Death Message (16 page)

Fifty dollars down on the night, it had been an expensive lesson to learn, but Thorne didn't much care. He'd loved every minute of it and was still buzzing an hour later, wide awake.

He enjoyed the game anyway, but having someone to go after had made it even better.

Baby,

I don't know how far I walked tonight and I don't suppose it matters. But I swear I don't know how I kept putting one leg in front of the other, because it feels like my head's full of dirty cotton wool. I know I said I was enjoying it, and it's better than rotting in the flat, but all I could think about tonight was sleep. How much I want it, and how much I'm dreading it. Knowing that when I do get off, it won't last long, that I'll be up again feeling like shit in a couple of hours.

I think that, maybe, there's dreams I don't remember. Worse than the normal ones, I mean. So fucking terrible that something, some survival instinct or whatever, knocks me out of them and wakes me up before anything really bad happens. God knows what they'd be, though. The ones I can remember are shitty enough. Stuff about you and Robbie, about what happened. Or worse, when nothing's happened at all and everything's just fine, just the way it was. But then I remember, in the dream I remember, and when I wake up it's like I've only just found out, you know? Like I'm back at Long Lartin, listening to those coppers all over again, every word kicking the shit out of me.

Talking of which...

One of them's dead. One of the two from before, I mean, when I got sent down. But there's other stuff going on now, other people involved. Things are happening that are bugger all to do with me, and I don't really feel like I'm in control of this any more. Not to worry, the details don't matter. You were never that big on the nuts and bolts of stuff anyway, not unless there was a handbag or shoes involved!

I'm not going to stop, though. I just wanted to tell you that. However fucked up or strange things get, I'm going to finish it. And yes, I do remember the shelves I never got round to putting up, and the bathroom that stayed half-tiled for over a year, so I know damn well you'll be having a good laugh about me finishing anything.

That's fine, I don't care. As long as I can see you laughing...

Right, time to try and sleep again. I'll go through the cupboard full of pills I've got and see if there are any I haven't tried. Maybe I should mix up a sodding cocktail. Give the boy a squeeze for me. And all sorts for yourself, baby.

Marcus XX

Camden Market was one of the capital's top tourist attractions; the fourth-biggest retailer in the country, according to some sources, with up to one hundred thousand people descending on the place every weekend. Making his way slowly up from Mornington Crescent station towards Camden Lock, Thorne had decided that he'd been held up or jostled by twice that many.

Well, there
were
only forty-two shopping days left until Christmas.

He had scowled, weaving through the melee, leading with his shoulder. 'I told you this would be mad.'

'Shut it, Grandad...'

Louise had suggested the trip a day or two before, saying it had been years since she'd been. Then Hendricks had got wind of the idea and it had rapidly turned into an outing. The three of them had met for breakfast at a cafe near the Tube station, and there was talk of walking up to Primrose Hill later on, or of splashing out at Marine Ices when they got shopped out.

At the very least, it should have been distracting.

Pushing his way through a sea of black leather and multicoloured hair extensions ought to have allowed Thorne some time away from thinking about Marcus Brooks. Wondering why there were so many people, relative to the huge amount of quirky pottery and faux-antique tat; moaning about the fact that cleaning up after the market each week was like painting the Forth Bridge; grumbling, sweating in spite of the drizzle, feeling too old to be anywhere near the place. All of that should have taken Thorne's mind off dead bikers and bent coppers for at least an hour or two.

After the first half-hour, though, Thorne suggested they split up, so that he could browse through the second-hand CDs in the Stables, look for a couple of Cash albums he only possessed on vinyl. In reality, it was because, alone, he could focus more easily on the case: on Brooks and the drive for revenge that Nicklin had stoked up and described with such relish; on Skinner and his partner; on the slow and terrible chain of events that they had begun six years earlier.

He could think about a woman and her child being mown down on a zebra crossing. About men who lived by rules and believed in a reckoning.

