The café was a greasy spoon with ideas above its station. The sort of place that thought a few cheap sandwich fillings in Tupperware containers made it a delicatessen. The reaction, within a minute or two of him shambling in, sitting down, and showing no obvious intention of buying anything, was predictable.
“Hey!”
He said nothing.
“You going to order something?”
He reached across for a magazine that had been left on an adjacent table and began to read.
“This is not a doss-house, you know?”
He smiled.
“You think I’m joking … ?”
He nodded toward a familiar figure outside the window as the fat, red-faced proprietor came around the counter toward him. With impeccable timing, the man he’d been smiling at pushed through the door, just as the café owner was leaning in menacingly.
“It’s okay, he’s with me …”
The threatening expression on the proprietor’s face softened, but only marginally, when he turned from the tramp’s table and looked at the Metropolitan Police warrant card that was being thrust at him.
Detective Sergeant Dave Holland pocketed his ID, reached across, and dragged back a chair. “We’ll have two teas,” he said.
The man sitting at the table spoke in earnest. “Mugs of tea …”
The owner shuffled back toward the counter, somehow managing to sigh and clear his throat at the same time.
“My hero,” the tramp said.
Holland put his briefcase on the floor and sat down. He glanced round at the two other customers: a smartly dressed woman and a middle-aged man in a postal uniform. Back behind his counter, the owner of the place glared at him as he took a pair of white mugs from a shelf.
“He looked like he was ready to chuck you out if I hadn’t come in just then. I was tempted to stand there and watch. See what happened.”
“You’d have seen me deck the fat fucker.”
“Right. Then I’d’ve had to arrest you.”
“That would have been interesting …”
Holland shrugged and pushed dirty blond hair back from his forehead. “Paddy Hayes died just after eleven-thirty last night,” he said.
“How’s the son doing?”
“He was pretty upset beforehand. Wrestling with it, you know? Once he’d decided, once they turned off the machines, he seemed a lot calmer.”
“Probably only seemed.”
“Probably …”
“When’s he going home?”
“He’s getting a train back up north this morning,” Holland said. “He’ll be getting home around the time they start the PM on his old man.”
“Won’t be too many surprises there.”
They both leaned back in their chairs as the tea arrived with very little ceremony. The fat man plonked down two sets of cutlery, wrapped in paper serviettes. He pointedly nudged a laminated menu toward each of them before turning to empty the ashtray on the adjoining table.
“You hungry?” Holland asked.
The man opposite glanced up from the menu he was already studying. “Not really. I had a huge plate of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs first thing.” His eyes went back to the menu. “Of course I’m fucking hungry.”
“All right …”
“I hope you’ve brought your checkbook. This could get expensive.”
Holland picked up his tea. He cradled the mug against his chin and let the heat drift up to his face. He stared through the narrow curtain of steam at the disheveled figure sitting across from him. “I still can’t get used to this,” he said.
“What?”
“This. You.”
“You can’t get used to it? Jesus!”
“You know what I mean. I just never imagined you anything like this. You were the last person … You are the last person …”
Tom Thorne dropped his menu and crossed stained fingers above it. The decision made. He stared hard across the table.
“Things change,” he said.
TWO
Lots of things had changed …
What everything was bloody well called for a start. When he’d returned to work, it had seemed to Thorne that in the short time he’d been away they’d decided to change the name of just about everything. The Serious Crime Group, in which Thorne had been a detective inspector on one of the nine Major Investigation Teams in Murder Command (West), was now part of what had laughably been christened the Specialist Crime Directorate. Directorate, for crying out loud. Did the people who pushed pens around and decided these things really think that changing something’s name made a scrap of difference to what it actually did?
Directorate, group, pool, squad, team, unit … posse, gang, shower, whatever.
Just a bunch of people, of mixed ability, scrabbling around in various degrees of desperation, trying to catch those who had killed. Who were still killing.
Or, if they were really lucky, those who were planning to kill.
The Specialist Crime Directorate. Thorne remembered a vacancy advertised by a well-known supermarket in something called “ambient replenishment.” The job had turned out to be stacking shelves.
Naturally, the structure Thorne came back to had changed as well. Each MIT on the Murder Squad was now composed of three detective inspectors, each at the head of a smaller, core team and each with that much more paperwork, that much more administrative responsibility, and that much more time spent behind a desk. Each with another few hours of their working life spent ensuring that staff morale was high while levels of sick leave stayed low, and that actions were carried out within those very necessary constraints of bloody time and sodding budget, and so fucking on and so fucking forth …
“I know this stuff has all got to be done, and I know it’s got to be done properly, but there have to be priorities. Don’t there? For Christ’s sake, I’ve got two Asian kids with bullets in their heads and some nutcase who seems to take great delight in sticking a sharpened bicycle spoke into people’s spines, but I’m being prevented from getting out and doing anything about it.”
