‘Shall I heat up some of that pasta?’
‘In a bit,’ Helen said. She turned and looked at him, imploring. ‘Must. Have. Wine.’
Thorne heaved himself up and went to get the white wine from the fridge. He took out a can of beer for himself while he was there, though he was still feeling the effects of the lunchtime Guinness. He could almost hear Phil Hendricks telling him what a lightweight he was turning into, how the years were finally catching up with him. The truth was that Thorne probably wouldn’t bother to argue. A few months before he’d had a good session at lunchtime with a confidential source and every intention of going back to work afterwards. On a muggy afternoon, four pints to the good, he’d fallen asleep on the Tube and woken up in Edgware.
He carried the drinks across, sat down again.
‘Good result today,’ she said.
Thorne nodded. ‘Few and far between.’ He’d texted Helen as soon as the verdict had come in, but they hadn’t had a chance to talk until now. She had already been preoccupied with Alfie by the time Thorne had got back to the flat.
‘You were a bit… weird during all that.’ Helen took a drink. ‘When you were going to those therapy sessions.’
Thorne turned to face her. ‘How was I weird?’
‘I don’t know… just getting into your part, probably. Like Robert De Niro or something.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘I swear. I mean, it wasn’t like I was rummaging around for your secret coke stash, but I did get a good idea what it must be like living with a junkie.’ She smiled. ‘I kept thinking you were lying to me about things. Well, more than usual, anyway.’
‘More than usual?’
‘You know, everyday things. We both do, don’t we? Everyone does. I was lying just then about Alfie’s bedtime story. I only read it twice, but three times sounded better. Listen, I’m not talking about anything important. Just stupid stuff.’
Thorne considered it for a few seconds. He raised his beer can, but didn’t drink. ‘I don’t think I was being weird.’
Helen laughed. ‘And addicts don’t think they’re addicts, do they?’ She took another drink. ‘I’m just saying… you were a bit strange to live with, that’s all.’ She paused, timing her punchline perfectly. ‘A bit stranger…’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘What?’
‘Like you’re so easy to live with.’
Helen was a picture of innocence. ‘Never said I was.’
The truth was things had been a little strained between them since the events nine months before in Helen’s home town of Polesford. The case they had worked on there had been shocking enough, but it had precipitated a personal revelation that they were still struggling to live with. A secret that only seemed to grow darker once it had been shared.
‘Worth it though,’ Helen said. ‘The weirdness.’ She was clearly still enjoying the wind-up. ‘For today, I mean. Like you say, it doesn’t always go the right way, does it?’
Thorne nodded. During a trial a few months before, a medical expert had produced evidence that the accused had still been five milligrams over the legal alcohol limit during an interview and therefore unfit to be questioned. Thorne could only watch as a solid murder case had fallen apart faster than an Arsenal title challenge.
‘Good piss-up afterwards, was it?’
She had smelled it on him immediately, of course.
‘Not bad,’ Thorne said. ‘Patting ourselves on the back. The briefs raising a glass to Heather Finlay, then swapping stories about cars and holiday homes. The usual.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘What?’
‘You are happy that you won, right?’
Thorne looked at her.
‘Well, how about letting your face know about it?’ Helen finished her wine and stood up. ‘You murder squad boys need to learn how to celebrate.’
Thorne smiled and watched Helen go to the fridge to get herself a refill. She asked if he wanted another beer and he told her he’d had quite enough at lunchtime.
He could still taste that Guinness, fizzing on his tongue. Worsening, the more of Tanner’s story he’d heard.
Thorne could not see any good reason to mention the meeting with Nicola Tanner. Chances were that nothing was going to come of it anyway, but the fact was he and Helen rarely talked about work if they could avoid it: a murder squad; a child abuse investigation team. The people, maybe, but not the work. Now and again there were occasions when steam needed to be let off, or stories were simply too funny or bizarre to remain untold, but otherwise there was an unspoken agreement to try and leave the Job on the doorstep.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t in their heads, of course, a shadowy voltage charging the distance between them, but it wasn’t the subject of chit-chat.
