Death Message (36 page)

'I'm on my way to Waterloo,' she said.

'What's in Waterloo?' Thorne crossed over Wardour Street and took shelter in a shop doorway.

While Louise was telling him about the sighting at The Adam, he saw Holland come out and scan the street for him. He raised an arm and Holland jogged across through the downpour.

'I'll get to you as quick as I can,' Thorne said.

'No point. Anyway, I've got Kenny with me. Where are you?'

When Thorne told her, Louise suggested that he and Holland check out every bar and small club on Old Compton Street. None of them were regular haunts, as far as she knew, but she guessed that Hendricks had been into most of them at one time or another. 'It can't hurt,' she said.

Thorne smacked his hand against the shop window then started walking. 'Waste of fucking time.'

At his shoulder, Holland pushed back his wet hair and asked what was going on. Thorne grimaced, shook his head.

'What else are you going to do?' Louise asked.

Porter wasn't paying, obviously, but she clocked the fifteen-pound entrance fee as she went in. The other places had been cheaper, but not by much. Three or four different clubs, and four quid a pop for drinks, she couldn't help wondering how much cash Phil Hendricks got through during a typical Saturday night on the razzle.

She and Parsons might have waltzed to the front of the queue and past the ticket office, but there was still an awkward moment when a security guard - with the obligatory long black coat and earpiece - put out a hand to stop them at the door to the club itself.

Porter just stared. Parsons told the man to move.

The bouncer looked awkward, reddened when he spoke to Porter. 'I'm not sure if I should search your bag or not.' He stepped back when Parsons put a hand on his arm. 'I don't know, you might be carrying weapons.'

'Several,' Porter said.

It might just have been the newness, but Vada seemed classier than The Adam. The music was less insistent, and there was more space to move; the dance floor itself took up only a small area of the main room. The atmosphere was not as frenzied, and Porter imagined the place would fill up later, as clubbers looked for somewhere to talk or wind down.

Men danced close, to synthesised voices and a soft beat, as she and Parsons made their way across the room towards the bar. The designers had tried for something louche and late-sixties in the black and red velvet of the furnishings, fibre-optic table lamps, and blown-up portraits of Caine and Jagger on the walls.

Porter got nothing useful from the bar-staff, so she and Parsons split up to explore the rest of the club.

Unfortunately, the lighting was just as moody and atmospheric as the sound. Plenty of dark corners and pools of shadow, as Porter searched; looking for a black, maybe a silver shirt; a cropped hairline, softer at the back of the neck, where a tattoo began. Listening for a familiar, filthy laugh as she moved close to the tables and banquettes, in the areas where the music was deadened by walls of glass bricks.

Trying to stay optimistic.

There was a quieter bar at the top of a small staircase. Porter stalked from corner to corner, aware from some of the looks she received that her expression of frustration was perhaps being mistaken for disapproval. It couldn't be helped.

The barman here was no more help than the one downstairs, suggesting to Porter that her friend probably hadn't come in yet.

She felt another rush of anger at Thorne. He would say he hadn't lied, of course, that he'd been protecting her, but she knew that was bollocks. The anger subsided when a man who matched the description of Marcus Brooks walked past her and smiled; as she found herself wondering how many coppers there might be in the place, aside from herself and Kenny Parsons.

On cue, the DS appeared at the doorway of the bar and shook his head. A look that suggested he'd done enough arse-licking for one Saturday night and was ready for home.

They walked out of the bar and down the stairs, with Porter checking a series of small lounges as they went, determined to cover every inch of the place before she gave up. She was on the verge of doing exactly that - wondering what the fuck was going to happen now with Thorne, what she could say to comfort him, should anything happen - when she finally saw a face she recognised.

The man was sitting in the third of the chill-out rooms, near the door, with two other men and a woman. There was a fair selection of bottles and glasses on the table between them.

Porter had no time for introductions, so let her warrant card make them for her. 'I've met you before,' she said. 'With Phil Hendricks.'

