She gave him what his dad would certainly have described as an old-fashioned look. 'So what were you doing?'
Not going to university, thought Thorne. For so many reasons, he wished he had. 'I was about to join the force, I suppose, and managing my ache.' Wanting to be a policeman more than anything. Trying to make his mum and dad proud. Wanting to do good, and all the other stupid ideas of which he'd been so brutally disabused. Anne drained her can and Thorne passed her another. They sat in silence for a minute, remembering, or pretending to remember.
'Thanks for coming over by the way. Did you drive?'
'Yes. Bugger to park, though.' Thorne nodded. 'It's good to get out actually. Rachel and I are getting on each other's nerves a bit at the moment.'
'Yeah?'
She's got a couple of resits to do and she thought the whole exam thing was behind her. So she's being a bit... spiky.'
Thorne remembered his first encounter with Anne Coburn in a lecture theatre at the Royal Free. Spiky obviously ran in the family.
Anne took another long slug of beer. Enjoying it. 'Just run-of-the-mill teenage angst, I suppose. She hasn't pierced her belly-button or painted her room black yet, but it's probably just a matter of time.'
'It'll sort itself out.'
'And so will this business with Alison.'
'It's all right, there won't be an investigation or anything. Nobody's taking it seriously.'
'Except you.'
'If that's what he wants.' The he spat out like something sour.
'Why don't you talk about it, then?"
'Anne, I don't need a doctor. Or a mother.'
She shuffled forward to the very edge of the sofa and leaned forward, her head down.
'Fine. Do you want to go to bed, then?'
Thorne had always thought that spluttering your drink out when somebody surprised you only ever happened in Terry and June, but he succeeded brilliantly in snorting a decent amount of cheap lager into his lap. The sitcom moment made him laugh uncontrollably.
Anne laughed, too, but she was also blushing to her toenails.
'Well, luck... I don't know what you're supposed to say...'
'I think you just said it.'
She slid off the sofa on to the floor next to him. 'So?'
'Well, these trousers have got Tesco's own lager all over them now. They'll have to come off...'
He leaned across and kissed her. She put down her lager and placed a hand on his neck. He broke the kiss, looked at the floor. 'Now, this carpet has unhappy memories and I'm still not a hundred per cent sure I've got the smell of vomit out of it...'
'You smooth-talking bastard.'
'So, the palatial bedroom suite?'
She nodded and they stood up. There was still a hint of awkwardness between them. Nothing had yet been abandoned, but taking hands would have seemed a little silly all the same. Thorne held open the bedroom door. 'I have to warn you, I've got a Swedish virgin in here.'
Anne raised her eyebrows and looked into the room, seeing only a small fitted wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a neatly made bed. She didn't get it. 'Eh?'
'The bed...' Thorne pulled her to him. 'It doesn't matter...'
Thorne woke and looked at the clock. It was nearly two thirty in the morning and the phone was ringing. He was instantly wide awake. He slipped out of bed and hurried naked into the living room where the handset was recharging on the base unit just inside the front door. The heating couldn't have been off for very long but the flat was already freezing.
'Sir, sorry it's so late. It's Holland.'
Thorne pressed the phone tight to his ear and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. He could still hear Leftfield. The CD was on repeat and they'd forgotten to turn it off.
'Yes?'
'We might have something here. A woman rang through. She'd seen the reconstruction - waited a couple of days wondering whether to call.'
'Go on.'
'Nine months ago a man knocked on her door claiming to be looking for a party. She thought he looked all right you know, friendly enough. She invited him in. He was carrying a bottle of champagne.'
Thorne stopped shivering.
'I haven't got much more than that at the minute, sir. For some reason he left, and she didn't really think anything of it until the programme. She reckons she can give us a pretty good description, though.'
'Does Tughan know about this?'
'Yes, sir. I've already called him.'
Thorne felt a twinge of annoyance, but he knew that Holland couldn't have done anything else. 'What did he say?'
'He thought it sounded hopeful.'
'Anything about me?'
He could hear Holland thinking.
