‘That’s OK, mate. Hammered meself as it goes . . .’
‘Been clubbing?’
‘No, just in the pub – mate’s birthday . . . really brilliant.’
Good. He was glad she was happy. All the more to want to live for. So . . .
‘I don’t suppose you fancy a nightcap?’ Reaching through the car window and producing it with a flourish.
‘Blimey, what are you celebrating?’
Christ, what was it with these girls and a bottle of fizz? Like a hypnotist’s gold watch.
‘Just pinched it from a party.’ Then the giggle. ‘One for the road?’
About half an hour. Thirty minutes of meaningless semi-literate yammering until she’d started to go. She was full of herself. Nita’s boyfriend . . . Linzi’s problems at work . . . a couple of dirty jokes. He’d smiled and nodded and laughed, and tried to imagine how he could possibly have been less interested. Then the nodding-dog head and the sitcom slurring, and it was time for the innocuous-looking man to tip his paralytic girlfriend into the back of his car and take her back to his place.
Then he’d made the phone call, and put her in position.
And now Helen wasn’t quite so gobby.
Again the gurgling, from somewhere deep down and desperate.
‘Ssh, Helen, just relax. It won’t take long.’
He positioned his thumbs, one at either side of the bony bump at the base of the skull and felt for the muscle, talking her through it . . . ‘Feel these two pieces of muscle, Helen?’
She groaned.
‘The sternocleidomastoid. I know, stupidly long word, don’t worry. These muscles reach all the way down to your collar-bone. Now what I’m after is underneath . . .’ He gasped as he found it. ‘There.’
Slowly he wrapped his fingers, one at a time around the carotid artery and began to press.
He closed his eyes and mentally counted off the seconds. Two minutes would do it. He felt something like a shudder run through her body and up through the thin surgical gloves into his fingers. He nodded respectfully, admiring the Herculean effort that even so tiny a movement must have taken.
He began to think about her body and about how he might have touched it. She was his to do with as he pleased. He could have slipped his hands from her head and slid them straight down the front of her and beneath her shirt in a second. He could turn her round and penetrate her mouth, pushing himself across her teeth. But he wouldn’t. He’d thought about it with the others too, but this was not about sex.
After considering such things at length he’d decided that his was a normal and healthy impulse. Wouldn’t any man feel the same things with a woman at his mercy? So easily available? Of course. But it was not a good idea. He did not want them . . . classifying this as a sex crime.
That would be easy, would throw them too far off the scent. And he knew all about DNA.
A growl came from somewhere deep in Helen’s throat. She could feel everything, was aware of everything and still she fought it.
‘Not long now . . . Please be quiet.’
He became aware of a drumming noise and, without moving his head, glanced down to where her fingers were beating spastically against the floorboards. Adrenaline staging a hopeless rearguard action against the drug. She might make it, he thought, she wants to live so much.
One minute forty-five seconds. His fingers locked in position, he leaned down, his lips on her ear, whispering: ‘Night-night, Sleepyhead . . .’
She stopped breathing.
Now was the critical time. His movements needed to be swift and precise. He eased the pressure on the artery and pushed her head roughly forward until chin was touching chest. He let it rest there for a few seconds before whipping it back the same way so that he was staring down at her face. Her eyes were open, her jaw slack, spittle running down her chin. He dismissed the urge to kiss her and moved her head back into the central position. Back into neutral. Then he took a firm grip and entwined his fingers in her long brown hair before twisting the head back over the left shoulder.
And holding it.
Then the right shoulder. Each twist splitting the inside of the vertebral artery. Now it was up to her.
He laid her down gently and placed her body in the recovery position. He was sweating heavily. He reached for a glass of cold water and sat down on the chair to watch her. To wait for her to breathe.
His mind was empty as he focused, unblinking, on her face and chest. The breaths would be short and shallow, and he watched and willed the smallest movement. Every few seconds he leaned forward and felt for a pulse.
Helen’s body was unmoving.
