Lifeless - 5 (16 page)

Hol and said nothing. Thorne heard him say it.

'Sorry. Have I... ?' She looked from Thorne to Hol and and back again. 'What, am I not talking like a proper lady?' She emphasised the last word comical y, as if it were spelt with a 'y' in the middle and two 'e's on the end.

Thorne smiled. 'Wel at least you're in a better mood than you were on Saturday. Good weekend?'

It was McEvoy's turn to redden. 'Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Just woke up feeling arsey. Weekend was.., fine. Great, actual y. Thanks.'

Before the silence had a chance to make itself uncomfortable, Thorne caught sight of Brigstocke in the pub doorway, scanning the crowd, looking for them. Thorne waved and the DCI came over. Before he arrived at the table, Thorne could tel from his face that there was news.

Simply a question of how bad...

'Got a fax through ten minutes ago. The description of a man who threatened a woman with a gun near Clapham South tube station last night...'

Thorne's shoulders lifted. A reflex as the jolt ran through him. The tingle. Not bad news at al ...

McEvoy could see where Brigstocke was going. 'Not attempted robbery or rape then?'

Thorne answered her, quietly. 'Attempted murder.'

Brigstocke nodded. 'Sounds like our man. Tal , thickset, sandy hair, glasses. Better add bleeding as wel . Woman he pul ed a gun on says she beat the shit out of him with a high-heeled shoe.'

McEvoy swal owed a mouthful of beer. 'Fucking good.'

'When can we talk to her?' Hol and asked.

'I'm trying to arrange it. She's being looked after by her family obviously she's stil upset.' Brigstocke moved to sit down. Thorne shuffled along to make room for him. 'Hopeful y by the end of the day ...' Brigstocke sighed and al owed himself the first smile that Thorne had seen for a few days.

Thone stood up and reached for his jacket. If the man with the gun was one of the men they were looking for, then thankful y, one kil er had failed. Thorne felt certain that the other one would not have done...

The object: to col ect pairs.

Thorne disliked being the one to remove the smile from Brigstocke's face, but didn't hesitate to do so.

In his head it was a scream. It came out like a whisper.

'Somewhere, there's a woman who's been shot to death. I want to find her.'

London was a city of ghosts, some deader than others.

Thorne knew that in this respect, it wasn't unlike any other major city - New York or Paris or Sydney - but he felt instinctively that London was.., at the extreme. It was probably down to the history of the place. The darker side of that history, as opposed to the parks, palaces and pearly kings' side that made busloads of Japanese and American tourists gawk and jabber.

The hidden history of a city where the lonely, the dispossessed, the homeless, wandered the streets, brushing shoulders with the shadows of those that had come before them. A city in which the poor and the plague-ridden, those long-since hanged for stealing a loaf or murdered for a shil ing, jostled for position with those seeking a meal, or a score, or a bed for the night.

A city where the dead could stay lost a long time.

Thorne had known about London's skil at concealing its cadavers for as long as he had been a police officer, but it stil disturbed him. Those that died peaceful y at home, could lie rotting in their front rooms for weeks and months, attracting the rats and the flies, and eventual y the attention of the neighbour with the wel -developed sense of smel .

Those that died violently, those whose kil ers did not want them found, could lie alone and out of sight for far longer. Buried, burned or bricked up, dismembered, dumped or weighted down in water, until those that looked for them were only memories themselves. Until the dead were no more than a page in a yel owing file, or a name on a set of dental records.

Of course, such things happened in smal towns and in vil ages, in places where they were stil remarkable, but there was something about London which, Thorne felt, suited anonymous death. There were those that bleated on about how their particular area of the city was a little community, no real y it was, friendly and welcoming... Thorne knew that, in reality, this meant little more than the newsagent cal ing you by your first name and the barman in your local maybe knowing what your tipple was. When it came down to it, you could stil lose touch with your best friend if he lived more than two streets away, and the reaction of many Londoners to a woman being raped on their train would be to raise their newspapers a little higher.

