Keith turned, red-faced, and looked across at where Eve was still standing, hand in hand with Thorne. She waved and started to walk toward him. Holland sauntered the other way, toward Thorne, smiling at Eve as they passed. He seemed a little startled when Thorne dropped a hand onto his shoulder.
“I’ll run you home, Dave.”
Holland looked confused. He glanced over his shoulder, watched Eve join her friends. “It’s fine, really, I can get a cab…”
“There’s no need.”
Thorne drove down Whitechapel Road, heading south toward Tower Bridge. He took it slowly, still getting used to the steering and the clutch but also enjoying it, wanting the journey to last. They were listening to Merle Haggard as they moved slowly into the one-way system around Aldgate.
“What was going on back there, then?” Holland said.
“Keith works in Eve’s shop sometimes. I think he’s a bit—”
“No, I mean bringing me along on your night out, like a spare prick at a wedding.”
Thorne checked the rearview mirror. “I wanted to show you the car.” He didn’t believe it himself, any more than when he’d told Eve the same thing earlier.
“Things all right with you and Eve?”
Thorne hesitated. Discussions like this one was shaping up to be weren’t common between them, and where it might be going was impossible to predict. If Holland hadn’t had a few too many, he’d probably be saying nothing. Even socially, the difference in their ranks was rarely forgotten. The unspoken acceptance of the need to keep a certain distance was usually knocking about somewhere, moderating.
Tonight, they were just two friends driving back from a bar, and Thorne decided to go with it.
“I’ve been fucking her around to be honest, Dave.”
“What?”
“No, not like that. We haven’t even…”
“Oh…”
“It’s a long story, but basically she thinks I’m messing her around, and I am. One minute I’m up for it, the next I’m relieved when it isn’t happening.”
For ten seconds or so before he spoke, Holland appeared to think about what Thorne had said. “What’s all that about, then?”
“I don’t know…”
The truth was that Thorne didn’t know, and if he was confused, then he could only wonder at what the hell might have been going through Eve’s mind. The whole relationship felt somehow teenage. The ups and downs, the mixed messages…
There was nothing teenage, nothing confusing, about the short film that began to run suddenly in Thorne’s head. He watched himself and Eve in the lift that carried them up toward their nice hotel room. They were all over each other, their mouths hungrily exploring necks and shoulders and their hands probing the areas beneath buckles and straps.
Thorne gripped the wheel tighter, hearing the gulps for breath that came when the kissing stopped, and the moans when it began again. The bell as the lift door opened, and the rustle of Eve’s legs moving beneath her skirt as they all but ran toward their room.
He saw himself push the card into the door, watched as the two of them stepped through and fumbled, giggling, for the light switch.
There was a body on their bed. Prostrate and bleeding. The blue necklace, cheap and dreadful, biting deep into the neck…
Thorne hit the brakes hard, squealing to a stop at a red light. Holland held his hand out, braced himself against the dashboard.
“Sorry,” Thorne said. “Still getting the measure of it…”
They said nothing for a while, until the Tower of London loomed, spotlit ahead of them, and they moved slowly past it onto the bridge.
Thorne nudged Holland’s arm and nodded upriver. “It’s fucking great, isn’t it?”
He loved crossing the Thames at night, never tiring of the spectacular views up and down the black river after dark. South to north across Waterloo Bridge was his favorite—to the left, the London Eye, and the dome of St. Paul’s away in the City to the east—but crossing virtually any bridge, in any direction, at this time was usually enough to lift Thorne’s spirits. Tonight, Butler’s Wharf squatted to their left, while down below to the right of them, HMS Belfast seemed set in sullied amber, the river around it colored by the lights that ran along each bank.
Foul and fucked up and shitty as the place could be, it was a journey like this that Thorne would urge on anyone thinking about moving out of London…
“What about you and Sophie?” Thorne said. “All geared up for it?”
Holland turned, smiling, but looking like he might throw up. “I’m shitting myself, if you really want to know.”
“Fair enough, it’s a scary business. I’ve not had one, but—”
“It’s not just the baby. It’s what the baby’s going to mean.”
“Workwise, you mean?”
“It just feels like I’m being swept along, you know? Like I’m not in control of what I’m doing anymore.” Thorne shook his head, opened his mouth to say something, but Holland plowed on, growing louder and more animated as he spoke. “Sophie says it’s up to me what happens afterward, but she’s going to stay at home with the baby and I’ll be the only one earning…”
“She’d rather you were doing something else?”
“Yeah, but she was like that before she was pregnant. I mean, she’d be delighted if I got out of the job, no question, but there’s no pressure. I’m worried that I might be the one to start thinking I should find something else. Something a bit better paid, you know?”
“Something safer?”
Holland turned and looked at Thorne hard. “Right.” He turned away again, stared out of the window at the flaking billboards and car showrooms on the New Kent Road, moving past at almost exactly thirty miles per hour.
