Death Message (8 page)

There were wires running all over the shop; machines either side of the bed with bags hanging off them. There were dressings along both of Hodson's arms where he'd taken the skin off and a brace around his neck. He'd punctured a lung, apparently, as well as shattering his hip and pelvis, and one leg had been smashed up so badly that he'd been lucky to keep it, by all accounts.

'Jesus, Ricky. What a mess.'

Hodson's eyes were moving back and forth quickly now. A beam of panic cutting through the fog of sedation; allowing out a few sputtered words, slurred and hoarse. 'You're in the wrong room, mate...'

He took out a sorry-looking bunch of grapes and held them up for inspection. Then went back into the bag and produced a paperback book. He put them both on the table then reached across to rub the back of his hand across Hodson's unmarked face. It rasped against the man's stubble.

'At least you were wearing a helmet,' he said.

He took the rag from his pocket and pushed it quickly into Hodson's mouth, forcing his head down into the pillow. He winced as his fingers caught on the teeth, before bringing the bag around and slipping it over Hodson's head. He gathered up the plastic, wrapped the handles around his fingers and squeezed, tightening his hands below the jaw to get a decent seal.

The metal bed-head rattled, but not for very long.

He watched as the thin, crappy plastic was sucked in, as it wrapped and crinkled around the nose. He waited until it slowed, then turned his eyes to the window; looked out at the distant lights, his hands still clamped tight above the neck-brace.

It was probably Watford...

He turned back again and leaned in, as the bag slapped gently one last time against Ricky Hodson's face. 'That black ice is a bastard, eh?'

Thorne had been leaving messages for Louise since early afternoon, but she hadn't called back until he'd been on his way home.

He'd told her that he'd had an 'interesting' day. Said he'd give her the gory details later if she fancied it, that he'd be happy to get over to her place. Louise had confirmed she wouldn't be working horrendously late, but that she really ought to get an early night, if that was OK. She'd said she would call him if she changed her mind; if she found herself utterly unable to get through the night without him. Thorne had told her he'd be waiting for the call.

The Bengal Lancer had been about to close, but, as a favoured customer, the manager was happy to let Thorne sit at the bar with a couple of the waiters and work his way through a plate of onion bhajis and lamb tikka while the cleaners carried on around him. It did the trick. When he'd walked in, Thorne was still pissed off with Louise, but two pints of Kingfisher and a few off-colour stories had put him in a far better mood by the time he got home, just before ten-thirty.

He fed Elvis, stuck some washing in and caught the end of
Wednesday Night Football
on Sky. He was about to log on to Poker-pro when he noticed that he'd got email. Hendricks had clearly not had the busiest of days and had spent far too much of it thinking up names for their new 'gay pathologist' drama. In his email he'd suggested Poof-Mortem and
Mincing in the Morgue
before deciding that perhaps they could spin off into a talk-show format in a mortuary-style location, with a working title of On the Slab with Kinky Phil.

Thorne decided that, for a while at least, this was more fun than gambling. He sat and thought, scribbling notes on a piece of paper normally reserved for assessments of rival poker players. Then he fired off an email to Hendricks, proposing
Stiffies!
and Queer Eye for the Slab Guy. But he couldn't come up with anything he liked better than Is That Rigor Mortis, or Are You Just Pleased to See Me?

Waiting to see if Hendricks would come back with anything, Thorne remembered his phone. His original handset had been sent back from Newlands Park that lunchtime and was now sitting, sealed inside its Jiffy bag, on the table by the front door.

Thorne fetched scissors from the kitchen and cut into the parcel while keeping one eye on a potentially dirty film on Channel Five and racking his brain for more comedy titles. He decided, as he worked, that this was male multitasking at its most advanced. That the tight-arsed jobsworth at Newlands Park was clearly trying to get his own back, having wrapped up the phone in several layers of impenetrable plastic packaging.

It took him almost ten minutes to dig out the Nokia. Then ten more to retrieve the battery and the SIM, each of which had been mummified separately. By the time Thorne finally put everything together, the film had finished and he'd used up all the swear words he knew.

