‘Just Plain Fucking Run Out of Gas,’ Anne explained. ‘When a patient is going to die. I hate that one . . .’ She poured herself another glass of wine and leaned back in her chair, retiring momentarily as Bishop warmed to his theme.
‘Jimmy gets a bit touchy and squeamish at some of the more ghoulish jokes that get us through the day. Seriously though, some of the shorthand is actually a useful way to communicate quickly with a colleague.’
‘And keep the patients in the dark at the same time?’
Bishop pushed up his glasses with the knuckle of his index finger. Thorne noticed that his fingernails were beautifully manicured. ‘Absolutely right. Another of Jimmy’s pet hates, but by far the best way if you ask me. What’s the point of telling them things they aren’t going to understand? If you do tell them and they do understand, chances are it’s only going to frighten the life out of them.’
Anne began to clear away the plates.
‘So better a patient who’s in the dark than a JP FROG?’
Bishop raised his glass to Thorne in mock salute. ‘But that’s not the best one. I get to deal with a lot of JP FROGs, but Jimmy, specialising as she does in lost causes, is very much the patron saint of TF BUNDYs.’ He grinned, showing every one of his perfect teeth. ‘Totally Fucked But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet.’
Thorne could hear Anne in the kitchen loading the dishwasher. He remembered the smug look on Bishop’s face as he’d put the coffee cups in his dishwasher a few days before. He wore the same expression now. Thorne grinned back at him. ‘So what about Alison Willetts? Is she a TF BUNDY?’
Thorne saw at once that if he’d thought this would throw Bishop then he was seriously underestimating him. The doctor’s reaction was clearly one of undisguised amusement. He raised his eyebrows and shouted through to the kitchen. ‘Oh, Christ, Jimmy, I think I’m outnumbered.’ He turned back to Thorne and suddenly there was a glimmer of steel behind the flippancy. ‘Come on, Tom, is the moral indignation that was positively dripping from that last comment really meant to suggest that you care about your . . . victims, any more than we care about our patients? That we’re just unfeeling monsters while the CID is full of sensitive souls like your good self?’
‘Christ, Tommy, what a smug bastard . . .’
Susan, Maddy, Christine. And Helen . . .
‘I’m not suggesting anything. It just seemed a bit harsh, that’s all.’
‘It’s a job, Tom. Not a very nice one at times and, yes, it’s quite well paid after you’ve slogged your guts out training for seven years then spent a few more kissing enough arses to get to a decent level.’ That certainly rang a bell. ‘We’re paid to treat, we’re not paid to care. The simple truth is that the NHS can’t afford to care, in any sense of the word.’
Anne put an enormous plate of cheesecake in the centre of the table. ‘M and S, I’m afraid. Great with pasta. Crap at puddings.’ She went back through to the kitchen leaving Bishop to start divvying it up.
‘I always tell students that they have a choice. They can think of the patients as John or Elsie or Bob or whatever and lose what little sleep they get . . .’
Thorne held out his plate for a slice of cheesecake. ‘Or . . .?’
‘Or they can be good doctors and treat bodies. Dead or alive, they’re bodies.’
What had Thorne said earlier to Keable?
‘Are you going to let him get away with this shit, Tommy?’
I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Why don’t you help me? Is it him? Is he the one?
The one question they never answer.
Thorne started to eat. ‘So, what do most of your students decide?’
Bishop shrugged and took a mouthful. He chuckled. ‘There’s another one.’
‘What?’
‘CID. Another acronym.’
Thorne smiled at Anne as she sat back down and helped herself to a slice. Bishop grunted, demanding the attention of the audience. He’d obviously come up with something wonderful. Thorne turned to him and waited. Get ready for the killer . . .
‘Coppers In Disarray?’
