Scaredy cat

FOURTEEN

Thorne thought: so this is old age.

A heavy chair near the television, with its shit-coloured seat covered in plastic and panic buttons everywhere. Handles around the bath and piss-soaked knickers in the sink, and a woman who couldn't really give a toss, popping round twice a day to see if you're dead yet.

'Do you take sugar, Mrs. Nicklin?' McEvoy stuck her head round the kitchen door.

Annie Nicklin shook her head at nobody in particular and Thorne relayed the answer to McEvoy with a more obvious gesture of his own. Though she hadn't said a lot, the woman in the heavy chair, with her clawed hands resting on top of a green blanket, was still fairly sharp mentally, but her body was on the way out. Arthritis, diabetes, angina.., the catalogue of diseases had been reeled off cheerfully by the warden – a hard-faced article named Margaret – as she'd shown them into Annie's flat and explained that they wouldn't get a great deal out of her. Nobody ever did.

McEvoy brought the tea through, and as she handed round the mugs, Thorne continued to ponder the question that had absorbed him since he'd walked through the door. Which was preferable? A good brain and a body that was fucked? Or hale and hearty flesh and bone, with nothing left up top? Obviously, nobody ever really got the choice, but still, Thorne couldn't help weighing it up. Considering the options. It looked as if his old man was heading down the second road, but Thorne reckoned that when it came to it, he'd prefer to go to pieces upstairs and downstairs. At least that way, if he were sitting in his own mess, he'd be blissfully unaware of the fact…

He sipped his tea and thought about meeting Ken Bowles the day before. There was a man who could see pain and loneliness just up ahead. He took a biscuit and thought about the Enrights. As if the everyday agonies of old age weren't bad enough. He had the same old thoughts about the boy, Charlie Garner, who was no age at all. His life still ahead of him and already blighted. His mother taken away by the son of the old lady sitting a few feet away, slurping tea in a shit-coloured chair covered with plastic. Thorne stared at Annie Nicklin. When she had looked at her son, at Smart, back when he was no older than Charlie Garner, what had she seen in his future? What had she dreamed he might become?

'That all right for you, Annie?' McEvoy asked. Mrs. Nicklin nodded again, slurped a bit more, continued to stare at the television screen, even though it wasn't switched on. Thorne hoisted his behind from the depths of the soft, springless sofa and leaned forwards. 'We just wanted to ask you about Smart.'

Nothing. Just the noise of the drinking. The endless beep beep of a lorry reversing somewhere. A dog howling in one of the other flats. Thorne looked across at McEvoy, raised an eyebrow. You have a crack, and keep it nice.

McEvoy, much to her annoyance, had won that morning's tossup. Thorne had not been able to decide which would work better with the old woman – Holland's boyish, floppy-haired charm or the empathy of a younger woman? The coin had picked McEvoy and in the car on the way out to Stanmore, with Thorne diving and trying to coax any kind of warmth out of the Mondeo's knackered heater, she'd not been shy about why she was pissed off about it…

'I don't particularly feel like wheedling stuff out of a sweet old lady whose son happens to be a psychopath. You don't need to have read a lot of textbooks to figure that she might have something to do with that.'

Thorne hadn't read a single textbook and he was having none of it.

'What? Did she lock him in the coal shed? Make him wear women's clothes and lipstick? We need to talk to this woman, and frankly, I couldn't be less interested in a debate on nature versus nurture…'

McEvoy clearly didn't care whether he was interested or not.

'Nurture, every time. Every time.'

Thorne stopped at traffic lights and yanked up the handbrake.

'Supposing you're right. You aren't, but supposing you are…' McEvoy said nothing, stared out of the window – 'what about Nicklin's father? Why can't he have been the one who beat poor little Smart with a coat hanger or whatever?' Palmer had already told him that Nicklin's father had left home when he was still a toddler. Nobody knew, or by all accounts cared, if he was alive or dead. For a few moments, McEvoy thought about what Thorne had said, or at least pretended to. 'No. Mothers and sons. Fathers and daughters…'

Thorne leaned on the horn as a white van roared away from the lights and swerved in front of him. 'You've never met my father, have you?' McEvoy didn't laugh, so Thorne stopped being nice about it.

'Listen, if there's anything this woman can tell us that might help, I want to hear it OK? You're a copper, not an amateur shrink, so go in there and do your job…'

McEvoy had been laying it on with a trowel ever since they'd got there.

'Maybe we could start with when Smart left home, Annie.'

The old woman cleared her throat. Her chest rattled for a second or two after she'd finished. Then she spoke. 'That's where it starts and where it finishes. He left. The end.' It was her longest sentence so far. Thorne looked at McEvoy. Carry on…

'So you never heard from him?'