'Almost certainly,' the man said. He ground out a cigarette, blew a thin stream of smoke across the table, then looked up; over Porter's shoulder and beyond. 'He's knocking around somewhere.'

Porter felt something give in her stomach. 'Where?'

The man's eyes were still searching. 'He was with some skinhead type. Getting very cosy.'

Porter turned, looked out through the doorway for any sign of Hendricks.

'They were here ten minutes ago...'

Porter bolted for the door, with the man and his friends still discussing things behind her. She was scrabbling for her phone as she caught sight of Parsons at the other end of the corridor; dialled as he came running towards her.

'Tom, he's here, or he
was
, and maybe Brooks. You should probably get over.' She left the address and hung up.

'Where the fuck haven't we been?'

'Offices?' Parsons suggested. 'Toilets?'

Parsons rushed towards the gents' and Porter made for the ladies' at the other end of the carpeted corridor. Inside, one woman stood at the marbled sink and stared as Porter slammed back cubicle doors. Nothing.

Before the door had swung shut behind her, Porter was moving down to the far end of the corridor. She took a left and found herself in the kitchens; stared past the two waitresses sitting on the counter and backed quickly out again.

There was nowhere else to go.

She saw no sign of Parsons; could hear the music bleeding through the walls, and the rain on the other side of the door ahead of her. She leaned on the metal bar, pushed and stepped outside.

It was a narrow back alley, running forty or fifty yards to a side street that curled around the back of the club from the main road. The water ran from steeply pitched roofs on either side. It fell in sheets, lit in several places by the light from windows or the wall-mounted sodium lamps in doorways.

In one of those doorways halfway down, Porter could see two figures.

She edged slowly along the wall; could hear feet on the floor as someone adjusted their position. She heard something bang against a door. Something like a groan.

'Phil?'

She took three or four more steps along, then away from the wall, and saw the head that turned towards her, the features in shadow.

Hendricks being pressed back hard against the door.

Hands raised around his neck...

Porter was running then, reaching into her bag, and when the bag hit the puddle her hands were tight around her telescopic baton. She was shouting something as she swung it hard into the back of the man's legs; pulling and turning him as he fell, then dropping down on top of him.

'
Fuck
...
Louise...'

She drove her knee down beneath the man's shoulder blades, grunting with the effort as she gripped the baton at either end and pressed it down on to the back of his neck... as other hands clawed at her own neck and grabbed at her hair.

Then she could hear Phil Hendricks screaming and swearing, his voice jagged, above the drumming of the rain and the roar of her own blood.

Thorne and Holland were on their way back to the car when the call came.

'It's Kenny Parsons, sir...'

Whatever Parsons said next was lost beneath the shouting in the background. Thorne recognised Hendricks' voice; felt relief scald through him. Then another male voice; threatening.

'What the fuck's happening?' Thorne shouted.

There was a pause before he heard the phone being handed over: Louise clearing her throat.

'I got it wrong. He's fine.' She was buzzing, breathless. 'I fucked up.'

'Tell me.'

'I thought it was Brooks, OK? That Phil was being attacked. I saw it and just thought-'

'Slow down.' Thorne could hear Parsons now, telling people to be quiet, raising his voice over theirs.

'He was getting his end away, for Christ's sake. Some kid he met.'

'You sure?'

Louise started to describe how Hendricks had dragged her off the man on the ground; then hesitated, like she didn't want to say too much else. What else she'd seen. 'It looked like this bloke was...
on him, you know?'

Thorne was walking faster now. 'Is anybody hurt?' he asked.

The phone was snatched again, before Louise could answer.

'Right now, all I want to do is fuck you up,' Hendricks said. 'Go straight to Brigstocke and drop you as deep in the shit as I can.'

Thorne knew he had every right to be as angry as Hendricks, and he was. But he fought the urge to sound it. 'You'd best shut up and listen,' he said.

Hendricks got the message.

'It wasn't a wind-up, OK? You're a legitimate target, because you gave evidence at Marcus Brooks' trial six years ago.'

