Against the dark dirt floor, a few fragments of broken glass caught the light. Cobwebs around the door glistened, moving in the breeze, and lingering fumes from the exhaust scratched at the back of Thorne’s throat as he approached the Astra. The car was every bit as old and tired as the officers outside had said it was. The patches of rust were far more vivid than the faded red of the paintwork or the dirty streaks of grey filler on both rear wings.
Thorne remembered exactly what the officers had been talking about and wondered if this was precisely the reason Mercer had bought such an old car. If Thorne had been right about him having plenty of money to play with, he could certainly have afforded something a lot better.
Had this been the plan all along?
Job done…
He used his phone to take a couple of quick photos, then moved round to the side of the car. His eye followed the line of the white plastic tubing that had been taped to the end of the exhaust and fed in through the top of the rear driver’s-side window. That door, like all the others, had been opened to help dispel the fumes, but Thorne could see the remnants of the grey gaffer tape on the glass that had been torn into thick strips and used to seal the opening from the inside.
He moved forward – the fumes even stronger suddenly – and stared through the open driver’s door into the darkened interior.
Got his first look at Terry Mercer.
The body was slumped to the left, though not quite touching the passenger seat. Thorne could not be sure if this was how he had been found, or how the sergeant had left him after searching for signs of life. Mercer was wearing a dark jacket and a light blue shirt, training shoes that looked almost brand new in the gloom of the footwell. His white hair looked to have been oiled and swept back, but now a few thick strands hung loose and untidy from the drooping head, as though he’d just woken up. His left hand was a fist in his lap while the other stretched out towards the open door.
Thorne leaned in and touched fingers to Mercer’s face. It still felt warm, but, glancing down, he could see that the car’s heater had been turned up and guessed it had been running while the engine was on.
No point sitting there freezing for those last few minutes.
Glancing across, he saw the scrap of paper that Carlowe had mentioned and reached for it. Mercer’s final statement – simple, triumphant – had been scrawled in slanting capital letters. There was a cheap yellow biro on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Thorne held on to the note for a few seconds longer; it was slippery between his plastic-coated fingers. Then he set it back where he’d found it.
He felt light-headed, uncertain of how to feel.
It was over, his ridiculous phantom investigation, though he and those he had dragged into his doomed orbit might already have spent too much time off the grid to avoid the inevitable fallout. He was happy, or at least relieved, that the killing was at an end. But at the same time he could not help feeling that he had been robbed of something.
That he had been cheated.
He needed air, and not just because of the exhaust fumes.
He stood up and took a step away from the car, but then a glance inside caught the mess of litter on the back seat. An overcoat bundled up on the floor. He wondered if anyone had bothered searching the rest of the vehicle yet or opened the boot.
Had that ‘proper rummage’ Carlowe had mentioned.
There was only one other officer lurking at the entrance, but she was looking the other way, so Thorne ducked quickly down into the back of the car. He turned over the jumble of discarded cans and fast-food wrappers. He looked through the pockets of the jacket and came up empty. As he was backing out again, he glimpsed the edge of a white plastic bag wedged beneath the driver’s chair and reached down to pull it out.
The weight told him it was not empty.
Sitting on the back seat and taking care to keep his head down, Thorne drew a tattered green-cardboard folder from the bag. He opened it and as soon as he had taken out its contents and begun to examine them, he knew exactly how to feel. He barely registered the discomfort as he gasped in a lungful of exhaust fumes…
A minute later Thorne was walking out of the garage at a nice steady pace; gratefully sucking in the cold air as he moved out of the light, through the low-lying flood of the patrol car’s headlights and back into the chill of the semi-dark.
Carlowe turned from a conversation with his sergeant. Said, ‘You must be good at holding your breath.’
Thorne managed a sickly smile then pulled an appropriate face and turned away to spit copiously into the dirt. ‘I’ll get out of your hair then,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘Thanks for letting me tag along.’ He began walking towards his car, aware a moment or two later that Carlowe was following a few steps behind and not turning round when he was spoken to.
‘No way Jesmond can think you’re slacking now, eh, Tom?’
‘Sorry?’
‘All this, on your night off.’
‘Right,’ Thorne said.
A car came round the corner – the doctor’s possibly – bumping slowly across the ruts towards them. ‘Why do I get the feeling you know something the rest of us don’t?’ Carlowe asked.
Thorne said nothing and reached into his pocket for car keys.
Doing so was a little awkward, with his right arm held rigid at his side; keeping the necessary pressure on the folder tucked away inside his jacket, holding it tight against his ribs.
What he knew, was exactly how Terry Mercer had persuaded seven people to kill themselves.
FIFTY-TWO
Helen had a bottle of wine open and was doing her best to stay awake in front of the television, when Hendricks called.
‘I thought you should know,’ he said, ‘Terry Mercer’s dead.’
‘How?’ It took a few seconds for her to get the word out; to shake the conviction that Thorne had managed to track down the man he was after and do something from which there would be no coming back.
