by Kate Rhodes
All I could do was sit on the concrete step outside with my head between my knees, waiting for the dizziness to clear. When I straightened up again, Hussein stood in front of me, a euphoric look on his face, as if he’d already been promoted.
‘They’re holding the bloke in the van. Do you want to see him?’
‘Who is it?’
‘He’s not talking. No ID on him either.’
I stood up too quickly, the ground shifting below my feet, but curiosity dragged me back towards the van. Gary Lennard came to mind first; few people had suffered more because of tainted blood. Maybe he’d exaggerated his illness to throw us off track? My head felt woozy again, shock and exhaustion catching up with me as I struggled to put one foot in front of the other.
53
The woman’s panic rises as she reaches Portland Street. Three squad cars sit at the mouth of the alley, blue lights flashing as she drives past, her hands shaking on the wheel. She parks two blocks away and walks back slowly, hiding between buildings; he may still be in the laboratory, facing a barrage of questions. Anger floods her system. Her main regret is not killing the boy when she had the chance. Drizzle mists her face as she stands there watching.
When she lowers herself back into the driver’s seat, her power has vanished. The idea of returning home to wait for the knock on her door is horrifying, but there’s no point in running, with no one to help her escape. She takes the gun from her pocket and places its cold muzzle against her lips, tastes the steel with her tongue, but her finger refuses to pull the trigger. The gun falls back into her lap as she stares blank-eyed through the window.
54
Tania arrived while I was preparing myself to look inside the van. For a second I thought she might hug me, but she converted the gesture into a pat on my arm.
‘Maybe shrinks have a purpose after all.’
‘High praise, Tania. I don’t know who he is yet.’
‘Are you up to seeing him?’
‘Just about. Let’s do it.’
My legs still felt unsteady as we approached the vehicle, its doors firmly closed. When one of the officers unlocked it, a man was hunched inside the metal cage, handcuffs round his wrists. Shock hit me when his gaunt face came into view. Simon Thorpe’s skin was paler than before against the dense black of his hair; he looked exhausted, dark grey circles under his eyes.
‘Where’s your wife, Simon?’ I asked.
No answer arrived; his face was expressionless. I watched in disbelief as he turned his face away. The man who had killed four medics and spent weeks torturing another was a qualified psychotherapist, and one of Clare Riordan’s closest friends.
Tania answered a string of calls on her radio as we drove to the station. It sounded like Burns was suppressing the news that Riordan had been found until Denise Thorpe was arrested. I gazed out of the car window at the night-time streets, too numb to feel anything but relief.
Someone placed a cup of coffee in my hands in the incident room and my curiosity revived. There was no sign of Burns in the hubbub, my head full of unanswered questions. Why would the Thorpes set out to harm a child they had both professed to love? I still couldn’t see a motive, apart from the fact that they were both frustrated medics. Maybe they had felt locked out of their chosen profession, united by bitter resentment. But that didn’t explain the elaborate staging, their fascination with the history of blood treatments, or the fact that nurses at Denise’s mother’s care home had seen them both at the time of Clare’s abduction. I was finishing the dregs of my coffee when Angie appeared. Her greeting was the opposite of Tania’s restraint. She threw her arms round my neck, bellowing congratulations. The station was erupting with the news that the case was closed, jubilant faces looming at me. The atmosphere was so giddy, it felt as if lead weights had been lifted from the roof. Angie led me to Burns’s door, then gave me a gentle shove before anyone else could shake my hand. I forgot my rules about distance at work and walked straight into his arms. I could have stayed there hours, but he eased back, his lopsided smile widening.
‘You’ll give me another heart attack at this rate,’ he said.
‘That’s not my plan.’
‘The tabloids all want a piece of you. Our phone lines are crashing.’
‘Tell them to get lost.’
‘That’s my girl.’ Burns gave a shaky laugh. ‘A car’s waiting for us outside.’
‘I need to assess Thorpe first.’
‘Not till tomorrow. His wife’s cool as a cucumber, which is surprising given what she’s done.’