Annie Nicklin picked up an empty teacup, looked at it, put it down again. 'There was a letter once, from London.'

'Do you still have it?'

She turned her head slowly round to look at them and smiled, though she was clearly in some pain. 'I never opened it.'

'Did you not want to know where he was?' Thorne asked. He couldn't be sure whether she was choosing to ignore him or the question. Either way, she wasn't answering.

McEvoy moved on. 'He left in September 1985, is that right?'

The old woman nodded.

'Just like that? Out of the blue?'

'I wasn't.., hugely surprised.'

Thorne thought: or bothered…

'This was a month or so after the disappearance of Karen McMahon?' Mrs. Nicklin licked her lips, stared ahead. McEvoy tried again. 'When Stuart left, that would have been about a month after…?'

With a small moan, Mrs. Nicklin reached for the stick that was propped against her chair and, grunting with the effort, she pointed with it to a bottle of pills on top of the television. Thorne stood up and fetched the bottle. 'These?' He opened the bottle. 'How many? Just one?' Mrs. Nicklin nodded and he handed her a tablet. There was a glass of water on the tray attached to her chair and he passed it to her. She swallowed. Thorne sat down again. Pills for Annie's body which was giving up the ghost. Still sharp up top though. Sharp enough to understand everything. To decide when might be a good moment to take a tablet in order to avoid a question she didn't want to answer…

'Was he upset about Karen? Was that why he left?' McEvoy was craning her head round, trying to make eye contact. 'How much was he seeing of Martin Palmer before he left?' Somewhere, the dog was still crying, and now, Annie Nicklin was avoiding McEvoy's questions as well.

Thorne pushed himself up, stepped in front of her. She began to click her tongue and tried to move her head. Thorne stood solid, between the old woman and the television that wasn't on. The gentleness had gone from Thorne's voice. 'Tell me about Karen, Mrs. Nicklin.' There was a low moan from deep in her throat but that was as communicative as she was getting. Thorne leaned down close to her, very little patience left. 'Tell me about Karen McMahon.'

The case had begun to ring a bell when Palmer had first mentioned the name. Thorne remembered it of course, but not well – a missing girl, a nationwide search – the details were vague. When he found out the date he realised why. The summer of 1985. He had been… absorbed by a case of his own at the time. Johnny Boy. Francis John Calvert, a killer of gay men, who felt that the police were getting too close. So close that he had had no choice… The nightmare a young DC called Thorne had walked into…

'Tell me about Karen.'

He could see the pale, paper-thin flesh around her jaw constrict across the wasted muscle as she gritted her false teeth. With what little movement was left in her clawed fingers, she grasped at the blanket across her lap, pulling it close to her.

'Tell us and we'll go, Annie,' McEvoy said.

'She got into a car.' She spoke slowly and with emphasis, as if explaining something terribly complicated. Just to make sure Thorne understood, she said it again. 'She got into a car.'

'When she was with Smart?'

'After. A bit after that. She was ahead of him and the car pulled up.'

'The blue Vauxhall Cavalier…'

She stared down at her blanket, clutched at it. 'You know all this.'

Thorne shook his head. She looked away. 'Smart must have been very upset. He saw it all happen, didn't he?'

She turned back to him quickly. 'Yes. He was upset. He never stopped crying afterwards. Smart saw everything. He saw her get into the car. He saw the man who was driving it. He told the police what the man who was driving the car looked like, you can check.'

'He told the police? Or he told you and then you told the police?'

'Both, both.' She rot-rotted and one liver-spotted hand began to rap lightly on the arm of her chair.

McEvoy was on her feet now, standing directly behind Annie Nicklin's chair. 'This man, the man that Stuart saw, did he grab Karen? Did he get out of the car? Force her?' McEvoy might just as well have been talking to herself. She stared at Thorne across the white hair of Annie Nicklin's bowed head. She shrugged. Enough?

Despite what Thorne had said to McEvoy in the car on the way over, he had an urge to shout at this old woman, to bully her. He raised his voice only slightly, but as soon as he began to speak, Annie Nicklin raised her head. She met his gaze for the first time, and held it.

'Did Smart have any idea why? If this man didn't force her, did Smart have any idea why Karen McMahon got into his car? Did he tell you that, Annie?'