About a whirlwind being reaped...

When he caught up with Louise and Hendricks, who were drinking coffee on a crowded pavement, it was only to let them know he'd decided to go into work, even though he was booked out for the day, with a DI from another team covering for him.

Louise wasn't happy about it. She pointed out that the case would not fall apart without him. He said that she'd do the same thing if she had to.

'Yeah, if I
had
to,' she said.

Hendricks raised his hands. 'Uh-oh! Domestic...'

Louise threw him a look, in no mood to let it drop.

'You two can stay,' Thorne said.

'Can we? Thanks a lot.'

'I haven't got time for this.'

'No, you'd better get a move on,' Louise said. 'They'll all just be standing around, wondering what to do until you get there.'

Thorne looked to Hendricks for support, for a 'bloody women' raise of the eyebrows that might diffuse the situation, but his friend stared resolutely into his coffee cup. Thorne turned back to Louise. 'We said we wouldn't do this.'

'That was when I thought you were "dedicated" or whatever,' Louise said. 'That you just liked the job.' She pressed a hand to her chest. '
I
like the job, but I'm not a nutter about it...'

Walking back as quickly as he could towards the Tube station, Thorne swore at more than one person for not getting out of his way fast enough. He seethed at being described as a 'nutter', shaking his head and muttering to himself, and cursing anyone with the temerity to be sharing his pavement.

Queuing at the ticket barrier, he was approached by an overweight individual with neatly combed blond hair and a warm smile.

'Do you want to live for ever?'

'Sounds all right,' Thorne said.

The man thrust a leaflet at him. 'You need to let Jesus into your life.'

'There's always a fucking catch,' Thorne said.

As she watched Thorne disappear into the crowd, Louise felt a twinge of guilt cut through her anger - remembering that the case had rather found him, that there had probably been times when she had been equally driven - but the guilt cooled rapidly into resentment at having lost her temper. At being made to feel guilty.

She'd been irritable all day - since Thorne had announced that there would be
three
of them going out together. She loved Hendricks to bits, how could she not? But she'd been hoping that she and Thorne could enjoy a Sunday without company. Joint days off were few and far between, and she could count on one hand the number of times they'd spent one on their own. She'd hoped that they could relax for a few hours; that they might get the chance to talk about a few things.

There were so many things they'd never discussed...

She turned to Hendricks, pulled a face. 'Tosser...'

Hendricks lowered his head, then looked up at her, doe-eyed and batting his lashes. He had the voice off to a T: posh and wistful, Princess Diana with piercings: 'The thing is... there were three of us in that relationship, and, you know... it was a bit
crowded
. Me, him and the Metropolitan Police...'

Louise smiled, just a bit. 'It's not the job.'

Hendricks shrugged, like it was none of his business. They finished their coffees. 'So, what shall we do?'

Louise wanted to go home. She wanted to spend some time on her own, to let her resentment breathe. To bloom or burn itself out. She wanted to climb into jogging bottoms and kick around in her nice, warm flat for the rest of the day, until she knew whether she should cling on to this relationship or think about cutting her losses.

'Lou?'

She reached for her bag. 'I think we should carry on shopping. Buy a few things we don't need. Then we should both treat ourselves to enormous, fuck-off ice creams.'

The hunt for Marcus Brooks was up and running...

With Nicklin's information backed up by fingerprint matches from both murder scenes, the team and all resources at its command were now focused in the same direction. The cell-site intelligence on the sending of the Skinner video indicated that the call had been made from a site near Shepherd's Bush Green.

'It's no more than a mile east of Acton, where the first message was sent from,' Samir Karim said. 'We know the Hodson message was sent straight away, from the hospital, but maybe these other two came from somewhere closer to home.'

'Maybe...'

'We need a few more calls, that's all.' Karim handed over the blown-up section of the
A-Z
, with the relevant cell-sites marked in red. As things stood, the area to which Marcus Brooks may or may not have a connection was no more than two dots on a map. It wasn't a great deal to go on.