Thorne's depressing reflections on the city where he had been born, where he lived and worked, were prompted by the simple and not unexpected fact, that by the end of the day, they had stil not found the body they knew was out there. They had of course been monitoring missing persons' reports but nothing had come in. The victim had not been missed yet. There could be a hundred reasons why.

Now, as he and Hol and drove towards Wandsworth to question the woman who had survived the attempted murder the night before, Thorne tried to stop thinking about the woman who hadn't. Her body, wherever it lay, might hold vital clues that even now were disappearing as the corpse changed shape, texture, consistency; popping and sighing gently.

The city would give it up when it was ready.

In the meantime, Thorne had a whole list of things to worry about. A real cause for concern was the fact that the kil ings were speeding up. It had been nineteen days since Carol Garner and Ruth Murray. Jane Lovel and Katie Choi died over four months before that. A shortening of the intervals between kil ings was a predictable pattern, but this was dramatic. Unless of course there were murders in between the two sets that they'd missed... Thorne quickly dismissed this chil ing thought, setting for the slightly less disturbing one that for the kil ers, the hunger was real y starting to take hold.

The kil ers...

Thorne's other major worry. Two kil ers but one of them was, as

yet, no more than theoretical. A shadow. They were on their way to talk to a woman who'd come face to face with one of them. The same one seen by Margie Knight and Michael Murrel .

The one whose face was al over every newspaper and TV screen. Was he the careless one? The sloppy one? Or was his partner just so much better at covering his tracks, at kil ing and kil ing, and staying invisible?

The kil er who had given them their only leads, the one whose blank, bespectacled face now stared out from a hundred thousand posters, was the one who kil ed quickly and efficiently; the single stab wound, the sustained pressure on the neck.., the kil er that wept. He was not the one who butchered and walked unseen into the darkness covered in blood. He was not the one that throttled the life out of

Carol Garner, smashing and squeezing while her little boy watched. He was not the one...

Thorne wanted the kil er on those posters. He wanted him very badly. But he wanted his partner more.

Sean Bracher glanced at his watch as he stood at the bar waiting for the

useless wanker behind it to bring his drink.

She was late.

He wasn't worried that she wouldn't come, just slightly annoyed that he'd have to get up again to fetch her a drink when she final y deigned to arrive. He handed over the money for his beer without a word, grabbed a huge handful of peanuts from a bowl on the bar and strol ed across to a table.

He wasn't planning on sleeping with her tonight. Obviously he wasn't going to say no if he turned out to be wrong, but he guessed that Jo, for al her flirting, was the type to make him wait for it. Jane had made him wait too, only the one more night mind you, and it had certainly been worth waiting for. It was only ever going to be a fling of course - he'd made that clear from the word go and she was cool about it. He didn't want to be tied down to anybody, least of al a receptionist, but it certainly made the working day, not to mention the odd weekend business trip, a damn sight more interesting. She'd turned out to be kinky as fuck...

He stuffed a fistful of peanuts into his mouth and looked around. The place was starting to fil up with those grateful to have got another Monday over with, desperate for a quick one before the struggle home on the train or the bus. Somebody had left a rol ed-up copy of the Standard on the next table. He reached across for it and began idly flicking through the sports pages.

Yeah, it was a nice pub. They would grab a couple here and then head off for an Italian or something. Nothing with too much garlic. He'd done exactly the same thing with Jane on their first date, over six months before.

Jo was actual y better looking than Jane, but not as much of a laugh. He missed the piss-taking with Jane, the wind-ups, the crack. He'd encouraged her to flirt with that freak in the overseas section. That had been hysterical. The pil ock had fal en for it one hundred per cent. Stammering and blushing. Went fucking bal istic when he found out he'd been had. Christ though, if you couldn't have a laugh at work...

He looked at his watch again. Checked his mobile for messages. Why the hel were women always so fucking late? She had been keen enough when he'd suggested meeting. He typed in a quick text message and sent it. Where r u? Probably stil in the ladies back at the office, tarring herself up. On second thoughts, maybe he would end up giving her one later. Her place preferably, no reason to stay the night then...

He smiled, mental y in bed with her already, as he flipped the Standard over.

He glanced down at the front page and almost choked on his peanuts.

