t waver. ‘Seriously, I’m touched. And it’s good, you know, that the pair of us have been keeping an eye on each other.’

  Thorne felt the colour rising. ‘What?’

  Nicklin waved the question aside, as though he preferred to delay such prosaic push and shove for a little longer. ‘You’ve not changed much, I don’t think.’ He pointed at the straight scar that ran along Thorne’s chin. ‘This is new. And there’s a lot more grey in the hair. Looking pretty good, though.’

  Thorne could not say the same thing. He didn’t know if the baldness had been Nicklin’s choice, but the creased and pitted head only emphasised a weight gain far greater than might normally have been expected from an extended diet of prison food. If his teeth were looking better, the other features had sunk into the jaundiced flesh of his face. A rash of tiny whiteheads was clustered just inside one nostril. There was dry skin along the lines of both lips. But the eyes were warm still, and seductive.

  ‘What did you mean?’ Thorne asked. ‘When you said Brooks was doing you a favour.’

  The Legal Visits Area was little more than a large corridor with a series of interview booths running off it. Each had a thick, Perspex wall at the front, so that the prisoner could remain ‘in sight and out of hearing’ of the prison officers on patrol, with CCTV cameras angled in such a way that any documentation could not be seen. On either side, inmates were meeting with solicitors or probation officers, and muffled voices, raised as often as not, bled through the flimsy partitions that separated one booth from the next. For a few seconds before he spoke, Nicklin gazed around as if he’d never been there before. As though he were suddenly amazed at the dirty finger-marks on the glass, at the drabness of the pale yellow walls and the MDF. ‘You do know about his girlfriend and the kid?’ he said. ‘The reason why this is happening?’

  Thorne nodded.

  ‘Right, well, you can imagine how fired up he was then. A fortnight before he was due to get out. He went through that whole fucking hippy-dippy range of shit you’re supposed to go through when you lose someone: guilt, denial, rage, acceptance, whatever. Only he went through them fast, and he never quite got to the nice toasty part at the end. Marcus was just left with the rage, and it did him a power of good. It made him able to deal with what had happened, to make decisions. It reconfigured him.’

  ‘Why was he so sure it was the Black Dogs who were responsible?’

  ‘Someone in here passed the word. I don’t know who, but those fuckers made certain he got the message.’ Nicklin widened his eyes. ‘They wanted him in pain, and he was. He still is, I know that much. But now, so are they. All he talked about before he got released was how much he was going to make them suffer in return. We talked about it a lot.’

  ‘You must have fucking loved that,’ Thorne said. ‘Someone else you could send out there and encourage to kill.’

  ‘I did nothing, I swear. Marcus didn’t need any encouragement. I just made the odd… suggestion.’

  ‘The pictures?’

  ‘I asked if he’d mind sending you the messages.’

  Thorne leaned forward, but Nicklin did not back away an inch from him in return. ‘Where did you get my number?’

  Nicklin puffed out his cheeks. ‘For someone who clearly has a brain, you can be as thick as shit sometimes. And careless.’

  Thorne’s mind was racing through scenarios. He knew Nicklin was good with computers, and must have had access to them inside. Had he been hacking into phone records? If he could get them…

  ‘Three things.’ Nicklin raised his fingers one at a time. ‘Shop around for your utilities. Try to keep that overdraft under control a bit. And stop eating so many takeaways, or I swear you’ll end up as porky as I am.’

  Thorne took a few seconds to get it, then almost laughed, despite the horrendous possibilities. ‘You’ve had someone going through my bin?’

  ‘A friend of mine who lives in your neck of the woods pops by now and again to rummage around for me. Has done for quite some time.’ He paused, gave a wry smile. ‘I think I know you pretty well now, and I do mean above and beyond what brand of washing-up liquid you use.’

  ‘And you don’t think I’m going to do anything about this?’

  ‘I think you might buy a shredder.’ Nicklin said. ‘But if you mean do anything to me, I’m not sure it’s going to make an awful lot of difference to my sentence.’

  Thorne knew he was right. Nicklin had been able to attack the inmate in Belmarsh safe in the knowledge that any extension to his sentence would have been purely cosmetic. It was what could make lifers, real lifers, such dangerous prisoners. ‘Why wait until now?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘I had no way to use the information. None that I would have been satisfied with, anyway. I did think about having some fun with your credit cards, but seriously,
what am I going to do? Ring you up in the middle of the night and breathe down the phone at you? Doing this is a lot more interesting, has a lot more possibilities, and I need that in here. The drama classes just aren’t doing it for me, you know?’

