“It’s me. What’s up?”
“Nothing serious. Keith’s let me down, so I just need to change the time a bit on Saturday. I told him I was going out and he said that he’d lock up for me. Now he turns round and says that he needs to leave early as well, so I’m a bit stuffed…”
“It doesn’t matter. Get over when you can.”
“I know, I just wanted to get to your place early, drop some stuff off before we go out to eat.”
“Sounds interesting…”
“It’ll probably be nearer seven now, by the time I’ve sorted out the shop and put my face on.”
“I can’t see myself getting home a lot sooner than that anyway…”
“Sorry to screw our arrangements around, but it’s not my fault. Keith’s usually pretty reliable. Tom…?”
Eve’s voice had faded away. Thorne was no longer listening.
Our arrangements…
Zoom in close and hold.
The certainty of it came as swiftly, and snapped into place as tightly, as a ligature. Like the blue blur of the line as it whips past the face and down, only becoming clear when it begins to bite, Thorne knew in a second exactly what it was that he’d missed. What had lain shadowed and just out of reach. Now he saw it, brightly lit…
Something he’d read and something he hadn’t…
They’d found all Jane Foley’s letters to Remfry, the ones sent to him in prison and the couple that had been sent to his home address after his release. Nothing indicated that there were any letters missing, and why would there be?
Something had been missing, though.
Thorne had read those letters a dozen times, probably more, and nowhere had Jane Foley discussed the plans for her meeting with Douglas Remfry. The rendezvous itself was never talked about specifically. Not the time or the date. Not even the name of the hotel…
So how the hell had anything been arranged?
Something Thorne could remember reading had been written by Dave Holland. His report on that first visit to collect Remfry’s stuff, the day he went over there with Andy Stone and pulled those letters out from under Remfry’s bed. Mary Remfry had been keen to stress her son’s success with women. She’d made a point of mentioning the women that were sniffing around after Dougie had been released. The women that were calling up…
Remfry, Welch, and Southern had not just walked into those hotels thinking they were going to meet Jane Foley. They’d known they were going to meet her.
They’d spoken to her.
TWENTY-FIVE
“Not just spoken on the phone either,” Holland said. “I’m not sure about the others, but I think Southern might have met her.”
They were gathered in Brigstocke’s office, prior to a hastily arranged team briefing. Eighteen hectic hours since Thorne had put it together. Since he’d worked out that there was a her…
“Go on, Dave,” Brigstocke said.
“I interviewed Southern’s ex-girlfriend…”
Thorne remembered reading the statement. “Right. They split up not long before he was killed, didn’t they?”
“That’s just it. She said that the main reason she dumped him was that she’d heard about some other woman, thought he’d been two-timing her. Somebody told her that Southern had been bragging about it in the pub. Telling his mates he’d picked up this fantastic bit of stuff. Actually…”
“What?”
“I need to look at the statement, but I think Southern supposedly told his mates that she had more or less picked him up.”
Thorne looked past Holland, down to Brigstocke’s desk, at the series of black-and-white photographs laid out in two lines across it. “Jane Foley,” he said.
“Who is she, really?” Kitson said.
“Could be anybody,” Thorne said. “We can’t discount any possibility. A model he hired or a hooker. The killer could have used her for the pictures, paid her to make the calls to Remfry and Welch. Given her a bit extra to pick up Howard Southern…”
Brigstocke was gathering his notes together. He didn’t believe what Thorne was suggesting any more than Thorne himself did. “No, it’s Sarah. The sister. Got to be…”
“Using her mother’s name,” Thorne said.
“This is all about the mother,” Holland said. “It’s all about Jane.”
Thorne moved toward the desk, correcting Holland as he passed him. “It’s all about a family…”
“Which means nothing’s straightforward,” Brigstocke said. “Which means it’s a damn sight more fucked up and impossible to fathom than we can even begin to imagine.”
Thorne was thinking out loud as much as anything. “I’m beginning to imagine it,” he said. “Families can do damage.”
“Are we about done?” Kitson asked suddenly. She moved toward the door without waiting for an answer. “I’ve got a couple of things to do before the briefing starts.”
“I think so. Everybody clear?” Brigstocke looked at his watch and then at Thorne. The face of the watch was a whole lot easier to read. “Right, we’ll start in five minutes, then…”
The “missed-call” message had been scribbled on a memo sheet and left on Holland’s desk. He screwed the paper up into his fist as he began to dial the number.
“Mrs. Noble? This is Detective Constable Holland. Thanks very much for getting back to me.” He’d meant to chase her up at the end of the day yesterday, but after Thorne’s moment of revelation, things had gone haywire…
“I’m afraid I didn’t get your message until quite late,” she said. “And I didn’t know whether or not to call you at home.”
“It would have been fine,” Holland said. He probably wouldn’t have heard the phone anyway over the sound of the argument he’d been having with Sophie.
“I will get these photos back, won’t I?”
“Definitely. We’ll take care of them, I promise.”