I stared up at him. ‘Let me interview her now.’
‘Switch off, Alice. No solicitor’s going to work at midnight, even for a case like this.’
I listened as he explained that Clare was in intensive care, high fever and a cocktail of drugs placing her in danger. Mikey had been taken back to the flat in Shadwell to rest. I thought about him as we left Burns’s office; his ordeal had been terrifying, from being dragged into Thorpe’s car again, to seeing his mother at death’s door. I fought my urge to rush to the apartment to check on him. With luck he’d be asleep, and I could see him in the morning. The last face I saw as we headed for the exit belonged to Denise Thorpe, being taken to the holding cells, face blank with shock. Maybe she had believed they could hurt people indefinitely, shielded by middle-class respectability. There was something chilling about her anonymous appearance, which would allow her to walk down any street unnoticed. I ignored the flashbulbs as we trotted down the steps, unable to wipe her from my mind.
Back at the flat I was still jittering with pent-up adrenalin. Burns stood in the kitchen, facing me.
‘Need a drink?’
‘Apple juice please.’ The cloying taste of the laboratory’s atmosphere was still in my mouth, sour with chemicals.
‘How in God’s name did you find him, Alice?’ Burns pressed the glass into my hand.
‘Listening skills, logic, and mapping software.’
‘You took one hell of a risk.’ His shoulders tensed. ‘And you were wrong about the line of command. While you’re my consultant, I’m in charge. I could fire you for insubordination.’
‘Are you too macho to apologise?’
He shook his head. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Mikey’s clues matched my location analysis. He knew his mum was somewhere in Walworth, and I thought the killers were so obsessed by blood history that they’d choose a symbolic building. I was wide of the mark; I thought it would be another old church after the previous two sites.’
‘Angie’s lot checked out the history of the Health Laboratories. It’s pretty dark; the MoD used them to test nerve agents on soldiers in the Thirties. Fifteen men died of blood poisoning, but they kept it hushed up for decades.’
‘How would the Thorpes know?’
He shrugged. ‘From local history websites, like us, probably.’
‘It’s their motive I don’t get. Serial killers normally fall into three categories: sexual predators, psychopaths or sadists. Simon and Denise were getting even for a past injustice, but the reason’s not clear. One of them could be seriously ill.’
‘Just be glad they’re off the streets.’ Burns hooked his arm round my shoulders, then held out his phone. ‘Take a look at this.’
A large building appeared on the screen, stone bleached pale by intense sunlight. Each room was more sumptuous than the last; the roof terrace had a turquoise swimming pool, surrounded by sun loungers and parasols. ‘It looks amazing.’
‘It’s a five-star hotel in Tangiers. We can fly there on Friday for a week if I hit send.’
I reached out and tapped the button for him, to end the debate.
We talked nineteen to the dozen, debating theories about the Thorpes’ case. At four in the morning I passed out against his shoulder, still fully dressed.
55
Thursday 6 November
A psychiatric nurse called Paula Ryman was with Mikey when I reached Shadwell the next
morning. She was a colleague of Gurpreet’s, a slender fifty year old with grey hair cut in a short, no-nonsense style. She looked concerned when I asked how Gurpreet was recovering from the attack.
‘He’s on the mend at home, thank God. Apparently he tried to fight them off.’
I smiled at her. ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
‘I had one hell of a job getting Mikey to sleep,’ she said. ‘The news about his mum isn’t good. They’re keeping her in the ICU.’
Sleep was what Mikey needed most, but I couldn’t resist tiptoeing into his room. His thin face looked peaceful, no visible damage, even though his mother was fighting for her life. I crouched down to study the cardboard model at the foot of his bed. It was an accurate replica of the Health Laboratories, right down to the tiles around the central door, every detail correct. He must have tagged the killers to the place where his mother was held, but the drug he’d received had affected his memory, making it impossible to find his way back after he went looking for help. His mantra – ‘almost there, not far now’ – finally made sense. He’d been able to picture where his mother was all along, but lacked the power to explain.