  ‘I don’t see why Brooks would agree to sending photos of these people he’s killed to a copper. A little risky, I would have said.’

  ‘I told you, he’s doing me a favour and there’s really not a lot of risk.’

  ‘You reckon? If it wasn’t for the photos, we wouldn’t even know who he is. And every crime scene gets us closer to him.’

  Nicklin shrugged. ‘Most murder victims show up eventually. They bob to the surface, or a dog starts digging, or some neighbour with a big nose sniffs them out. Since when has getting a sneak preview actually helped you catch anyone?’

  It was a fair point. ‘And there was I thinking this was all about you being helpful.’

  ‘Fuck, no. I just want you frustrated.’ Nicklin grew more animated as he continued; searched for Thorne’s eyes with his own. ‘I want you involved in this because I know how much you care. You probably care a little less about dead bikers than you do about little old ladies, but you care enough to get caught up in it. I like the idea of that. I just fancied walking around in here, thinking about you going quietly barmy, while the bodies kept piling up on your queer mate’s chopping board.’

  Thorne had not bothered to take off his jacket. He leaned back on the chair and forced his hands down into the pockets; let them tighten into fists when they were out of sight. ‘What’s your friend’s plan?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘How long is he going to carry on with this?’

  ‘Until he feels like they’ve paid enough, I would have thought. Or until he’s had enough. Whichever comes first.’

  ‘Can you contact him?’

  ‘No.’ Nicklin looked at Thorne, unblinking. Said it again.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Thorne said.

  Nicklin seemed mildly disappointed. ‘Listen, there’s really no point lying when you’re in here. It’s like tidying up, or caring what you look like. It’s actually a relief not to have to bother.’

  ‘If Brooks decides to get in touch-’

  ‘He won’t,’ Nicklin said. ‘He’s moving on.’ He sighed and nodded when he saw that Thorne was about to press the point. ‘But if he does, I’ll be sure to give him your best.’

  Thorne pushed back his chair.

  ‘Never know your luck.’ Nicklin scratched lazily at his neck, fingers curled against the stubble. ‘You might get the chance to do it yourself.’

  Seeing that Thorne had left his chair, a prison officer stepped towards the door. Nicklin stood too, turned and leaned back against the table. ‘It’s not the same for me as it is for Marcus,’ he said. ‘I don’t hate you, not at all, and I don’t give two fucks about revenge. You do know that, don’t you?’

  Thorne kept on walking. ‘I don’t care.’

  Nicklin clearly found this hilarious. ‘Course you do,’ he said.

  Brooks raised the handset, checked the small screen and pressed the button to shoot. Marvelling still at how much this technology had come on in the time he’d been inside. Back when he’d gone down, as far as he could remember, people had just been starting to use their phones to do other things than make calls. But Christ, he could hardly believe the stuff that could be done now, the extent to which these gadgets had come to dominate people’s lives six years later.

  Celebrations. Accidents. Disasters.

  It didn’t seem to matter what the occasion was, punters would be reaching for their Nokias and Motorolas and Samsungs, and chances were the camera would be used before loved ones were called. Wrong place, right time, right place, whatever. Funny or plain disgusting. All of it captured, saved to an inbox, and sold to Sky or the Sun or whoever else stumped up the cash and was desperate to share some on-the-spot footage with the world. Where else could you get pictures of poor fuckers picking their way through smoke-filled Tube trains, or staggering, blackened and bleeding like stuck pigs, from the wreckage of a bus?

  There was no denying, it was seriously handy.

  He’d seen that stuff on TV when he was in Long Lartin; had discussed it with Nicklin. Marking out dead time on the landing; putting the world to rights in his cell or Nicklin’s. They’d talked about all sorts of shit like that, whatever was on the front page, until the news had come about Angie and Robbie and he’d had more important things to worry about.

  The man was on the move, so he moved with him. Slowly, on the other side of the road. Keeping his subject in shot, staying that little way behind so he’d have time to lower the phone if the man turned round.

  A year or two before, there’d been a lot of bollocks talked about the craze for ‘happy slapping’: kids filming strangers’ reactions when they attacked them, then passing the footage around like they were swapping football cards. Nicklin had thought it was funny, had got quite worked up when the papers made such a fuss about it. He’d asked why the fuck anyone was surprised. I mean, you couldn’t uninvent this stuff, could you? Everyone used their phones in the same weird ways, he’d said. Coppers and perverts, and all sorts. So why not schoolkids, who hadn’t made their minds up yet which way they were likely to go?