‘Why don’t I do the pasta?’ Helen said, removing the bowl of leftovers from the fridge.
‘No…’ Thorne tried to get up, but Helen was already bending down to the cupboard.
She said, ‘You always manage to burn the pan, anyway.’
Thorne sat back, tried once again to focus.
We brought in a couple of specialists, but we couldn’t make it stick.
Though his shift had been set aside for the court appearance, Thorne had gone back to the office as soon as he and Tanner had parted company. At Becke House, there had been more congratulations on the outcome of the trial, offers of yet more drink at the end of the day, but Thorne had made his excuses and slipped away at the first opportunity. He had seated himself at a computer in a quiet corner and gone back through the files on the Meena Athwal case. Every statement, every CCTV log, every piece of what might have become evidence four years before, had the investigation ever got out of first gear.
He had found what he was looking for quickly enough.
A friend of Meena’s had told a police officer that, more than once, Meena had said she thought she was being followed. She had mentioned two men. It had been logged but later ignored, once it had been decided that Meena had been the victim of a random attack. After all, those who chose to sexually prey upon strangers rarely worked in teams.
Had they got it horribly wrong?
Could these have been the same two men Tanner had mentioned?
Helen was saying something, and when Thorne looked up he caught movement to his left and looked to see Alfie standing in the doorway. One foot balanced on the other, a perfect expression of practised helplessness and misery.
‘Hello, mate. You OK?’
Alfie shook his head and lowered it; as good a con-artist as Thorne had ever encountered.
Helen turned and removed the saucepan from the heat. She sighed, rolled her eyes at Thorne. ‘Come on, then…’
Alfie was smiling by the time Helen had reached him and taken his hand to lead him back to bed.
Half a minute later, Thorne could hear the familiar rise and fall of her voice coming from her son’s bedroom. Brown bloody bear…
Thorne reached down and picked up a toy; a miniature basketball hoop on a plastic handle, the ball at the end of a stripy cord. He decided he might just as well focus on that for a while.
He flicked up the ball, missed.
He put down his beer and tried again.
Nicola Tanner sat halfway up the stairs, looking down at the unsullied oatmeal blandness of the hall carpet. The nice new carpet, the smell of which, two weeks on, had still struck her like a slap when she’d opened the front door half an hour earlier.
She hadn’t had any choice.
Blood, mess… disorder. The stain had needed to be removed, of course, but it still felt as though she had erased the last of Susan. The last part of her that had been real. There were still… things, clothes and books, but she kept putting off that trip to the charity shop. Dropping off the cardboard box and turning to leave, as though its contents were no more than unwanted junk without any real meaning.
She pulled her overcoat tighter and thought about her meeting with Tom Thorne
. He had been polite, which was a surprise considering some of the things she had been told about the man, but she wasn’t sure there was anything beyond that; any real interest.
Why should there be?
But she couldn’t do this on her own. They hadn’t taken her warrant card away, but compassionate leave was still leave, at the end of the day. That said, wouldn’t any officer, working or not, step up if they had to? Surely no copper worth the name would stand by and do nothing if they genuinely believed a crime was being committed.
It was bending the rules, though, no point pretending it wasn’t, and that was not something Nicola had ever done, reserving a special kind of scorn for those who did. No, the simple fact was that she needed help. She required some degree of legitimacy if she wanted to carry on with this; if she was going to start turning over stones again.
She stared down, empty; cried out for the day. She was still angry at herself for losing control, though sitting in that pub she had been aware, even as the tears had come, that they might be doing her a favour. Thorne was clearly no pushover, but she’d known plenty like him who couldn’t resist a sob story.
There had been so much blood.
Like misshapen wings, or the rust-coloured remains of them, by the time Nicola had opened the door that night and found Susan’s body. Soaked into the pile, and that strange scattering of white spots that she was later told was bleach. Was it too much to hope that Susan’s eyesight had gone by the time they’d snuffed out the life, so much life, in the rest of her? That she had not been able to see them killing her?
