“Roger worked over at St. Joseph’s. It was the school where Mark and Sarah would have gone.” She said it casually, like the children had done no more than fail an entrance exam. “It was just part-time, casual work, but he did all the bits and pieces that needed doing around the place. One day this man comes round, one of the parents, hammering on the door. Says his son’s been involved in some kind of incident and mentioned Roger’s name. Utter rubbish, of course, the man was on something, I think, but it really upset Roger. This lunatic wouldn’t leave it and went to the headmaster. The school was keen to keep it low-key, which was right, obviously, since it was so stupid, but Roger wanted to do the right thing. He left quietly in the end, rather than upset the children. That was typical of him. It was scandalous, disgraceful that anybody could even suggest…There were always kids round here after school and on the holidays. Always kids in our house…”
“Roger liked children…”
She looked up, her face softening, grateful for Thorne’s insight. For his understanding. “That’s right. He would never have admitted it, but I think, deep down, he was always trying to make up for not having Mark and Sarah anymore. Being around other kids had been his own way of coping with what happened. Later on, after that unpleasantness, everything started to get on top of him. His heart just packed up in the end…”
“What was your way of coping, Irene?” Thorne said.
“I just prayed the kids were safe,” she said. “That wherever Mark and Sarah went after they left us, they were out of harm’s way…”
It was that sentence which stayed with Thorne, which he thought about as they struggled out of the West End through traffic, inching around Marble Arch, car and passengers overheating more than slightly.
“It was very convenient for Roger Noble,” Holland said. “The kids going missing when they were between schools. They vanish from all education records…”
“It was certainly handy,” Thorne said.
“They did go missing, didn’t they? I’m just thinking out loud…”
Thorne shook his head. “Noble was responsible for them going, which is why he never reported it, but I don’t think it was worse than that. If he killed them, who the hell are we looking for?”
“What are we going to do?” Holland asked. “Shouldn’t we report it? That fucker could have abused loads of other kids.”
“There’s no point. He’s long dead. He can’t hurt any more kids now.”
“What about her? Do you think she knew?”
Thorne thought about what Irene Noble had said. About praying the kids were out of harm’s way. He shook his head. If she had known, she surely could not have said that and kept a straight face.
In the Grafton Arms, spitting distance from his flat, Thorne shared several pints and half a dozen games of pool with Phil Hendricks. The beer seemed to have little effect, and he lost five games out of the six.
“I’m not enjoying thrashing you as much as I normally would,” Hendricks said. “You’re so obviously preoccupied with all this other shit.” Thorne, leaning back against the bar, said nothing. He watched as Hendricks potted the last couple of balls before putting the black down without any difficulty. “What about if we start putting money on it? That might focus your thoughts a bit more…”
“Let’s leave it,” Thorne said. “I’ll finish this pint, and I’m off home…”
Hendricks took his Guinness from the top of the cigarette machine and walked across to join Thorne at the bar. “I still don’t really see it,” he said. “How could they not know? How could they not know something…?”
Thorne shook his head, his glass at his lips. Among other things, they had been talking about Irene Noble and Sheila Franklin. About two women of more or less the same age, married to men whom they loved dearly, and whom, now that they were widows, they remembered with tenderness and affection. Two men whose memories lived on, fondly preserved as precious things. Two men beloved…
One a rapist and the other a child molester.
Thorne swallowed. “Maybe it’s an age thing. You know, a different generation.”
“That’s crap,” Hendricks said. “What about my mum and dad?” Thorne had met them once, they ran a guesthouse in Salford. “My old man couldn’t so much as fart without my mum knowing about it…”
Thorne nodded. It was a fair point. “Same with mine…”
“She knew what he was thinking, never mind doing.”
Hendricks reached into the top pocket of his denim jacket, took a Silk Cut from a packet of ten. Thorne was irritated, in the way that only an ex-smoker could be. Irritated by the fact that his friend could smoke one or two, then put the pack away for a week or more, until he fancied another one as a bit of a treat. Smoke, and enjoy it, and not need another one. A packet of ten, for crying out loud…
“Are they going to be told?” Hendricks asked. “Those women? Is someone going to break the bad news about their dead hubbies?”
“No point yet. If we get a result they’ll find out soon enough…”
Hendricks nodded and lit his cigarette. The curls of blue smoke drifted across to where a man and a woman were now playing pool. It hung in the light above the table.
“Maybe we only think we know what was going on with our parents,” Thorne said. “Maybe we only know as much or as little as they did.”
“I suppose…”
“There’s an old country song called ‘Behind Closed Doors’…”
“Bloody hell, here we go…”
“It’s true, though, isn’t it? So much family stuff is mythology. Shit that just gets handed down, and you never know for sure what really happened and what’s made up. Nobody ever thinks to sit you down and pass it on. The truth of it. Before you know it, your history becomes hearsay.” Thorne took a drink. He knew that at some point, he should have talked to his father. Found out more about his parents and their parents. He knew that there wasn’t much point now…
“Fuck me,” Hendricks said. “All that’s in one song?”
