Thorne would very much have preferred to pass that message on himself, face to face, in a perfect world; to be the one to tell Catrin Coyne that her son was alive. Selfish and stupid, of course, but he felt he needed it. Still, what was most important was that she received the news as soon as possible.
To have seen her face, though . . .
A paramedic waved and Kimmel waved back. They were ready to go. ‘I’ll do it on the way to the hospital,’ she said.
Thorne watched the ambulance drive away, while officers unloaded equipment from the back of a van and began ferrying it around the side of the house. Others were in the woods already, setting up the arc lights and generator, sealing off the crime scene.
No crime had been committed by Kieron Coyne, of course, despite what Thorne had witnessed and whatever the outcome for the man in the ambulance. Not legally, at any rate, not when the boy was still below the age of criminal responsibility.
A uniformed constable strolled over. ‘Ready when you are.’
Thorne looked across to the squad car, in the back of which Kieron Coyne sat next to a young WPC. Ten minutes earlier, she had wiped the blood-spatter from his face and tried to hold his hand, though the boy hadn’t seemed especially keen.
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Yeah, chatting away like nothing’s happened.’ The officer shook his head. ‘Seems quite excited, really. Asked me if I could turn the siren on for him.’
The scene in the woods was one of several connected to the crimes committed by Jeff Ashton, and no one else. Kidnapping and false imprisonment at the very least. Other things . . . perhaps, though for obvious reasons it would be a while before the necessary facts emerged.
Thorne walked across to the car, opened the door and squatted down. The boy turned and stared at him.
‘Do you fancy coming for a ride in my car?’ Even as he said it, Thorne found himself wondering if Ashton had asked Kieron much the same question that Saturday morning, three weeks before. Telling himself that he was an insensitive idiot, Thorne looked for some reaction on the boy’s face, but saw none.
‘Is it a police car?’ Kieron asked.
‘Not like this one,’ Thorne said. ‘But I’m a policeman.’
In truth, Thorne’s suggestion that he take Kieron in his own car and follow the local team back to the station at Hertford was not strictly in accordance with protocol, but Thorne didn’t much care. He had witnessed Ashton alone with Kieron and had not set so much as a bootee-covered foot in that cellar, so there could be no issue with potential cross-contamination of forensic evidence. He’d said as much, a little more forcefully than was probably necessary, only too happy to pull rank when a Job-pissed DC from Hertfordshire had expressed his concerns.
There was no risk at all to any potential prosecution case.
Thorne didn’t see that it mattered who drove Kieron to the station.
Besides which, he wanted to.
‘Does your car have a siren?’ Kieron asked.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Thorne said. ‘But we can make the noise, if you like.’
EIGHTY
Cat had lost all sense of time and direction. She had no idea where in the field she was or how far from the road, no idea how long she’d been hiding.
More importantly, she had no idea where Angie was.
She’d run until she was out of breath, then lay down, squeezing her body into one of the ruts and trying to keep as quiet and still as possible. For a while, she could hear Angie calling her, telling her that it was pointless to run, that she was happy to search all night if she needed to.
‘Nothing better to do, babe . . .’
Just when Cat had started to think Angie had given up, she’d heard footsteps just a few feet away. Angie coughing and muttering. She’d closed her eyes and waited for the worst, but since then – what was that, ten minutes ago? – it had been quiet.
Slowly, Cat pushed herself up with her one good arm, gritting her teeth to stop herself crying out. She peeled off her jacket, but it was too dark to see how bad the cut was. There was plenty of blood though. Her arm was slick with it and her jacket was sopping. She winced as she wrapped the jacket around the wound, sucked in a breath as she tightened it. Had she been stronger she’d have torn off the sleeve and used that, but summoning the strength to stand was hard enough, to get herself to her feet and moving again.
After a few minutes, she could see that she was close to the edge of the field, and she began to stagger towards it when she heard the sirens getting louder. She crashed into a hedge and drove herself forward, branches tearing at the jacket, her hair, her face, as she forced her way through on to the road.