Christ, what was she thinking? What did it matter? Susan was gone, and all because they had thought she was Nicola. Because Susan’s own car had been in the garage that day.
Oatmeal.
How sadly, stupidly dull was that?
Her arms wrapped around her knees, Nicola felt a smile begin to form, creaking into place; so rare these last two weeks that she could not help but be aware of it. No, she could not imagine living with a brightly coloured hall carpet, or walls that were anything but white. She could not imagine an uncrossed t or an undotted i; an open-ended arrangement or a spur-of-the-moment decision.
She could not imagine life without the woman she had loved.
Still loved.
But she could imagine the men who had done this looking up at her and begging for their lives. She could imagine the horror on their faces, the slow realisation, and she could imagine their screams as she let the bleach fall – one nice, fat drop at a time – into their eyes.
She let her head drop and shook it. The few moments of fantasy, of imagined revenge, were natural enough, she knew that. But she also knew that it was just fantasy; that with both men hog-tied and helpless, with a bottle of Domestos in her hand, she would never do it.
She raised her head.
She was, and always would be, as inoffensive, as predictable, as that carpet.
She got slowly to her feet, turned round, and climbed the stairs to run herself a bath.
FIVE
Even Kamal had been forced to admit that the party wasn’t up to much. A semi-famous DJ getting paid a small fortune to put together a crappy playlist on his iPod. Smirnoff Ice at eight quid a pop and nowhere to sit down. They had stayed less than an hour and, in the end, Kamal had been the one to suggest that they leave; his lips pressed close to Amaya’s ear, still needing to shout above the din of some house hit for thirteen-year-olds they could have heard on Capital Radio any afternoon.
‘This is rubbish. Waste of a good shirt.’
Amaya was certainly not arguing. She had spent most of the time alone, while Kamal had prowled around. Eking out her drink in a crowded corner and scanning faces as the coloured lights danced across them, just in case.
‘Shame.’ They had changed position and now Amaya was the one doing the talking; pointing at the idiot behind the decks and shouting her sarcasm. ‘I was thinking of asking him to DJ at the wedding.’
Kamal had grinned and grabbed her arm. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. At least we can still get the Tube. I won’t have to explain an Uber to my old man.’
On the train they ate chocolate bought from the station kiosk; jabbered happily about Amaya’s college course, Kamal’s job at his father’s printing business.
‘We might have to chuck both of them in,’ Kamal said. ‘Do something else.’
Amaya looked at him. ‘Hopefully not.’
‘Yeah, hopefully. But it might come to that.’
‘What do we do for money?’ Amaya asked. ‘If it does come to that. What do we live on if you don’t have your job?’
‘I find another job.’
‘Yeah, because that’s so easy.’
‘I go on benefits if I have to.’
They stopped talking as the train pulled into a station and watched as several people got off. They were overground now and the carriage was emptying, stop by stop.
The doors closed and the train moved away again.
‘But if you lose your job that’s probably because they’re not exactly thrilled about us getting married, right?’ Amaya looked at Kamal. He nodded. ‘So, that means moving away.’ She leaned closer to him; the rattling of the carriage made conversation only marginally easier than it had been at the party. ‘And getting involved with all that official stuff – benefits or signing up for council housing or whatever – is a really easy way of somebody finding us.’
Kamal nodded, chewed at a fingernail. ‘I’ll sort it all out, don’t worry.’
‘Plus, I want to carry on at college.’
‘Yeah, obviously.’
‘It’s a good course, you know? A good qualification.’
Kamal took her hand. ‘Look, I’m only saying these are things that might happen, but we’d be stupid if we didn’t think there’s a possibility. I mean, remember why we’re doing this in the first place. You know what it’s like for me, right? And I know exactly what it’s like for you, because I’ve seen it with both my sisters.’ He reached for Amaya’s hand. ‘I’m just talking about the way it could go if they don’t like it. If they really don’t like it, I mean. I’m talking about the worst-case scenario. Yeah?’ He waited. ‘Amee…?’