Thorne could feel his hard stare being returned with interest. Then, as if the movement was painful, she dragged her eyes away from his and down towards the floor, one hand clasping the blanket for dear life and the other reaching for the walking stick. It was only after a few seconds that Thorne became aware of what was happening and glanced down. The knocking of the stick against his shin was almost imperceptible. The impact of the rubber tip against the bone was feeble, but the impulse behind the movement was anything but. Annie Nicklin was poking and prodding, trying to push him away, to poke and push him away. Jabbing and pushing at him… In time with the jerky movements of her withered arm and knotted stick, she spoke. Her voice was clear and high, and the tone of it took on a strange sing-song quality as she spoke the same five words over and over again.

'She got into a car…'

Urging the Mondeo back towards Hendon, along the bizarrely named Honeypot Lane, Thorne pictured a girl in a white dress – he had no idea what Karen McMahon had really been wearing, but it had been a summer's day – pulling open the door of a blue car, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear and climbing in.

At the edge of the picture stood a boy called Stuart Nicklin, blurry, with his head slightly bowed, but with those dark eyes taking in every detail. Absent, but very much there, like a phantom image or a double exposure, was a man named Martin Palmer, still utterly fucked up nearly twenty years later.

There was something wrong with the picture…

'So, nature or nurture?' McEvoy said, as they got near to Becke House.

Thorne smiled. 'I'm saying nothing.'

'A lot like the old woman then…'

Thorne had to agree. 'I've known armed robbers, rapists… I've interviewed axe murderers who gave it up easier.' McEvoy laughed, but Thorne was being deadly serious. 'If Nicklin's got a fraction of that determination, or that.., cunning, we're in trouble.'

'What about Palmer's parents?'

Thorne shook his head. There was really no need, and besides, they would know what was happening soon enough. One phone call from Palmer, a day or two after he'd given himself up, had established how Nicklin had tracked him down. 'Oh yes, a nice boy you were at school with called, trying to get hold of you… didn't leave his name.., wanted it to be a surprise, I think.' Beyond that, there was nothing useful to be had out of them. Eventually, it would just be about giving them the bad news.

He was intrigued, but also a little relieved that Annie Nicklin had shown no interest in news of any sort about her son or his whereabouts. That would have been decidedly tricky.

'Oh yes, he's turned up… But…'

At the Peel Centre, they pulled up to the security barrier and Thorne fished around for his ID. McEvoy leaned across him and showed hers to the officer on duty. After a moment, the barrier lifted and Thorne nudged the car towards the parking bays.

'Got plans this evening?' Thorne asked.

McEvoy turned away and stared out of the window. There were a dozen or so recruits working with dogs on the far side of the compound.

'Not really. Early night, I think. You?'

'Myself and Mr. Philip Hendricks have a hot date with Sky Sports and a Chinese takeaway.'

'Sounds good…'

'Yeah, if you don't mind being a relationship counselor when you're trying to watch the match.' He pulled a face for McEvoy's benefit, but really he was looking forward to Hendricks coming over. Unwinding. Letting a little of it go…

Thorne guided the car into a space next to Brigstocke's Volvo estate and killed the engine. He stared up at the dun-coloured walls and peeling olive paintwork of the three-storey sixties' monstrosity they had the misfortune to work in. If management had any sense, and a desire to maintain levels of recruitment, they would have instructed the film crew to make sure they kept the cameras well away from Becke House.

'It's a phenomenally ugly building,' McEvoy said, after a few moments.

Thorne nodded, thinking: We're in it, trying to catch people who do phenomenally ugly things.

McEvoy pushed in the button to release her seat belt. 'What's on this afternoon?'

Thorne took a deep breath. 'Well, I'm going to make a few calls, try and find out what's going to cost more, fixing the heater or replacing the car.'

'About bloody time. I'll be spending the next half an hour trying to get some feeling back into my feet…' Thorne laughed. 'It's ridiculous. Why don't you use the car you've been assigned?'

Thorne shrugged. 'I don't know.., it's brown.'

McEvoy was gob smacked by Thorne's answer, and by how much he suddenly looked like a confused and sulky teenager. 'So, get another one…

'I like this car,' Thorne said. 'It's got all my tapes and stuff.'

'Oh right, yeah. Dolly Patton and Tammy Wynette.'

Thorne sighed and opened the door. 'I'm going to kill Holland. No, I'm going to make him listen to some proper country music and taken I'm going to kill him…'

McEvoy climbed out of the car, snickering like the cartoon dog in Wacky Races. 'It wasn't his fault. He didn't say…'

'Actually, fuck that, the music would be wasted on him anyway. I'll just kill him.' Thorne turned the key in the lock, looked at McEvoy across the Mondeo's roof. 'While I'm busy killing Detective Constable Holland, I want you to do something for me.'

