‘Oh, right,’ Thorne said. ‘Are we talking about me or Ian?’ The name was as much as Thorne knew about the boyfriend Kitson had been seeing for several months, but after her much-discussed fall from grace, he could hardly blame her for keeping her private life as private as possible. ‘Poor sod screwed up over the weekend, did he?’ Her smile told Thorne he was right on the money.
‘I’m just saying, if women ran things . . .’
‘Be better, would it?’
‘. . . the world wouldn’t be in such bloody chaos.’
‘Except once a month,’ Thorne said. ‘When things would go extremely tits up.’
Kitson’s smile widened around the plastic spoon. ‘How was your Sunday, smart-arse?’
Thorne had spent most of the previous day alone, which had suited him well enough. Louise had driven down to see her parents in Sussex and although Thorne got on perfectly well with both of them, she hadn’t bothered to ask if he wanted to come along. If Hendricks was right, and Louise had told her mum about the pregnancy, she probably preferred to be on her own when she broke the news that there no longer was one.
He had not seen the need to ask.
He had made himself a toasted ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, then watched Spurs grind out a piss-poor goalless draw against Manchester City. Louise got home just before he had the chance to be bored all over again by Match of the Day 2 and they spent what was left of the evening arguing about when she was going back to work.
She had rung her office from the hospital that first afternoon, telling them she had a stomach bug, and had decided that four days off sick was more than enough. Thorne disagreed, said he thought she needed longer. Louise told him that it was her body and her decision to make, that she felt as fine as she was ever fucking-well going to, and that she was going back first thing on Monday.
Thorne had left an hour earlier than usual this morning, to beat the traffic and to avoid a repeat of the argument. He looked up at the clock on the wall above Kitson’s desk. Louise would be getting to Scotland Yard, where the Kidnap Unit was based, around now.
‘My body, my decision . . .’
He dropped his eyes, nodded at Kitson. ‘My Sunday was pretty quiet,’ he said.
Once the team had gathered for the morning briefing, it quickly became apparent that others connected to the twin inquiries had been considerably busier than Tom Thorne over the previous thirty-six hours.
‘We’ve been able to match the DNA sample gathered from beneath the fingernails of Catherine Burke in Leicester to that taken from hairs on Emily Walker’s clothing. So we’re now officially looking for the same individual in connection with both of these murders.’ Russell Brigstocke took a moment, looked from face to face.
Said, ‘One killer.’
Karim moved his fist from beneath his chin and raised a finger. ‘Are we releasing this?’ he asked.
‘Not yet,’ Brigstocke said.
‘And we know the Leicester lot won’t, do we?’
‘They know they’re not supposed to.’ Brigstocke shrugged. ‘Look, an inquiry like this means there’s obviously double the chance of something being leaked. Some idiot in uniform out to impress a reporter he’s trying to get into bed, whatever.’ He raised his hands to quiet the predictable reaction. ‘So, all we can do is try to keep the lid on at our end. We all know how the press works, how mental things can get if they catch a sniff of a serial killer.’ He scanned the faces again, pausing for a second or two when he reached Thorne’s, before carrying on.
Thorne knew that Brigstocke was at least half right. The tabloids would certainly go to town. While the broadsheets would use the phrase sparingly and probably use inverted commas, the red-tops would show no such restraint. Same with TV: the BBC would at least want to be seen to avoid sensationalism, while for the likes of Sky News and Channel Five those two words would become something of a mantra.
He also knew very well why Brigstocke had sought him out to push home his point. He guessed that, were he to Google his own name, he would find it cropping up on more than one of those websites he had come across the previous week. His name, alongside those of the men and women he had hunted.
Palmer. Nicklin. Bishop.
One who took the lives of strangers because he was afraid not to; a man who got others to murder for him; a killer whose unluckiest victim did not die at all . . .
Thorne’s mind was yanked back from its wandering as the lights went out and an image appeared on the screen.