Hendricks told her as much as he knew, explained that Thorne had called from his car to ask if he could pull whatever strings were necessary to ensure he did Mercer’s post-mortem.
‘Can you?’
‘This isn’t a job where people volunteer too often,’ he said. ‘I’ll make some calls though.’
Helen turned at the sound of a whimper from Alfie’s room. She stepped into the hall and listened, but she knew every noise her son made and it didn’t sound like he was awake. ‘Sorry, Phil…’
‘Anyway, there you are,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘Come on, I think even Tom might have to let this one go now.’
‘Did he sound pleased? When you spoke to him.’
‘Yeah, kind of. He sounded… enthusiastic.’
Helen grunted, non-committal. In the last few weeks enthusiasm had become something to be afraid of.
‘Like I said though, he was in the car and it was only a couple of minutes.’
‘Where was he going?’
‘Well, I presumed he was on his way home.’
Neither of them spoke for a few seconds, then Helen told him how much she’d enjoyed their night out. Hendricks said that he’d had a good time too, despite having paid for it the following morning.
‘Bit of a shaky scalpel hand,’ he said.
‘Bloody hell.’
‘It was fine. I mean, it’s not like I’m a brain surgeon, is it?’
Helen laughed, but she was thinking about Thorne searching for his jacket a few hours earlier. The urgency as he prowled between rooms, the adrenalin fizzing in him. It was a drug he had struggled to say goodbye to once and she wondered how easy it would be for him to do it again.
Hendricks said, ‘The other night, when I was talking about why he did it.’
‘The summit fever stuff?’
‘It’s like he has this compulsion to do things properly, you know? Like there’s only ever one way to come at anything and I know it’s a pain
in the arse for the rest of us, but it’s usually for the right reasons.’
‘Yeah, he’s a sodding perfectionist when it suits him.’
‘Basically, love, you’ve hooked up with a control freak.’
Helen’s voice softened. She wanted Thorne home; wanted to take the piss because secretly he liked it and see his face when Alfie came to him, and trace a finger across the small, straight scar on his chin. ‘There are worse things to be,’ she said.
‘I suppose.’
‘It means you give a shit, at least.’
‘Did you know more control freaks kill themselves every year than manic-depressives?’
Alfie whimpered again, and this time it sounded as though he wanted attention. ‘I didn’t, but it’s good to know.’
‘Sorry,’ Hendricks said. ‘Bit of a suicide nerd.’
‘That must have come in handy the last few weeks…’
When Helen had hung up, she called Thorne’s mobile, but it went straight to answerphone. There seemed no point in leaving a message, not if he was on his way home anyway. She heated Alfie’s bottle, then collected her own on the way to his room, the two of them wide awake suddenly.
FIFTY-THREE
Thorne had not expected Frank Anderson to still be in his office at quarter to ten at night, but he’d enjoyed calling on him nonetheless; hammering on the door hard enough to put another small crack in the glass.
Resigned to no more than scant and momentary satisfaction, he suddenly remembered the bar on the other side of the road. The one from which he’d called Anderson on his previous visit and the one – so Anna Carpenter had once told him – in which Anderson drank most days, alone or with prospective clients to whom he did not wish to show the sordid reality of his less than impressive business premises.
Thorne jogged across the road, dodging between cars.
Anderson was at a table just inside the door, sitting close to a woman in her mid-forties. His back was to the door, but the woman saw Thorne approach and immediately stopped laughing.
‘New client, Frank?’ Thorne waited for Anderson to turn round then pointed at his companion. ‘Or is this a lady friend?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Anderson said.
Thorne stepped closer and looked at the woman. ‘Seriously, love, if you’re thinking of sleeping with him, you’re going to want a really hot shower afterwards.’
The woman opened her mouth but said nothing.
‘What do you want?’ Anderson asked.
Thorne tossed the folder down on to the table, opened it up and removed the photographs. He held them for a second before dropping them and spreading them out quickly, scattering beermats as Anderson and the woman scrabbled to remove their drinks.
Anderson took a cursory glance. Said, ‘And?’
There were more than twenty photographs and though Thorne only recognised two of the subjects – Jacqui Gibbs and Andrew Cooper – he had known straight away who they were. What he was looking at. All of them photographed without their knowledge: coming out of houses, climbing into cars, kicking a football in the park. The families of those Terry Mercer had been targeting.
Men, women and children.
Grandchildren…
Mercer had offered his victims a simple choice. Take their own lives or forfeit those of the people they loved. No choice at all.
‘You lying piece of shit,’ Thorne said.
‘Now, hang on—’
Now, people at nearby tables were staring, but Thorne could not have cared less. ‘You took these, didn’t you?’ He stabbed a finger at the picture of Jacqui Gibbs walking away from a supermarket. ‘This was all part of the job you did for George Jeffers.’
‘You asked me about the old people,’ Anderson said. ‘Remember? You wanted the names of the old people Jeffers had told me to find and I gave you their names. That was our deal.’
‘You found these people too though, didn’t you?’
Anderson looked. ‘I didn’t take all of these.’