“You are such an arsehole…”
They stepped away from the bar to make room for a group of lads, finished their drinks standing by the door.
“Where does all this leave you with Mark Foley?” Hendricks said.
“He’s still our prime suspect.”
“Whoever he might be…”
“Right, and wherever. But he’s not making my life very easy.”
“He’ll slip up. We’ll nail him when he does…”
“I’m not talking about catching him.” Thorne was finding it hard to think about his murderer without picturing him as a fifteen-year-old child. He saw a boy protecting his sister, spiriting her away from a place where one, or perhaps both, of them was being abused. “I’m still trying to decide exactly what he is.” Thorne turned to look at Hendricks. “This whole thing’s all arse-about-face, d’you know that, Phil? Mark Foley or Noble or whoever the fuck he is now is a killer and he’s a victim.”
Hendricks shrugged. “So?”
“So, there’s a part of him that part of me doesn’t really want to catch…”
Thorne walked Hendricks back toward the tube. Hendricks asked Thorne about Eve, joked when he heard about their hot date on Saturday, and moaned about his own eventful but ultimately bleak love life.
Thorne wasn’t paying an awful lot of attention. He was tired, imagining himself floating gently down on to his hillside, the bracken waving a welcome as he drew nearer to it. Jane Foley was suddenly there beside him, drifting to earth, and though he could not see her face clearly, he imagined the pain etched across it, for herself and for her children.
Thorne knew that when he and Jane Foley hit the ground, their bodies would travel right through the bracken and beyond. He knew that the hillside would collapse beneath their weight and that they would sink down deep through earth and water and the rotten wood of old coffins. Down through powdery bone and farther, into the blackness where there was no sound and the soil was
packed tight around them.
TWENTY-FOUR
The telephone voice was even more pronounced on Irene Noble’s answering-machine message. Holland waited for the beep, then spoke. “This is Detective Constable Holland from the Serious Crime Group. Yesterday, when myself and DI Thorne interviewed you, we forgot to ask about photographs of the children. We’d appreciate it if you might be able to lend us some pictures, which we will of course return whenever we finish with them. So, if you could get back to me as soon as possible on any of those numbers on the card we left you, I’d be very grateful. Many thanks…”
Holland put down the phone and looked up. From behind his desk on the other side of the office, Andy Stone was staring across at him.
“Photos of the Foley children?” Stone said.
“The DCI’s still keen on getting them on the computer, aging them up.”
Stone shook his head. “Waste of time. Never looks anything like the kids when they eventually turn up.”
“If she’s got photos from just before the children ran away, they’ll be fifteen and thirteen. They can’t have changed too much.”
“You’d be amazed, mate. Have you never bumped into someone you haven’t seen for a few years and not recognized them? That’s after a few years…”
Holland thought about it and admitted that he had. He also knew, from the twin murder case he’d worked on with Thorne the year before, that if people wanted to change the way they looked, it wasn’t actually that hard. Still, he reckoned that if the technology was there, there was no harm in using it.
Stone remained unconvinced. “It’s a pretty basic software program that digitally ages the photographs. At the end of the day, it’s all guesswork and a lot of assumptions. How can you know if someone’s hair’s going to fall out, or if they’re going to put on loads of weight or whatever?”
“I’ve seen some that looked pretty close,” Holland said.
Stone shrugged, went back to what he was doing. “Do we know she’s got any photos at all?” he said, without looking up.
“Not for certain, no. Be a bit strange if she didn’t, though. She was very fond of them…”
“You going to get somebody to go and pick them up?” Stone asked. “Or shoot over there yourself?”
“Hadn’t really thought about it. I’ll see what she says when she gets back to me, see when’s a good time. You want to come along?”
“No…”
“She’s single, but probably a bit old, even for you…”
“I’ll give that one a miss, I think.”
“Suit yourself.” Holland noted down the time he’d made the call. Wednesday the seventh, 10:40 A.M. He’d give Irene Noble until the end of the day and call again. When Stone next started to speak, Holland looked across. Stone was leaning back in his chair, staring into space through narrowed eyes.
“Very fond of them? I think you’re being a bit bloody generous…”
“I think she was more than very fond of them,” Holland said. “But yes, she was also naive. Call it stupid, if you like…”
Stone snapped his gaze toward Holland. “If love is blind, she must have been fucking besotted…”
Whoever thought that computers would do away with paperwork was sadly mistaken. There was as much paper piled up on desks as there ever had been. The only difference was that now, most of it was printed out by computer…
Thorne sat and read through the stories of four murders.
Those same scraps of information that clogged his brain had also been recorded somewhere on paper. On laser-printed sheets of A4, on faded and curling reams of fax paper, on Post-it notes and preprinted memo sheets torn from a pad. The entire case was laid out like this before him. Ream after dog-eared ream, piled in stubby blocks of yellow and white and buff. Banded by elastic or bound with laminate sheets or stapled and stuffed into cardboard folders…
Thorne went over every piece of paper, of the jigsaw. Looking for the answer he knew to be there. Sifting through the shit, like a squawking gull flapping around a vast dump. Beady black eye searching for that morsel of interest…
Hearing the trace of that Yorkshire accent in Carol Chamberlain’s voice. The good sense in every flat vowel of it.