'Don't spare my feelings, Holland, I haven't got any.'
'There was some crack about you and Miss Willetts, sir. I don't really remember - just a joke, really.'
Nobody was taking it seriously.
'When are you going to interview her?'
'Myself and DI Tughan are going to see her tomorrow morning.'
Thorne took down the details, scribbling the woman's name and address on a Post-it note next to the phone. The initial buzz was wearing off a little and he could feel the cold again. He wanted to get back to bed.
'Thanks for that, Holland. One quick thing...'
'Don't worry, sir, I'll call you as soon as we've seen her.'
'Great, thanks. But I was going to say, if anybody should ask, your girlfriend trapped her hand in a door this morning...'
He realised as soon as he'd hung up on Holland that he was terribly awake. He turned off the music and scurried around the living room with a bin liner, picking up empty beer cans. For a second he was tempted to look inside Anne's bag, which still lay where she'd dropped it. Had she brought a change of clothes with her?
He thought better of it and instead grabbed the spare duvet from the cupboard in the hall and sat on the sofa in the dark.
Thinking.
Things were moving quickly. There had been cases before where he'd felt like an outsider - he would come at things from a different angle - but he was still, if only nominally, part of a team. This time it was different. He'd felt good marching out of Keable's office but within minutes he was wondering if he'd done the right thing. He still wondered. He knew why he'd walked away. Whatever Keable had told his bosses about politics and personality clashes, it still came down to judgment.
Their passing of it; his lack of it.
His judgment and theirs, and that of those long gone. But even the judgment of the dead could not always be trusted. Any conviction based on such testimony would surely be flawed. Only one man could judge him. And Tom Thorne was the harshest judge of all. He thought about the woman asleep in his bed. Anne wasn't the first woman he'd slept with since Jan. There had been some drunken fumbling with an ambitious young sergeant and a short fling with a legal secretary - but this was the first time he'd felt frightened afterwards. Once upon a time Anne had been involved with Bishop. Thorne still wasn't sure to what extent, but that hardly mattered. The killer who had all but turned his life upside down had once had sex with the woman who was now, at least for the moment, sharing his bed. He suddenly wondered if Bishop might be jealous. It made sense. The anonymous phone call, the accusation, had seemed a little.., beneath him. Could the attack here in this room have been, at least in part, a warning to stay away from Anne? On top of everything was there actually a sexual rivalry? The idea was comforting. It began to give him back a sense of control. He'd felt it slipping away as the anger had swept over him after the accusation about Alison. Now he was calmer.
Back in the hospital. Oh, he'll find out exactly what type I A man trained to save life was taking it in the name of something Thorne could never understand. Didn't care about understanding.
If Thorne was going to stop him, it was important to maintain the initiative.
He went to fetch the phone, curled up on the sofa and dialed 141 ...
A few minutes later,
he crept back into the bedroom, slid under the duvet and lay there blinking, unable to sleep. Around four o'clock Anne woke up and did her best to help him.
'How do you feel?"
A question I'm asked every day. Sometimes more than once. It's not that I don't understand why. It's that I'd-better-say something kind of thing. Better than sitting there looking at the clock and wondering which nurse gets to wipe my arse, I suppose. It's hospitals. It makes people feel strangely compelled to buy fruit and breathe through their mouth and ask ridiculous questions. But why questions, for fuck's sake? Don't ask me questions. Tell me things, if you like. I'm a good listener. Getting to be very, very good. Tell me anything you like. Bore me rigid. Sit there and waffle on about how your boss doesn't understand you, or your husband's not interested in sex any more or you want to travel or nursing's badly paid, or you like to drink in the afternoons but don't - ask - me - things. How do you feel?
It's not like you're actually expecting an answer, is it? You'd be bored off your tits if I decided to play along. If I wanted to respond with a pithy 'Not too bad, thank you for asking, and how are you?' that would take, at present levels of blinking proficiency and taking into account the fatigue factor, approximately forty-five minutes. Sorry you asked? Well, don't, then. How do you feel?
