Death Message (33 page)

At some point. The moment when the identity of the man they were both after - although Thorne could still not be sure if they were chasing him for the same reason - was brought out into the open. Then it would be down to clout, pure and simple, and Thorne knew who was carrying the most.

'Rawlings is an aggressive little bastard though, isn't he?' Nunn sucked his teeth. 'I wouldn't like to be around when he loses his temper.'

'He's scared.'

'No point being scared if you haven't done anything.'

'That's bollocks,' Thorne said. 'You know very well that you lot are there to scare people.'

'To remind them, maybe.'

'They give you special training, don't they?'

'You're not scared, are you?'

'Constantly.'

Nunn nodded. 'Makes sense. We've got a good-sized file on you, so you'd be stupid not to worry a little.'

Thorne stared straight ahead. Petula had cross-faded into Glen Campbell singing 'Rhinestone Cowboy'.

Three years before, Thorne had been indirectly responsible for the death of a prominent north London gangster. Few had mourned, but Thorne lived with the knowledge that the day might come when he would have to answer for it. He could not know if this event, or others that came close, was in a DPS file; but more worrying were the reasons why Nunn had chosen to tell him such a file existed at all. Thorne could sense that an offer of some kind was being made, but there had also been a threat thrown in for good measure.

He looked across, but Nunn had turned to peer out of his window at nothing in particular.

You'd be stupid not to worry a little...

Thorne didn't like Richard Rawlings, and trusted him even less, but he'd been happy enough to remain noncommittal in an effort to get Nunn's take on it. Suddenly, it seemed like there was no further point in going round the houses. Not when he was up against an expert. 'When Skinner was killed, I asked if you felt disappointed, that you'd missed out on nicking him, remember?'

'"Robbed" was the word you used,' Nunn said. 'And I told you that yes, I did.'

Thorne wondered if Nunn had a good memory or a tape recorder. Decided he was getting seriously paranoid. '"Robbed" because you'd lost the chance to put one bent copper away? Or two?'

'Two's always better than one. Always.'

'Well, either you know who the other copper is and you were hoping Skinner would give you the evidence. Or you were banking on Skinner telling you who his partner was.'

'Doesn't really matter now he's dead.'

'Which is it?'

The advantage of playing virtual poker, especially when your face gave away as much as Thorne's usually did, was that you could dance around with glee when your hole cards were revealed and only someone in the room with you would know you'd been dealt aces. Thorne looked at Nunn, hoping to see some sort of 'tell'. Saw him nodding along with the song on the radio and decided that the DPS man was probably a far better poker player than he was.

'Look, we both know what this man's done,' Thorne said. '"Squire".' That got a reaction. It was the first time the name had been mentioned between them. 'We both want him put away, but it seems to me like one of us thinks it's some sort of competition.'

'You're wrong.'

'Am I? Way it's going, we'll only find out who this fucker is when he turns up with his skull smashed in.'

Nunn looked frightened suddenly. 'That's not going to happen.' It certainly sounded as though he knew something.

'So, is it Rawlings?' Nothing. 'Does Rawlings know?'

Thorne let out a long sigh, sucked it back in hard when Nunn turned in his seat to stare at him.

'So, one of us thinks it's a competition,' Nunn said. 'And I suppose only one of us is being totally honest. Gobbing off like he's the only one playing straight, not keeping anything to himself...'

Try as he might, Thorne knew he was reddening. If Nunn knew that he'd been communicating secretly with Marcus Brooks, then Thorne was fucked, file or no file. He felt as cornered as Rawlings had claimed to feel; as he knew Brigstocke felt, whatever he had been accused of doing. 'It's not hard to see why you fuckers are so unpopular.'

Nunn smiled, as though it was a predictable response from someone on the back foot. Like it was something he'd heard plenty of times before. 'You don't think it's worth doing? Making sure the shit gets flushed away?'

'It's not just the shit though, is it?'