“I’m worried that I’ll resent the baby,” Holland said. His head fell sideways against the window. “For the choices it might force me to make…”
Thorne said nothing. He pressed a button on the sound system’s control panel, searching through the CD until he found the track he was looking for. When the song began, he nudged up the volume. “You should listen to this,” he said.
“What is it?”
“It’s called ‘Mama Tried.’ It’s about a man in prison…”
“That’s what they’re all about, isn’t it?”
“It’s really about growing up and accepting responsibility. It’s about making the right choices…”
For a minute, Holland listened, or pretended to. By then they were coming up to the roundabout at the Elephant & Castle, his street just a little way beyond it. He shook his head suddenly and laughed.
“Growing up? I’m not the one with the midlife-crisis car…”
Thorne was starving by the time he got in. He stuck three pieces of bread under the grill while the video was rewinding. He’d managed to go the whole day without hearing the result of the match and was looking forward to watching it.
Half an hour into a fairly dull game, and Thorne was wondering why he’d made the effort…
It had been more than a decade since Tottenhan Hotspur had been involved in a Charity Shield, but Thorne and his father had been to the last few. They’d seen the goalless draw against Arsenal in ’91, and the consecutive games in ’81 and ’82, after Cup Final wins on the bounce.
The first big game he’d ever gone to had been the Charity Shield in 1967. The trip to Wembley, an extra seventh-birthday present after Spurs had beaten Chelsea 2–1 and won the FA Cup. Thorne could still remember the roar, and his amazement at the sight of all that green, as his old man had led him up the steps toward their seats. He always loved that first sight of the grass, all the years they went to matches together after that, emerging into the noise and the light as they climbed up into the stand at White Hart Lane.
He wondered if his father had watched today’s game. He’d doubtless have an opinion on it if he had.
Thorne made the call, and listened to twenty minutes of jokes without punch lines.
&nb
sp; TWENTY-TWO
Carol Chamberlain put down the newspaper when Thorne came back to the table with the coffees.
“It’s not great,” she said.
Thorne glanced at the latest lurid headline, spooned the froth from his coffee. “It’s not my problem.”
Despite the best efforts of Trevor Jesmond and those above him, the media had got hold of the story a fortnight or so earlier, after the Southern killing. It hadn’t quite been the tabloid frenzy that Brigstocke had predicted, but it was pretty basic stuff. One paper had printed pictures of zippered rapist masks with red crosses through them, underneath the headline THREE DOWN. Another had gathered testimony from half a dozen rape victims and run it alongside quotes like “Give This Man a Medal” and “The Only Good Rapist Is a Dead One”…
Monday morning’s batch of stories involved complaints from those campaigning for the rights and integration of ex-prisoners. There were demands that more be done to catch the killer, accusations that the Met was dragging its feet. Only the night before, Thorne had watched a heated debate on London Live between representatives of rape-crisis organizations, their counterparts from prisoners’-rights pressure groups, and senior police officers. The assistant commissioner, flanked by a scary female commander and a sweating Trevor Jesmond, had reminded one lobby that the murder victims had themselves been raped, while assuring the other that everything possible was being done.
Thorne had turned the program off around the time Jesmond began to look like a rabbit caught in the headlights, blathering about two wrongs not making a right…
“Your superiors might decide to make it your problem,” Chamberlain said.
Thorne smiled. “Is that what you used to do?”
“Of course. I did ‘Passing the Buck’ seminars at Hendon…”
They were sitting at a table in the shade, outside the small vegetarian café in the middle of Highgate Woods. It was all a bit organic and right-on for Thorne’s taste, but Carol had wanted to eat outside somewhere and it had seemed as good a place as any.
The fancy bread was hideously overpriced, but it was all on expenses…
Carol Chamberlain’s cold case had been taken away from her as soon as it had become hot again. She’d had no choice in the matter and was already working hard on something else. Still, Thorne knew how much they owed her and considered it the least he could do to keep her up to speed. More than that, he actually enjoyed their discussions, finding Chamberlain to be an incredibly useful sounding board. They’d met up or talked on the phone a few times now, since she’d first barged into his office. They gossiped and bitched and bounced ideas around…
“At least they haven’t made the connection with the Foley killing,” she said. “They don’t know about Mark and Sarah yet…”
Thorne reached across for the paper and flipped it over. He scanned the football stories on the back page. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“It could be good, of course.”
“How?”
“It might be the way to find them.”
“Or frighten them away for good…”
Once coffee was finished and pudding decided against, Chamberlain stood and began piling up their plates. “Let’s take the long way back to the cars.” She rubbed her stomach. “Walk some of this off…”
“She was asking for you, Dave…”
Having fetched him from his office and pointed to the woman in question, Karim left Holland in the doorway of the Incident Room. Stone appeared silently at Holland’s shoulder, and they stared across at where Joanne Lesser sat in a chair by the window.
“Mmm,” Stone groaned. “Soul food…”
Holland nodded, turned to him. “Racist and sexist in two words. That’s bloody good going even for you, Andy…”
“Fuck off.”
