Lifeless - 5 (27 page)

Thorne sat at his desk wondering whether anything could be worth this, remembering the conversation he'd had a few short hours earlier. He stared out through the rain-streaked windows into the glowering, grey sky. Into the face of Phil Hendricks, those dark eyes lit up.

Make it a warm one, wil you?

At lunchtime, a fleet of mopeds delivered a mountain of pizzas. Thorne and Brigstocke shared an extra large Spicy Meat Feast, but not equal y. Brigstocke's reply when this fact was pointed out, was not one Thorne felt like arguing with, even if the DCI did have a broad grin plastered across his greasy chops as he spoke.

'If I'm going to sit on fences, I'l need a fatter arse, won't I? So stop moaning.'

Thorne wasn't very hungry anyway.

The smal talk didn't feel forced or awkward, just a little inappropriate. Like a bad joke at a funeral where everyone's turned up way too early and they're standing around waiting for the body to arrive. Which was, of course, exactly what they were doing. 'How're the kids?'

Brigstocke's eyes widened as he slurped up a string of red-hot mozzarel a. He had four kids under six and was often to be found spark out at his desk in the middle of the afternoon.

Often, but not during this case.

'Little bastards,' Brigstocke mumbled. 'Glad to be here if I'm honest, whatever the circumstances.'

Thorne knew what he meant. He'd come into work more than once for pretty much the same reason, except that in his case, the only person he was escaping from was himself.

'Everybody reckons it gets easier, but fucked if I can see when. The time they're old enough to start making their own breakfasts and sticking on Cartoon Network, so you can stay in bed for a bit longer, is just about the same time they start bunking off school and doing crack. Just a different set of things to worry about. Do you want that last bit?'

Thorne shook his head and watched as Brigstocke pushed the entire slice of pizza into his mouth. He grunted with satisfaction, then started looking around and waggling his oily fingers.

'I'l grab some paper towels from the Gents,' Thorne said. He could hear Hol and and McEvoy laughing about something in the adjacent office as he moved across to the door.

He stopped and turned, his hand on the metal door handle. His palm slippery with sweat and grease. 'I know this was what I wanted. Flushing him out.' He took a deep breath. 'It stil feels shit *ahough.'

Brigstocke swal owed the last of the pizza, pushed up his glasses with a clean knuckle. 'Course it does, and you're not the only one feeling bad.'

'I know, but...'

'I'm the only DCI in this room, Tom. Nobody's got a gun to my

head on this one. Jesmond gave me the chance to say no.'

'Why didn't he just say no himself?.'

Brigstocke stood, jammed the pizza box into the wastepaper basket and crushed it down hard with a size eleven brogue. 'Fear.'

Thorne opened the door. 'I'l get us a couple of coffees while I'm out there...'

Al day at work he thought about what the police might be doing.

He imagined them in their offices, in their incident room. Some of them staring at the carpet, waiting for the news to come in. Others reacting differently, scurrying about the place, trying to feel useful, keeping themselves busy. Just another day on the investigation.

He pictured them in their toilets. The joshing, pudgy types at the stinking urinal, heads bowed and cocks out. Other less experienced, alone in cubicles, elbows jammed on knees and legs going to sleep after too long on a warm lavatory seat. Staring at a cracked tile floor, breathing heavily. The shit pouring out of them like water. Arseholes red, raw.

Plenty of lame jokes to ease the tension. The bog door kicked as their col eagues took the piss, the echoing sound of jeers and hol ow laughter to chase away the feeling of dread.

Hopeful y, yes, a feeling of dread...

He saw the pale and puffy faces of these men and women who were so very desperate to catch him. These police officers - fat and unhappy, skinny and dried-up, soft as puppies or hard as housebricks. He saw them al , as they sat at their desks and stared out of windows, and spoke into the grubby mouthpieces of grey telephones. As they passed in corridors and shared il icit cigarettes by open windows. The smel of the fags never quite managing to cover up that sour smel of sweat, trapped, rich and rank in the weave of cheap shirts and rumpled jackets. "

Al day at work he imagined it, alone or with col eagues, at his desk or about the place. Each new thought, each fresh image, entertaining the hel out of him.

He couldn't quite conjure up an image of Thorne, though.