Anger overtook me during the taxi ride to the station. It was an emotion I normally ignored in professional contexts, unwilling to let that quick surge of bitterness harden my mind. Most of it was directed at Denise Thorpe for lying through her teeth as she coolly demanded access to Mikey. I indulged a quick fantasy of strapping her to her own torture chair, before pushing it aside. The only way to bring the Thorpes to justice would be to ignore personal feelings and concentrate on evidence.
The incident room was running on a skeleton staff, just a handful of detectives hunkered over their computers filing late reports. Without the constant jangle of bleepers and phones, the place felt ghostly.
‘Peaceful, isn’t it?’ Angie appeared at my side.
‘It’s like the Mary Celeste.’
‘The boss is at Scotland Yard. He wants Thorpe interviewed first, then his wife.’
Simon Thorpe’s lawyer arrived early to meet his client. He was dressed in a sharp suit, ridiculously young and bright eyed, clearly aware that such a notorious trial would guarantee his place in legal history. Thorpe looked the worse for wear when he was brought from the holding cells, wrists straining against his handcuffs. The circles under his eyes were almost as black as his hair, making me doubt that he’d slept at all. There was no trace of his old charisma. He looked thinner than before, his skin jaundiced.
‘Ready to talk, Mr Thorpe?’ Angie asked. He didn’t reply, his stare chilly as a blast of cold air. ‘Say “no comment”, please, or your case will be tried on evidence alone. Do you understand?’
After a while her constant questioning seemed to take effect. His hands wouldn’t keep still, a line of sweat thickening on his upper lip. Maybe he’d been hoping that silence would bring a measure of control. I flicked through his file as Angie chipped away at his defences. He had been born in Santa Monica, trained in London as a medic, then he’d worked in France for several years before abandoning his medical career for psychotherapy.
‘You worked fast the day you took Clare,’ Angie said. ‘A nurse saw your wife with her mother around nine o’clock, but you must have arrived later. I’m guessing Denise walked there alone. Did you leave Clare at the laboratory then go straight to the care home?’
Thorpe refused to answer, but his health record had caught my attention.
‘I see that you’re a haemophiliac, Mr Thorpe.’ I glanced at the page again. ‘Did you receive tainted blood in France? Is that what turned you against the medical profession?’
For the first time his expression faltered, as if I’d pinched a raw nerve, his silence forcing me to carry on.
‘Now that your hepatitis C has progressed to cirrhosis, it’s surprising you’re getting by on mild painkillers. Most patients would be using morphine. I can see why your medical history has made you angry.’
His American drawl sounded harder than before when he finally spoke. ‘My feelings aren’t relevant. The UK treated its victims worst; the government lied and destroyed evidence. Everyone on the health panel was rewarded afterwards, with promotions and opportunities. Lisa Stuart admitted it.’
‘Where did you put her body?’
He looked contemptuous. ‘Regent’s Canal by Acton’s Lock.’
‘You threw her in?’
‘She fell.’
‘I’ll bet she did,’ Angie muttered. Her face was angry, but I felt relieved. Police divers would plunge into the canal’s black water until Lisa Stuart’s remains were found; her mother would be able to hold the funeral at last.
‘How did you get her name?’ I asked. ‘The panel’s membership was protected information.’
His eyes glinted. ‘Lisa was a client of mine, suffering from anxiety. She blamed the stress of working on the panel, but she accepted a promotion on the back of it.’
‘She told you that in a therapy session?’
‘That’s how it began. She gave us Mendez’s name straight away, and he was even more of a coward. He bleated out Clare’s name in thirty seconds.’
‘You didn’t know she was on the panel, even though she was a close friend?’
‘That was the worst thing. She knew how I’d suffered, but kept it secret. She did nothing to help.’
‘But she gave you Jordan Adebayo’s name?’
‘And Dawn Coleman’s. The guy from the blood bank wouldn’t say a word.’
I felt a surge of respect for Adebayo. Despite his terrible death, he’d died a hero. It had taken weeks of torture to make Riordan reveal two names. If she lived, she would have to carry the consequences of naming her colleagues, but I doubted I would have shown as much courage.
