Thorne, who didn't doubt it for a second, did his best to summon up something like a smile in return. 'I'm sure I'll cope.'
Norman nodded, pushed himself away from the edge of the desk, strolled across to the window. 'If a media type says "off the record", my advice usually would be to shut the fuck up very bloody quickly, but off the record, Tom...' Brigstocke laughed. Thorne sort of joined in. 'Anything I should know about?'
'Impossible to say,' Thorne said. 'I don't know how many things you don't know.' Norman didn't turn from the window so Thorne couldn't judge his reaction, but Brigstocke's was clear enough. Thorne knew that he'd better play along. 'We'll make sure you're the first to know if anything significant breaks. We're chasing up a few leads...'
Norman turned from the window and looked straight at Thorne.
'Listen, I don't really expect to be the first person to know anything, but it's always a good idea to use the press. If you don't, give them a chance and they'll have you...' Th0rne didn't bother even trying to think of a smart-arse answer, because he knew Norman was right.
He'd seen too many good policemen eaten up. If the appetite was to be satisfied, he needed to tolerate people like Norman.
'Right now, they're getting a bit impatient,' Norman said. 'We've made a major breakthrough, no question about it, but we need to follow it up.'
'We should never have made it public. The fact that the killers are working together...'
Norman dropped the matey tone as if it was a turd. 'That was not down to me, Inspector, as you well know. My job was, and is, to implement the decisions taken at a far higher level than this, as far as they affect the Met's relations with the media.' He looked across at Brigstocke, cocked his head.
Was that clear enough?
Brigstocke took a few steps towards Thorne, put his hands on the back of the chair.
'Anything from the meeting with Bracher?'
Thorne was uncomfortable discussing the case as it was actually unfolding with Norman in the room, but he understood that Brigstocke was angling for something, anything, that he might be able to throw to the press office.
'Not really.' He turned to look at Norman. 'But we should be able to let you have a definitive e-fit of the man we think killed Jane Lovell and Ruth Murray very soon.'
Norman seemed inordinately pleased. 'Great ... that's great. Excellent. I'm going to get us maximum exposure. Every front page in the country, every major news and current affairs show...'
There was a knock and Sarah McEvoy stuck her head round the door. 'Sir I... oh sorry, I'll come back...'
Norman threw up his hands. 'I'm about done here, Russell...' He started walking towards the half-opened door. Brigstocke beckoned McEvoy in. 'It's OK, Sarah.' McEvoy stepped into the room and stood aside as Norman walked past her. Thorne could see him sizing her up, checking her body over, before he turned at the doorway.
'Obviously a DNA match would have been fabulous, but just having a print is the next best thing. If you get him, when you get him, they'll convict him. Media relations can help you get him, Tom.'
Brigstocke nodded, looked at Thorne. 'I'll see you out, Steve...'
Norman said something to McEvoy, and Brigstocke said something to both of them as he and Norman took their time leaving the office. Thorne stayed in his seat and watched them go, his mind wandering. He span his chair round and gazed out of the window. A glorious view of the industrial estate on the other side of the AS. Stores with names like Carpet Kingdom and Shoe World and Dictatorship of Leather. Vast, American-style warehouses. Everything becoming more American.
Including the killings.
Thorne watched the little square cars passing the big square superstores. From the windows on the other side of the building, he could gaze down at the college parade ground, occasionally see recruits being put through their paces.
Either way, the view was depressing.
'Looked interesting...'
Thorne spun round. McEvoy was perched on the edge of his desk, waiting to be told everything. He couldn't be arsed with telling her much more than was blatantly obvious from his expression. 'Not really.'
McEvoy wasn't going to be fobbed off. 'Seemed like a slippery customer.'
Thorne said nothing. She had one last crack at him. 'I was especially impressed by the subtle way he managed to give my tits the once over.'
Thorne laughed. 'It wasn't that subtle...'
'Trust me, it's relative. Is he going to be a problem?'