His face, yes, but not its expression. Not the set of him. Thorne was definitely not the headless chicken type, but neither was he the sort to brood and wait, powerless and hog-tied. He knew that Thorne would be the one to feel it the most when the body was found. When the cal

came through and the sparks started to fly.

That certainly couldn't be too far away.

For him, the day was just rushing by. He doubted that it was passing quite as quickly for Tom Thorne.

'Fuckfuckbol ocksfuck...'

On the way back to his office with two steaming cups of coffee, Thorne had been ambushed by the lethal corner of the desk that hated him. The pain of a bloody graze across an already existing bruise along with the scalding to both hands was intense. For a second, he felt as though he was going to be sick.

'Hand me that fucking Sel otape.'

The passing uniform did as he was told while Thorne grabbed a handful of paper from the desk and sank grimacing to the floor.

Brigstocke, alerted by the industrial-strength exclamations, emerged from his office to find Thorne on his knees, screwing up wads of A4

and taping them clumsily across the corner of the offending desk. 'I'l get my own coffee then, shal I?' 'Bol ocks!'

Brigstocke laughed. This was a piece of slapstick that would probably do them al a lot of good. 'I hope you've checked that isn't important...'

'What?'

Brigstocke pointed to the corner of the desk. 'That paper. Six months from now we don't want the prosecution case col apsing because a vital witness statement is taped to the corner of a desk in Hendon.'

'I don't care...'

There was more laughter, this time from Hol and and McEvoy,

who stood giggling like children in the doorway of the smal er office.

Thorne stood up and threw them a filthy look. He rubbed his leg.

Christ it hurt...

Thorne realised abruptly that this pain, laughable though the

cause of it might be, was actual y the first thing he'd real y felt in hours. The agonising stab woke him up and reminded him where he was. Al at once, the sting of the graze, the tingle of the burn, shook something loose in his brain and shoved it roughly into focus. A jumble of indistinct words and blurred images formed themselves into a question. Something slippery became graspable and he seized upon it.

Suddenly, Thorne was knocking hard.

'Keeping Palmer on the outside, keeping him visible, was so as the pattern wouldn't change. So that the other kil er wouldn't panic and bolt. So that he might carry on as normal. Now he's changed the way he does things. Why?' Gritting his teeth, Thorne marched back into his office. Brigstocke, Hol and and McEvoy fol owed him.

'He hasn't changed it real y,' Brigstocke said, shutting the door behind them. 'I mean the details have always changed, from one kil ing to the next. The murder weapons, the locations...'

Thorne crossed to the far side of the office. He leaned back against

the window, looked hard at the other three. 'Always a woman though.' Hol and shrugged. 'Three times, yeah. I suppose that's always.' 'Yes, Hol and, that's always.' He spoke slowly, emphatical y, his next sentence as complete a description of the man they were after as he needed or cared about. 'He kil s women. He got Palmer to kil women. So why a man suddenly?'

McEvoy sniffed, then replied, her voice casual, her answer much the

same as it had been earlier. 'I think he,likes to vary things, keep them

fresh. He makes that stupid joke about being predictable in the email...' 'That's another thing. The joke feels wrong. The tone of the whole thing is forced. None of what he's doing is casual. He wants us to think it's random, like it's whimsical, like it doesn't matter to him who he targets. He doesn't want us to know that maybe, for the first time, he's got an agenda.' He made eye contact with each of them. 'I think there's a good reason for this, for today...'

McEvoy was the first to see it. 'Fuck!'

Brigstocke and Hol and looked at her, desperate to know what she

was thinking, annoyed they weren't already thinking it.

'We were too late,' McEvoy said.

Thorne nodded, pushed himself away from the window and moved quickly across to his desk. 'He's pissing around. He knows we've got Palmer.'

Brigstocke stiffened. 'What?'

Thorne grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and headed quickly for the door. The pain in his leg was gone. 'I got it wrong. He knows al about Palmer. We need to get him away from work now, get him home. It's Martin Palmer who Nicklin's planning to kil today...'

Brigstocke picked up the phone, shouted after him. 'Hang on, Tom.

There must be at least half a dozen officers there...' Thorne walked out without looking back. 'I'm not there.'

