‘How you feeling?’
‘Not too bad,’ Thorne said. ‘I mean I’d really rather not phone in sick tomorrow.’
‘See how you feel in the morning.’
‘Thanks for being so good about me being late, by the way.’
Helen moved into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. She turned on the bedside light. ‘The last thing I was going to do was have any sort of row in front of Jenny,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t need any more ammunition.’
‘Against me, you mean?’
‘Against the whole thing. She wasn’t very keen on me living with another copper the first time round, with Paul.’
‘So you think we would have had a row?’ Thorne asked. ‘If your sister hadn’t been here.’
Helen grinned. ‘You forgot she was coming, didn’t you?’
‘Completely,’ Thorne said.
They looked at one another for a few seconds until Alfie began to cry softly in the next room. It usually started this way, small and weak like a new-born’s whimper. They both knew he’d be ramping up the volume fairly quickly.
‘Great,’ Helen said, getting up. ‘Well, you’ll probably be spark out by the time I’m done with him, so I’ll try not to wake you in the morning.’
‘I’m sure I’ll be fine,’ Thorne said.
As Thorne reached for the light, Helen stopped at the door.
‘I think you should definitely take the day off,’ she said. ‘You do look seriously rough.’
TWENTY-SIX
Thorne had seen the business card Kitson had described once before. Thin and flimsy, with a basic font and simple layout; one of those you could get printed up in batches of fifty from machines at railway stations.
FA Investigations.
The year before, Thorne had become professionally involved with a young private investigator named Anna Carpenter. She had dropped out of university and gone to work for FA Investigations with high hopes of an exciting new career, only to find herself acting as bait in seedy honeytrap operations, when she wasn’t working as a glorified bookkeeper or fetching her boss’s booze.
Thorne, and the case they worked on together, had been her escape.
He had not wanted anything to do with her at first, had been forced into it for the sake of the investigation. By the end, they had become close; a new lease of life for Thorne every bit as much as it was for her. Though Anna’s boss was not directly at fault for the way things had turned out, Thorne had seen and heard enough of the man she had worked for to wish that he could have blamed Frank Anderson for what happened.
Blamed him and done something about it.
Now, at ten fifteen on a drizzly Thursday morning, while Helen and his chief inspector thought he was laid up in bed, Thorne stood on a pavement in Victoria, outside a narrow brown door with cracked glass, and dragged his thoughts back to the present. The five dead and the dog-eared card found in George Jeffers’ pocket.
He rang the bell.
Half a minute later, Frank Anderson answered the door. Perhaps he was having trouble finding a new ‘secretary’ on the pittance he was paying, or else he was not making enough money to afford anyone at all. Either way, it was good news.
‘What do you want?’ Anderson said. It had taken him a long few seconds to remember where he recognised Thorne from and he did not look very pleased when it finally came to him. Thorne enjoyed the man’s discomfort and confusion, the way he shrank back just a little in the doorway.
They had last seen one another at Anna Carpenter’s funeral.
‘Well, I certainly don’t want to stand about chatting on your fucking doorstep.’ Thorne had not meant to sound quite so aggressive. He was hoping for a degree of co-operation after all, but something about Anderson’s face – vulpine, florid – had triggered a momentary desire to knock the man on his bony arse rather than waste any time being polite.
He bit back the urge and glanced skywards, as if it was just the rain that was making him tetchy.
Anderson said, ‘Yeah, all right, calm down,’ and turned inside, inviting Thorne to follow him upstairs. The office was much as Thorne remembered it: a drab collection of chairs and filing cabinets in brown and gunmetal grey. A job lot acquired on the cheap when some fifties council building was upgraded.
‘You want some tea?’
Thorne said no, as politely as he could.
Anderson dropped into a swivel chair behind a scarred wooden desk. He was wearing a tired suit that near enough matched the decor, a striped tie hanging from an undone collar. He was probably early fifties, but drink had put ten years on him. He looked like the schoolteacher you might think twice about before letting him take a PE class.