He switched on the phone. Watched as the signal and battery indicators appeared. He looked at the screen for ten seconds... fifteen, then laid the handset down and went back to the computer.

The moment he sat down, the tone sounded, and the phone began to vibrate on the table. Calls were being diverted through to his new phone, but you couldn't divert text and MMS.

He had a message waiting.

Mid-morning, Thursday, and for the second time that week Brigstocke sat staring at Tom Thorne's mobile phone. He tapped at the screen. 'Is that some sort of wire on the right-hand side?'

Thorne walked around the desk, leaned down and looked over Brigstocke's shoulder. He stared at the picture which had arrived the night before. There was no blood this time, no signs of violence. To the casual observer, the man on the screen might even have looked asleep; a notion reinforced by the fact that his head was resting on a white pillow.

But Thorne was no casual observer.

He looked hard at the light, wavy line that snaked down one edge of the picture and almost touched the dead man's face at the bottom of the screen. 'It's clear,' Thorne said. 'Like a tube, or a cable...'

Brigstocke stared then shook his head, defeated. 'Let's see what they can do at Newlands Park.'

Holland peered in at the glass and pushed the door open at the signal from Thorne. He announced that T-Mobile had finally come back with details on the original message: the call had been made via a mast on top of an office block in Acton.

In the Incident Room and beyond, the team was working flat out. As of a few hours previously, when Thorne had received the second photograph, the inquiry had been substantially upgraded. Officers moved across from other cases - including the Sedat murder, and several being worked by other teams - had already established that this latest message had been sent from another prepay handset, this time on the Orange network. A request for cell-site intelligence had been lodged overnight and steps were being taken to locate where the phone had been purchased. Providing they were able to pinpoint the retail outlet, and based on an average turnover of stock, this could mean wading through a month's worth of CCTV footage or more. It might provide evidence that could be useful if they ever got an offender into a courtroom, but it was highly unlikely to help in catching them. Like much else that the team were busy knuckling down to, it was like collecting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with no idea what the finished picture was supposed to look like.

'How quickly can Orange get us the cell-site?'

Holland looked pleased with himself. 'I lied and told them T-Mobile had really pulled the stops out for us,' he said. 'Reckon a bit of healthy competition might do us a favour.'

Thorne and Holland walked out together and were passing Andy Stone's desk as the DC came off the phone and collared them. 'Bin-bag can't see us this morning.'

'You'll need to talk English,' Thorne said.

'Martin Cowans.' Stone held up a printout, with a number of arrests detailed beneath a fetchingly menacing photograph. 'Black Dogs' top dog, but he prefers to be known as "Bin-bag", for some reason. You told me to call and let him know we wanted a word.'

'So what's keeping Bin-bag so busy this morning?' Holland asked.

'A mate of his has died unexpectedly, so he said. He's got stuff to arrange.'

Thorne looked at Stone.

'Tucker getting the big biker funeral, is he?' Holland asked. 'Coffin on the back of a Harley. Motorhead as he slides through the curtains...'

'That's the thing,' Stone said. 'I thought he was talking about Tucker as well... but he wasn't. Some other mate of his died last night in hospital. He says he needs to get over there apparently, sort-'

'Call him back,' Thorne said, already turning. 'Find out which hospital he's on about and get a crime scene unit over there on the hurry-up.' He carried on barking instructions as he marched out: 'Call Phil Hendricks and get him down there. Make sure the hospital know we're coming, then tell Cowans to stay exactly where he is. After we've paid our respects to his friend, we can all get together for a chat...'

Putting things together as he went, Thorne fought the urge to run all the way back to Brigstocke's office.

A death in hospital, a certain kind of death, would not have shown up on the daily bulletin. This time, the man responsible had not waited to let him know what he'd done.

Thorne opened the door and marched straight over to Brigstocke's desk. He jabbed at the screen of his phone, traced a finger down the mysterious line on the photograph.

'It's the tube from a hospital drip.'

