Lifeless - 5 (31 page)

'She got into a blue car, sir. A Cavalier, I think they're cal ed. Blue with rust on the front bumper and a sticker on the back window, and a six and a three in the number plate. She had a strange look on her face. I remember wondering what she was thinking, but she didn't seem frightened. Just before her head disappeared, down behind the door, I think she might even have waved at me. Just a little wave. Either that or she might have been pushing the hair back behind her ear. She did that a lot. It was hard to tel because the sun was in my eyes...'.

Perks stopped, screwed up his own eyes. He was trying to remember something else, or perhaps he was simply recreating the face of the boy who'd first spoken these words. Thorne couldn't be sure.

'He was fourteen, Thorne. A few weeks older than she was, that's al . Karen had just turned fourteen. 17 July, 1985.' He blinked twice, slowly. 'Karen would be thirty-one this year.' Thorne nodded. It was clearly a calculation Perks could do in his sleep. 'He was stil a child. I

had no reason not to believe him.'

'l know.'

'Christ, people saw the car. Bloody idiots thought they saw the car, thought they saw Karen...'

Thorne was a fraction of a second from reaching out a hand and placing it on the old man's arm, when Perks turned away, shaking his head. He leaned on the wal , fixed his gaze on the shoreline.

The tide was almost ful y out. Thorne stared down at the assorted detritus revealed by the retreating water, squatting in the sludge. Tyres, dozens of them, broken crates and of course the ubiquitous supermarket trol eys. How the hel did these things get here? He couldn't imagine anybody unloading the weekly shop into the back of the car and then merrily hoiking their trol ey off the nearest bridge. Yet here they were, probably deeply symbolic of something or other, but to Thorne, right at this minute, just a bunch of old trol eys stuck in the mud.

This was a fairly typical bankside treasure trove, though Thorne had often come across more exotic items. A number of artificial limbs. A 1968 Harley-Davidson. A dead white bul -

terrier, bloated and snarling like a hideous spacehopper.

And of course, the occasional body.

Every so often the river gave them up. Gently laid them out on a sandy bank, coughed them up into a tangled bed of weeds or spat them onto the mud. Most were never identified, never claimed, remaining as anonymous as the supermarket trol eys. Many stil waited to be discovered, moving up and down the river far below the surface. Their eyelashes and fingernails, the flakes of their skin, snacked upon by sea trout, salmon and seahorses.

Thorne wondered how quickly, "if at al , the body of Karen

McMahon would be given up, released into his care so that he could learn things from it...

'Two things,' Perks said suddenly. Thorne turned to him, waiting. 'I know I won't be the first person you cal , or the second. Probably won't be high up on the list at al . Get to me as quickly as you can though, wil you? When you find her?'

Thorne nodded. He hadn't needed to be asked.

'What's the other thing?'

Perks turned to him, shivering, tucking his scarf down inside his car coat. 'I want to be the one that tel s Karen McMahon's mother.'

Hol and stood in the doorway, blocking it. McEvoy moved to go past him. He moved to prevent her.

She laughed without a trace of humour. 'This is stupid.'

'Yes, it is,' Hol and said. 'If you come into the office and I'm here, you turn around and leave. I come in when you're already here, you get up and go...'

'So, ask the DCI if you can move offices.' 'Right. What am I supposed to tel him?' 'Anything you like.'

'... that we're suddenly not getting on?'

Hol and sighed and stepped forwards, giving McEvoy little choice

but to move back a step or two. He closed the door.

'We're not doing our jobs properly, Sarah.'

McEvoy narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice. 'You're on that one again, are you?'

'I said we, Sarah. Both of us need to sort this out before it goes too far.'

'Is that a threat? Going to grass me up, Hol and?'

Hol and brushed past her, sank into a chair. 'Jesus, Sarah, you're so paranoid.'

'Yeah? Wel you should see me when I've done a few lines.' She glared at him, standing her ground but wanting more than anything to throw open the door and run. Wanting to bolt into the toilets and

open her bag and sniff up a little confidence

It was almost as if Hol and could see the need in her face. 'And have

you? Done a few today?' McEvoy said nothing, but felt the burning start behind her eyes. 'Where do you keep it? When you're here I mean. In your bag is it? In here somewhere ... ?'