“You’ll need to give me a little bit of time to put my hands on them. They’re in the cellar, I think. Actually, it might be the loft, but I’ll find them…”
Holland looked over his shoulder. The Incident Room was filling up. There were doubtless still a dozen or more smokers outside somewhere, getting their last lungfuls of nicotine for an hour or two, but most available seats and areas of bare desktop were already taken.
“So what do you think? A day or two?”
“Oh yes, I should think so. I’ve picked up such a lot of old rubbish over the years, mind you…”
“Once you’ve got the photos, when can we come and pick them up?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Holland asked the question again, raising his voice above the growing level of hubbub around him.
“Any time you like,” she answered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Thorne was alone in Brigstocke’s office. There were only five minutes until the briefing was due to begin. Brigstocke, who would kick things off, was already in the Incident Room. After he’d said his piece, it would be down to Thorne.
He stood before the gallery of pictures on Brigstocke’s desk. A series of images carefully designed to tempt and tease. To offer while at the same time giving absolutely nothing away…
Thorne could not be sure if the woman in the photographs was Sarah Foley. It didn’t really matter. She was there and yet she was absent. In most of the shots she was kneeling, her head bowed, or else artfully shadowed. Thorne picked each picture up in turn, studied it, waited in vain for it to tell him something that it had managed, thus far, to keep to itself.
Aside from the powerful, disconcerting message the photos sent to his groin, Thorne saw nothing new.
Even physically, though the promise of submission was constant, little was revealed. In some of the photos the woman looked to have dark hair, while in others it seemed more fair. In two of them the hair definitely looked blond, but it could easily have been a wig. The body itself appeared to change, depending on how it was posed and lit. It was alternately lissome and muscular, its
position making it impossible to accurately judge the height or even the build of the woman to whom it belonged.
Sarah Foley, if it was her, had not been captured.
Thorne looked at his watch. Another minute and he’d need to get out there. His job was to rev them up, to give the team enough to carry it into the home straight.
The next few days they’d work their arses off, and none more so than him. They’d be going back, as always, checking what they had in light of the new lead, but all the time there was forward momentum. He could already sense it, the hunger that increases when it smells the meal, a collective ticking in the blood. The investigation was picking up speed quickly, starting to race. From this point on, Thorne would make bloody sure nothing else got away from him.
Still, barring an actual arrest, by the weekend he’d be ready for a break. Saturday night with Eve and Sunday with his old man. He allowed himself a smile. If everything went well on Saturday night, he’d probably be making something of a late start the following morning.
Thorne was guessing that by knocking-off time on Saturday, he’d need something to divert him. There were other parts of him, better parts, that needed exercising, and he wasn’t just talking about sex. It would be good to feel the fizz of it with Eve, the flush and the promise of it. The scary thrill and the wonderful release. He was also looking forward to spending a few hours with his father. He needed to feel that lurch, that welling up of whatever it was his old man could suck into Thorne’s chest without trying…
Karim appeared in the doorway, gave him a look.
“On my way, Sam,” Thorne said.
He would speak with real passion to the officers who were waiting for him. He wanted to catch this killer more than ever now, and he wanted to spread that desire around like a disease. He wanted to engineer that heady feeling of desperation and confidence that could sometimes make things happen all by itself.
But he would take care to hold the other feeling inside, the one that had begun to come and go, and cause something to jump and scuttle behind his ribs…
Yes, they were moving quickly. They were suddenly tearing along, they were up for it. But Thorne couldn’t help but feel as if something was moving, equally fast and with just as much determination, toward them. There was going to be a collision, but he didn’t know when or from which direction.
He wouldn’t see it coming.
Thorne gathered up the photos from the desk, slipped them into a folder, and walked toward the Incident Room.
TWENTY-SIX
They spoke to each other slowly, in whispers.
“Did I wake you?”
“What time is it?”
“Late. Go back to sleep…”
“It’s okay…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Were you dreaming about it again?”
“Every bloody night at the moment. Jesus…”
“You never used to have dreams before, did you? I had them all the time, always did, but never you…”
“Well, I’m having them now. With a vengeance.”
“That’s an appropriate word.”
“Will they stop, do you think? Afterward?”
“What?”
“The dreams. Will they stop once it’s all over?”
“We’ll know soon enough…”
“I’m nervous about this one.”
“No need to be.”
“We’re less in control of it than with the others. You know? With them we knew what to expect, we knew everything that might happen. That was the advantage of the hotels, they were predictable…”
“It’ll be fine…”
“You’re right, ’course it will, I know. I wake up like this and I’m still thinking about the stuff in the dream and my head’s all fucked up.”
“Is that the only reason you’re nervous? Something going wrong?”
“What else would it be?”
“That’s all right, then.”
“You’d better be there on time, though…”
“Don’t be silly…”
“You’d better fucking be there, all right? Think about the traffic.”
“I never have any problems with the traffic, and I’ve always been there.”
“I know you have. Sorry…”
“What about Thorne?”
“Thorne won’t be a problem.”
“Good…”
“I’m so tired. I have to try and get back to sleep now.”
He reached for her, slid an arm across her belly.