“Listen …”
“Every time I so much as set foot outside the office, one or other of my so-called colleagues starts bitching about having to do my share of the fucking paperwork and it’s getting stupid. I just want to do the job, you know? Especially now. You can understand that, can’t you? I’m just a copper, that’s all. It’s not complicated. I’m not a resource, or a facilitator, or a fucking homicidal-perpetration-prevention-operative …”
“Tom …”
“Do you think whoever shot those two kids is sitting at home doing his paperwork? Is this lunatic I’m trying to catch filling in forms? Making a careful note, no, making several copies of a careful note about how many different bicycle spokes he’s used, and how much they cost him, and exactly how long it took him to get them just sharp enough to paralyze somebody? I don’t think so. I don’t fucking think so …”
The man sitting in the armchair wore his usual black hooded top and combats. There was a selection of rings and studs in both ears, and the spike below his bottom lip shifted as he moved his tongue around in his mouth. Dr. Phil Hendricks was a pathologist who worked closely with Thorne’s team. He was also the nearest thing Tom Thorne had to a best friend. Violent death and its charged aftermath had forged a strong bond between them. He’d caught a taxi to the flat in Kentish Town as soon as Thorne had called.
Hendricks waited just long enough to be sure that Thorne had run out of steam, without giving him the time to get up another head. “How are you sleeping?” he asked.
Thorne had stopped pacing, had sat down heavily on the arm of the sofa. “Do I sound tired to you?”
“You sound … hyper. It’s understandable.”
Thorne jumped up again, marched across to the fireplace. “Don’t start that lowering-your-voice shit, Phil. Like I’m not well. I’m right about this.”
“Look, I’m sure you’re right. I’m not there enough to see i
t.”
“Everything’s different.”
“Maybe it’s you that’s different …”
“Trust me, mate, this job’s going tits up. It’s like working in a bank in there sometimes. Like working in the fucking City!”
“What happened when you saw Jesmond?”
Thorne took a deep breath, placed the flat of his hand against his chest, watched it jump. Once, twice, three times …
“I got a lecture,” he said. “Apparently, these days, there’s a lot less tolerance for deadwood.”
Lots of things had changed …
Hendricks shifted in the armchair, opened his mouth to speak.
“Deadwood,” Thorne said, repeating the words as if they were from a foreign language. “How fucked is that from him? Pointless, tight-arsed tosser!”
“Okay, look, he’s all those things, we know that, but … maybe the caseload is getting on top of you a bit. Don’t you think? Come on, you’re not really dealing with the work properly, with any of it.”
“Right, and why’s that, d’you reckon? What have I just been telling you?”
“You haven’t been telling me anything; you’ve been shouting at me. And what you’ve actually been doing is making excuses. I’m on your side, Tom, but you need to face a few facts. You’re either completely out of it or you’re ranting like an idiot, and either way people are getting pissed off with you. Getting more pissed off with you …”
“Which people?”
Then, despite what Thorne had said a few moments earlier, Hendricks lowered his voice. “You weren’t ready to start work again.”
“That’s bollocks.”
“You came back too soon …”
It was not much more than eight weeks since Thorne’s father had died in a house fire. Jim Thorne had been suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s at the time of his death, and the blaze had almost certainly been no more than an accident. A misfired synapse. A piece of tragic forgetfulness.
There were other possibilities, though. Thorne had been working on a case involving a number of powerful organized-crime figures. It was possible that one of them—that one man in particular—had decided to strike at Thorne via those closest to him. To inflict pain that would stay with him far longer than anything of which a simple blade or bullet was capable.
Other possibilities …
Thorne was still coming to terms with a lot of things. Among them, the fact that he might never know for sure whether his father had been murdered. Either way, Thorne knew he was to blame.
“I would have come back earlier if I could,” Thorne said. “I’d’ve come back the day I buried him. What else am I going to do?”
Hendricks pushed himself out of the chair. “Do you want some tea?”
Thorne nodded and turned toward the fireplace. He leaned against the stripped-pine mantelpiece, staring at himself in the mirror above as he spat out the words. “Detective Chief Superintendent Jesmond is thinking about a few weeks’ ‘gardening leave.’ ”
Standing in front of Trevor Jesmond’s desk that afternoon, Thorne had felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He’d dug down deep for something like a smile. Deeper still for the flippant comeback.
“I’ve only got a window box …”
Now the anger rose up again, but quickly gave way to a perverse amusement at yet another, ridiculous euphemism. “Gardening leave,” he said. “How nice. How fucking cozy.”
It made sense, he supposed. You could hardly call it what it was: some pointless, hastily invented desk job designed to get shot of anyone who was causing a problem. Anyone embarrassing, but not quite sackable. Gardening sounded so much better than burned out, or fucked up. So much more pleasant than drunk, traumatized, or mental.
Hendricks had walked slowly toward the kitchen. “I think you should take it,” he said.
The next day, Thorne had discovered how the odds against him were stacking up.
“I’m in a corner here, aren’t I?”
Russell Brigstocke had looked down at his desktop. Straightened his blotter. “We’ll find you something that won’t drive you too barmy,” he said.