Grateful that you're there, don't get me wrong. All of you. Visitors, nurses popping heads round the door, cleaners. Say hello. Come in and tell me lies. Just don't be predictable. The one reason you're asking, really, is that you can't tell precisely just by looking at me. Not exactly. I mean, you could take a wild stab in the dark. You could make a pretty good guess. You wouldn't need to phone a friend, would you? I'm lying in hospital. Utterly fucked. I'm hardly going to be over the moon. But most of the time you don't have to ask people how they feel. It's obvious. You can see if someone's happy, or tired, or pissed off because it's there in their face, but my face doesn't give a lot away. It must say something, I suppose, but I can only guess, really. If there's an expression that says, "Closed; or "Gone to lunch; it's probably there or thereabouts.
How do you feel? OK, then...
Angry. Stupid. Optimistic. Bored. Tired. Awake. Frustrated. Grateful Irritated. Violent. Calm. Dreamy. Shit. Confused. Ignorant. Ugly. Sick. Hungry. Useless. Special. Horny. Pessimistic. Ashamed. Loved. Forgotten. Freaky. Mislaid. Relieved. Alone. Frightened. Stoned. Dirty. Dead... Horny? I know, sorry, very strange. But I'm lying here on a sexy mattress that hums and there's that very gorgeous nurse who actually might not be gay after all. So... Did I say confused? Yes.
A lot of the time. Like why did Thorne show me a picture of Dr Bishop? I had a feeling he was leading up to something. Maybe it's like when you go deaf or blind and your other senses get better to compensate. Because most of toe's knackered maybe I'm becoming a bit witchy or something. I know he wanted to ask me things but then his phone rang and he talked quietly and went a bit funny.
Nobody's told me anything yet about what happened. Not really. About the crime, I mean. I know what he did to me... But I still don't know why.
ELEVEN
He got on to the tube at Waterloo. Eight stops, direct, on the Bakerloo line. The carriage was absolutely packed, just the way he liked it. Sometimes he needed to let two or three trains go and wait for the right one. There was no point in squeezing on when the carriage was empty of interest. He watched as the train roared into the station, ignoring his fellow travelers as they inched towards the edge of the platform. He scanned each carriage as it moved past him, making his choice.
It might take a few stops before he'd got to where he needed to be but he moved easily through the crowd of commuters. He enjoyed the build-up. He loved negotiating that sweaty knot of pent-up anger and rustling newspapers to get himself into the right position.
It didn't usually take long to find her.
Today she was tall, only an inch or two shorter than he was. She had dark hair in a bob,. and glasses through which she tried to take in as much of her copy of The Beach as she could under the circumstances. There was always the danger, of course, that she might get off the train before he did. Before he'd had a chance to get close to her. So many of them got off at Oxford Circus or Baker Street. He wasn't too disappointed when that happened. There was always tomorrow. The rush-hour was wonderfully predictable. He made his first contact as the train stopped at Piccadilly Circus. That wonderful jolt as the train came to a standstill. Thirty seconds later he would get another chance when they pulled away again. He was behind this one. Sometimes he liked to be face to face. To see their expression as he half looked away or shrugged apologetically. And he loved the breasts, of course. But this was his favourite. He liked the feel of their behinds against his groin. He could place a sweaty hand in the small of their backs to steady himself. He could smell their hair. Best of all, he could turn and look at the person behind him if he needed to, starting a small wave of accusatory looks and sighs as his excitement mounted.
She'd washed her hair this morning. He wondered whether she'd had sex last night. If she'd showered she would have washed the smell away, which was a shame, but he loved the smell of her hair all the same. And a hint of something else at the nape of her neck. The train slowed and came to a halt in the tunnel between Oxford Circus and Regent's Park. Another lovely little push. With the train motionless, he thought for a minute about what he had to do today. An interview this morning. He enjoyed those. He liked to run things. He could read people well, he knew that. But they could never read him. The train moved off again with a useful jerk. Only four stops to go. Perhaps one more before the big one. She was looking intently at her book, but he knew she was thinking about him. Despising him. That was fine. Let her think it was over. Let her relax, thinking he'd moved or got off without her seeing. She wouldn't want to look over her shoulder to check. He'd wait until they left. Marylebone.