Bishop was the first to leave. He’d shaken Thorne’s hand and . . . had he winked? Anne led him into the hall to get his jacket, leaving Thorne on the sofa with a glass of wine listening to them saying their goodbyes. Their obvious intimacy disturbed him in every way he could think of. The next part of the evening, whatever that was, would have to be handled very carefully. Their voices were lowered, but there was no mistaking Bishop’s low hum of contentment as he kissed Anne goodbye. Thorne wondered how witty and garrulous he’d be with a detective constable’s fist half-way down his throat. He wondered how smug he’d be in an airless interview room. He wondered what he’d have to do to get him into one.
He heard the front door shut and took a deep breath. Now he wanted to be alone with Anne and not just because of what she could tell him about Bishop.
She came back into the living room to find Thorne staring into space with a huge smile on his face. ‘What’s so funny?’ Thorne shrugged. He didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot by telling her that he’d just come up with his own little acronym for Jeremy Bishop. A highly appropriate one as it happened. GAS.
Guilty As Sin.
‘Where’s Rachel this evening? Have you locked her in her room with a Spice Girls video?’
‘She’s out celebrating her GCSE results.’
‘God, of course, it was today.’ The papers had been full of it. The increase in pass levels. The ever-widening gap between girls and boys. The six-year-old with an A* in maths. ‘Celebrating? She must have done well?’
Anne shrugged. ‘Pretty well, I suppose. She could maybe have tried harder in one or two subjects, but we were pretty pleased.’
Thorne nodded, smiling. We? ‘Hmm . . . pushy mother.’
She laughed, flopping into the armchair opposite him and picking up her glass of wine. Thorne leaned forward to refill his own glass.
‘Tell me about Jeremy’s wife.’
She sighed heavily. ‘Are you asking me as a policeman?’
‘As a friend,’ he lied.
It was a good few seconds before she answered. ‘Sarah was a close friend. I’d known them both at medical school. I’m godmother to their kids, which is why I’m sure that your interest in him is a complete waste of time and I don’t want to harp on about this, but it’s starting to feel a bit . . . insulting actually.’
Thorne did not want to lie to her, but he did anyway. ‘It’s just routine, Anne.’
She kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet up underneath her. ‘Sarah was killed ten years ago . . . you must know all this.’
‘I know the basic facts.’
‘It was a horrible time. He’s never really got over it. I know he seems a bit . . . assured, but they were very happy and he’s never been interested in anyone else.’
‘Not even you?’
She blushed. ‘Well, at least I know that this isn’t an official question.’
‘Completely unofficial and horribly nosy, I know, but I did wonder . . .’
‘We were together once, a long time ago when we were both students.’
‘And not since? Sorry . . .’
‘My husband thought so, if that makes you feel a little less nosy. David always had a thing about Jeremy, but it was really just professional rivalry, which he liked to tart up as something else.’
Like his hair, thought Thorne.
He’d tried to pace himself and Anne had drunk far more than he had, but he was definitely starting to feel a little lightheaded.
‘What do his kids do?’
James, twenty-four, and Rebecca, twenty-six, another doctor. These facts and many others filling three pages of a notebook in his desk drawer.
‘Rebecca’s in orth
opaedics. She works in Bristol.’
Thorne nodded, interested. Tell me something I don’t know.
‘James, well, he’s done all manner of things over the last few years. He’s been a bit unlucky, if I’m being kind.’
‘And if you’re being unkind?’
‘Well, he does sponge off his dad a little. Jeremy’s a bit of a soft touch. They’re very close. James was in the car when the— they had the accident. He was a bit screwed up about it for a while.’ She blew out a long, slow breath. ‘I haven’t talked about this for ages . . .’
Suddenly Thorne felt terrible. He wanted to hug her, but instead volunteered to make another cup of coffee. They both stood up at the same time.
‘Black or . . .?’
‘Listen, Tom, I’ve got to say this.’ Thorne thought she was starting to sound a bit pissed. ‘I don’t know what you think about Jeremy, I don’t know why you had to go and question him . . . I dread to think, actually, but whatever it is I wish you’d stop wasting your time. This is one of my oldest friends we’re talking about, and I know he likes to play the hard-bitten, cynical doctor but it’s just a party piece. I’ve heard it hundreds of times. He cares very much about his patients. He’s very interested in Alison’s progress . . .’