He reached for the bag and mask. It was time to intervene. Ten minutes of frantic squeezing, shouting at her: ‘Come on, Helen, help me!’ Screaming into her face. ‘I need you to be strong.’
She wasn’t strong enough.
He slumped back into the chair, out of breath. He looked down at the lifeless body. A button was missing from her shirt. He looked across at the plain black shoes, neatly placed one next to the other by her side. The small pile of jewellery in a stainless-steel dish next to them. Cheap bracelets and big, ugly earrings.
He mourned her and hated her.
He needed to move. Now it was just about disposal. Quick and easy.
He began to strip her.
Thorne picked up the bottle of red wine from the side of his chair and poured another glass. Maybe forty-year-old men were better off on their own in neat, comfortable but small flats. Forty-year-old men with bad habits, more mood swings than Glenn Miller and twenty-odd years off the market had very little say in the matter. A taste for country-and-western hardly helped.
Johnny was singing about memories. Thorne made a mental note to programme the CD player to skip this track next time. Had Frank been right when he’d asked if the Calvert case was still part of the equation?
Take one fresh and tender corpse . . .
Fifteen years was too long to be lugging this baggage around. It wasn’t his anyway. He couldn’t recall how it had been passed on to him. He’d only been twenty-five. Those far above him had carried the can, as it was their job so to do. He’d never had the chance to take the honourable way out. Would he have done it anyway?
One man, released . . .
He’d had no say in letting Calvert go after the interview. The fourth interview. What happened in that corridor and later, in that house, seemed like things he’d read about like everybody else. Had he really felt that Calvert was the one? Or was that a detail his imagination had pencilled in later, in the light of what he had seen that Monday morning? Once everything started to come out, his part in it all was largely forgotten anyway.
Four girls, deceased . . .
Besides, what was his trauma – God, what a stupid word – compared with the family of those little girls who should still have been walking around? Who should have had their own kids by now.
Memories are made of this.
He pointed the remote and turned off the song. The phone was ringing.
‘Tom Thorne.’
‘It’s Holland, sir. We think we’ve got another body.’
‘You think?’
His stomach lurching. Calvert smiling as he walked out of the interview room. Alison staring into space. Dead Susan, dead Christine, dead Madeleine, crossing their fingers.
‘Looks the same, sir. I don’t think they’d even have passed this one on to us but she hasn’t got a mark on her.’
‘What’s the address?’
‘That’s the thing, sir. The body’s outside. The woods behind Highgate station.’
Minutes away, this time of night. He downed the rest of the glass in one. ‘You’d better send a car, Holland. I’ve had a drink.’
‘Best of all, sir .
. .’
‘Best?’
‘We’ve got a witness. Somebody saw him dump the body.’
I could sense that Tim really wanted to know who the flowers were from. He didn’t say anything, but I know he was looking at them. He didn’t ask me. Maybe that’s because it was a question he actually wanted an answer to, and not just a pointless conversation with his ex-girlfriend who’s now a retarded mong.
Sorry, Tim. But nothing can prepare you for this, can it? I mean, you go through all the usual stuff, holidays together, meeting each other’s friends. He never had to deal with meeting the parents, jammy sod. His were a nightmare! But this was never part of the deal, was it? ‘How would you cope if I was on a life-support machine and completely unable to move or communicate?’ never really comes up in those early intimate little chats, does it?
Oh, and I’ve got an air mattress now, to stop me getting bed sores apparently. It’s probably hugely comfy. Makes a racket, though. Low and electrical. Sometimes I wake up and lie in the dark thinking that somebody’s doing a bit of late-night vacuuming in the next room.
Anne’s got the hots for that copper, I reckon. He does seem nice, I grant you. Nicer than her ex anyway, who sounds like a tit. The copper’s funny, though. I was pissing myself when he apologised for being a bit whiffy. I heard Tim asking one of the nurses about the flowers. There was no card and the nurse went away to ask one of her mates. Now I think Tim suspects I’m having an affair with a policeman. Obviously, he must be a fairly strange policeman with a taste for cheap yellow nighties and extremely compliant girlfriends who never answer back.