  Brooks thought about what he was doing. Wasn’t it just a more extreme version of happy slapping? He wondered if maybe that’s where Nicklin had got the idea from.

  A young black girl coming towards him slowed down and turned to see what Brooks was pointing his phone at. She looked across the street, then back at him, and carried on walking, not seeing a whole lot to get worked up about.

  Brooks smiled at the girl, then continued filming, using his thumb to zoom in as far as he could go.

  He was worked up enough for both of them.

  Thorne had bought himself lunch at the station, eaten it while he was waiting for the train back to Paddington. Soggy pizza and piss-poor coffee. Replacing one bad taste for another. Thinking about Stuart Nicklin while he ate; the prisoner still laughing when the warder had put a hand in the small of his back to guide him from the room.

  Brigstocke called before the train had pulled out of the station. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Long Lartin.’

  ‘Who the fuck’s in Long Lartin? Never mind-’

  ‘I’ve got lots to tell you.’

  ‘It’ll have to wait,’ Brigstocke said. ‘We’ve got a likely-looking match on a print from the Tucker scene.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Bloke was done for murder six years ago.’

  The train wasn’t busy. There were only three other people in the entire carriage. Opposite and just ahead of Thorne, a man lay sprawled across two seats, his feet pulled up, his head dropping slowly on to his chest, before being jerked back up with a grunt, only to drop again fifteen seconds later. Life or alcohol. Thorne wasn’t sure which, but the man had obviously had too much of one or the other.

  ‘I’m chasing the results from Hodson’s room in the hospital,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Be nice to get a positive ID at both scenes, but I think we may have got our man…’

  ‘Marcus Brooks,’ Thorne said. He let it hang for a few moments, enjoying the sound of the DCI’s amazement crackling down the line. ‘Go on, tell me I’m the best.’

  ‘Who the fuck were you seeing in Long Lartin?’ There was a short pause, then Brigstocke remembered. ‘Oh…’

  ‘It’s why I’m getting the messages.’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  So, Thorne told Brigstocke what Nicklin had told him: about why Marcus Brooks was on a killing spree, about his relationship with the prison’s most notorious inmate, and why photos of his victims had ended up in Thorne’s inbox.

  ‘How do you feel about it?’ Brigstocke asked, when Thorne had finished.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nicklin. The stuff he says he knows, the personal stuff.’

  ‘I don’t know wha
t you mean, “feel about it”,’ Thorne said, ducking the question. Killing it.

  Thorne told Brigstocke he’d be back at Becke House by about five, that they could go over things in more detail then, decide on which way to go over the next few days. Brigstocke told Thorne that he’d see him later. Said, ‘You know exactly what I meant by “feel about it”.’

  When the train began to pull away, Thorne realised that he wasn’t facing the direction of travel. He’d been distracted, hadn’t been paying attention when he’d sat down, and although it wasn’t a big thing with him, he’d always face forward, given the choice.

  He got up and changed seats.

  When she’d asked, on a trip down to Brighton, he’d told Louise that sitting the other way made him feel slightly sick. He’d been unwilling to admit that, in truth, he found it disconcerting. It made no real sense, he knew that. Even now, having moved, he didn’t have any sort of view beyond the toilets at the end of the carriage. But he told himself that it wasn’t a literal thing, anyway. It was stupid, but it was simple enough.

  He was happier sitting this way; facing forward. He felt as though he could see what was coming.

  NINE

  Thorne could sense it within seconds of coming through the door: the change of atmosphere in the Incident Room. Before he’d had a chance to ask anyone what had happened, he saw that it was still happening. The man and woman walking down the corridor that ringed the Incident Room answered his question with a look, glancing in at Thorne and the rest of the team as they passed on their way to the lift. A moment of something like defiance before their eyes slid away from his own.

  These were the sorts of coppers who had become so used to the reaction their presence triggered that most of them decided to get their retaliation in first. They were those who, whatever their nickname might have been, no longer cared if anyone could hear them coming.

  Rubber-heelers…

  Whether it was the expansion of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, or something altogether more insidious, the Directorate of Professional Standards had grown into a branch of the Met as complex and overstretched as any other. It had Internal Investigation Commands based in every one of the four Met areas, each one handling every sort of basic complaint or allegation against police officers, from simple ineptitude upwards. Other DPS units, including an Anti-Corruption Group and an Intelligence Team, handled more specialist enquiries, and were engaged where accusations of murder or other major offences were involved.