‘I’m interested in one of your clients,’ Thorne said. ‘A man named George Jeffers.’ He waited. ‘He was one of your clients, right?’
Anderson’s hands were clasped together. He unclasped them then moved them back together. Admitting nothing, but making no denial. A tacit invitation for Thorne to carry on.
‘I believe that Jeffers asked you to trace a number of individuals for him, is that correct? A number of elderly individuals?’
Anderson thought for a few seconds. ‘Look, you know I can’t talk about my clients.’
‘I’m asking nicely.’
‘I’m saying no nicely.’
‘You really think I’d be here if it wasn’t important?’ Thorne said.
Anderson’s expression changed, softened. Perhaps as someone who spent his working life spying on unfaithful husbands or benefit cheats, he relished his input being important for a change. Or perhaps he decided that talking to Thorne about this was preferable to talking about the past. ‘OK, let’s say that George Jeffers was a client.’
‘Did you know that he’d just come out of prison?’
Anderson nodded. ‘He never said anything, but you can smell it on them, can’t you? He had that… pallor, whatever you call it. Like he was see-through.’
‘So you traced these people for him.’
‘Not unheard of, is it?’ Anderson shrugged. ‘You come out of prison after a long stretch, only natural you might want to get back together with a few people you’ve lost touch with.’
Thorne nodded. Thinking: It wasn’t Jeffers who had lost touch with anyone, and there was nothing natural about what the man who wanted these people found was planning to do. ‘How did he pay you?’
‘Now you’re pushing it.’
‘Come on, I’m not going to tell the taxman. Cash?’
Anderson said nothing.
‘Scotch?’
Anderson scowled at him. ‘My business.’
‘I need a list of the people he asked you to find.’
Anderson leaned back in his chair, swivelled back and forth. ‘No chance.’
‘You’ve already admitted Jeffers was a client, so what’s the big deal?’
‘That’s as much as you’re going to get,’ Anderson said. ‘Besides which, I’ve admitted nothing of the sort. I start handing on the details of particular cases, all the ins and outs, I’m betraying my clients’ confidence and completely compromising the integrity of my business.’
It was a struggle not to laugh. ‘Right. They might throw you out of the Association of British Investigators. Still using their logo, I see.’
Instinctively, Anderson reached for the stack of notepaper Thorne was eyeing up. He gathered up the pile and thrust it into a drawer, then began straightening up other objects on his desk: a calendar, a mug filled with pens, a telephone attached by a cable to a digital recorder.
‘That’s naughty,’ Thorne said. ‘I wonder what would happen to the integrity of the business if your clients discovered that you’d never been a member of the ABI? That you were using that logo illegally.’
‘So, I forgot to send in the membership fee,’ Anderson said. ‘I can sort that in five minutes, so don’t think that’s any sort of threat.’
‘What about the fact that you spend half your time calling up yo
ur competitors, posing as a prospective client and arranging non-existent meetings?’
‘Firstly, it’s what everyone does and secondly… you’re starting to sound a bit desperate.’ He stood up. ‘Right, I think we’re about finished, aren’t we?’
‘I really need that list.’
‘Well, come back with a warrant and we can talk about it.’ Anderson must have sensed Thorne’s hesitation, seen something in his face. ‘Oh, I see.’ He sat down casually on the edge of the desk. ‘This one’s off the clock, is it?’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘It bloody well does to me,’ Anderson said. ‘Even more reason for me to tell you to piss off. Like I needed another reason.’
Thorne looked at him. If he was struggling to control his desire to slam Anderson’s smug face hard on to his desk, then Anderson was fighting a similar – if rather more foolish – urge to do much the same to him. A year before, in this very office, Thorne had made Frank Anderson look like an idiot, and clearly that still rankled. Thorne looked, making no effort to hide what he was thinking, but saying nothing, because he had nothing else to say.
‘So?’ Anderson smiled. ‘Piss off.’