Hol and's eyes scanned the room. 'Better pray none of the trainee sniffer dogs ever gets loose in here...'

She cried easily these days. The tears could come at almost any

time. They were just gathering in the corners of her eyes, only a drop or two, and easily pressed back with the heel of her hand, but stil enough to stop Hol and dead in his tracks. 'Sarah . . .' 'No/'

Her hands dropped back to her sides and she raised her head. Not

a trace of softness remained in the set of her features. The anger always fol owed the tears and she welcomed it. She was on safer ground then. A clenched fist and a tightness in the chest felt more comfortable than the taste of saltwater in her mouth.

'Listen, I don't want your help and I don't need your advice. I certainly don't need tel ing what's good for me, work-wise or any other fucking-wise.'

'Nobody's trying to tel you...'

'A few fucks and a grope in the car park does not give you any

rights at al , OK? And I didn't hear you complaining the other day when you were giving me one on the bathroom floor. Grunting and pushing me into the side of the toilet...'

'I only want...'

'Just leave it alone. I don't do it at work.'

The single knock was fol owedinstantly by the noise of the door opening and they both turned at the same time. McEvoy instinctively took a step towards the door. Neither she nor Hol and had a clue whether the man in the sharp suit with, the slicked-back hair who was

walking into the office had heard any of their conversation, but it was

al either of them was thinking during the exchange that fol owed. 'I'm looking for McEvoy.'

'I'm DS McEvoy. Do you not know how to knock?'

'I knocked.'

'You knock, you wait, you get asked to come in, you come in. It's pretty bloody straightforward.'

'Who's got time? I'm DCI Derek Lickwood from SCG east.' He dropped an overcoat on to a chair, held out a hand. 'You're nothing like you sound on the phone.'

Thorne got on to the Docklands Light Railway at Island Gardens which straddled the Greenwich Meridian. Here, a filed Victorian walkway ran right under the river, connecting with the south shore near the Cutty Sark.

In no time at al , the train was rattling through the heart of Canary Wharf; the view as breathtaking to Thorne as any he had just seen staring across the Thames.

It was a bizarre journey. A matter of minutes separated one of the oldest parts of London from the brand new developments that were changing the skyline for ever: from nineteenth-century tea clipper in Greenwich dry dock to forty-foot yacht in Limehouse Basin; from the classical elegance of the Queen's House to the very different beauty of the new skyscraper, days away from becoming the tal est building in the city; from stucco and slate to steel and mirrored glass in a couple of minutes.

The DLR was as close as the city got to a time machine.

Now Thorne needed to make a far shorter journey back in time. Just the tiniest hop back, seventeen years to the summer of 1985.

A hot summer. Live Aid, French nuclear testing, Brixton ready to boil over. DC Tom Thorne, newly married, standing in a stuffy interview room with a man named Francis Calvert, everything about to change.

And a young girl who, while Thorne was fighting to get the smel of death off his clothes, may or may not have climbed into a car. A girl whose picture grew smal er and final y dropped off the front pages as bigger stories exploded on to them. A girl who almost certainly died alone and afraid on a warm night when perhaps people danced at Wembley stadium or threw petrol bombs on Electric Avenue, or sat at home like Tom Thorne, trying to keep the rest of the world wel away.

Thorne put his head back and looked out of the window. Wal s and windows and endless stretches of spray-painted metal moved past him in a blur. Seventeen years ago when Karen McMahon had disappeared, he'd been somewhere else. Now, perhaps they could final y help each other.

The train rumbled on towards Bank where he would change: Northern line back to Hendon and a few hours in the office before driving back out to south-east London again later on.

He closed his eyes and pictured himself twenty years down the road - being sat down in a grotty pub or walked along the river by some spunked-up wannabe; a fast-track thirtysomething DI only too eager to tel him how he'd got it so very wrong al those years before, how he'd screwed up and how they were re-opening the case and how, final y, now, they could put his mistakes right...

He pictured himself smiling and saying, fair enough mate, but you'l have to tel me which case you're talking about. Which particular fuck-up.

It's a bloody long list...