Amaya was looking at a man sitting on the other side of the carriage, a few seats down and to their left. He was leaning against the divider, bleached-blond hair pressed to the Perspex, watching them. He wore a green jacket spattered with what looked like white paint, a dirty brown T-shirt underneath and dusty boots. Kamal caught the stranger’s eye and quickly looked away.
It was as though the man took this as his cue.
‘Yeah, you’d better look away.’ He sat up straight, staring at Amaya. He pursed his lips, made kissing noises.
At the end of the carriage, a middle-aged woman was engrossed in her copy of the Standard. Amaya looked at her and watched the woman raise the newspaper a little higher.
Amaya glanced at Kamal. His head was lowered. She squeezed his hand, feeling him tense next to her, before her eyes slid quickly back to the man in the green jacket.
‘Look at you,’ he said. A low, smoker’s voice, the words thick with drink. ‘All ballsy, aren’t you? But your boyfriend’s shitting himself. Look at him, for Christ’s sake.’
Amaya was afraid to take her eyes off the man. She said, ‘What’s your problem?’
The man leaned forward, closing the gap between them. ‘Your lot,’ he said. ‘You’re my problem. You’re everybody’s problem.’ The train slowed as it approached the next station, but the man carried on talking. ‘You don’t need to be hiding inside them stupid black sacks either or have hats and beards.’ He waved a hand towards them, looked them up and down. ‘Makes sense, I suppose, sitting there dressed like normal people, trying to blend in so you can catch us off guard.’ He nodded towards Amaya’s feet, to the bags containing the clothes she and Kamal had left home in. ‘What’s in the bags?’
The doors opened and the woman with the newspaper got off quickly, lea
ving the train through the doors furthest away from Amaya and the man in the green jacket, her eyes fixed on the platform ahead of her.
‘I asked you what was in the bags.’
Amaya looked quickly left into the next section of the carriage and saw that there were only two passengers remaining. A young boy was busy with his phone and a smartly dressed Asian man sat a few seats further along. He was old, at least forty or something, and just for a second, he caught Amaya’s eye and shook his head. She was still trying to work out what it meant when the other man spoke again.
‘Mind you, I suppose you wouldn’t waste a decent bomb on an empty train, would you? No point going to heaven or whatever you lot call it for that.’ He got to his feet suddenly, steadied himself on the hanging rail and shouted at the two other passengers, playing to what little audience he had. ‘Hardly worth blowing themselves to kingdom come for the three of us, is it?’ He pointed at the Asian man, who was watching him. ‘Not like you’d be much of a loss, mind you.’
Amaya leaned close to Kamal, one hand wrapped around his and the other pressed against her thigh, trying to control the tremor that was causing her foot to bounce off the floor of the carriage. She leaned in to whisper, ‘It’ll be fine, he’s just drunk,’ then sat up straight again when the man turned to loom over her.
‘So, he gets virgin dolly-birds, does he?’ He nudged at Kamal’s leg with a dusty boot. ‘So what, you get blokes who’ve never got their ends away? That how it works? Like some mental… raghead gang-bang —’
He stopped, startled for a moment as the Asian man from further along the carriage arrived suddenly, ducking in front of him and dropping into the seat next to Amaya.
‘Hello, here’s the other one.’ He narrowed his eyes as though struggling to focus on the newcomer. ‘Who the fuck asked you to get involved?’ He stepped away and all but fell back into his seat, spread his arms out behind him.
The Asian man leaned close to Amaya and whispered quickly. ‘Next stop.’
Amaya nodded.
‘Eh? Who invited you?’
With the man in the green jacket seemingly more interested in his newest victim, Amaya took her chance to lean in and pass the instruction on to Kamal.
Love Like Blood Page 3