'I don't think so, as long as we let Mr. Norman think he's keeping the massed hordes of the press at bay. Right now, I've promised him this e-fit as soon as. We need to get Murrell and Knight in here ...'
McEvoy edged herself off the desk. Thorne saw her eyes flick away from him for a second. Bad news. 'What?'
'That was actually what I needed to see you about.' McEvoy tried to sound matter of fact. 'We can't find Margie Knight.'
'Can't find her?' Thorne was shouting. He knew that heads would be turning outside the office door.
'Look, she must have freaked out after she talked to us. Maybe she's gone on holiday...'
Thorne stood up, stomped across the small office. 'For fuck's sake, Sarah. We should have brought her in here straight away, got an e-fit then.'
'She's a prostitute. She has a natural dislike for the police because most of the time we're trying to arrest her or stop her making a living. You reckon we should have dragged her across London, tied her to a chair?'
McEvoy was reacting aggressively to the anger born out of Thorne's frustration, but he knew that she was right. Co-operation had to be just that. Memory was an untrustworthy thing at the best of times. Never a reliable ally. The last thing it needed was to be forced.
'Couldn't we just go with Murrell's description for now?' McEvoy asked. 'Maybe give the press a couple of options. With and without glasses...'
'No.' Thorne knew only too well how much of a difference a description could make. He'd made costly mistakes before. Inaccuracies, inconsistencies, were unavoidable, but keeping them to a minimum could save lives. It was that horribly simple.
'Murrell's description is five months old. Margie Knight had a good look at this fucker two weeks ago.' He walked back towards his desk, stopping opposite McEvoy, making it very clear. 'I want to see the face she's carrying around in her head. We'll put it together with Murrell's and then we'll see what he looks like.' She nodded. He moved across to his chair and sat down. 'So, what are we doing?'
'I've called in a few favours at Vice and every uniform in the area is carrying a description. We'll find her.'
Thorne looked at her. Her face was often difficult to read, but at that moment it told him that whether McEvoy found Margie Knight or not, she'd tear every dodgy sauna, massage parlour and tin-pot knocking shop in the city apart trying. He leaned back in his chair and tried to sound as if he was still a little pissed off.
'Go on then...'
The doubts swept over him with the draught from the door that McEvoy slammed behind her. For a minute or two with McEvoy, when the anger had taken hold, he'd sounded almost decisive. It had almost been as if he actually had an idea what he was doing. Two weeks since Ruth Murray and Carol Garner had died and they were going backwards fast. Scrabbling about for leads from two murders committed five months before that.
Thorne knew that he was going to spend the rest of the day working by numbers and fighting away two horrible thoughts. The first was that probably, no, almost certainly, the only thing that would help the case move forwards now, that could provide a springboard that might lift the investigation on to another level, was another pair of bodies. The second was not so much a thought as a feeling; like a virus or an infection lurking within him, waiting to burst into life, clammy and clinging, and immune to treatment.
A feeling that they wouldn't have to wait too long. The police came to the office today, Karen. Two of them, hunting in pairs. Like the men they're after...
They were just sniffing aroun
d really. It wasn't at all dramatic. There was no smashing down of doors or snipers on the rooftops opposite. It's difficult to know just how much they've worked out. I've been racking my brains ever since they left but it gives me a headache just thinking about it. They wouldn't have come if they hadn't made a connection between Jane and the other one, you know... Ruth, the one behind the railway station. They must know about that. But how much do they know about the others?
About his? I can't work it out at all...
All the time they were here, I knew that I could have ended it with a word. It would have been so easy to fall on the floor in front of them and confess. This is complete fantasy, I know. If I hadn't been terrified of the police, I would never have begun this in the first place, would I? So, I'm left, as usual, confessing to you, Karen. I must tell you that your face, the face I see in my mind's eye as I'm confessing, is full of understanding, and warmth. Full of love.
My work's really starting to suffer now and people have noticed. I got a warning the other day. I don't think they'd ever sack me or anything but if I want to carry on moving up in the company, you know, the intimation was that I'd better buck my ideas up. How can I concentrate on anything, Karen? How can I think about anything, with what's in my head? I'm amazed that I can still breathe. I'm astonished, all the time, that I can eat, and walk and dress myself.