SIXTEEN

Thorne thought that Palmer looked scared, then realised it was the way he always looked. Certainly, Palmer's laughter when Thorne told him what was going on - why he'd been forced to take the rest of the day off 'sick'- seemed genuine enough.

He'd taken off his thick glasses, wiped his eyes and squinted at Thorne. 'Whatever else he is, Inspector, he's stil my friend. I'm sure he stil thinks of himself that way at any rate. He wouldn't try to kil me...

Thorne had said nothing, dragged a chair across to the window. That had been many hours ago. Since then they'd sat, or moved slowly around each other, saying virtual y nothing as it grew dark, Thorne occasional y talking on the radio to the officers in the unmarked cars at the front and rear and to those on foot. Six officers were present, seven including Thorne. Stil , the sudden crackle of static from the radio, the shril ring of the telephone or a shout from an adjacent flat were enough to tighten something momentarily in his guts, to increase the beats per minute by a couple.

'What do you think of me, Mr Thorne?'

Palmer had been perched close to the elevision. Thorne had turned

the sound right down. Palmer leaned forward, switched the set off and swung round to look at Thorne who was sitting straight-backed on the sofa, eyes closed. He had his mobile in one hand, his radio in the other.

He spoke without opening his eyes. 'Nothing. I think.., nothing of

you.'

'Sorry, I'm being dim. You think nothing of me or you don't think of me at al ? It's confusing. Which do you mean?'

Now Thorne opened his eyes and his voice was tight with what might have been irritation. 'Either. Both. Turn the television back Palmer got up and moved across to take the chair opposite Thorne. As he sat down, Thorne stood and stretched, produced a yawn from somewhere. 'I'm going to get another coffee...'

'You must have seen a lot of kil ers, Inspector.' Palmer's voice was quiet, a whisper almost, but as always, he sounded like he had a heavy cold: nasal and laboured, the chest faintly wheezy between phrases. 'You've been in rooms with plenty of people who've done the same as me. Breathed the same air as a few who've done a lot worse I should think. I don't know, kids.., what have you.' Thorne said nothing, but the coffee seemed forgotten. He wasn't going anywhere. 'So why do I make you so uncomfortable?'

Thorne took a step towards Palmer, annoyed suddenly that he seemed so relaxed. Palmer drew back in his chair a little. 'You know that I'm here to catch him. Not to protect you. You do fucking wel know that, don't you?'

Palmer nodded. Thorne stayed angry, groping for words. 'By the way, my dodgy knee makes me uncomfortable, one or two of my superiors often make me uncomfortable, wind makes me fucking uncomfortable. You ...'

'What? I make you sick? I make you want to hurt me?'

Thorne turned away and walked towards the window. He checked his watch as he went. It was a little after half past nine.

He stared down at the courtyard outside, at the high green fencing and the quiet street on the other side of it. He could see one of the cars sitting a hundred yards or so away, could just make out the figures of the two officers inside. He imagined their tiredness, their irritation, and his own began to vanish, like dirty water down a drain. He waited a minute or two. 'I'm impressed you waited so long.'

Palmer pushed up his glasses, shook his head a little. 'Waited for what?'

'To give me the "I'm not like him" speech.'

'I wasn't...'

Thorne didn't take his eyes from the street below. He held up his hand to cut Palmer off. 'If that's what you're building up to here, you needn't bother. I don't care, and for what it's worth, I think you're actual y worse.' He turned to see Palmer lowering his head, clasping his hands to his chest. 'Nicklin, you know, the one you reckon stil thinks of himself as your friend, is a maniac. Psychopath, sociopath, whatever. I don't know why he kil s. Not exactly. He likes it, he gets off on it, it's the only way he can express himself, sad little fucker. And he gets an extra kick out of getting you to do it as wel .

'So, with you it's a bit easier isn't it? We know exactly why you kil .' Palmer raised his head, blinked slowly behind his glasses. Thorne acknowledged the smal plea he saw in Palmer's eyes.

'Al right, past tense, we know exactly why you kil ed. You kil ed because he told you to. Pure and simple. To my mind, that makes you worse than he is.'

Thorne turned back to the window. 'He slaughters women in front of their children, and you're worse.'

It was several minutes later that Thorne heard the sigh of the armchair as Palmer stood up, and a few moments after that when he saw the shadow creep across the floor at his feet, and felt the presence of the man behind him.