Thorne pointed across the desk at his DCI. A jokey threat. “You’d better.”
It was a close call as to which of them had been more embarrassed when the tears had suddenly appeared. Had sprung up in corners. Thorne had pressed the heel of his hand quickly against each eye, and wiped, and kicked the metal wastepaper basket halfway across Russell Brigstocke’s office.
“Fuck …”
Scotland Yard.
Perhaps the single most famous location in the history of detection. A place synonymous with the finest brains and with cutting-edge, crime-fighting technology. Where mysteries were solved and the complexities of the world’s most twisted criminal minds were examined.
Where for three weeks, Thorne had been forced to sit in a room no bigger than an airing cupboard, going quietly insane, and trying to work out how many ways a man could kill himself using only standard office equipment.
He had thought, understandably, that the Demographics of Recruitment could not possibly be as boring as it sounded. He had been wrong. Although, the first few days hadn’t been so bad. He’d been taught how the software program—with which he was supposed to turn hundreds of pages of research into a presentation document, complete with block graphs and pie charts—worked. His computer instructor was about as interesting as Thorne had expected him to be. But he was, at least, someone to talk to.
Then, left to his own devices, Thorne had quickly discovered the most enjoyable way to pass the time. He was just as quickly rumbled. It didn’t take someone long to work out that most of those Web sites being visited via one particular terminal had very little to do with the recruitment of ethnic minorities, or why more dog handlers seemed to come from the southwest. Overnight, and without warning, Internet access was denied, and from then on, outside the job itself, there was little for Thorne to do but eke out the daily paper and think about methods of killing himself.
He was considering death from a thousand papercuts when a face appeared around the door. It looked a little thinner than usual, and the smile was nervous. It had been four weeks since Thorne had seen the man who was at least partly responsible for putting him where he was, and Russell Brigstocke had every right to be apprehensive.
He held up a hand, and spoke before Thorne had a chance to say anything. “I’m sorry. I’ll buy you lunch.”
Thorne pretended to consider it. “Does it include beer?”
Brigstocke winced. “I’m on a bloody diet, but for you, yes.”
“Why are we still here?”
Thorne hadn’t even clocked the name of the place as they’d gone in. They’d come out of the Yard, turned up toward Parliament Square, and walked into the first pub they’d come to. The food was bog-standard—chili con carne that was welded to the dish in places and tepid in others—but they had decent crisps and Stella on draft.
A waitress was clearing away the crockery as Brigstocke came back from the bar with more drinks.
“What’s all this in aid of, anyway?” Thorne asked.
Brigstocke sat and leaned toward his glass. Took a sip of mineral water. “Why’s it have to be in aid of anything? Just friends having a drink.”
“You weren’t much of a friend a few weeks ago, in your office.”
Brigstocke made eye contact, held it for as long as was comfortable. “I was, Tom.”
The slightly awkward silence that followed was broken by murmured “sorrys” and “excuse me’s” as a big man who’d been wedged into the corner next to Thorne stood and squeezed out. Thorne pulled his battered, brown leather jacket from the back of a chair and folded it onto the bench next to him. Relaxed into the space. The pub was busy, but now they had something approaching a bit of privacy.
“Either you want to have a good moan about something,” Thorne said, “or you want to talk about a case that’s pissing you off.”
Brigsto
cke swallowed, nudged at his glasses with a knuckle. “Bit of both.”
“Midlife crisis?” Thorne asked.
“Come again?”
Thorne gestured with his glass. “Trendy new specs. Diet. You got a bit on the side, Russell?”
Brigstocke reddened slightly, pushed fingers through his thick, black hair. “Might just as well have, the amount of time I’m spending at home.”
“The roughsleeper killings, right?” Thorne grinned, enjoying the look of surprise on Brigstocke’s face. “It’s not like I’ve been in Timbuktu, Russ. I spoke to Dave Holland on the phone a few nights ago. Saw a bit in the paper before that. A couple of bodies, isn’t it?”
“It was a couple …”
“Shit …”
“ ‘Shit’ is bang on. Deep shit is what we’re in.”
“There’s been a lid on this, right? It literally was a ‘bit’ I saw in the paper.”
“That was the way it was being played until last night. There’s going to be a press conference tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tell me …”
Brigstocke leaned across the table and spoke, his voice just loud enough for Thorne to hear above Dido, who was whining from the speakers above the bar.
Three victims so far.
The first body had been found almost exactly a month earlier. A homeless man somewhere in his forties, murdered in an alleyway off Golden Square. Four weeks on, and his identity remained unknown.
“We’ve spoken to other rough sleepers in the area and can’t get so much as a nickname. They reckon he was new and he certainly hadn’t made any contact with local care services. Some of these people like to matey up and some just want to be left alone. Same as anybody else, I suppose.”
“DSS?”
“We’re still checking missed appointments, but I’m not holding my breath. They don’t all sign on anyway. Some of them are on the street because they don’t want to be found.”
Lifeless Thorne 5 Page 2