Death Message (19 page)

A little later, Thorne caught up with Hendricks when the pathologist came out to get coffee.

'Your man's on a roll,' Hendricks said. 'That's three bodies in a week. He's paying for my holiday.'

Thorne stared towards the back door and spoke as much to himself as to his friend: 'They didn't find the murder weapon.'

'Sorry?'

'He took it with him this time.'

'So, he's being careful.'

'He's left prints at every murder scene, left the weapon behind every time. It's a bit bloody late to start being careful, isn't it?'

'Judging by how much force he used on that poor bastard's head, he's not exactly thinking rationally.'

'He's cool. That's what you said.'

Hendricks shrugged. 'Maybe I should stick to what's going on inside dead people.'

Thorne let out a long, slow breath. Watched it drift up into the fug of blue-grey cigarette smoke that had formed above the patio. He noticed that several empty cups had been tossed into the narrow flower beds around its edge. Something else for the widow to complain about. 'You're probably right,' he said, eventually.

'What are you thinking?'

'You don't want to know.'

'Please yourself.'

'I'm not sure
I
want to know.' Over Hendricks' shoulder, Thorne saw Rawlings moving past people, making his way, grim-faced, in their direction. He glanced back at Hendricks. 'This should be fun.'

Hendricks saw what was coming and stepped away, suddenly fascinated by a hover-mower leaning against the fence.

'Rawlings.' Thorne had been prepared for some hostility as he proffered a hand, but saw that Skinner's friend was fighting back tears as much as the urge to punch somebody.

'I can't decide,' Rawlings said. 'I don't know whether I'd rather have ten minutes alone in an interview room with the cunt who did this or fifteen with the cunt who organised the fucking protection.'

'It's a tough one.'

'It's OK, I know it wasn't your call.' He turned and stared blackly towards the corner where Trevor Jesmond and the area commander were deep in conversation. 'The fuckers with the pips tell the likes of us what to do, right?'

Thorne said nothing.

'Knew him ten fucking years. More. Only worked together for a couple of months, but we really hit it off, you know? Don't know if it was the football or something else, but we clicked.'

'Where was that?'

'What?'

'You and Paul working together.'

'Flying Squad, late nineties. I was just moving on and he was getting his feet under the table. Like a fucking lifetime ago now...'

Thorne nodded sympathetically; watched as Rawlings looked back towards the house again, as he muttered 'cunts' and gave the dampcourse a kick. He couldn't help thinking that Rawlings swore too much and wondered if he might be one of those coppers who was equally excessive when it came to sentiment; to
showing
it at moments like this. The righteous anger at the death of a fallen comrade; a great mate, a good copper; 'just let me get hold of the bastard'... all that cobblers.

He remembered seeing Rawlings stroll into Skinner's house thirty-six hours before, being greeted warmly by the wife. It had crossed Thorne's nasty, suspicious mind for a moment or two then, that it wasn't just Millwall FC that Rawlings and his friend had in common.

'What happened yesterday morning?' Thorne asked. 'After we saw you.'

'Come again?'

'Did you stay long?'

Rawlings took a second, then smiled sadly. 'Paul was all over the place, in a right old fucking state. Trying to persuade Annie to take the kids and piss off to her mum's. She started kicking up a fuss and Paul was shouting the odds, so I thought I'd best make myself scarce. I couldn't have been there more than half an hour, forty-five minutes, after you left. He said he'd bell me later, after the game. We'd usually talk about the match on the phone if we weren't watching it together, you know? But he never did...'

Thorne nodded. He and his father had done the same thing until the Alzheimer's had got too bad. Before social niceties had gone out of the window, and the old man had begun to swear almost as much as Richard Rawlings. 'So did you go?' Thorne asked. Rawlings blinked, not understanding. 'The game?'

Rawlings shook his head. 'Listened to it on the radio in the end. Bleeding Doncaster equalised in the last fucking minute...'