Alison. The one person they were supposed to talk about and hadn’t.
‘I meant to have a word with you about that, actually. You know we’re trying to keep some things out of the papers?’
Her face darkened. ‘Am I about to get told off?’ She wasn’t remotely pissed.
‘He seems to know a lot about the case and I just wondered if . . .’
She took a step towards him – not afraid of a fight. ‘He knows a lot about the medical case, yes. We’ve spoken about Alison regularly and obviously he knows about the other attacks because that has a direct bearing on things.’
‘Sorry, Anne, I didn’t mean—’
‘He’s a colleague whose advice I value and whose discretion you can count on. I’d say take my word for it, but obviously there wouldn’t be much point.’
She stared at him, his first reminder since that morning in the lecture theatre of just how scary she could look. Evidently he didn’t have quite the same capacity to intimidate her. Something in his face, he had no idea what, suddenly seemed to amuse her and her expression softened.
‘Well, what’s it been? A few weeks? And we’re already on to our second major row. It doesn’t bode well, does it?’
Thorne smiled. This was highly encouraging. ‘Well, I’d actually categorise the first one as more of a bollocking, if you want to be accurate.’
‘Are you going to get that coffee or what?’
As he filled the mugs from the cafetière, she shouted through to him from the living room, ‘I’ll stick some music on. Classical? No, let me try and guess what you’re into . . .’
Thorne added the milk and thought, never in a million years. He shouted back, ‘Just put whatever you want on . . . I’m easy.’ As he walked back in with the coffee, he almost laughed out loud as she turned round brandishing a well-worn and wonderfully vinyl copy of Electric Ladyland.
As the taxi – a black one, he wasn’t going to make that mistake again – ferried him back towards Kentish Town, the evening’s conversation rattled around in his head like coins in an envelope. He could remember every word of it.
Bishop had been laughing at him.
The cab drove down the Archway Road towards Suicide Bridge and he looked away as they passed Queens Wood. He pictured the fox moving swiftly and silently through the trees towards its earth. A rabbit still twitching in its jaws, trailing blood across leaves and fallen branches as the vixen carries its prey home. A litter of eager cubs tearing their supper to pieces – ripping away pale chunks of Helen Doyle’s flesh while their mother stands frozen, watching for danger . . .
Thorne stared hard at shopfronts as they flashed past. Bed shop, bookshop, delicatessen, massage parlour. He shut his eyes. Sad, soggy men and cold, brittle women, together for a few minutes that both would try later to forget. Not a pleasant image but . . . a better one. For now.
He knew that Helen and Alison and the rest of it would be with him again in the morning, lurking inside his hangover, but for now he wanted to think about Anne. Their kiss on the doorstep had felt like the beginning of something and that, together with the reliably pleasant sensation of being moderately off his face, made him feel as good as he had in a long time.
He decided that, late as it was, he’d ring his dad when he got in. It was ridiculous. He was forty. But he wanted to tell him about this woman he’d met – this woman with a teenage daughter, for God’s sake. Rachel had arrived back just as he was leaving. He’d said a swift hello before making a quick escape once the inevitable argument started about how late she’d got back.
He wanted to tell his dad that ‘maybe’, with a large dollop of ‘perhaps’ and a decent helping of ‘forget it, never in a million years’, one of them might not be spending quite so much time alone any more.
He added a two-pound tip to the six-pound fare and headed up the front path, grinning like an idiot. It was always a risky business for cabbies, wasn’t it, picking up pissed punters? A healthy tip or vomit in the back of the cab? That was the gamble. Well, one had just got lucky.
Thorne was humming ‘All Along The Watchtower’ as he put the key in the lock, and was only vaguely aware of the dark figure that emerged from the shadows and ran up the path behind him. He turned just as an animalistic grunt escaped from the mouth behind the balaclava and the arm came down. He felt instantly sick as a bulb blew inside his head.