“Christ, you’re on good form, mate…”
“Seriously, she’s very tasty, though. You’re a lucky bastard.” Holland looked at him. “Well, she’s obviously up for it. First she’s on the phone, now she’s come in to see you personally…”
Holland led the way across the Incident Room, Lesser standing eagerly as he and Stone approached. He was sure that what Stone had been suggesting was only in his own, sexually skewed imagination. Still, for more than just the obvious reasons, he hoped that Joanne Lesser had something important to say.
Five minutes later, they sat, the three points of a small triangle, in Holland and Stone’s office. Plastic cups of tea on the edges of desks…
“The dates have been bothering me,” Lesser said.
“The dates of the foster placements?” Holland began sheafing through the notes on his lap.
“It’s slightly different now, but back then we’d have ceased to monitor a placement once the child had turned sixteen. From then on, they were no longer deemed to be the responsibility of social services…”
“Right.” Holland was still searching.
“I double-checked the information on the index cards—you know, the information that I sent to you—and it doesn’t quite make sense.”
“What doesn’t?” Stone said.
“The last recorded monitoring date was February 1984. That would have been a home visit, most probably. At least a phone call…”
Holland had found the page he was looking for. He ran his finger down the list, stopped at the date Lesser had mentioned. “Mr. and Mrs. Noble.” The Nobles should have been back from their holidays by now. He’d left a message, but they hadn’t got back to him…
Lesser leaned forward on her chair, looking from Stone to Holland as she spoke. “I checked the children’s dates of birth, just to be on the safe side, but there’s still a problem.”
Holland looked at the dates. He turned the page, looking for something else, and when he’d found it, he saw the anomaly. “They weren’t old enough,” he said.
Lesser nodded, the blush beginning around her throat. Holland could almost have blushed himself. This was something he should have seen, would have seen if he’d been giving it the proper attention. He’d been half-arsed, hadn’t considered it important enough. He should have let Stone give him a hand when it had been offered. Now Stone was the one sitting there, probably enjoying every minute of it, as simple, evident facts were spelled out for Holland by a member of the public…
“Nineteen eighty-four?” Stone said. “So, the kids would have been…”
“Fifteen and thirteen,” Lesser said. “Mark was almost sixteen, fair enough. If it had just been him I wouldn’t have been concerned, but the little girl was nowhere near old enough for monitoring to stop. You can see why I thought it might be important…”
“What are the reasons you might stop monitoring a case?” Holland said.
“There’s only two that I can think of. If a family moves away it would be handed over to a different area, or even a completely different county.”
“I reckon that’s it,” Holland said. He began turning pages again until he found the current address for the Nobles. “Romford far enough?”
Lesser nodded. “Doesn’t come under us.”
“Does it say how long they’ve been living there, though?” Stone asked.
“No, I’ll have to check. Last record in any local school is 1984, so there’s every chance that’s when they moved.” He turned back to Lesser. “What’s the other reason, Joanne? You said one reason was moving…”
“Adoption.” Holland and Stone both looked back at her blankly. “Again, things are a bit more rigorous now, but then, once the adoption order had been signed, that was it. Not our responsibility anymore.”
“I get the feeling you’ve already checked this…”
She shrugged. “I know someone in Adoption, so I gave her a ring. Their records are a bit more organized than ours. Have you got a pen?”
Holland couldn’t help smiling. He stretched across and grabbed a pen from his desk. “Go ahead…”
“Irene and Roger Noble formally adopted Mark and Sarah Foley on February
twelfth, 1984. They may well have moved shortly after that, but that was certainly the last contact the children had with Essex social services…”
Holland scribbled down the information. From everything they knew, it seemed that it was the last contact Mark and Sarah Foley had had with anybody.
They walked slowly around the edge of the cricket field toward the children’s playground; moving along the path of shadow cast by a line of overhanging oaks and birches. Deep into the school holidays, there were plenty of people around. The temperature was starting to drop as the sky clouded over, but here and there were glimpses of a dark blue, like bruises fading on puffy flesh.
“Mark Foley still sounds like a good bet to me.”
“Yeah, I think so, too,” Thorne said. “Just wish I could cash it in.”
“It’ll happen. He can’t stay hidden forever.”
“I’ve still got a problem with motive, though.”
Chamberlain threw Thorne a look of theatrical surprise. “I thought you were the type who didn’t care about why…”
“Ultimately, it’s not my job, is it? But if it’s going to help me catch him…”
“Go on…”
“I can see the motive for killing Alan Franklin…”
“It’s about as good as it gets. Franklin caused everything, might just as well have killed his parents. Took him long enough to get revenge, though.”
“I think I can understand the waiting,” Thorne said.
Chamberlain grinned. “Maybe he’s just lazy.”
Thorne thought he was pretty well qualified to give an opinion on that one. “I don’t think so…”
They came slowly to a halt.
“He was growing up,” Thorne said. “Letting his body grow strong, letting the hatred grow stronger. Then he waits until Franklin’s old, until he feels safe, before he puts an end to it in that car park.”
“Only that isn’t an end to it…”
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