‘They’ve obviously had some kind of enormous row,’ Thorne said. ‘She doesn’t want to admit he’s just walked out, so she’s making out like it’s no big deal, like he does this regularly. Cuts himself off for a few days, so he can find himself, whatever.’
‘He wants to find himself a new wife,’ Holland said. ‘The one he’s got sounds like a nightmare.’
‘No one knows what goes on behind closed doors.’ Thorne saw the sideways look from Holland. ‘Charlie Rich. 1973.’
‘What about the other two?’ Holland asked.
If either of the two men whose names were below Dowd’s on the list possessed mobile phones, then they were pay-as-you-go, as there was no trace of any contracts. No trace of anything.
Simon Walsh had lived at seven addresses in the previous eighteen months, signing on at half a dozen different benefit offices before dropping out of the system. His only existing relative, an aunt, claimed not to have heard from him in ten years; and a friend who had last seen him six months previously said he thought Walsh might have become addicted to anti-depressants. Without being told why they were looking for him, the friend added, somewhat ironically, that he was always expecting to hear that Simon had been found dead somewhere.
According to Graham Fowler’s estranged wife, he had been sleeping rough somewhere in south-east London for at least two years, after an increasingly severe alcohol problem had cost him first his job, then his family. There was nobody of that name registered at any of the established day centres or night shelters.
‘Well, I can’t see us finding either of them through credit-card receipts,’ Thorne said. A few years before, he had spent a period undercover, living on the streets of the West End in an effort to find the man who was killing rough sleepers. He had met plenty like Simon Walsh and Graham Fowler, men who had slipped through the cracks by accident or design. ‘They both sound like people who don’t particularly want to be found.’
‘That might be what saves their lives,’ Holland said. ‘I mean, if we can’t find them . . .’
Thorne looked at the remaining name, which had been circled again and again in red felt-tip, as if in exasperation. ‘Not that finding them is the end of the problem.’
The one person on the list of potential victims that they had been able to track down was proving to be something of a handful. Despite repeated conversations and visits from family liaison officers, Debbie Mitchell was refusing to so much as consider the possibility of entering protective custody.
‘Well, she’s not all there, is she?’ Holland said.
‘She’s got problems.’
‘And there’s this business with her kid.’
Debbie Mitchell was the single mother of a child with severe learning difficulties. She had been arrested on three occasions for soliciting and on several more for possession of Class A drugs.
‘It’s weird, this drug thing,’ Holland said.
‘What thing?’
‘Catherine Burke did a few; now Debbie Mitchell. I should think there’s every chance with Walsh and Fowler, too.’
‘Not weird really,’ Thorne said. ‘Not when you think about what they’ve all got in common. You ask me, the weirdos are the ones who aren’t drug addicts or alcoholics.’
The office moved all around them, while they drank their coffees and stared at the board, as though the marker-pen lines and scribbles were symbols in some complex equation, the answer to which might suddenly present itself if they looked hard enough.
Three hours later, Thorne was standing in front of another board, looking at the list of lunchtime specials on the menu at the Royal Oak. Until recently, in what passed for the team’s local, ‘special’ might have applied to almost any food that was vaguely edible, but a new landlord had radically improved standards. An ex-copper himself, he knew that even police officers demanded more than shit and chips at lunchtime. It was still far from being a gastropub, but it had finally become something more than a last resort.
Thorne placed his order and took a Diet Coke and a bitter lemon back to a table by the fruit machine. He slid in next to Yvonne Kitson. They touched glasses and drank, their expressions making it clear that they would prefer a pint of strong lager and a cold white wine, respectively.
‘Later,’ Kitson said.
Thorne picked up a beer-mat and began methodically tearing it into tiny pieces. ‘This case is breaking new ground,’ he said. ‘It’s a “who-didn’t-do-it”.’
Kitson smiled, happy to play along. ‘Go on then, who didn’t do it?’
‘Well, since you ask . . . It wasn’t a primary school teacher in Doncaster, it wasn’t a photocopier repairman and keen amateur boxer from Wrexham, and it certainly wasn’t a seventy-eight-year-old ex-merchant seaman who’s retired with his wife to Portugal. It’s lovely weather there today, by the way, he told me so several times. He and his wife were planning to have lunch out by the pool.’
‘Three of your Anthony Garveys?’
‘My morning so far.’
‘Got to be done.’
‘Oh, I know,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’m loving every vitally important minute of it. I’ve been eliminating people from my enquiries like there’s no tomorrow. Putting lines through their names and ticking them off, just to be on the safe side, you know? Eliminating all day long. I am . . . the Eliminator!’
Kitson sipped her drink. ‘Fine, but I didn’t hear you coming up with any bright ideas this morning.’
Thorne finished ripping up the beer-mat and nudged the pieces into a nice, neat pile. He had nothing much to say and even if he had, seeing Russell Brigstocke turn from the bar and wave at them, he would probably have kept it to himself. Using basic mime techniques, he and Kitson were able to transmit their desire for more drinks, and once Brigstocke had bought them, he joined them at the table.