Screaming and waving, Cat ran towards the flashing lights.
EIGHTY-ONE
The uniformed sergeant – whose squeaky voice and cheery attitude belied a face that looked as if it had been arranged with the back of a spade – shook his head, much as his colleague had done back at the cottage. ‘Kids are resilient though, aren’t they?’ He nodded in the direction of the cells, one of which Kieron Coyne was currently being shown by a helpful constable.
‘Let’s hope so,’ Thorne said.
‘Always amazes me, what they can cope with.’
Thorne nodded, leaning against the desk, but he wasn’t convinced by the sergeant’s optimism. The boy’s fascination for the noises a police car could make, the eagerness to try on a copper’s helmet and his excitement about being shut inside a prison cell for a few minutes did not mean that he was coping. His behaviour might equally mean that, consciously or not, he was simply burying what had happened to him.
Disassociating . . . was that the word?
What the hell did Thorne know about it?
‘He seems OK,’ the doctor had said, after a cursory examination when they’d arrived at the station. ‘He’s a bit pale, perhaps . . . may have lost a little weight, but otherwise all right.’ He’d waited until the boy was out of earshot. ‘For obvious reasons, there’ll need to be a rather more thorough examination as soon as is feasible.’
Obvious or not, Thorne did not want to spend too long thinking about what those reasons might be, or what thorough would entail.
There would be an interview, too, of course, as soon as an appropriate adult could be brought in, but right now reuniting Kieron with his mother was everyone’s first priority. Thorne had tried calling Cat again as soon as they’d reached the station, but there was still no reply from her flat. It was almost half past ten. The question of where Kieron was going to spend the night was becoming an urgent one, and if Thorne did not get hold of Cat very soon he would have little choice but to contact social services.
‘I’m not saying it’ll be easy for the lad.’ The sergeant was moving to pick up the phone that had begun to ring at the other end of the desk. ‘But they bounce back, don’t they?’
Thorne said nothing.
‘Are we going home?’ Kieron had asked in the car. ‘Will my mum be there?’
‘She’s going to come and meet us,’ Thorne had said.
Kieron had nodded, thoughtful. ‘Will she be cross with me, do you think?’
Thorne had said, ‘Of course she won’t,’ something like that. He’d reached across to lay a hand on Kieron’s arm, but the boy had shifted away, refusing to be comforted and perking up only when Thorne had turned into the station car park. Had promised him Coke and crisps, and a chance to see inside one of the cells.
‘Josh’s dad will be put in one of those, won’t he?’
Now, Thorne looked up and saw that the sergeant was holding the phone towards him. Thorne stepped across.
‘Detective Constable Kimmel,’ the sergeant said. ‘From the hospital.’
Thorne snatched the phone. ‘How’s Ashton doing?’
‘He hasn’t regained consciousness.’ Kimmel sounded tired. ‘It’s not looking great.’
‘Right.’ For a moment, Thorne was back in those woods. Watching as Kieron heaved that log above his head, t
hen brought it crashing down. He blinked, said, ‘Listen, I still can’t get hold of Catrin—’
‘Catrin Coyne’s here,’ Kimmel said. ‘She’s at the hospital.’
‘What?’
‘She almost got herself run over by the ambulance, but don’t worry, she’s fine. They’re patching her up right now.’
‘Patching her up . . . ?’
‘A knife wound, but it’s not serious.’
‘What the fuck happened?’ Thorne glanced up and saw the sergeant look away, trying desperately to pretend that he wasn’t hanging on every word.
‘I can’t really get any sense out of her,’ Kimmel said. ‘She’s on painkillers, which doesn’t really help. Babbling about her friend Angie . . . about Kieron, obviously.’
‘Did you tell her we’ve got him?’
‘Yeah. Sorry, did you want to—?’
‘Tell her he’s coming,’ Thorne said.