'I don't do this because I enjoy the looks when people know which department you're working for. I don't love being called a scab and a fuck of a lot worse, hearing the conversation stop when you walk into the canteen. Do you honestly reckon I'd be doing it if I didn't think it was important?'

On the train a few days before, Thorne had thought he'd sensed a vulnerability; something not quite hidden by the long coat and shaved head. He thought he caught another glimpse of weakness now, in the vehemence, but it had gone before he had even finished the thought.

'We're well aware what people think,' Nunn said. '
Most people...'

Neil Diamond, now: 'Beautiful Noise'. A song Thorne loved, in spite of himself. 'Well, if you've got the faintest idea what I think,' he said, 'I'd be happy to hear it. Because at the minute, I haven't got a fucking clue.'

Nunn leaned forward and turned up the volume. Apparently, their conversation was over.

The Neil Diamond song was still in his head, becoming less of a favourite all the time, when Thorne called Louise, mid-afternoon. He could barely hear her when she picked up.

'What the hell's that?'

Louise had to raise her voice over some very uneasy listening in the background. 'Some piece of thrash-metal Phil brought over with him.'

'OK...'

Hendricks was still there.

Thorne heard Louise shouting at Hendricks to turn the music down; heard it stop completely a few seconds later. When Louise came back to the phone, she was almost whispering.

'He's in a seriously strange mood, by the way.'

So, Hendricks hadn't mentioned their earlier conversation to Louise. That was probably no bad thing. Thorne toyed with telling her about the message, about Hendricks' refusal to take it seriously, but decided against it. She was bound to ask the same question Hendricks had, about what Brigstocke thought, and Thorne did not want to get into any of that. He could always have told her that he was acting DCI, of course, but keeping his mouth shut felt slightly better than such near deceit. So he said nothing.

Enough people were thinking badly of him as it was.

'How's it been?' Louise asked, flat.

'Same as ever. However you feel at the start of the day, it's downhill from breakfast.'

'You must be knackered,' she said. 'Sorry...'

'It's fine.' He could hear something being shouted in the background. Told her about the text he'd received from Hendricks that morning.

'Did he? He never said anything.'

It was hardly a surprise. Even as Thorne recounted Hendricks'
you're the best
message, he couldn't help but think it would be the last joke coming from that direction in a while.

'That's funny,' she said. 'Inaccurate, but funny.'

Thorne was relieved to hear a smile in her voice.

'When can you get over?'

'Shouldn't be too late. Eight, half eight.'

'Maybe we can finally get to see this movie. There's usually late shows on a Saturday.'

'Or the three of us could do something together,' Thorne said. 'Might be easier to just get a DVD out.'

'OK,' Louise said, frosty again.

'I'm booked out for the whole day tomorrow.'

'Yeah, fine. Whatever.'

Thorne guessed that the 'whatever' meant anything but; that Louise had been banking on the two of them spending some time alone. But he hadn't quite been able to forget about that video clip. Perhaps he should simply have told her, because by the time he'd hung up, after half a minute more of fuck all, he knew that Louise was thinking badly of him anyway.

He was on his way out of the door when the panic took hold...

Hurrying across the Incident Room, thinking about ways to get back in Louise's good books. Pulling on his jacket and cheerfully telling those he wouldn't see until Monday to enjoy their Sundays at work. Walking past the whiteboard, and glancing at the photographs; the bodies of the first two victims. Tucker and Hodson.

Dead white flesh and coloured ink.

Two thoughts, fragments of conversations, came together -
smashed
together - in his mind and started the wheels racing.

The feeble joke Bannard had cracked about all bikers looking the same: all long hair and tattoos. And something Hendricks had said at Tucker's post-mortem, the one they'd watched together...

Thorne walked back to his office, pressed his body against the door after he'd closed it. Wondering,
hoping
that this was no more than cabin-fever. He used his prepay to call Louise's flat, then Hendricks' mobile.