'Fuck off,' Hendricks said. 'I'd barely finished training six years ago. I hadn't set foot in a fucking courtroom.'

'The senior pathologist was Allan Macdonald.'

'So?'

'Ring any bells?'

'I assisted him for six months or something...' Hendricks trailed off, and in the pause Thorne could hear the confidence evaporate. 'He died a couple of years ago, I think.'

'Right. Which puts you next in line. Very fucking handy.'

'I still don't know what you're on about. I had nothing to do with that trial. Don't you think I'd remember?'

'The prosecution submitted a written statement confirming that Simon Tipper could have been killed during the time that Brooks was in his house. Time of death was the key element of Brooks' defence. The only element, more or less. Once that medical evidence was put in front of a jury, along with the prints on the glass and everything else, the verdict was only ever going to go one way.'

'I was just laying equipment out back then. Cleaning out the sluices, doing the paperwork...'

'You countersigned that statement, Phil.'

Just rain for a few seconds, and muffled voices. 'Fuck.'

'Yeah.
Fuck.'

Thorne jumped slightly at the touch of the hand on his arm. He followed Holland's gaze towards the car, still parked outside the Spice of Life. Saw the sticker on the windscreen, then the dirty orange clamp wrapped around the front wheel.

'Wait there,' Thorne told Hendricks. 'I'll be with you as soon as I can.'

The drink Thorne had promised Holland for his help that night had turned into something more substantial by the time he'd persuaded him to stay with the car and wait for the clamping truck. He stepped into the road, telling Holland to keep an eye on the BMW's dodgy clutch. Shouted back that he'd pick up the car some time tomorrow as he waved down a passing taxi.

The cab was halfway through a U-turn, and Thorne was watching Holland climb into his car, muttering, when the mobile went again.

'I would have let him have some fun,' Brooks said. 'Before the kid delivered him.'

It took Thorne a few seconds to understand. Whoever Louise had found Hendricks with in the alley had been bait. Had been working with Brooks. A quick fumble to get Hendricks interested, then back to the kid's place, where Brooks would have been waiting.

'The poor little fucker came back with his tail between his legs. Some woman had beaten the shit out of him.'

Thorne fell back in his seat as the taxi accelerated away down Charing Cross Road. 'Hendricks is off limits,' he said.

'Because he's your friend?'

'He had nothing to do with what happened to you.' Thorne could feel his chest leaping against the seat belt. Water was running from his hair, dripping down between his ear and the handset.

'Angie and Robbie weren't off limits.'

Thorne quickly wiped the phone against his shirt. He thought about saying that he was sorry. Instead said: 'I know about loss.'

There were brown smears across the window between Thorne and the cabbie, but he could still make out the spots on the back of the man's neck.

Brooks grunted. 'Nicklin said.'

Thorne's hand tightened around the phone. He wondered if there was anything Nicklin
didn't
know about him.

'So?'

'It's not the same.'

There wasn't time for Thorne to argue, though Christ knew he'd been over it in his head enough times. 'Why put other people through it?'

'It isn't-'

'Other
families?'

The meter ticked over twice, and when Brooks finally came back there was still no answer. 'Look, I'm sorry that he's your friend, the bloke in the club. It's weird how things turn out, isn't it?'

Thorne knew there was nothing weird about it. He knew exactly how the connection had been made. Who had done the necessary research and then passed the information on to Marcus Brooks.

He'd sort that one out himself later on.

'Listen to what I'm saying, OK? Things will go very badly for you unless you forget about Phil Hendricks. You need to know that.'

Ten seconds passed before Brooks spoke again. 'There's other people I'm more interested in,' he said.

It sounded close enough to an understanding for Thorne. 'So, where does it end, Marcus?'

'Fuck knows.'

'You going after the judge next? The people on the jury?' The taxi drove fast around the western edge of Trafalgar Square. Swung left through amber on to the Strand. 'Don't forget the shorthand typist and the bloke who drove the prison van.'