The crowd at the front had dispersed by the time the body was brought out just before ten-thirty. The area commander and the DCIs were a picture of solemn outrage, while Nunn and his DPS cronies pulled the right faces, even if they knew rather more about Paul Skinner than most people. Rawlings stood with his head bowed and his fists clenched. A couple of the boys in Met Police baseball caps took them off as the stretcher went past.

Once the mortuary van was on its way, Thorne took his final chance to speak to Hendricks, who immediately asked if he had called Louise yet. Thorne admitted that he hadn't, neglecting to add that it would probably be better for both of them if they didn't talk until the following day.

'Shouldn't go to bed on an argument,' Hendricks said.

'She could always call
me
...'

Brigstocke came quickly down the path towards them, a look on his face when he caught Thorne's eye that said 'private'. Thorne passed the message on to Hendricks, who was happy enough to leave them to it. He said that he'd phone mid-morning with the PM results, try to provide the team with a more accurate time of death.

'He was dead by full time,' Thorne said. 'If that's any help.'

Brigstocke watched Hendricks move away, then stepped closer to Thorne. 'They've authorised live listening.'

It wasn't a phrase Thorne had heard often, but he knew what it meant - that it was a serious step. 'Who's the subject?' Brigstocke stared at him like it was a stupid question, and Thorne realised that it
was
, a second after he'd asked it. 'Me. Right?'

Since the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, intelligence gathering had changed as radically as anything else. RIPA had laid down strict guidelines about such things as unlawful interception and monitoring of transmissions, with heavy penalties for those in breach of them. Thorne knew well enough that, when it was deemed necessary - when there was 'imminent threat to life', for example - such things went on. But the public, and indeed the majority of police officers, remained unaware of the covert technical support unit, on call to any branch of the Met, that installed the bugs and then listened in. The unit that gathered information which was totally inadmissible as evidence but would be given to those working on the case to use as they saw fit.

A unit, like a handful of others, that existed but didn't exist.

Thorne wasn't a suspect, and, crucially, would be giving his consent to such 'intrusive surveillance'. But there were others whose privacy would be compromised, whose consent would never be sought, and Brigstocke was at pains to point out that the operation would therefore remain extremely sensitive. He told Thorne that so much as mentioning it to anyone outside the senior command structure could result in a prison sentence. 'You OK with that?'

'Yeah, I suppose.' The thought of prison was enough to give anyone pause for thought, but Thorne was as worried about how much his life, its details, its
ordinariness
, would become a mundane aspect of someone else's day at work. He winced at the idea of sweaty coppers wearing headphones, pissing themselves as Louise called him a nutter.

It was only a small step up from someone going through your rubbish.

'What are we talking about?' he asked.

'Home, office and mobile phones,' Brigstocke said. 'You still have that pay-as-you-go?'

'Yeah, but I've only just bought it, haven't I? There's no way Nicklin could have given Brooks that number.'

Brigstocke nodded. 'Well, that's good. At least you'll have
some
privacy. They'll do email as well, obviously. And intercept the post.'

'Can't I open my own sodding post?'

'I don't think so.'

Thorne's eyes widened with sarcasm. 'I promise I'll pass on anything from the murderer. Anything that isn't a final demand or a pizza menu.'

'It doesn't work like that, Tom.'

Thorne sighed, shook his head. 'Whatever.'

'We need this sorted,' Brigstocke said. He looked towards the phalanx of police officers, and beyond, at the house of the one that was on his way to the mortuary. 'Things have got very bloody serious now...'

Later, Thorne would reflect on the perfection of the timing, and wonder if Marcus Brooks had been watching them at that moment. Staring down from the window of a nearby house.

The tone sounded from his jacket pocket just as Brigstocke was out of earshot. He thought the message might be from Louise. When he saw that it wasn't, saw the unidentified number appear, he scrolled down quickly; wondered whose picture he would be looking at this time.

There was no photograph. Just a simple text message:
He was dead when I got there.

Brooks. Telling Thorne the same thing he'd told Sharon Lilley all those years before.