Later, approaching LIMP Belmarsh, Thorne's mind turned to DIY or gardening as it usual y did. The place couldn't help but put him in mind of a B&Q, or any one of those other shop-cum-warehouse monstrosities he could see from his office window, if he was unlucky and it was a clear day. Belmarsh looked as if it had been model ed on an American-style penitentiary: utilitarian, functional. Though the big old Victorian prisons like Strangeways" and Brixton were doubtless grimy and overcrowded, Thorne couldn't help thinking that they had a little more.., character.

Not that character was real y the point, of course.

That bizarre London mix of old and new was there again, sandwiching Thorne on his drive south, from the Greenwich marshes, through Charlton towards where the prison squatted, somewhere indistinct between Woolwich and Thamesmead. It was a straight road running alongside the river, and though the scenery on either side was hardly picturesque, it was certainly contrasting. On the right, set back from the road, were a number of converted Victorian barracks and army buildings. Dark and dirty, and on land most probably poisoned by a hundred years of oil and ordnance. To Thorne's left as he drove along beneath a sky already dour and darkening at four o'clock, stood plot after plot of new housing developments. They were the sort that used to be advertised by that bloke with the square chin and the deep voice who swooped down in a helicopter. Red bricks and green roofs, which would almost certainly fal down long before the somewhat darker buildings on the other side of the road.

Then there was the prison itself. Its security level was as high as anywhere in the country. Home at one time or another to Jeffrey Archer, Ronnie Biggs and any terrorist worth their salt.

Nobody had ever escaped. Low and grey and grim, and itself overlooked by yet another housing development. Thorne wasn't sure who had the worst view: the unhappy families in their lovely new red-brick houses, or the prisoners...

It took a little over half an hour from when Thorne first showed his warrant card at the desk in the visitors' centre to when he was sitting in the Category-A legal visit room, waiting to see Martin Palmer.

It was a drawn-out and regimented procedure. From the Visitors' centre, where Thorne had to leave al personal belongings in a locker, on to the main building where his authorisation was checked again and an ultraviolet mark stamped onto the back of his hand. Then out into

a courtyard where his pass was re-checked, through an X-ray portal, a maze of glass and air-lock type passages - one door shutting before the next one opened. And then the wait for the van that transported visitors to the separate Category-A compound. Once there, a third check on credentials, another X-ray machine and a good deal more grunting and staring before Thorne was final y ushered into the smal , rectangular visit room.

Then another wait that depended on nothing but the mood of the

prison officers concerned. It was always the same and it always pissed Thorne off. Police officers and prison staff were old enemies. The finders and the keepers resenting each other.

Screws were seen as failed coppers. Coppers were thought of as delivery boys with smart suits and clean hands. On a prison officer's territory, if anything could be done to make things that little bit more tedious and difficult, it usual y was.

Ten minutes later, a heavily tattooed and deeply depressed prison

officer led Martin Palmer into the room. Palmer walked across and took a seat at the table opposite Thorne. The prison officer, who Thorne thought looked like a shithouse with right-wing leanings, left to take up his position behind the door from where he could observe through the window.

Palmer was pale. He was wearing the orange hooded top that

Thorne had seen him in at his flat on Christmas Eve. He stared at Thorne, blinking slowly. He looked more like a man who'd just woken up than one who, as a matter of policy, would be on suicide watch.

Despite the time and trouble he'd taken to get there, Thorne wanted

to keep it quick and simple. He was only real y there to deliver a message.

'I'm going to find Karen,' he said.

NINETEEN

Palmer looked lost.

He stared around in search of something that might anchor him, some familiar landmark from which he could navigate, but everything felt alien and unknown.

Thorne watched, trying to imagine the man as a boy in this place when the world was very different, but he was no more successful than Palmer at recapturing the past.

It was understandable, of course. The embankment was unrecognisable compared to how it must have been almost twenty years earlier. This stretch of line, which a mile or so further on ran past the bottom of the King Edward's playing fields, had been disused for years. It had been earmarked for a development which, luckily for this operation, was never quite funded properly. The railway buildings - maintenance sheds and equipment stores - had long been demolished. The track was overgrown and in pieces. In patches, the grass was over eight feet