‘The FSS in Leicester sent us the fragment of X-ray found on Catherine Burke’s body.’ Brigstocke pointed up at the screen. ‘And we can see how it fits alongside the piece that Emily Walker was holding.’ The small black pieces of celluloid had been blown up, and though it was still not clear what had been X-rayed, the magnification clearly showed where the full-sized image had been cut - a jagged line that almost disappeared when they were pushed together. ‘The fact that the killer left these for us to find would indicate that he wants us to piece them together. Although, as yet, we’re none the wiser about these.’ He pointed to a barely legible series of letters and numbers that ran in three lines along the top of each piece, then nodded to the back of the room.
The slide changed and an image appeared showing the conjoined sequence of letters and numbers magnified still further:VEY48
ADD
PHONY
‘Write them down,’ Brigstocke said. He watched as eyes dropped to notebooks all around the room. ‘Now, there are obviously pieces missing on either side . . .’
Next to Thorne, Kitson scribbled and mumbled, ‘Like a jigsaw puzzle.’
‘Except we don’t have a box with the picture on,’ Thorne said.
‘Right, let’s crack on.’ Brigstocke took one last look at the screen. ‘But if anyone fancies doing some major arse-licking and spending every minute of their spare time trying to figure that out for us, I’ll be extremely grateful.’
‘Better than a bloody sudoku,’ Karim said.
Brigstocke smiled. ‘Not that anyone’s going to have any spare time, you understand.’
As exaggerated groans broke out either side of him, Thorne stared, unblinking, at the picture. The sequence of numbers and letters.
‘As yet, we’re none the wiser . . .’
He imagined the killer working with nail scissors, his face creased in concentration. Pictured him later sweating and bloodstained, carefully laying each piece into a victim’s palm and folding the dead fingers around it.
‘There are obviously pieces missing . . .’
Thorne stared at the gaps.
Half an hour later, when the team had dispersed, Thorne and Kitson wandered across to Brigstocke’s office for a less formal briefing. For the DCI, daily sessions like this were a chance to catch up with senior members of his team and talk about ways to take the inquiry forward. To air grievances, or talk through ideas someone might be too embarrassed to suggest in a larger meeting. A year or two earlier, the cigarettes would have come out; before that, back in the days of Cortinas and fitting up Irishmen, the secret stash of Scotch or vodka.
When Thorne and Kitson arrived, the door to Brigstocke’s office was open. He was on the phone, but as soon as he saw them, he beckoned them inside and motioned for Kitson to shut the door.
Thorne saw the expression on Brigstocke’s face and did not bother to sit down. He had a good idea what was being talked about when the DCI said, ‘You’re sure, because this one sounds different.’ He knew, by the time Brigstocke was talking about pieces of plastic and press blackouts.
Thorne exchanged a look with Kitson, and waited.
Brigstocke hung up and let out a heartfelt groan on a long, tired breath.
‘Another piece of the jigsaw?’ Thorne asked.
The blood had still not returned to Russell Brigstocke’s face. ‘Two of them,’ he said.
EIGHT
The bodies of Gregory and Alexandra Macken, aged twenty and eighteen, had been discovered just
after 9.30 a.m. by the landlord of their rented flat in Holloway - an Iranian named Dariush - who had come round to fix a leaking radiator. They were informally identified by the elderly woman in the flat downstairs, who claimed to have heard them coming home on Saturday, two nights earlier, but had not seen them since.
‘They came back at different times, and there were definitely two male voices earlier on.’ She was very insistent about that, while also making it clear that she didn’t like to stick her nose into other people’s business. Later, when she was tearful, she said, ‘Nicer than your average students.’ She made sure the uniformed officer wrote that down. ‘Didn’t make a racket and always said hello. Even fed my cat when I went to stay with my sister.’