And suddenly it was much later.
The objects in his living room were at the bottom of a swimming-pool. The stereo, the armchair, the half-empty wine bottle shimmered and wobbled in front of him. He tried desperately to focus, to get a little balance, but all his worldly goods remained upside down and stubbornly unfamiliar. He looked up. The ceiling inched towards him. He summoned every ounce of strength to roll himself over, face down on the carpet and vomit. Then he slept.
A voice woke him. Hoarse and abrasive. ‘You look rough, Tom. Come on, mate . . .’
He raised his head and the room was full of people. Madeleine, Susan and Christine sat in a line on the sofa. Their legs were neatly crossed. Secretaries waiting for a job interview. Not one of them would look at him. To one side Helen Doyle stood staring at the floor and chewing nervously at a hangnail. Huddled into the single armchair were three young girls. Their hair was neatly brushed and their white nightdresses were crisply laundered. The smallest girl, about five years old, smiled at him but her elder sister pulled her fiercely to her breast like a mother. A hand reached towards him and dragged him to his knees. His head pounded. His throat was caked in bile. He licked his lips and tasted the crusty vomit around his mouth.
‘Up you come, Tom, there’s a good lad. Now, eyes wide open. Nice and bright.’
He squinted at the figure leaning against the mantelpiece. Francis Calvert raised a hand in greeting. ‘Hello, Detective Constable.’ The dirty blond hair, yellowed by cigarette smoke, was thinner now, but the smile was the same. Warm, welcoming and utterly terrifying. He had far too many teeth, all of them decayed. ‘It’s been ages, Tom. I’d ask how you were doing but I can see . . . Bit of a session, was it?’
He tried to speak but his tongue was dead and heavy. It lay in his mouth like a rotting fish.
Calvert stepped towards him, flicking his cigarette towards the carpet and producing the gun in one horribly swift movement. Thorne looked frantically round at the girls on the armchair. They were gone.
At least he was to be spared that.
Knowing what would inevitably follow, he turned his attention back to Calvert, his head swinging round on his hunched shoulders with the ponderous weight of a wrecking ba
ll. Calvert grinned at him, those rotten teeth bared as he clattered them theatrically against the barrel of the gun.
He tried to look away but his head was yanked upwards by the hair, forcing him to watch.
‘Ringside seat this time, Tom. All in glorious Technicolor. I hope that’s not a new suit . . .’
He tried to close his eyes but his eyelids were like tarpaulins, heavy with rain.
The explosion was deafening. He watched as the back of Calvert’s head attached itself to the wall and began a slow, messy descent like some comical, slimy child’s toy. He moved an arm to wipe away the hot tears that stung his cheeks. His hand came away red, the bits of brain between his fingers. As he slumped towards the floor he was vaguely aware of Helen moving across to join the others on the sofa and lead them in a round of polite but sincere applause.
It was like being horribly drunk and massively hung-over at the same time. He knew he mustn’t drift off again. The faces were still jumping around in his head like pictures in a child’s flick book, but the speed was decreasing. The equilibrium had almost returned but the pain was beyond belief.
He was alone, he was himself, and he was crawling across the puke-ridden carpet, inch by agonising inch. He had no idea what time it was. There was no light coming through the window. Late night or early morning.
His fingers grasped at the nylon fibres of the cheap shagpile. He took a deep breath. Gritting his teeth and failing to stifle a cry of agony, he willed his knees to shuffle another few inches across the vast and merciless eight feet of carpet that separated him from the telephone.
PART TWO
THE GAME
Not spoken to Anne for a couple of days. Not really spoken, I mean. Well, let’s get this straight. Perhaps I’m making these conversations sound like bouts of non-stop banter, full of juicy gossip and cracking gags. Let’s not be stupid. Basically she spills her guts and I just blink occasionally. Don’t get me wrong, they’re fucking dynamite blinks, but I don’t think I’m chat-show material just yet.
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