What’s that old joke about the perfect woman? If I was a nymphomaniac and my dad owned a brewery, he’d be quids in . . .
FOUR
The Sierra pulled up behind the operations van. As soon as Thorne stepped out of the car he could see that things were going to be difficult. Even at two o’clock in the morning it was still muggy but there was rain coming. Valuable evidence would be lost as the scene turned quickly to mud. The various photographers, scene-of-crime-officers and members of the forensic team were going about their business with quiet efficiency. They knew they didn’t have very long. Anything useful was usually found in the first hour. The golden hour. Tughan would still have everything covered anyway: he’d have rung for a weather forecast. This was their first sniff of a crime scene, and nobody was taking any chances.
Thorne set off down the steep flight of steps that led to Highgate tube station and gave access to Queens Wood – the patch of woodland bordering the Archway Road. As he walked he could see the glare of the arc lights through the trees. He could see the figures of forensic scientists in white plastic bodysuits, crouched over what he presumed was the body, in search of stray fibres or hairs from the girl’s clothing. He could hear instructions being barked out, the hiss of camera flashes recharging and the constant drone of the portable generator. He’d been at many such scenes in the past, far too many, but this was like watching the A-team work. There was a determination about the entire process that he’d seen only once before. There was a distinct absence of whistling in the dark. There was no gallows humour. There wasn’t a flask of tea to be seen anywhere.
It was only when he ducked under the handrail and began to pull on the plastic overshoes provided by a passing SOCO that Thorne realised just how difficult a crime scene this would be to examine. He also saw at once how callous the killer had been in his choice of dumping ground. The body lay hard against the high metal railings that bordered the pavement all the way down the hill. On one side lay the main road and on the other, some hundred feet of dense woodland on a steep hill leading down to the underground station at Highgate. The only access to the body was up the hill and through the trees. Though a well-trodden path had already emerged, it was still a slow process negotiating the route to the body. The ground was hard and dry but it would take only ten minutes of rain to turn it into a mud chute. By the time they’d got the scene protected with polythene tents it would hardly have been worth the effort. He hoped they got what they needed quickly. He hoped there was something to get.
Dave Holland came jogging down the slope towards him. He was backlit beautifully by the arc lights. Thorne could quite clearly make out the silhouette of a notebook being brandished. He doesn’t look like a policeman, thought Thorne, he looks like a prefect. Even with a hint of stubble, his tidy blond hair and ruddy complexion made him the obvious target for comments of the aren’t-policemen-looking-younger-these-days variety. Pensioners adored him. Thorne wasn’t sure. Holland’s father had been in the force and, in Thorne’s experience, that was rarely without problems. He doesn’t even move like a copper, he thought. Coppers don’t skip down hills like mountain goats. Coppers move like . . . ambulances.
‘Cup of tea, sir?’
OK, perhaps he’d been a bit naïve. There was always tea.
‘No. Tell me about this witness.’
‘Right, don’t get too excited.’
Thorne’s heart sank. It was obviously not going to be earth shattering.
‘We’ve got a vague physical description, not a lot.’
‘How vague?’
‘Height, build, a dark car. The witness, George Hammond . . .’
That fucking notebook again. He wanted to ram it up the cocky little gobshite’s arse.
‘. . . was at the top of the path a hundred yards further up the main road. He thought the bloke was chucking a bag of rubbish over.’
That was what Thorne had already worked out. He must have pulled up and heaved the body over the railings. She might just as well have been a bag of rubbish.
‘And that’s it? Height and build?’
‘There’s a bit more on the car. He says he thinks it was a nice one. Expensive.’
Thorne nodded slowly. Witnesses. Another thing he’d had to become resigned to. Even the more perceptive ones gave conflicting accounts of the same event.
‘Mr Hammond’s eyesight isn’t brilliant, sir. He’s an old man. He was only out walking his dog. We’ve got him in the car.’
‘Hang about, those railings are six feet high. How big did he say he was?’
‘Six two, six three. She’s not a big girl, sir.’