Ten minutes later, Frank Anderson was enjoying his second whisky of the day, thinking that although there weren’t too many things that could brighten his life up at the moment, sending that prick Thorne away with his tail between his legs was definitely one of them.
He raised his glass in a toast to his own brilliance; muttered, ‘One each, I reckon.’
Anderson’s interest in the whole George Jeffers thing had been sufficiently piqued by Thorne’s visit, by his obvious desperation for the details, that he spent the next few minutes trying to figure out what might be in it for him. Was there any way he could make some money out of it? Were there any angles he could exploit to his own advantage? Bar actually selling the information to Thorne he couldn’t think of any offhand, but he was still wrestling with the conundrum when the phone went.
A new client. The day was looking better and better.
The man suspected that his wife was having an affair with a work colleague. A stylist at the hairdressing salon where she worked, who had conned everyone into thinking he was gay, when that was obviously just a cover story. Anderson had heard similar stories a thousand times and he listened patiently, before making the man fully aware of his rates, including the charges for the conversation they were now having.
‘I just need proof,’ the man said. ‘Proof of what she’s doing to me and to our kids.’
‘I’ll get you proof one way or the other,’ Anderson said.
‘If we get divorced, she’ll try and turn me over. I mean, that’s what always happens, isn’t it? But if I can prove that she was the one playing away, it might not be so bad. I might even get a chance to keep my kids.’
‘Sounds like money well spent then,’ Anderson said.
He told the man that he would need to come into the office to make formal arrangements and they agreed a time the following week. The man thanked him, said he was a lot less worried about things now he’d spoken to a professional.
‘Glad I can help,’ Anderson said.
When the call had ended, Anderson sat back in his chair and raised his glass a second time. ‘Professional,’ he whispered, before draining it. He was still clutching the glass containing his third whisky of the day when he went down to answer the door a few minutes later.
Tom Thorne, looking rather more cocky than when he’d left.
‘It’s always the stupid laws that prove to be the handiest,’ Thorne said. ‘The really boring ones.’
‘What?’
But Thorne was already pushing past him on his way up the stairs, talking as he went while Anderson trotted after him. ‘I mean they got Al Capone for tax evasion in the end, didn’t they? And they only caught the Yorkshire Ripper because there was an irregularity with his tax disc. This one, though… this one’s my absolute favourite from now on.’
Anderson shouted, ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’ as Thorne marched into his office and around his desk. He could only stand and stare as Thorne reached for the digital voice recorder and pressed PLAY.
‘I just need proof,’ the tinny voice said. ‘Proof of what she’s doing to me and to our kids…’
Anderson’s shoulders slumped when he saw the expression on Thorne’s face and realised.
‘Not bad,’ Thorne said, ‘even if I say so myself. I just poshed my voice up a bit… reckon I sound like Hugh Grant. I think the stuff about the kids was a nice touch, don’t you? And you sounded ever so sympathetic.’
‘You’re an arsehole,’ Anderson said.
‘I might well be, but because you failed to inform me that our conversation was being recorded, you’re the arsehole who’s in breach of the Telecommunications Act of 2003.’ Thorne sat down in Anderson’s chair, opened a drawer and took out a sheet of the headed notepaper he had seen Anderson put away earlier. He waved it towards him. ‘So, do I arrest you now, or do you save us both a lot of trouble by writing those names down for me?’
‘Arsehole,’ Anderson said again.
‘I mean, I don’t think we’re talking about prison or anything, but it’s probably a hefty fine and it’s not going to look good on the CV, is it?’
Anderson stepped forward and snatched the paper, muttering curses as he leaned across to take a pen from the mug on his desk. He nodded towards the computer, the muscles flexing in his jaw. ‘I’ll need to…’
‘Oh, of course.’ Thorne vacated the chair and watched Anderson come around and call up the file he needed, stabbing furiously at the keys of the grimy PC. He picked up the half-empty bottle of Bell’s from the top of the filing cabinet. ‘Times must be hard,’ he said. ‘I had you down as a single malt man.’
‘Here.’