‘Have you already ordered?’
Two nods.
Brigstocke took a long drink of sparkling water and sat back. ‘I just lost fifteen minutes of my lunch-hour thanks to Debbie Dozy-Bollocks. ’
‘Still being difficult?’ Kitson asked.
‘You know an FLO named Adam Strang?’
Thorne nodded, remembering the Scotsman from the Macken crime scene.
‘Well, he spent most of this morning trying to talk sense into her, but she’s not having any of it. She’s just point-blank refusing to go anywhere. ’
‘How much has she been told?’
‘Not everything, obviously. Enough, though, or at least it should be.’
‘What are the other options?’ Kitson asked.
Brigstocke shook his head, like he was sick of thinking about it. ‘I’m reluctant to stick a car outside twenty-four hours a day just because she’s being stupid.’
‘Can we install a panic button?’
‘Not enough,’ Thorne said. ‘I don’t think Emily Walker or Greg Macken would have had time to push one.’
‘So, what else can we do?’ Brigstocke asked. ‘Arrest her?’
Kitson flicked a bright red fingernail against the edge of her glass. ‘That shouldn’t take too long, looking at her record.’
A waitress arrived with the food: lamb casserole for Thorne and fish pie for Kitson. Brigstocke stared down unenthusiastically at the bowl of pasta he was given, then pointed at Thorne’s plate.
‘I fancied that, but somebody had just ordered the last one.’
‘The quick and the dead,’ Thorne said.
They ate for a minute or so without talking, until Thorne said, ‘Why aren’t we involving the press with this?’
Brigstocke swallowed quickly. ‘I thought we went through this earlier on.’ He looked to Kitson for validation.
She nodded. ‘Keeping quiet about the serial thing.’
‘Right,’ Brigstocke said.
‘I’m not talking about that,’ Thorne said. ‘Why aren’t we getting photos of Dowd and the others in the papers, on the box, whatever? We can get something out of them for a change.’
This time Brigstocke took his time swallowing and answered quietly. ‘That’s . . . tricky.’ He looked around. Many of the team were eating at nearby tables.
Thorne pushed his plate aside and leaned closer to Brigstocke, just as one of the trainee detectives chose that moment to come over and spend five minutes pumping all his loose change into the fruit machine. There was nothing more said about the case until he had finished. Thorne made a comment about the machine being tight and watched the trainee walk away. Then turned back to Brigstocke.
‘Tricky, you said?’
‘I was talking to Jesmond,’ Brigstocke said.
Thorne winced theatrically at the mention of the superintendent’s name. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Somebody has to. Anyway, there appears to be a strong feeling that using the press in the way you’re suggesting might not be a good idea.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it may alert the killer to the fact that we’re on to him.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘They think it might be, if we want to catch him.’
‘So, we want to catch him more than we want to protect the people he’s trying to kill?’
Brigstocke sighed. ‘Listen, I know.’
‘That’s mental,’ Thorne said. ‘He must already know we’re on to him. He left the bits of X-ray, for Christ’s sake. He wants us to put it all together.’
‘I’m just letting you know what I was told, all right?’
‘On top of which, I can’t see this bloke just packing his bags and buggering off because he sees a few photos in the paper.’
‘Point taken.’
‘I don’t think he’s the type to stop.’
‘Look, there’s no point getting arsy with me. I’m just telling you, there’s a . . . tension, between the different . . . priorities.’
‘Surely the first priority has to be protecting the potential victims?’ Kitson said.
‘Tell that to Debbie Mitchell.’ Brigstocke turned to Thorne. ‘In fact, you can tell the superintendent, seeing as you feel so strongly about it. They’re talking about putting a critical incident panel together.’
‘I’d rather stick needles in my eyes,’ Thorne said. He had sat on such a panel a couple of times before, struggling to look interested while diplomats in uniform droned on about media strategy, and had sworn that he would never do so again.
‘Right, in which case you should get off your high horse and stop giving me grief.’ Brigstocke took one last mouthful of pasta and pushed back his chair. ‘Fair enough?’
Neither Thorne nor Kitson ate too much more after Brigstocke had left and let the waitress take away the plates the next time she was passing.
‘High horse?’
‘High-ish,’ Kitson said.
‘Come on, I’m right though, aren’t I?’
‘I don’t think he disagrees with you, but there’s not a great deal he can do about it. Rock and a hard place, all that.’
There was still fifteen minutes before either of them was due back at Becke House. Thorne drained his glass. ‘So, do you really fancy spending the rest of the afternoon ringing up people you know haven’t killed anyone and asking them if they’ve killed anyone?’
‘You finally had a bright idea?’
‘What you said about arresting Debbie Mitchell.’
‘I was only half joking.’
‘Let’s take a drive over there. You never know, if we push it, we might get her to assault one of us.’
Kitson took a compact from her handbag and reapplied her lipstick. ‘I’ll toss you for it in the car,’ she said.