Paper had been passing across Thorne's desk since he had walked through the door: printouts, statements, diagrams; authorisation documents; memos and maps. Sheaf upon sheaf, building a comprehensive picture of where Marcus Brooks was not. Of what he had done in the few months before he'd started killing anyone. Details of the last known address: the house he'd shared with Angela Georgiou and their son Robert, now empty and locked up. An inventory from the company which had been storing all of the furniture for the last three months; the rental paid a year in advance, the bill settled in cash. Statements from Brooks' parole officer and from local social services, verifying that he had reported each week as required; had been signing on, seeking work and claiming housing benefit until three months before, when he'd slipped off the system. From his parents, now living in Wales, confirming that telephone contact had stopped around the same time. Requisitions for the usual records and searches: credit and store cards, DVLA, voters' register, National Insurance...

'He'll slip up,' Thorne said.

Karim's nod was hopeful at best. 'He's been pretty clever so far, though, with all the phone business. I think he's learned a fair amount about flying below the radar, you know?'

Thorne was coming to the same conclusion. This was stuff that a career criminal like Brooks would have started picking up early in life, and prison was the best finishing school there was.

He would have learned a lot from the likes of Stuart Nicklin.

'He's got to be living on something, though.'

'Cash,' Karim said.

'Where's he getting it from?' Thorne rifled impatiently through piles of paper for Brooks' bank and credit-card statements, none of which showed much in the way of funds.

'Well, he might have had some stashed away, but let's presume he hadn't, that he needed to get some.' Karim slid a plastic wallet containing a CD across the desk. Thorne looked at the printed label, took out the disk and pushed it into the computer's drive as Karim continued: 'We got some names from S &O. Pulled in a snout from one of the firms Brooks used to do some driving for in the mid-nineties.' The image appeared on the screen: time-coded, black-and-white footage from the fixed camera in a typical interview room. Karim pointed to the man sitting at a table, opposite himself and Andy Stone. 'This bloke's been giving your new mate Bannard bits and pieces for years.'

'Looks like a charmer,' Thorne said. 'Where's this?'

Karim jerked a thumb towards the window. 'Colindale. Me and Andy had a chat with him first thing.' He leaned over and moved the mouse, taking the footage forward until he reached the section of the interview he wanted. 'Here we go...'

Thorne turned up the volume. The interviewee, a skinny old sort with leathery chops and eyes like black beads, had plenty to say for himself. He spat his words out in a reedy voice laced with Glaswegian; leaned through the smoke that rose from a cigarette.

'Plenty of people owe Brooks, you know? It's not a secret that he could've made a deal when they did him for that murder. That he was offered a year or two off his sentence in return for a wee chat, and he told them where to stick it.'

Stone had been unable to resist. 'Unlike you, you mean?'

The man had ignored the dig. 'These are people he could easily have gone to for money when he came out. People who remembered that he kept his mouth shut when he didnae have to. They'd have been more than happy to help him out.' The man took a deep drag on his cigarette, then looked up, well aware where the camera was, blowing out smoke through a smile. 'They'll be queuing up to do him a favour now. Considering some of the arseholes he's getting rid of...'

'I don't think Brooks needs a bank,' Karim said, stopping the playback.

Brigstocke entered without knocking, and Karim quickly got the message that there were other things he could be doing.

'Thanks, Sam,' Thorne said, as the door closed.

Brigstocke leaned against Kitson's desk. 'How's it going?'

Thorne straightened the papers on his desk. 'Well, it looks like Brooks was as good as gold while he was setting all this up, then he just dropped out of sight. He's not making it easy for us... well, other than helping us identify his victims, obviously. His
potential
victims. But you know, we'll get there...'

Brigstocke nodded. 'Why "potential", suddenly? Why do you think he's started sending videos? Sending us pictures before he kills them?'

'A psychiatrist would probably say he wants us to stop him.'