Good as Dead

TWO

‘It’s espresso, for crying out loud,’ Tom Thorne shouted. ‘Espresso… ’

The man – who of course could not hear him – was talking enthusiastically about how he could not even think about starting his day without that all-important hit of caffeine. He said the offending word again and Thorne slapped his hand against the steering wheel.

‘Not ex presso, you pillock. There’s no bloody X in it… ’

Sitting in a long line of rush-hour traffic, crawling north towards lights on Haverstock Hill, Thorne glanced right and saw a woman staring across at him from behind the wheel of a sporty-looking Mercedes. He smiled and raised his eyebrows. Muttered, ‘Sod you, then,’ when she turned away. He had hoped that, having seen him talking to himself, she might presume that he was making a hands-free call, but she clearly had him marked down as a ranting nutter.

‘I suppose that a nice strong ex presso gives you an ex pecially good start to the day, does it?’

Looking for something else, anything else to listen to, he stabbed at the pre-set buttons; settled eventually for something sweet and folksy, a soft, pure voice and a song he half recognised.

Shouting at the radio was probably just another sign of growing older, Thorne thought. One of the many. Up there on the list with losing a little hearing in his right ear and thinking that there was nothing worth watching on television any more. Wondering why teenagers thought it was cool to wear their trousers around their knees.

The song finished and the DJ cheerfully informed him which station he was tuned into.

Up there with listening to Radio 2!

Changes of opinion or temperament were inevitable of course, Thorne knew that, and on some days he might even admit that they were not necessarily a bad thing. When change happened gradually, its slow accretion of shifts and triggers could go almost unnoticed, but Thorne was rarely comfortable with anything that was more sudden. However necessary it might be. Too many things in his life had changed recently, or were in the process of changing, and he was still finding it hard to cope with any of them.

To adjust.

He pulled somewhat less than smoothly away from the lights, cursing as his foot slipped off the still unfamiliar accelerator pedal.

The bloody car, for a start.

He had finally traded in his beloved 1975 BMW CSi for a two-year-old 5 Series that was rather more reliable and for which he could at least obtain replacement parts when he needed them. The car had been the first and as yet only thing to go, but more major changes were imminent. His flat in Kentish Town had been on the market for a month, though he still had some repairs to do and buyers seemed thin on the ground. And, despite several weeks of quiet words and clandestine sniffing around, a suitable transfer to another squad had yet to become available.

Then there had been Louise…

All these less than comfortable shifts in Thorne’s life, important as they might seem, were secondary to that. The car, the flat, the job. The flurry of changes had come about, had been decided upon, as a direct result of what had happened with Louise.

He and Louise Porter had finally parted company a couple of months before, after a relationship that had lasted just over two years. For half that time it had been better than either of them had expected; way better than most relationships between police officers, certainly. But as a team they had not been strong enough to cope with the loss of a baby. Neither had been able to give the other the particular form of comfort they needed and, while the relationship had limped on for a while, they had suffered separately and paid heavily for it. Louise had been understandably resentful that Thorne seemed more easily able to deal with the grief of strangers, while Thorne himself had struggled with guilt at not having been quite as devastated by the miscarriage as he thought he should have been. By the time that guilt had burned itself out and Thorne was able to admit just how much he had wanted to be a father, it was too late for both of them.

They had become lovers by numbers, and in the end it had simply fizzled away. It was Louise who finally plucked up the courage to say what needed saying, but Thorne had known for a while that the break had to come, before such feelings as were left between them darkened and became destructive.

They had both kept their own flats, which made the practicalities straightforward enough. Louise had taken away a bin-liner stuffed with clothes and cosmetics from Thorne’s place in Kentish Town, while Thorne had left Louise’s flat for the last time with a carrier bag, a few tins of beer and a box of CDs. It had ended with a hug, but it might just as well have been a handshake. Loading his boxes and bags into the back of his car, Thorne had decided that it might be a good idea to change a whole lot of other things.

To start again…

He turned towards Finchley and almost immediately hit a tailback. No more than five miles now, but still half an hour or so away from Hendon, and Becke House. The headquarters of the Area West Murder Squad.

‘Why the hell do you need to change your job?’

He had been out drinking with Phil Hendricks a few weeks before, and, as always, the Mancunian had not fought shy of giving his opinion. Thorne shook his head, but had listened anyway. Hendricks’ opinion was the one he most valued professionally and the same thing usually applied when it came to his private life, because the pathologist was the nearest thing he had to a best friend.

‘Only friend,’ Hendricks never tired of saying.

‘Why not?’ Thorne had asked.

‘Because it’s not… relevant. It’s not necessary. It would be like me doing a post-mortem on some poor bugger who’d been shot twelve times in the head, then saying the fact he had hardened arteries and a slight heart condition might have had something to do with his death.’

‘You’re drunk,’ Thorne had said.

‘It’s too much, that’s all. Just because you’ve split up with someone doesn’t mean you have to change everything. I mean, car… yes! The bloody thing was a death-trap and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with moving to a new flat either. We’ll find you somewhere much nicer than that dump you’re in now and I’ll take you shopping for some decent furniture, but do you really need to be looking for a new job as well?’

‘It’s all part of it.’

‘Part of what?’

‘New start,’ Thorne said. ‘New broom… leaf, whatever.’

‘You’re drunker than I am… ’

They had moved on to football then and Thorne’s desolate sex life, but Thorne could see that Hendricks had a point, and he had thought about little else since. Even though he still believed he was doing the right thing in looking for a new challenge, the thought of leaving Area West Homicide made him feel slightly sick. The nature of the job and the politics of arse-covering meant that it was often hard to build up real trust between members of a team. Thorne had come to value the relationships he had with a number of those he worked with every day. Men and women he liked and respected. Plenty of idiots as well of course, but even so.

Better the devil you know, all that.

On the radio, Chris Evans was making him almost as angry as Expresso Man, so Thorne turned it off. He switched to CD and scanned through the ten discs he had mounted in the changer. He turned up the volume at the familiar guitar lick and that first lovely rumble of the man’s voice.

Johnny Cash: ‘Ain’t No Grave’.

‘While you’re busy changing things,’ Hendricks had said, ‘you could always do something about that stupid cowboy music.’

Thorne grinned, remembering the pained look on his friend’s face, and pushed on through the traffic towards the office.

It was not as if he was going to take the first thing that came along. Chances were nothing suitable would present itself for a good while anyway, and by the time it did he might feel differently.

For now he would just do his job, wait and see what turned up.