'I think I'm already doing quite enough keeping Derek Lickwood away from you. He knows you're avoiding him.'

Thorne smiled. 'Don't worry, it's a lot easier than that.' McEvoy waited. 'Get on the phone for me, and find out who was in charge of the Karen McMahon case.'

Alf from Stoke-on-Trent: 'Hanging's too good for these bastards. I'd happily pull the lever myself…'

He shook his head and broke off another big piece of the chocolate bar, thinking: Come on, Alf, you can't have it both ways. Still, he knew that this was how a fair proportion of the British public thought that he, and others like him, should be dealt with. This was what they considered an appropriate response.

The phone-in host, who was normally there to play devil's advocate, agreed wholeheartedly with All, and the two of them began to gleefully discuss whether or not, if we ever came to our senses and brought back capital punishment, we should stick to the noose or perhaps move into the twenty-first century and go for lethal injection.

He closed his eyes, tuned out the chat.

Others like him…

He couldn't say that he'd ever actually met anybody else like him. Not really. He'd run into his fair share of those for whom respect for the law was a luxury, and some whose moral framework had never existed or had been eaten away. He'd known plenty of men desperate enough to consider anything, but never an individual who was happy to consider everything. This fact didn't disturb him, but neither did it give him any great comfort. He just accepted it as the way of things. He wasn't arrogant enough to believe that he was completely unique. He accepted that one day he might stare across a street, or along a station platform, or even at a television screen and recognise a look in someone's eye.

It was a look he'd certainly never seen in Martin Palmer's eye. Now it was time to get in touch with his old friend again. He got up from the armchair and crossed the room to where the laptop computer, bought for cash in Dixons the day before, lay on the dining table. He switched it on, and while it was booting up, he fetched the freshly cloned mobile he'd picked up in south London on the way home. He'd ditch the computer and the phone the next morning on the way in to work.

He had always been careful to vary his methods. Opening up any one of a hundred free e-mail accounts was easy, and he always took care to make the hardware as near to untraceable as possible. The first few times, he'd simply walked into an Internet cafe. He preferred the smaller places – converted greasy spoons that advertised cheap photocopying, and had a couple of grubby, first-issue iMacs lined up in a back room. These places were tucked away, almost invisible between massage parlours and dodgy minicab firms: places that even the backpackers didn't know about, where no-one served cappuccino or gave a toss about what porn sites you accessed. These were places without CCTV. He'd moved on to laptops which were, of course, ideal for his purposes, and then it had just been a case of where to plug the things in. This wouldn't be the first time he'd used a stolen mobile – he had a contact who knocked them out for next to nothing – but in the past, he'd also enjoyed the telecommunications facilities offered by a number of shitty hotels in and around central London. Just a matter of checking in, logging on and fucking off. If, and it was a very big if, the place was ever traced, nobody would have any memory of the anonymous businessman with the small leather carry case. He connected the phone to the laptop and sat down in front of it. He began to give some thought to what he was going to write. He always liked to get the wording right.

It was funny, he'd almost predicted that something like this would happen, that in some strange way his hand would be forced, his mind made up for him. Now, he had no choice but to respond. The response, appropriate or not, was pretty much the only one he could make.

He logged on and the computer began to dial. In a matter of minutes he'd opened a new account, invented a name and created a password. He enjoyed assuming fresh identities whether they lasted many years or just a few hours in a dingy hotel room. He even relished those which, like this one, he would only ever need to assume in cyberspace for the few short minutes it took to send a handful of words across the city.

Pretty much the only response he could make… He wasn't sure exactly what Thorne had been hoping to gain by going to the school, but there it was. He snapped off another chunk of chocolate. The Detective Inspector was clearly not a man whose actions were predictable or immediately explicable. That was all right. Neither was he.

He laid out his instructions in the e-mail with the usual care. There was to be no misunderstanding. He had always strived to make it straightforward for Palmer, to make everything clear. Martin had always needed that.

Do this, now. Do that, only when I tell you. What was less clear, at least right now, was exactly why he was bothering to do this at all. Why was he sending these details to Palmer in the first place? Why was he issuing instructions which would never be followed, except in the creation of a newspaper story about a murder that had not taken place? Mind you, once the murder that would be taking place was discovered, they wouldn't bother making up any more stories anyway.

So why was he going through the motions like this? Why was he playing their game?

Palmer had chosen to remove himself from the equation and in doing so had taken away with him some of the… mustard. Dulled that extra buzz. Maybe he could get a little of it back this way. He needed to get it back, to go along with their not-so-clever bit of let's pretend, and see where it led all of them.

But that wasn't the only reason.