SIXTEEN
Totteridge was a leafy north London suburb with a bona fide village at its heart, where men who owned or played for football clubs lived with their suspiciously expressionless wives. A few minutes away towards Barnet, however, you would find yourself in a noticeably less well-heeled area just shy of the Great North Road, where most of the footballers were the sort who kicked lumps out of one another on Sunday mornings, smoking in the centre circle at half time and heading straight for a fry-up at the final whistle.
Debbie Mitchell lived on the top floor of a three-storey block on the Dollis Park Estate, a sprawl of sixties and seventies mixed-tenure housing in the shadow of Barnet FC’s ground. From the window of the small, smoke-filled living room, Thorne could just make out the floodlights of Underhill, the corner of the stadium’s main stand.
‘It must get pretty busy on match days,’ Kitson said.
‘Hang on a minute, this is Barnet we’re talking about,’ Thorne said. ‘They’d probably think the four of us was a pretty decent crowd.’
Only Kitson smiled as Thorne turned back to the window. Looking the other way, he could see the main road, the green belt rolling away beyond a petrol station and an enormous branch of Carpet Express.
‘Vision Express I can just about understand,’ he said, pointing. ‘Even Shoe Express, at a push. You know, you lose a shoe, you’re late for a party, whatever. But who could possibly need a carpet . . . really fast?’
‘What’s he on about?’
‘I mean, in how much of a hurry does someone have to be?’
One of the two women sitting close together on the sofa nodded towards Thorne, then turned to address Kitson who was perched on the edge of a dining chair near the door. ‘I get it,’ she said. ‘They’ve not got anywhere with the sensitive ones, or the ones who marched in here shouting the odds, so now they’ve sent the copper who thinks he’s a bloody comedian.’
Nina Collins was a good few years older than Debbie Mitchell, early forties, probably, and she had done most of the talking since Thorne and Kitson had arrived. She had opened the door, told them she was a friend of Debbie, her best friend, and that Debbie was inside, trying to get some rest and keep Jason calm. That she was frazzled, and who the hell wouldn’t be, with coppers ringing up every ten minutes telling her she had to get out of her home?
‘I suppose you’ve come to have another bash,’ she’d said, blowing cigarette smoke at them, before turning and walking back inside.
In the living room, Thorne turned from the window again and shrugged. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘quite a few people tell me I’m pretty funny.’
Collins stubbed out her cigarette. ‘They’re wrong,’ she said.
Thorne dragged a footstool across and sat down on it in front of the television. He looked at the two women. Collins was short and large-breasted, with black hair tousled into spikes, red at the tips when it caught the light. She wore a tight, striped rugby shirt that showed off her chest and there was a softness in her face, at odds with the body language and the brittle, Benson & Hedges voice. (Later, when there were new cases to worry about, Thorne would confess to Kitson, after a couple of pints, that he’d secretly quite fancied Nina Collins.)
‘He’s got a point,’ the woman next to Collins said. ‘It is a bloody stupid name. The carpets are seriously cheap, though, I’ll give them that.’
Debbie Mitchell was taller and skinnier than her friend. Her hair was long and dirty-blond, cut very straight on either side of a face that was drawn and blotchy, the foundation failing to hide an angry cluster of whiteheads around one nostril. She was barefoot, with her legs pulled up beneath her and one arm trailing over the edge of the sofa, in almost permanent contact with the boy playing on the carpet at her side.
‘He seems happy,’ Kitson said.
Collins turned as though she’d forgotten Kitson was there. ‘He is happy. He’s always happiest when he’s with his mum.’
‘Does he have any kind of . . . carer?’
‘Just me,’ Mitchell said. ‘There’s just us.’
Jason was tall for his age - eight, according to his mother’s file - and the pyjamas he was wearing looked a year or two too small for him. He pushed a large plastic train - the sort a slightly younger child might ride around on - up and down in a straight line along the side of the sofa. It was obviously a game he played a
lot. There were track marks worn into the brown carpet.
‘What about school?’ Thorne asked.
‘He goes to a special place three days a week,’ Mitchell said. ‘Up in Hatfield. I have to stay with him, though, because he screams the place down if I’m not there.’
Collins held up two fingers. ‘Twice social services have taken Jason away from her and every time it’s been a nightmare for him.’ Mitchell shook her head, eyes down, as though she didn’t want her friend to continue, but Collins raised her hand again, determined to have her say. ‘Supposed to be for his own good, being separated from his mum, and of course he bloody hates it.’ She reached across and squeezed Mitchell’s hand. ‘Every time she’s cleaned herself up and sorted her life out, though, haven’t you, darling?’
‘We’re fine now,’ Mitchell said.
‘Three bloody buses and a train to get out to Hatfield,’ Collins said. She shook her head, disgusted. ‘You’d think the council would lay on some sort of transport, wouldn’t you? But they’re too busy funding lesbian play centres and that sort of shit.’
‘We don’t mind,’ Mitchell said. ‘It’s always an adventure, providing the weather’s OK.’ She looked round at Kitson. ‘He doesn’t get bored like other kids, you know?’
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