All I can see are open mouths and red eyes and spit on teeth. All I can hear are grunts and gulps and the sound of blood bubbling out of holes.
All I can feel is dead flesh against my fingers. This is not even the worst, Karen. There is something much, much worse. All this, the sensory memories of these acts, might fade I suppose, given time, but time is something I am not being given.
Two weeks, no more, only two weeks since I pushed that girl into the shadows and put my clumsy, great hands on her. It's only been two weeks, Karen. Fourteen days, that's all. Hardly time to catch my breath and already there is a new set of... instructions. Soon, I've got to do it again.
************
1989
He knew, even before he'd come, that this would be the last time. He'd glanced down at the head of the man on his knees in front of him and seen the bald patch and the grease and the bits of scurf in his hair, and decided. This was probably as good a time as any to call it a day. He'd put enough money away in the last three years. Now, he could move on.
He'd only spent a short time begging, and even then he'd done it properly. He'd gone about things professionally. It was the same with this. He wasn't doing it to finance a smack habit like most of the other boys in the same line of work. His earnings were not wasted on drink or gambling. He used what he needed for the very minimum of food and shelter, and salted the rest away.
He'd made a lot of money in dirty hotel rooms and executive motor cars. He worked harder and more often than any of the others. He'd always been able to take a lot of pain and his disgust threshold was no lower. It had been easy. Half a dozen a day, ten on some days and all paying in cash. Seven days a week, rain or shine. His customers knew that they could always go to him.
He was like a 7Eleven.
He had more than enough now, and he'd spent time getting to know the people who could help with the paperwork. Now it was time for all that effort to pay dividends. What he was planning to do made sense of course. He needed to do it to be on the safe side, to make sure they couldn't find him, but he also liked the idea because he was bored. He'd been the same person for far too long. After nineteen years, he fancied a change.
It was time to reinvent himself.
He pulled his cock out of the old man's mouth and started to moan theatrically. The old man gasped and opened his mouth. He had a yellow tongue and sharp incisors and his nice clean work shirt was plastered to his neck with sweat.
He came, and for once it was more than the pitiful spasm and spurt he manufactured for punters on demand. Suddenly, the moan from deep in his throat was long and loud and deeply felt. He came...
Spunking away everything that was left of Stuart Nicklin. Out and away. Ridding himself of himself...
The sensation continued long after the ejaculation was finished. He was still moaning as he began to rain blows down on the head of the old man on the floor. He punched and he spat and he kicked, the effort causing sweat to run down between his naked shoulder-blades. He closed his eyes as he continued to lash out, and imagined himself re-made, a long way from where he was, and from who he was. It was comforting. It was everything he had ever dreamed about. He saw himself surrounded by people that liked and trusted him. He saw himself in a position of responsibility. He saw himself paid to control other people's lives. The old man had stopped screaming.
He opened his eyes and looked down at the pathetic figure in a nylon shirt, curled up at his feet, spitting out blood and yellow teeth. He gave him one more kick for good measure and began to gather up his clothes.
He still had some way to go of course, before his vision became a reality. The paperwork was fairly straightforward, but there was training to do. It would not be handed to him on a plate, he would need to work for it. And he would work hard because he wanted it more than anything. He pulled on his shirt and slammed the door of the dingy flat behind him. He jogged down the stairs and emerged, grinning, into the sunshine. Taking the first steps towards a brand new life. Considering everything that had happened, it was ironic that there was only one job that he'd ever really wanted to do.
SEVEN
Thorne woke from a dream filled with fountains of blood. He could barely make himself heard over the roaring of the arterial gush, as he shouted at the man with the scalpel. He fought to stop the blood falling onto the face of the young woman in the hospital bed, but she lay there unable to turn her head away, the dark red spots slowly obliterating the pink of her face, like the spatter from a paint roller. He sat up and waited for the dream to evaporate, which it did, quickly, leaving only the memory, which was far, far worse. The phone was ringing. Thorne glanced at the clock as he leaned over to grab it. Friday night had only just become Saturday morning. He'd barely been asleep for an hour.