Not hoping for anything, Thorne dialled the number from which the message had come. He tensed when it rang and almost shouted out loud when the call was answered.

'Marcus...?'

There was just the faintest breath, and the sound of distant traffic for a few seconds before the connection was broken. As Thorne thrust the phone back into his pocket, he turned to look at the house and suddenly understood something.

He was dead when I got there.

Brooks hadn't been describing the murder for which he'd been arrested in 2000. He'd meant this one. The message was about Skinner.

Looking back later, when arrests had been made and bodies buried, and regret had been fuelled by cheap lager, Thorne would be unable to put his finger on exactly why he did what he did next.

It was nothing specific...

Stupidity, instinct, a tendency towards self-destruction... because the fuckers weren't going to let him open his own letters. Whatever the reason, Thorne watched Nunn, Rawlings, Brigstocke and the rest moving slowly towards their cars, and he was no longer sure he could trust
anyone
. The copper who, together with Paul Skinner, had set up Marcus Brooks for a murder he may well have committed himself had got away with so much for so long. He was obviously very accomplished when it came to covering his tracks.

Thorne at least had to consider the possibility that the man might be closer than he realised.

There were long stares at the roadside now; nods exchanged between the ranks. There were promises made and a deal of gung-ho back-slapping. These people shared this terrible loss equally and were bound together by a determination to nail whoever had murdered one of their own. A copper's death seemed to count for so much, relatively. Seemed, on the surface at least, to mean more than that of a biker, or those of a young mother and her child. Was the suffering of Paul Skinner's family really any worse than that of Ray Tucker's or Ricky Hodson's? Or of Marcus Brooks?

If a copper's death was so important, then catching a copper who was also a killer should carry equal weight, shouldn't it?

Thorne looked at them, fired-up and full of it. And knew that, standing where he was at that moment, he was not one of them.

That was when he made the decision.

He knew he didn't have much time: Brooks might well be disposing of the SIM card at that precise moment. He had probably done so already. For the best, Thorne thought. It was a fucking insane idea anyway...

He couldn't use his usual mobile; they'd be checking it. And the new one, the
safe
one, was back at his flat...

Hendricks was just climbing into his old, silver Renault estate, when Thorne all but pulled him out, on to the pavement. 'I need to borrow your phone.'

'What?'

Thorne snapped his fingers, fought the urge to reach into Hendricks' pockets and search for it. 'Just give it here, Phil...'

He walked away fast up the street, navigating through the phone's menu as he went. His hand trembled a little as he keyed in the text, then the eleven digits of his unmonitored, pay-as-you-go phone number. Then he leaned against a low wall and entered the number Brooks had called from.

He pressed 'SEND' and waited. Watched as the graphic of an envelope span across the screen and the words appeared: Message sent.

Almost breathless, Thorne stabbed at the keypad, dialling the number once more.

He got a dead line.

Jennings had led him into the pub where Squire was already waiting, then gone off to get the drinks in.

He toyed with getting bolshie, maybe asking to see warrant cards, but there was really no need. He knew the Old Bill when he saw them, and these two had the look. Had the chat.

It was lunchtime and there weren't too many other customers about. They sat around a large wooden table next to the gents' toilets; the smell of piss and bleach-blocks wafting out whenever the door was opened. Jennings came back with beers for himself and his mate, water for him; tossed a couple of bags of peanuts across, and they got down to it.

'Keeping busy, Marcus?'

'You know...'

'Yeah,
course
we know. Nice little racket you and your old woman have got going.'

It
was
nice, had been working out a treat, as a matter of fact. He'd been looking for something ever since he'd got out of the game. Had tried and failed to hold down any number of ordinary jobs, but he wasn't cut out for life on the up and up. Then Angie had started doing some cleaning work, making a decent job of it, doing more houses on word of mouth and what have you. Bigger houses, where people were that much better off and didn't seem bothered about the cleaner having a set of keys; letting herself in while the owners were out having long lunches and getting their nails done.