Both victims were found dead in the larger of the flat’s two bedrooms. Gregory was discovered naked on the bed, while his sister, who was wearing pyjamas and a dressing-gown, was found on the floor. Both had slivers of dark plastic in their hands, and head wounds that were clearly visible through blood-spattered plastic bags.
Within an hour, the CSI team had set to work. A uniformed WPC from the local station did her best to comfort Mr Dariush in preparation for taking his statement, while a family liaison officer was sent to talk to the next of kin and inform them that they would be required to identify the bodies formally the following day.
If they felt up to it . . .
‘I never understand why anyone would choose to do that,’ Thorne said. ‘I mean, most of us have to do it at one time or another, but why would you sign up for a job where all you do is deal with other people’s misery? Where you have to . . . absorb it?’
‘Because you’re empathetic?’
‘Because you’re what?’
‘You give a toss.’
‘All the time, though?’ Thorne shook his head and swallowed a mouthful of coffee. ‘I’d rather face somebody with a gun.’
‘You should think about retraining,’ Hendricks said. ‘The dead ones are no bother at all.’
It was almost six o’clock. After more than seven hours at the crime scene, Thorne and Hendricks had left the flat as evening fell and walked the few hundred yards to a coffee bar on the Hornsey Road, to kill time while they waited for the bodies to be brought out.
‘How much longer has the brother been dead?’
They had taken a corner table without needing to discuss it, both well used to staying as far away from other customers as possible whenever they found themselves in a bar or restaurant and there was shop to be talked.
‘Ten, twelve hours, maybe,’ Hendricks said. ‘The sister’s been dead around a day, so he would have been killed more like thirty-six hours ago.’
‘So, Saturday night and Sunday morning?’
Hendricks nodded and took a slurp of tea. ‘Good film that. When Albert Finney was still gorgeous.’
‘You think he’s gay?’ Thorne asked.
‘Albert Finney?’
Thorne ignored his friend and waited. He had been thinking about what the downstairs neighbour had said and was working out a timeline. The girl had not been killed because she had interrupted someone in the act of murdering her brother.
The killer had waited for her.
‘Look, I’ll be able to tell you if anything sexual went on tomorrow,’ Hendricks said. ‘Who did what to who, and for how long. Macken was definitely gay, if that helps.’
‘Gaydar work on corpses, does it?’
‘He had Armistead Maupin and Edmund White on his bookshelves and Rufus Wainwright on his CD player.’
Thorne had heard of Rufus Wainwright. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘The killer might well be gay too,’ Hendricks said. ‘But if you ask me, he’s whatever he needs to be. Does whatever he has to do to get through the front door.’
‘Then whatever he has to do once he’s inside.’ Thorne finished his coffee, spoke as much to himself as Hendricks: ‘He . . . adapts.’
‘I’m not sure we’ll ever know exactly what happened,’ Hendricks said. ‘How he got the girl in there, whether he was hiding. But this time he brought two plastic bags with him.’
‘Two bags, but just one blunt instrument,’ Thorne said. They had found a heavy glass bowl by the side of the bed. There was hardened candle-wax in the bottom of it and what looked like brain-matter and dried blood caked across the underside. ‘He plans things carefully and he thinks on his feet.’
Hendricks nodded. ‘He’s good at this.’
A waitress came over and asked if they would like more drinks. Hendricks said that he was fine, but Thorne ordered another coffee, happy enough to sit there for a while.
‘What does he do for twelve hours?’ he asked.
‘What does who do?’
‘Our man, after he’s killed the boy.’
‘Maybe he sleeps,’ Hendricks said. ‘Reads a book. Has a wank.’ He shrugged. ‘I know what it looks like inside these nutters’ heads, but don’t ask me what goes on in there.’
Thorne leaned back in his chair. ‘Has a wank?’
Hendricks grinned. ‘A lot of these are sexual, right?’
Some were, certainly, but Thorne had already decided that these killings were not sexually motivated, and not only because of a lack of evidence. A violent death was never treated as something ordinary, but when it was about sex or revenge or money, there could at least be some level of understanding. When it was about none of these things was when it got scary.