If it’s anywhere, it’s in the details.
Opposite him, Yvonne Kitson sat typing, her face all but obscured by a paper mountain range of her own. She was still working on the Foley/Noble search, sorting through tens of thousands of addresses and car registrations and National Insurance numbers, as well as dealing with, collecting and collating, the information that was still coming in on the Southern killing.
Thorne looked across at her. He toyed with lobbing a ball of paper over to get her attention. He flicked briefly through the piles on his desk, looking for something he could screw up, then thought better of it…
“Apart from anything else,” Thorne said, “murderers aren’t doing the rain forests a whole lot of good.”
Kitson looked up and across at him. “Sorry?”
He picked up a sheaf of postmortem reports and waved them. She nodded her understanding.
“How’s it going, Yvonne?”
“We won’t have any more luck finding him as Noble than we did as Foley. He was only Mark Noble for five minutes, anyway…”
“Which he’d have hated. That man’s name…”
“Too bloody right. If I was him I’d’ve changed my name, or at least stopped using that one, as soon as I got the hell out of there.”
Thorne could find nothing in what Kitson had said to argue with. He’d have gone to Brigstocke straightaway, suggested they concentrate their resources somewhere else. But he didn’t have the faintest idea where…
“Let’s just plow through it,” he said.
The whole adoption/abuse/runaway lead was shaping up to be another one of those that came to nothing horribly quickly. It was hard enough trying to work out what might have happened to someone who’d run away from home six months before. To piece together the theoretical movements of a pair of teenagers who’d vanished from a house in Romford nearly twenty years earlier was almost certainly impossible.
They had little choice but to try, and while Holland, Stone, and the rest of the team did what they could, Thorne was going back over everything they already had. Sure that they already had enough.
By lunchtime, he’d found nothing, and felt as though he’d read about every murder that had ever taken place. He’d watched the hands of the pathologist rooting about in every chest cavity and down into the cold, wet depths of every gut. He’d listened to the less than helpful words of everybody who’d so much as stood at the same bus stop as one of the victims.
He’d had a bellyful…
“What’s on your sandwiches today, then?”
Kitson shook her head without looking up from her computer screen. “Didn’t have time today. The kids were playing up, and everything got a bit…” The rest of the sentence hung there until Thorne spoke.
“You can’t keep all the balls in the air all the time, Yvonne. You’re allowed to drop one occasionally, you know.” Kitson glanced up, gave him a thin smile. “Is everything all right, Yvonne?”
“Has somebody said something?” It came a little too quickly.
“No. You’ve just seemed a bit…out of it.”
Kitson’s smile thickened until she looked, to Thorne, much more like herself. Much more the type he could lob a ball of paper at.
“I’m just tired,” she said.
This next killing had to be the last one, at least for a while. It made a pretty picture, and it also made bloody good sense. Afterward, the police investigation was bound to be stepped up, and the risk of getting caught, just statistically, would increase.
If he were to be caught, to be tried for his crimes, the next killing would be a very bad one to get done for. He would certainly be crucified with little argument. Now, though, with just the others under his belt, it would be something of a different matter. Standing trial fo
r the murders of Remfry and Welch and Southern, he would fancy his chances…
If the papers were excited about the manhunt, they would be wetting themselves over a court case. The tabloids would back him, he was sure of it. He could probably even persuade one or other of them to shell out for his defense, pay to hire a top lawyer. He had decided already that should it ever come to it, he would speak in his own defense, would stand up and tell them exactly what he’d done and why. He was pretty confident that only a very brave judge would put him away for too long after that.
There would be an outcry from certain sections for sure, from the misguided and the bleeding hearts. From those who believed he should pay his debt to society, in the same way that those fine, upstanding citizens he’d killed had once done.
That would be all right with him. Let the silly bastards protest. Let them take the words perversion and justice and put them together like they owned them, even though they hadn’t got the least fucking idea what either of them could really mean.
Perversion and justice. The degradation and the dashed hope. The hideous comedy that had started everything…
It was all a fantasy, of course, unless the police came knocking on his door in the next couple of days. After that, after the final killing, nothing he could say would save him. The loyalties of the gutter press would switch very bloody quickly, along with everybody else’s, once the final victim had been discovered.
Rapists were one thing, but this was, after all, very much another.
Thorne was in the corner of the Major Incident Room feeding coins into the coffee machine when Karim approached him.
“Miss Bloom on line three, sir…”
Momentarily confused, Thorne reached for his back pocket, understanding when he found it empty. His mobile was on his desk in the office. Eve would have tried that first and then, having got no reply, would have called the office number…
Thorne crossed to a desk and picked up the phone. He held it to his chest until Karim had wandered far enough away.
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