‘Using the Pure logo was misleading. You must have realised it put Ian Passmore under suspicion.’
‘The symbol represents all the victims. We planned to announce our reasons at the end.’
‘Why did you and Denise target the panel members?’
‘They could have reversed the damage. If the government had apologised and compensated the victims fairly, every country in the world would have followed suit.’
Thorpe’s lips sealed themselves in a thin line, but his gesture was different from Mikey’s silence. While the boy had been desperate to shout the truth, Thorpe wanted to conceal his secrets. He refused to say another word before being taken back to his cell.
We had little time to compare notes before Thorpe’s wife arrived, accompanied by her lawyer. He was elderly, dressed in an ill-fitting tweed jacket, but his gaze was focused as a laser. Denise seemed even more detached than before, barely acknowledging us, her cloud of mouse-brown hair obscuring her face.
Angie offered a narrow smile. ‘Mrs Thorpe, you and your husband have been arrested on suspicion of multiple murders, plus the abduction and torture of Clare Riordan and her son. This is your chance to explain what happened.’
She looked confused. ‘I keep telling you, I had nothing to do with it. Neither did Simon. We’ve been married twenty years. I’d know if he’d done anything wrong.’
‘How does your husband’s illness affect him?’
‘The pain’s worse at night. When it’s bad he goes for a drive; he finds it calming.’
‘He goes out alone at night?’
‘I went too at the start, but he prefers to be alone.’
Angie huffed out a laugh. ‘That’s convenient, isn’t it? Your husband kills people while you sleep peacefully at home. Except we know he had an accomplice.’
Denise’s gaze met mine. ‘You believe me, don’t you? It’s not in Simon’s nature to be violent.’
‘Are you taking any medication at the moment, Denise?’ I asked. Her reactions seemed unnaturally slow, combined with her unfocused gaze.
‘Just lorazepam to help me sleep.’
‘One or two milligrams?’
‘Two, most nights.’
‘And anti-depressants?’
She shook her head. ‘Not any more; they made me feel worse.’
‘How long have you been feeling low?’
‘All year. Things haven’t been right between me and Simon; I’ve been so worried since he stopped going for his check-ups.’ Her voice tailed away.
If she was telling the truth, she was taking one of the strongest tranquillisers on the market. One dose would be enough to knock out most adults for twelve hours straight. I let Angie complete the rest of the interview while I took notes. I had been certain all along that the killers would be diametric opposites: one coolly organised, the other wildly emotional. But Denise Thorpe seemed too fearful to do anyone serious harm, even though her husband could have planned the attacks. Her anxiety came over in the strain in her voice. The more I listened, the greater my concern. The woman’s behaviour seemed fuelled by genuine panic.
‘Search our house,’ she insisted. ‘You won’t find anything.’
‘Your husband was caught in the act, Mrs Thorpe. He’s not denying it.’
Her lower lip trembled. ‘You’re lying. I know you are.’
Denise held her line right to the end. After she’d been led away, Angie released a string of expletives.
‘God, she’s slippery. It’ll take hours to nail her down.’
‘Have you got much circumstantial evidence?’
Angie’s face clouded. ‘By tomorrow we’ll have plenty. Pete’s lot are at their house in Wandsworth now.’
She vanished before I could voice my doubts, but I logged them on my assessment form. Denise Thorpe’s speech patterns, eye contact and body language suggested she was telling the truth. The idea that she was innocent refused to leave my mind.
56
The woman’s rage burns brighter than ever. She stands motionless, arms straight at her sides, gathering her courage. There must be a way to fight back, even from this point of weakness; if she concentrates, she’ll find it. It sickens her that Riordan has been rescued. She should have acted faster, but with luck the drugs injected into her veins will finish her soon. That still leaves the child free, even though his mother condemned hundreds to a painful death. There’s no such thing as an innocent bystander, like the shrink with her cold green stare. Her kind are a hundred times worse than the rest.