And Thorne was starting to feel afraid.
They both started at the sudden banging on the window, turned and saw a drunk who had tottered past once already, pressing his big red face against the glass. Thorne looked away but Hendricks began to smile and waved at the man. The waitress, who was hovering at a nearby table, apologised and moved towards the door, but the drunk, having blown one final kiss at his new best friend, was already lurching away along the pavement.
Thorne stared across the table.
Hendricks grinned and turned up his palms. ‘Like I said, empathy . . .’
There was another knock at the window, and this time Thorne turned to see Dave Holland on his way in. Thorne tried to finish his coffee quickly as Holland reached the table. ‘They bringing them out, then?’
‘No, but you might want to get back over there anyway,’ Holland said. ‘Martin Macken’s arrived and he’s kicking up a fuss.’ He looked at the coffee in Thorne’s hand as though he could have done with a strong one himself. ‘The father.’
The road had been sealed off to traffic, causing considerable congestion in the surrounding streets, which was exacerbated by drivers slowing down at either end of the road to rubberneck. Had there been a match at the Emirates Stadium, a huge area of north London could easily have been reduced to gridlock.
Outside the Mackens’ flat the street was nose-to-tail with police and CSI vehicles, so the blue Saab driven by the family liaison officer had pulled up opposite, between the generator lorry and a small catering van dispensing sandwiches and hot drinks.
Thorne figured that the Saab was the car he was looking for, as that was where the noise was coming from. As he and the others neared it, he could see a young, plain-clothes officer and several others in uniforms trying to mollify a man who was screaming and fighting to get across the road.
The man he guessed was Martin Macken.
Twenty feet from the car, Thorne took Hendricks to one side and told him to get back inside the flat and delay the removal of the bodies. As Hendricks walked quickly across the road, Thorne introduced himself to Martin Macken and said how sorry he was.
Macken could not possibly have heard over the terrible noise he was making and, after trying again, Thorne could do no more than stand by and wait for him to draw breath or drop dead with the effort. The man was fifty or so and had clearly looked after himself, but now he was coming apart in front of Thorne’s eyes. Hair that would normally have been kept neatly swept back was flying back and forth across his face as he raged and the tendons were rigid in
his neck. His lips were thin and white, spittle-flecked. His eyes darted, wild and bloodshot, as he strained towards the house opposite and howled for his children.
‘Please, Mr Macken . . .’
Suddenly, he seemed distracted by movement at the front door and stopped struggling. Thorne gave the nod and moved forward, while the officers, each of whom had been staring at his own shoes while using the minimum of force to restrain the man, stepped back.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Thorne, Mr Macken.’
Red-faced and breathing heavily, Macken pointed at the figure moving to the front door of the house where his children had lived. ‘Who’s that?’
Thorne swallowed as he watched Hendricks disappear inside. That’s the man who’ll be cutting up your children in the morning. ‘It’s just one of the team, sir. Everyone’s doing all that they can.’
Macken’s gaze moved to the first-floor windows, a moan rising from the back of his throat. The men in uniform tensed, as though he might try to rush across the road at any moment. When it became clear that he would not, the liaison officer, a Scottish DS named Adam Strang, moved up to Thorne’s shoulder.
‘I tried to tell him to stay where he was,’ Strang said, ‘That we wouldn’t need him until tomorrow, but he wasn’t having any of it. He just marched out of the house and went and sat in the back of the car. I had to go back in and switch the lights off . . .’
Thorne nodded his understanding and took another step closer to Macken. ‘Why don’t you get back in the car, sir?’
Without taking his eyes from the window, Macken shook his head.
‘Don’t you think you’d be better off at home?’
‘I want to see my kids.’ The man’s voice was low and hoarse, well-educated.
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible just yet.’ Thorne put a hand on his arm. ‘Why not let us take you back to . . .’ He looked around.
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