“Come here and I’ll help you…”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Not a very long time before, on a freezing night when weather and loneliness had seemed meant for each other, Thorne had dialed a number he had copied from a postcard in a news agent’s window. He’d driven over to a basement flat in Tufnell Park, handed over a few notes, and watched a fat, pink hand bring him off. He’d heard the woman’s less than convincing groans and entreaties, the jangle of the charm bracelet that bounced on her wrist as she worked. He’d heard his own breath, and the low, desperate grunt as he finished.
Then he’d driven home and gone to bed, where he’d done it again himself for twenty-five pounds less…
Now Thorne moved around his office, willing away the last knockings of a muggy Saturday and remembering his hands-on adventure in vice with even less pleasure than he’d felt at the time. It was a measure of how low he had felt then. Of how much he was looking forward to his evening with Eve Bloom.
He would leave Becke House feeling as positive as he had in a long time. Things had moved quickly. The few days since the woman—who might or might not be Sarah Foley—had elbowed her way to the right part of Thorne’s brain and to the forefront of his investigation had yielded encouraging results.
They’d reinterviewed Howard Southern’s ex-girlfriend, confirmed her story about the other woman, and quickly managed to turn up several characters claiming to have seen Southern with a woman in the days leading up to his murder. Descriptions were predictably vague and contradictory, “slim” and “fair-haired” being the only adjectives that turned up more than once. A barmaid told how she’d seen the woman drag Southern away into a dark corner, where she was “all over him, but like she wanted him all to herself.” A computer-generated portrait had been produced, but it was flatter and even more anonymous than such things normally were. The woman was no more there—on flyers and posters and front pages—than she was in the photos she had sent the men who were to be killed.
Still, it was progress…
Another line of inquiry involved the possibility that the woman did more than just woo the victims and lure them to their deaths. Though Thorne himself was dubious, it had at least to be considered that she had been present when they were killed.
They had gone back to the hotels in Slough and Roehampton, to the shelter in Paddington, and asked questions. Nothing exciting had turned up when CCTV footage was looked at again, but that was hardly surprising. If Mark Foley had known where the cameras were, then so would she. A woman who’d been working on reception at the Greenwood Hotel on the night Ian Welch was killed did remember seeing a blond woman hanging around. She’d thought the woman must have been with the party in the bar, but didn’t see her talking to anyone. The receptionist thought she was “funny looking”…
Thorne was not sure what role the woman had played. He wondered exactly what they would charge her with when they did find her. “Conspiracy to commit” was probably favorite. Yes, she might have turned up at the hotels, might even have answered the hotel-room doors to the victims, while Mark Foley stood hidden, tightening the length of washing line around his fingers…
Beyond that…?
If this woman was Sarah Foley, Thorne could not imagine her watching. He could not imagine her brother being watched as he brutally raped another man…
It was dark, unnatural thoughts such as this one that Thorne determined, at least for a night, to dismiss from his mind as he moved thro
ugh the Incident Room, saying his good-byes.
The doors opened as he reached the lift. Without breaking stride, Thorne walked in and turned to press the button. After a few seconds he watched the room, the desks, the case disappear before his eyes as the doors closed…
Thorne stepped from the lift and headed toward the car park, all the time thinking about what he was going to wear later on. He reckoned he’d have about half an hour after he got home before Eve was due. Maybe a bit more, if the traffic was as light as it should be.
The BMW cruised up to the barrier, then, fifteen seconds later, moved under it and out onto the road. A Carter Family compilation was selected, and the volume turned up. He wondered what music he should put on later. Would Eve run screaming from the place as soon as she knew about the country stuff?
He was such an idiot. Why had he messed around? Why the fuck had he even subconsciously been putting this off?
Thorne was still ludicrously excited by the car, by the shape and the feel and the sound of it. He put his foot down, enjoying the noise of the engine, smiling for several reasons as he accelerated toward the North Circular and home.
Picking up speed…
Holland drove across Lambeth Bridge, no more than ten minutes from home. He remembered crossing the river farther east, on Saturday night exactly a week before. Blind drunk and talking nonsense in Thorne’s new car.
He thought about the look on Sophie’s face when she’d found him later on the bathroom floor. He’d raised his head from the cool porcelain of the toilet and seen nothing he felt comfortable with. What he’d seen on her face was worry, carved in deep, and with the strange clarity that only alcohol can bring, Holland knew that it wasn’t for him. For the first time, he saw that she was concerned for herself, and for the baby she was carrying. Concerned that in choosing him as the father of her child, she’d fucked up big-time…
The hangover had worn off a damn sight faster than the guilt.
Holland decided that he’d do his bit to make tonight a good one. He’d stop off and pick up a nice bottle of wine for them to have with dinner, to finish off afterward, spread out in front of the TV. Sophie still enjoyed the odd glass of wine. It was supposed to be good for her, though before the pregnancy, she would certainly not have stopped at just the one glass. She’d have happily put away a bottle, while Holland watched as her cheeks began to flush, and waited, never knowing whether she’d become mushy or nasty. Either was fine by him. She’d make fun of him and start to tease, or else she’d wrap herself around him and talk about the future, and either way they’d usually end up making love.
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