The majority of heroin coming into the UK was still controlled by the Turkish mafia based in and around the Green Lanes area, but for the previous few years their position had been challenged by Asian gangs, many of which operated from the heart of the Sikh community in Southall. If, as Bannard had suggested, the Black Dogs were expanding into heroin smuggling, it put their leader's decision to live just off Southall Broadway somewhere between provocative and plain idiotic.

Martin Cowans clearly saw things rather differently. 'I'll live where the fuck I like,' he said. The way Cowans' lips twisted as he spoke told Thorne all he needed to know about the man's racial politics.

It was hardly a revelation.

Nor was the fact that Cowans extended his precious freedom of choice to those he welcomed into his home, and that no police were on his guest-list. The Black Dogs' president had agreed to meet instead at the club's HQ in Rayner's Lane, a few miles north of where he lived. The 'clubhouse' consisted of two ordinary end-of-terrace houses in a quiet side street, which looked as though they had been knocked through into one without the benefit of professional building advice. One half of the ground floor was crowded with mattresses and motorcycle parts. The other housed a tiny kitchen, living room and a purpose-built bar area complete with pool table, dartboard and beer pumps connected to metal barrels.

'Nice,' Thorne had said, as he and Holland had been given the tour.

Unusually furnished as its interior was, the outside of the building gave less away, if you didn't count the bikes lined up in what was left of the front garden. There were enough clues, though: the reinforced steel doors; the blacked-out windows; the security cameras mounted high on the pebble-dash at front and side.

'What do your neighbours make of this place?' Holland asked.

Cowans flicked ash on to a scarred grey carpet. 'Ask any of them. They'll tell you we're no trouble.'

'I bet they will,' Thorne said.

They were gathered in the living room: Holland and Thorne on tatty, high-backed chairs that looked as though they'd come from a doctor's waiting room; Cowans and two of his friends sprawled across a selection of armchairs and settees in scorched corduroy, velour, or torn and dirty vinyl.

The room stank of stale beer and motor oil.

'Listen, I don't know if anyone's given any thought to Ray Tucker's tropical fish,' Holland said. 'What's going to happen to them, I mean. Obviously he might have left them to someone, and this is just a suggestion.' He pointed. 'But the tank would look lovely against that wall...'

All three bikers were dressed as might have been expected. The uniform was compulsory on club premises. Thorne knew that the patches they wore on the backs of their leathers, or denim jackets - the club's colours - were hugely important to them. He understood that they were not to be abused, and that the wearing of patches to which a biker was not entitled would be dealt with severely. He'd read of gang members being dragged from their bikes, having their colours cut off with Stanley knives, without anyone first bothering to remove the jacket.

Cowans, who only ever answered to his nickname, was pushing fifty. He was stick-thin, but with a gut on him; long hair was tied back and silvering, while his thick beard hadn't quite turned the same colour. His younger colleagues had introduced themselves quite politely as 'Gazza' and 'Ugly Bob'. Gazza was stocky, with a beard that tended towards bum-fluff, while Bob was shaven-headed and sported a thick moustache. Thorne knew that men looking not unlike Bob hung out in some of the clubs Phil Hendricks frequented, but he decided to keep that to himself.

There was much that Thorne might have found almost comical, if he hadn't known exactly what these men were capable of. If he hadn't been wondering which of them had entwined daggers tattooed on some secret patch of pale flesh. He nodded towards Gazza and Ugly Bob. 'What are you two, then? Road captains? Sergeants-at-arms?'

They said nothing.

Thorne turned to Cowans. 'And Ray Tucker was vice-president, wasn't he?'

'I'm not going to talk to you about individual members of this club,' Cowans said. 'But I'm pleased that you've done some homework.'

'Oh yes.' Thorne took a piece of paper from his pocket, brandished it proudly. 'Printed out your rules and regulations as well. Nice website, by the way.'

'Music's a bit shit,' Holland said.

Thorne looked down at the list laid out in a dramatic, Gothic typeface: the club rules and the respective fines for any breach; the cost of patches; the guidelines for general behaviour. 'Five pounds a week subs,' he said. 'That's fairly steep.'