The train moved towards his final destination. He was sure that she'd felt every inch of him that time. It was a second, no more, but he'd felt the crack in her buttocks, the cotton of her long black skirt against the polyester of his work trousers. He'd felt her tense up.
Only once had one of them confronted him. She'd moved away and stepped off the train before turning back and screaming at him. Other passengers looked, but he smiled indulgently and held up his hands and let himself get lost in the mile of others getting on the train. Only once. They were pretty good odds. Of course, if it ever came to it, he had a pretty good defence up his sleeve.
This was his favourite moment. One last good one and then away. In that second or two before the doors opened he leaned against her and took everything in. The feeling of his erection against her arse, his face against the back of her head. The intimacy was breathtaking. They might have been lovers, curling up together in bed at night, the sheets damp and smelly...
Then off and pushing through the crowd towards the door. As he sidled past her he saw her glance up from her book. Close up she was far from gorgeous but he didn't care. The tension in her face and the heat in his groin were all that really mattered. It was only a game, after all. It was part of the hustle-bustle, wasn't it? He smiled and thought the same thing he always did after such a lovely start to the working day: So don't live in London, love. Doing up the buttons of his jacket to hide the tiny bulge, Nick Tughan stepped off the train at Edgware Road, and turning his mind towards the day ahead, began moving quickly towards the escalator.
Anne had left early saying she needed to get home before Rachel was awake and Thorne had slept until well after nine. He'd phoned Brigstocke to say he'd be in late. Not that he had anything planned - he was waiting on Holland: He was just plain knackered.
He was enjoying his fourth piece of toast and looking forward to the rare, illicit thrill of Richard and Judy when the doorbell rang.
He recognised James Bishop straight away from Kodak's photo. Bethell's appraisal had been about right, he thought: grungy was the word. He was tall and skinny, wearing a long dark coat over T-shirt,
jeans and grubby training shoes. What looked like very short, bleached blond hair was hidden beneath a black pork-pie hat, and he carried a dirty green bag slung across one shoulder.
'Are you Thorne?'
The same well-modulated tones as his father, despite the sad attempt at the oafish London accent, and the same chiseled features, albeit camouflaged by several days of light stubbly fuzz. It was like looking at Dr Jeremy Bishop as a student.
'Yes, I am, James.' That put the cocky little sod on the back foot. Thorne couldn't help smirking. 'Could I ask how you got my address?'
'Yeah. You told my dad which road you lived in... I've knocked on virtually every door in the street.'
You should have just asked him, James. He knows exactly where I live.
'I see. Woken up many of my neighbours?'
Bishop smiled. 'A couple. A very tasty housewife asked me in for a cup of tea.'
'We're pretty friendly round here. Fancy a bit of toast?'
Thorne turned from the front door and strolled back into his flat. There was a pause before he heard the young man close the outer door, and another before he shut the door to the flat and came sloping into the living room.
'Not bothered about the toast, but I wouldn't mind a coffee...'
Thorne went into the kitchen and watched as his visitor hovered in the middle of the living room. 'James is it, then?
Or Jim?'
'James.'
Right, thought Thorne, spooning the coffee into a mug. Jim to your trendy mates but James when you're trying to borrow money off Daddy. He carried the coffee through and handed the mug to him. 'So?'
Bishop looked disarmed. Evidently, this wasn't how he'd wanted things to go. He tried to sound as dangerous as he could, which wasn't very. 'I want you to leave my old man alone.'
Thorne sat down on the arm of the sofa. 'I see. What is it you think I'm doing exactly?'
'Why are you hassling him?'
'Hassling?'
'There was a bloke taking photos outside his house the other day, then when you turn up with some bollocks about scrounging a lift you tell him it was probably reporters. He might have fallen for that, but I think it's crap. What were you doing there anyway?'
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