Thorne squinted into the lights. ‘Right, I’ll have a word with the optically challenged Mr Hammond in a minute. Let’s get this over with.’
Phil Hendricks was crouched over the body, his pony-tail secured beneath his distinctive yellow showercap. The scientists had finished their scraping and taping, and Hendricks was taking his turn. Thorne watched the all-too-familiar routine as the pathologist took temperature readings and conducted what, until the body was removed, would be a cursory examination. Every minute or so he would heave himself on to his haunches with a grunt, and mumble into his small tape-recorder. As always, each tedious detail of the entire procedure was being immortalised on film by the police cameraman. Thorne always wondered about those characters. Some of them seemed to fancy themselves as film-makers – he’d actually had to bollock one once for shouting, ‘That’s a wrap.’ Some had a disturbing glint in their eye that said, ‘You ought to come round to my place and have a look at some of the footage I’ll be showing the lads at Christmas.’ He couldn’t help wondering if they were all waiting to be headhunted by some avaricious TV company eager for more mindless docusoaps. Maybe he was being too harsh. He was too harsh about Holland as well. Perhaps it was just the perfectly pressed chinos and loafers he didn’t like. Maybe it was just that Holland was a young DC eager to please.
Hadn’t he been like that? Fifteen years ago. Heading for a fall.
Hendricks began to pack away his gear and looked up at Thorne. It was a look that had passed between them on many occasions. To the untrained eye this ‘handing over of responsibility’ might have seemed as casual as two pool-players exchanging a cue. Pathologists were suppose
d to be colder than any of them but despite the Mancunian’s flippant, nasal tones and dark sense of humour, Thorne knew what Hendricks was feeling. He’d watched him crying into his pint often enough. Thorne had never reciprocated.
‘He’s getting a tad fucking casual, if you ask me.’ Hendricks began fiddling with one of his many earrings. Eight the last time Thorne had counted. The thick glasses gave him an air of studiousness but the earrings, not to mention the discreet but famous tattoos and the penchant for extravagant headgear, marked him out as unconventional to say the least. Thorne had known the gregarious goth pathologist for five years. He was ten years his junior and horribly efficient; Thorne liked him enormously.
‘I didn’t, but thanks for the observation.’
‘No wonder you’re touchy, mate. Two–one at home to Bradford?’
‘Robbed.’
‘Course you were.’
Thorne’s neck was still horribly stiff. He dropped his head back and gazed up into a clear night sky. He could make out the Plough. He always looked for it: it was the only constellation he knew by sight. ‘So, it’s him, then, is it?’
‘I’ll know for sure by the morning. I think so. But what’s she doing here? That’s a hell of a busy road. He might easily have been seen.’
‘He was. By Mr Magoo, unfortunately. Anyway, I don’t think he was here very long. He just stopped and chucked her out.’
Hendricks moved aside and Thorne looked down at the woman who in a few hours would be identified as Helen Theresa Doyle. She was just a girl. Eighteen, nineteen. Her blouse was pulled up, revealing a pierced belly-button. She was wearing large hoop earrings. Her skirt was torn, revealing a nasty gash at the top of her leg.
Hendricks clicked his bag shut. ‘I think the wound’s from where she got caught on the railings as the bastard hoicked her over the top.’
Something caught Thorne’s eye and he glanced to his right. Standing twenty or so feet away, staring straight at him, was a small fox. A vixen, he guessed. She stood completely still, watching the strange activity. They were on her territory. Thorne felt a peculiar pang of shame. He’d heard farmers and pro-hunt lobbyists ranting about the savagery of these animals when they killed, but he doubted that a creature killing to feed itself and its young could enjoy it. Bloodlust fed off a particular kind of intelligence. There was a shout from the top of the hill and the fox prepared to bolt but relaxed again. Thorne could not take his eyes from the animal as it stared into the artificially lit reality of a warped kind of human bloodlust. Of a genuine brutality. Half a minute passed before the fox sniffed the ground, its curiosity satisfied, and trotted away.
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