Paula Kimmel was sitting outside the curtained-off cubicle reading a magazine. She nodded at Thorne and smiled at the boy, but he looked quickly away to watch a nurse as she swept aside the curtain of the adjacent cubicle and stepped into it.
‘It’s like magic.’ Kieron grinned and waved his arm. ‘Whoosh, like when they do a magic trick on TV.’
‘Do you want to do that?’ Thorne nodded at the red curtain, behind which the boy’s mother was waiting.
‘Can I do a whoosh?’
‘I think you should,’ Thorne said.
‘On TV, though . . . sometimes people disappear.’
‘I promise you won’t disappear,’ Thorne said. ‘Go on . . .’
Kieron stepped forward, flexing his fingers. He muttered a ‘whoosh’, threw the curtain aside and ran into the cubicle. He shouted, ‘Mum . . .’
‘There you go,’ Kimmel said.
Thorne looked at her.
‘You can stop beating yourself up now.’
Thorne waited half a minute or so, then stepped – somewhat less dramatically – into the cubicle himself. Kieron was lying on top of his mother in bed. One arm was wrapped around his waist while the other, heavily bandaged, was raised, her fingers moving through his hair. Her eyes were closed and her lips were pressed close to his ear, whispering words Thorne could not make out.
It was too raw to watch and Thorne instinctively took a step back, just as Catrin Coyne opened her eyes.
He smiled and shoved his hands into his pockets.
She stared at him.
He whispered, ‘I’ll come back.’
She mouthed a ‘thank you’ a moment before Thorne closed the curtain behind him.
He stood for a minute, watching medical staff come and go, listening to a man crying out in pain a few cubicles along, then turned to Kimmel. ‘You eaten?’
Kimmel lowered her magazine. ‘Not since lunchtime.’
‘I passed a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s on the way here, if you fancy something.’
‘You going?’
Thorne zipped up his jacket. ‘God, yes.’
‘Just some fries,’ Kimmel said. She lifted her magazine then immediately lowered it again. ‘And maybe some nuggets. And a large milkshake.’
A few minutes later, walking through the hospital lobby, Thorne heard a pair of uniformed officers complaining. There was rioting in Trafalgar Square; windows smashed in and cars getting turned over. They’d probably be down there cracking heads if they weren’t hanging about in the middle of nowhere while everyone waited for some paedo to wake up.
‘Bloody ridiculous,’ one of them said. ‘It’s only football.’
Thorne walked past the two woodentops and out into the car park. It was drizzling, but he didn’t hurry to the car. There would be a good deal more work to do, once he’d eaten, plenty that still needed straightening out, but for now he was content to imagine the look on Catrin Coyne’s face when her son had burst through the curtain and run to her.
He climbed into the Mondeo and started the engine.
What was it that annoying magician always used to say on his TV show?
‘Now, that’s magic . . .’
On BBC 5 Live, the pundits were fielding phone calls about the game and the violence that had followed. England were out, having lost the semi-final against Germany. It was always on the cards – the predictable shoot-out – and why the hell had they let Gareth Southgate take a penalty, anyway?
Thorne pulled on to the main road and turned the radio off.
At that moment, he could not bring himself to care.
PART FOUR
Poison
EIGHTY-TWO
‘You’re pretty cheerful.’ Thorne nodded at Angela Coyne. ‘For someone who’s looking at life inside, I mean.’
The woman on the opposite side of the table appeared as relaxed as she had been since arriving at the station the night before. She smiled, as apparently unconcerned – according to the arresting officers – as she’d been when they’d pulled her car over in Enfield, at the same time Thorne was driving home from the hospital.
‘It is what it is.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, you make your bed, don’t you?’
Paula Kimmel leaned forward. ‘Two murders and one attempted. Hell of a bed, love.’
Angie Coyne ignored Kimmel’s dig and stared down at the photographs that Thorne had spread out in front of her; a collection seized during a search of her home address first thing that morning. ‘These turned out pretty well, I reckon,’ she said.