'Tom Thorne...'
'It's Russell. Wide awake? Or d'you want to grab a coffee and call me back?'
Brigstocke's tone cleared Thorne's head in an instant. 'I'm fine, go ahead.'
'Our friend in the hotel trade is back.'
Thorne had always known that he would be, eventually. He guessed there would be bodies. He guessed right.
'A middle-aged couple in the Olympia Grand, been dead since early yesterday evening by the look of it...' Brigstocke paused, cleared his throat. For Thorne it was always a relief to hear colleagues hesitate to speak about violent death. A relief and a surprise. 'He tortured them, Tom. There are marks...'
'Who's picking this up, Russell?'
Another pause, for an altogether different reason. 'I was hoping you would.'
Thorne sat up, swung his legs out of bed. 'I don't think I like where this is going, sir.'
'Don't go off on one, Tom. There's nothing sinister happening, but this was our case and I just don't want strangers on it. Team Two are already down there but I'd like you to get across, see what you make of it. Hendricks is on his way. Go and give them a hand.'
'What about the Garner case?' He knew it then. He'd named it. Four women dead, but for Thorne it was the Garner case. All the murders distilled into one, the one which for a small child had taken away so much more than just his mother. The case would always be about that child, as the case a year ago had been about a woman in a hospital bed, unable to move.
The woman he'd been dreaming about.
'It's been nearly three weeks, Tom...'
'Seventeen days.'
'Look, I agreed to let you spend time looking for Margie Knight, to hold back on releasing the e-fit, but we're getting nowhere.'
'Sir . . .'
'I've backed every decision you've made on this...'
'Because they've been the right decisi
ons...'
'Jesmond's getting fucking jittery, all right? Now,. I'm not talking about winding it down, so don't panic, but progress somewhere would go down a storm right now.'
Thorne was off the bed, catching glimpses of himself in the wardrobe mirror as he stomped around the room. He didn't look at all happy. He knew that Brigstocke was right of course, but his hackles were up all the same. 'Does he think we're sitting on our arses?'
'The hotel killings will be all over the paper in the morning.'
'What? How... ?'
'The bodies were found by a housemaid who went to turn down the beds. She called the papers before she called us.'
'Jesus. Norman must be up in arms...'
'He isn't the only one. The couple were Dutch, from Amsterdam. Tourists, Tom.'
Thorne grunted sarcastically. 'Oh, I see...'
'I don't care what you think you can fucking see, Inspector.' The change in Brigstocke's tone was sudden, and shocking. Thorne felt a twinge of guilt. The DCI was clearly under some pressure. 'We could have a decent break here, so while we're waiting for the same thing to happen on the other case, I want you to see what you can do, all right?
So get down there and have a look.'
Ronald Van Der Vlugt had spent a fairly unremarkable fifty-eight years on the planet, until the night he answered the door to a stranger in a top London hotel. Now, he lay naked in the bath, an inch of bloody water slopping around his lifeless body, trussed up like a defrosting turkey.
'What about the cuts, Phil?'
Hendricks was kneeling by the side of the bath, measuring wounds, and muttering into a small Dictaphone. He grunted, and scratched his head through his distinctive yellow shower cap. 'Stanley knife, looks like. Something very sharp and very straight. Dozens of them, all over the poor bastard. Face, torso, genitals. Same in there.' He gestured towards the bedroom where Mrs. Van Der Vlugt lay stretched out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, her body as sliced and chipped and stiff as a chopping board.
'No chance he did it post-mortem is there?' Thorne asked. The dead would stay dead, of course, but the living did no harm in searching for a crumb of comfort to offer the relatives. Thorne glanced down at the cuts on the mot-fled belly, the floating feces, the brain matter caked across the overflow. He had no idea whether the Van Der Vlugts had children, or grandchildren...
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