The young student got off the bus on Kingsland High Street. From there it was only a two-minute walk up the Dalston Road to her flat.

The evening was surprisingly mild. He took off his jacket as he

went along and threw it across his arm. Walking quickly, looking through the windows of second-hand record shops and Greek caf+s, thinking about the way she'd looked at him the night before.

She'd smiled a lot, raising her eyebrows, the tip of her tongue just visible against her top teeth. She had a laugh that made people on the other side of the pub stare. They'd al been a bit the worse for wear, celebrating their team's quiz win by drinking the first prize. Then the pair of them had stood at the bus stop at Highbury Corner, talking, letting three or four buses come and go before walking home - her off towards Dalston and him, in the other direction, towards the smal , damp cupboard he rented in Tufnel Park.

They'd agreed to meet for lunch today at Pizza Express. He'd slept until real y late and in the end he'd had to rush to get there on time, arrived out of breath and sweating. He'd waited for over an hour.

It had been a casual sort of arrangement, maybe far more casual than he remembered - he had drunk an awful lot of Guinness - but he had expected her to come. She didn't have a phone at her flat so he'd rung her mobile a couple of times during the afternoon, left messages. He was halfway through dial ing her number again when he'd decided to go round. It was only ten minutes away and the bus was virtual y door to door. He was sure she'd be glad to see him. Yes, they'd both had a lot of Guinness, but he was pretty sure she would be.

It was a dirty white door between a shoe shop and a cut-price travel

agency. Three bel s, her name underneath the top one.

He rang.

He put his jacket back on; she'd said she liked it last night. Looked up at the windows above him. An old man peered down at him from the first floor. Maybe they could go and have a pizza now - there were loads of places in Islington. Or they could just sit around, smoke a bit maybe, order something later. Whatever, it would just be real y nice to see her.

He rang again...

'Don't let Bracher go anywhere. Just keep him there...'

Thorne and Hol and had been heading south towards Blackfriars Bridge when Thorne's mobile had rung and he was informed that Sean Bracher was currently annoying the duty officers at Charing Cross, shouting about how he was one hundred and ten per cent certain, that the man in the e-fit was someone he worked with, someone from Baynham & Smout...

Thorne had al but yanked the wheel out of Hol and's hands. The woman in Wandsworth, Jacqueline Kaye, could wait until tomorrow. This was someone who they needed to talk to right now. They'd been to the office... Jesus, even Lickwood had been to the office, and the fucker had been there al the time...

Now, Thorne was talking to a DI at Chafing Cross as wel as trying to give Hol and instructions on the new route they were taking.

'What's the name?' Thorne nodded solemnly as he was told, then began waving his arm in front of Hol and's nose. 'Go right, we'l cut through Lincoln's Inn Fields.'

Hol and smacked a palm angrily on the wheel and did as he was told, keeping one eye on Thorne, watching his reactions, desperate to be told the details.

'Has Bracher told anybody else? Anybody at work? Good...'

Thorne pointed some more, grunting into the phone, meeting Hol and's sidelong glance and nodding. This was major.

As the unmarked Rover roared along the Strand, Thorne began to shout into the phone, as if he was losing the signal. 'We'l be there in about ten minutes.., yes, ten.'

He punched the button to end the cal and turned to Hol and. 'Sean Bracher...'

Hol and's phone began to ring.

'Fuck.. ;' Hol and groped inside his jacket for the mobile.

'Bet you it's for me,' Thorne said, 'I could hear the cal -waiting signal on mine...'

'River?' Hol and asked, pul ing out the phone. Thorne nodded. Hol and answered. 'Hel o? Right...' He handed the phone across. 'McEvoy.'

Five pounds to the good, a smiling Thorne took the phone. Sarah McEvoy was out of breath. She'd run to make the cal .

'We've got a man fitting our description, a man named Martin Palmer...' The smile froze on Thorne's face. It was the same name he had heard a few moments before; the name Bracher had given. 'Palmer walked into West Hampstead nick half an hour ago, dropped

a gun on to the desk and confessed to two murders.'

'OK, we're on our way.'