Thorne felt more pumped up than he had in a long time as he took the piece of paper Anderson was brandishing and looked down at the names.
‘So, we finished then?’
But Thorne wasn’t listening. However ingenious he had been, however big a fool he had made of Frank Anderson, he could feel the rush evaporate, the ticking in his blood slow to a dull, monotonous throb.
He was the arsehole, after all.
Four names he recognised, four names he already knew.
He had wasted his time.
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘I reckon I could get used to this,’ Hendricks said.
Holland looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Working from here.’ Hendricks looked around. ‘I mean, in terms of my own speciality, yes, it’s definitely a bit limited. There’s probably a freezer in the back somewhere and I could always improvise as far as a slab goes, but otherwise the facilities do leave something to be desired. That said though, you can’t argue with fancy Italian lager on tap and all the crisps and nuts you can eat.’ He turned, nodded across to where Thorne was waiting to be served at the bar. ‘Mind you, bearing in mind that we’re doing this out of the goodness of our hearts, I do think he should be buying all the drinks.’
‘That why you’re doing this then?’ Holland asked. ‘The “goodness of your heart”.’
‘Something like that. Someone needs to keep an eye on him.’
‘Not sure why I’m doing it.’ Holland loosened his tie. ‘Buggered if I can see the funny side, though.’
‘I spent all afternoon cutting up a thirteen-year-old boy,’ Hendricks said, quietly. ‘So pretty much everything else has got a funny side.’
When Thorne arrived back at the table and laid the drinks down, Hendricks said, ‘Here we are again then,’ and began whistling a recognisable refrain.
‘Wrong movie,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.’
Hendricks reached for his drink. Said, ‘I’m well aware of that.’
‘Yvonne told me to say sorry she couldn’t make it,’ Holland said.
‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said. ‘She texted me.’
‘She’s got a lot on with the kids, you know? But she’s still… on board.’
Thorne nodded, said, ‘Right then,’ and laid down the list he had extracted from Frank Anderson. He had already explained to the others that it contained only the names of the victims they had already identified. ‘Fiona Daniels, Brian Gibbs, John Cooper, Alan Herbert.’ He counted them off on his fingers. ‘Margaret Cooper killed just because she was there and he couldn’t leave her alive. Four people Mercer had a grudge against, so he gets George Jeffers to find them. Jeffers uses Frank Anderson to do it for him and all the information Mercer needs is waiting for him when he gets out.’
‘Tidy,’ Hendricks said.
Thorne stabbed at the scrap of paper, now damp with beer from the bottom of glasses. ‘So, where the hell does this leave us?’
‘Maybe it’s finished,’ Hendricks said. He swirled the beer around in his glass. ‘Maybe this was Mercer’s list and he’s crossed them all off and now he’s done.’
Thorne shook his head.
‘Maybe he’s looking forward to a nice cosy retirement. Putting his feet up in Eastbourne or somewhere and watching Antiques Roadshow. Doing a spot of gardening or whatever.’
‘He’s not done,’ Thorne said.
‘You want there to be some more?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Thorne snapped.
Hendricks looked at Holland.
Thorne held a hand up. Sorry. ‘Just one more name on that list and we might have at least had a chance. We might have known who he was going after and got there before he did.’
‘But there’s no way of knowing what order he was doing it in, is there?’ Holland said. ‘I can’t see how it would really have helped.’ He sat back and folded his arms. ‘I mean, I hope Phil’s right, I hope there aren’t any more.’
‘So do I, obviously,’ Thorne said. ‘But look at Alan Herbert. If Mercer’s going to all this trouble to murder the poor sod who just happened to be standing next to him in the dock, you’ve got to believe there are going to be others. Jury members, officers of the court… somebody who looked at him the wrong way, whoever. This has been festering for thirty years, for God’s sake.’ He raised his glass, then stopped and stared down into it as if something that should not be there was floating in his beer. ‘Who knows who else he’s nursing grudges against?’
The Dying Hours Page 14