Got no reply from either.

He thought hard,
breathed
hard for a minute or more, then dialled another number.

By the time he got off the phone, it was as sorted as it was ever going to be, but Brooks wasn't happy. It didn't feel right having to involve other people; having to rely on anybody. Each one should have been his alone, by rights.

This wasn't the way he did things.

He sat up on the soft bed in Tindall's spare room, looked at himself in the mirror on the dressing-table opposite.

It was almost beyond belief, this shit-house he'd become.

The way he did things.

Christ...

And it wasn't like he was talking about the way he packed a suitcase or drove a car. These weren't things he'd ever thought about, not seriously; even at the darkest moments, just after he'd gone inside. But everything changed you, big or small, didn't it? Turned you into someone else. Every single thing you saw or thought, so that you were never the same person from one second to the next. How the fuck could you be? Maybe, eventually, good and bad, that made you into the person you were always meant to become.

Murder was now something he did, simple as that. And he was a damn sight happier doing it on his own.

Nobody made him take the advice, or accept the offer of help, on this one, but it made sense under the circumstances. It squared things. And this fucker clearly deserved it as much as anyone else.

He pulled faces at himself...

It wasn't like he couldn't work with other people. He'd really enjoyed those couple of years when him and Angie were doing the houses together; loved them. But you had to be working for the same thing, doing it for the same reasons. The two of them had nicked shit and sold it to put food on the table. To pay for clothes and holidays and stuff for Robbie. End of story. They both had the same attitude to the work, so they thought the same way when it came to whether a risk was worth taking, whether the payoff was worth it, whatever. They had the same boundaries.

Nobody else involved in what he was doing could feel the same way he did. Not when he was bringing the hammer down. There'd have to be a moment, some point, when any other person would think they'd had enough, and walk away. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to reach that point.

Nobody else could feel as much, or as little, as he did.

He shuffled forward and off the bed; moved across to the mirror on his knees and pressed his face up close to it. Fuck, he looked like he was pushing fifty. Like his dad had looked those couple of times in the visitors' room.

Sorry, baby, he thought. I swear I was looking good right before it all happened; looking better than this, anyway. I'd even been working out for a few months, watching what I ate and all that. I didn't want to come back to you flabby and fucked, like Nicklin and the rest of them, you know?

Everything changes you, big or small; changes your plans. Course, I didn't know that when I was leaving my spuds at dinnertime and doing circuits in the gym at Long Lartin. Didn't think you were going anywhere, did I?

That I'd be walking out of one prison and into another.

'Mr Yashere? DI Thorne.'

A pause. 'I left a message with you three days ago.'

'The missing training shoe.'

'Correct. The shoe that has gone walkabout. Do you have it?'

'No...'

'Losing such an important piece of evidence is causing something of a problem, to put it mildly.' Yashere spoke slowly, with precision. A Nigerian accent.

'I promise that I will find it,' Thorne said. 'And when I do, I will personally deliver it to you, in a box, with a fuckoff red ribbon round it. But right now I need a favour.'

'I was just about to go home.'

The Crown Prosecution Service had a small office round the corner at Colindale station, but via the out-of-hours service Thorne had been put through to their Criminal Justice Unit at the main station in Edmonton. This was where Anthony Yashere and his fellow-caseworkers were based: collating exhibits; ensuring the integrity of evidence chains; firing off snippy emails and phone calls when blood stained training shoes disappeared.

Thorne explained what he needed.

Yashere took details, dates and names. Told Thorne that he could probably get him the trial transcript in a few days.

'Not quick enough,' Thorne said. 'Sorry.'

Yashere began to think out loud, guiding Thorne through the process as he logged into his IT system. It provided a summary of all ongoing cases, but was not yet fully up to date with trials whose details had been on the system it had replaced three years before.

Thorne listened to the click of computer keys. To grunts and sighs of frustration.