‘The ones he asked you to find. You took their pictures and handed them over for Jeffers to pass on to his mate.’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘His mate, Terry Mercer.’
‘Never heard of him—’
‘Have you got any fucking idea what you’ve done?’
The woman – a blowsy brunette wearing too much make-up – got to her feet a little unsteadily, but Thorne looked at her and she quickly sat back down again. Seeing that one of the staff had moved from behind the bar she leaned across to Anderson and said, ‘Shall I call the police?’
Anderson shook his head.
‘Already here,’ Thorne said.
The woman looked confused. She reached across for Anderson’s hand.
‘I asked you a question.’ Thorne picked up a photo, pushed it into Anderson’s face. ‘Any idea how many of these people’s parents and grandparents are dead now because of these?’ He held up the photo of Andrew Cooper. ‘This man’s mother and father.’
‘What’s going on, Frank?’ the woman asked.
Seeing the fear in his companion’s eyes, Anderson seemed compelled suddenly to react as though he had a spine of some sort. ‘OK, you’ve come in here and you’ve shouted the odds and I’m sure you feel a lot better. Now, we both know full well that I’ve not done anything illegal, so why don’t you take your collection of snaps and leave us to it.’ He held out his arms as though all the others in the bar were his friends. ‘We’re just trying to have a quiet drink, OK?’
Thorne looked at him.
Anderson stood up. ‘Right, good. Now, I’m going for a piss.’
He walked around the table, slid past Thorne and disappeared towards the Gents. Thorne stood breathing heavily for half a minute, staring down at the photographs while the woman went back to her drink and those around them returned to their conversations. Then he gathered up the pictures, turned from the table and began pushing through the crowd.
He walked in just as Anderson was turning from the urinal, zipping himself up.
‘Oh, this is getting silly,’ Anderson said. He moved towards the door, but Thorne barred his way. ‘Look, I don’t know what your problem is, but unless you’ve got anything else, I’m on a promise, so…’
‘You need to wash your hands,’ Thorne said.
‘So I took some bloody pictures, all right? I was doing my job.’ He stared at Thorne, waiting for him to move. ‘Come on, that’s enough now, I’m trying to be nice about this.’
‘Nice?’ Thorne could not remember the last time he had wanted to hit anyone quite this much. He also knew that whatever else he had done, whether he would get away with it or not, a straightforward physical assault after a confrontation witnessed by a bar full of people would be the end of him. The Job would be gone in a second and there would be plenty of people queuing up to get him put away.
Anderson saw Thorne’s hesitation and sensed the weakness. He smiled and said, ‘Yeah, I know. You’d love to.’
Thorne punched him hard in the face.
He moved quickly back through the crowded bar, keeping his head down and avoiding the stare of Anderson’s girlfriend as he passed the table. He barrelled out through the door, the folder under his arm, his injured hand hanging loosely at his side.
He ran straight into Neil Hackett.
FIFTY-FOUR
Thorne stepped back and they stared at each other for a few seconds while traffic rumbled by. A couple passed between them, walking towards the bar. The wash of passing headlights showed only mild amusement on Hackett’s face, while Thorne knew he looked every bit as horrified as he felt.
‘Someone’s in a hurry,’ Hackett said.
‘Need to get home,’ Thorne said, dredging up a smile. The rain that had begun to fall was not heavy, but he was aware of each drop landing with an audible smack on the folder he was carrying.
‘Under the thumb?’ Hackett said. ‘You need to do something about that.’
&nb
sp; ‘This isn’t your neck of the woods, is it?’ Thorne still did not know where Hackett lived, but the idea that this bar could possibly be his local would be stretching the notion of coincidence to a ludicrous degree.
‘No, it isn’t,’ Hackett said.
‘So why this place?’ Thorne nodded towards the bar. As he did so, the door opened and two lads peered out, excited at the sniff of trouble that had drifted from the toilets and keen to follow it outside. Thorne turned away, saw that Hackett was calmly staring them out. He heard the noise from the bar fade quickly as the door closed again.
‘I’ve heard good things,’ Hackett said. ‘Decent beer, nice crowd. Never any trouble.’ He glanced at Thorne’s hand. ‘Hurt yourself?’
Thorne flexed his fingers, winced. He hoped it wasn’t broken. ‘Trapped it in a door.’
‘Ouch.’
‘I’ll live.’
‘I quite like trying out places I’ve never been before,’ Hackett said. He took a step towards the bar, towards Thorne. ‘I’m usually pretty good at making myself at home. Finding interesting people to talk to.’ He thrust huge hands into the pockets of his long, dark coat and looked towards the door. ‘Any in there?’
‘No idea,’ Thorne said. ‘I just nipped in for a quick one.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m driving.’
‘Because it’s not really yours either, is it?’
‘What?’
‘Neck of the woods.’
‘I was visiting a mate.’
‘Anything interesting?’
‘Not really.’
‘In there, I mean.’ Hackett nodded at the folder in Thorne’s left hand.
The Dying Hours Page 25