‘You think? May I . . . ?’ Thorne reached across and turned one of the Polaroids around. These were the photographs Angie Coyne had taken of Dean Meade – dying, then dead – and were rather more explicit than those taken by the journalists she’d phoned when she’d left the scene. Thorne looked down at the close-up shot of the wound in the side of the young man’s neck, the blood still pumping. ‘Yeah, you’ve certainly captured . . . something.’
Angie hummed her agreement. ‘Funny, because people always told me I could have been a model,’ she said.
‘That is funny,’ Thorne said.
‘I mean, maybe I could have made a decent living on the other side of the camera. Probably pays a damn sight better than a market stall.’
‘Who was with you in Dean’s flat?’ Thorne asked.
She looked at him.
‘The woman who lives upstairs said she heard two male voices when Dean came in that night.’
‘Is that right?’
‘And we’ve found a witness who saw him leaving the pub with another man. Who let you in, Angie?’
‘Just someone who was helping us out.’
‘Helping? That was nice of him.’
‘I’m not going to tell you his name, so don’t waste your time.’
‘Really? You’ve been very up-front with us about everything so far. I’d go as far as to say you’ve been bragging about it.’
She cocked her head as though she was accepting a compliment. ‘Well, holding your hand up is one thing, but being a grass is very different.’
‘Helping us out.’ Kimmel looked up from her notebook. ‘That’s what you said. Us being you and Billy, right?’
Angie turned and stared hard at Kimmel. ‘You really don’t want to go there, babe.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘My brother had nothing to do with this, all right? With any of it.’
Kimmel shook her head, said, ‘Course not. So, if we were to get his cell at Whitehill turned over, just on the off-chance, we wouldn’t find any Polaroids like these?’
Angie raised her hands. Got me. ‘Well, I might have slipped him a couple last time I went in. Just to cheer him up a bit, you know?’
‘That’s very thoughtful,’ Thorne said.
‘He’s my little brother, isn’t he?’ She smiled again and tapped a long, red fingernail against her teeth. ‘We’re very close.’
‘So, killing Dean Meade and Grantleigh Figgis.’ Kimmel leaned forward again. ‘That was . . . what? A present for Billy?’
‘One way of
putting it.’
‘Most people just send in some chocolate. A good book, maybe.’
‘Billy’s not a big reader,’ Angie said. ‘And anyway, Meade got what he deserved. Like I said, I feel a bit bad about the Figgis thing, but it’s not entirely my fault, is it?’ She looked past Thorne, towards the large mirror on the far wall of the interview room, the officers she knew very well were watching from behind it. ‘It was you lot that nicked him, wasn’t it? Between you and the papers . . . as good as set the poor bastard up for me.’ She turned back to Thorne. ‘Who’s in the other room, anyway?’
Thorne said nothing.
‘That miserable Scottish twat in there, is he? The fat one with a face like a bag of spanners?’ She raised a hand and waggled her fingers. ‘Enjoying the show, mate?’
Thorne did his best to keep his own face straight, imagining Gordon Boyle’s reaction on the other side of the two-way mirror. He glanced at the spinning wheels of the twin cassettes in the wall-mounted recorder, delighted that the woman’s pithy assessment of the DI had been preserved for posterity.
With any luck, the tape would get played in court.
‘So, why Cat?’ he asked.
Angie’s expression darkened and, for a long few seconds, the only sound in the room was the squeak of those cassette wheels turning.
‘Meade I get,’ Thorne said. ‘Figgis, up to a point . . . but why the hell try to kill her?’
‘She can tell you herself.’
‘I’m asking you—’
‘Not that the silly bitch would still be around to tell you anything if I hadn’t been wearing heels last night.’ The woman sucked her teeth and scowled. ‘If she wasn’t wearing those hideous training shoes she’s always got on.’
Thorne waited.
‘Some women should never be mothers. Simple as that. Some of them just aren’t cut out for it, are they?’
‘Because of what happened to Kieron?’
‘Yeah, course.’
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