If he was being honest, he liked his routines and only he would decide when they changed. So, yes, it was a refusal… an absolute refusal to relinquish control, but it was also, he had to admit, because of a perverse desire to… carry on as normal. Business as usual, at least for the time being. He'd always had a sneaking admiration for that very British breed of nutcase who treated flood, fire or pestilence as no more than a minor inconvenience and refused to adapt. There was never any need to move house, or see a doctor or make a scene. Stubborn and stupid. Brave and barking mad. It worked the other way round, of course. It was only ever in this country that people could win millions on the lottery and decide to carry on working in a factory. Of course, in the end, those morons always did adapt, and so would he, when he absolutely had to. It wasn't rocket science, after all. Go with the flow, or rot where you stood. Adapt or get caught. For now though, he'd suck it and see.

He heard Caroline coughing in her sleep upstairs. Poor thing had been feeling rough for a couple of days. As he checked his typing for spelling errors, he made a mental note to pick up some Benylin for her the following day.

He popped the last square of chocolate into his mouth and pressed

'send'.

They rolled apart from each other and lay there, sweating, exhausted. Holland leaned up on one elbow and whispered mock-seductively into the ear of the woman next to him.

'So, come on, tell me about this mysterious Biscuit Game.'

McEvoy was still getting her breath back and marveling at how, just an hour and a half before, she'd arrived home to find Holland on her doorstep, clutching a bottle of wine and stammering like a poor man's Hugh Grant.

Seven thirty: awkward exchanges as keys were fumbled for. Twenty past eight: second bottle opened, lying around like students. Nine o'clock: the pair of them, smiling, naked and slippery. She had definitely been a lot more impulsive lately.

'Come on then…'

Was she actually blushing? 'It's just this stupid-It's probably not even true, it's like an urban myth, about this game they play at public schools.' She turned on to her side. He was staring at her, grinning, waiting for her to carry on. 'OK, basically, all the boys stand in a circle wanking.'

'Wanking?'

'Yes, apparently. There's a biscuit in the middle, and they all come on it, and whoever comes last has to eat the biscuit.'

There was a pause worthy of a great comedian before Holland let out a groan of disgust. 'You're making it up.'

McEvoy started to giggle. 'I swear…'

'Whoever comes last?'

His look of confusion made her laugh even more. 'I said it was stupid…'

'So they're actually being trained to come quickly?'

'I know. Mind you, it certainly explains why all the public schoolboys I've ever shagged have been shit in bed.'

They lay there for a minute, saying nothing, laughing now and again and trying to get their new, rather odd picture of the world into some sort of focus. McEvoy wondered how long he was planning to stay. Holland had just decided that he should be getting home, and was thinking about Sophie for the first time since McEvoy had put her tongue in his mouth and her hand on his cock, when she spoke.

'What about you?'

'What?'

'Were you a public schoolboy?'

Holland raised his head up off the pillow. 'Was I fuck!'

McEvoy's leg slid across his, and her hand began to creep across his stomach. 'Calm down, Holland. I'm kidding. You've already made that very obvious.' She smiled as she hoisted herself across him and began wriggling into position.

Holland put a hand on each of her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. 'What sort do they use?' She looked down at him, confused, so he explained. 'The biscuit. Digestive, custard cream, bourbon…?'

She was still laughing when they'd finished. Thorne had been right about the relationship counselor bit. Within ten minutes of the kick-off, he'd learned that Brendan had not, as predicted, buggered off as soon as Hendricks had given him his Christmas presents, but had actually stuck around and was now, miracle of miracles, dropping hints about moving in. At half time, Thorne got up and threw the remains of the Chinese takeaway into a bin-liner. There wasn't a great deal of anything left, Elvis having licked both plates clean within moments of them putting down their forks for the final time.

He returned with two more cold cans from the fridge. 'So you're happy about this, are you? Brendan staying?' Hendricks looked decidedly unsure. Thorne handed him a can. 'Oh, for fuck's sake, Phil.'

'It's just unexpected. I need to think about it a bit…'

'Not easily pleased, are you?'

Thorne opened his beer and slumped back into his chair. In the studio, some bald bloke who'd won three caps in the early seventies was attempting to make the previous forty-five minutes sound interesting. Aston Villa and Leeds United grinding out a nil-nil draw in the pissing rain was proving to be far from riveting.

'So what does he make of this then? Brendan…'

'He's not a football fan, well, not beyond thinking Thierry Henry's got nice legs anyway, so he's not really bothered.'

Thorne took a sip, stared at the TV. 'No, I meant, you know, you coming over here…'

For a minute, Hendricks said nothing and Thorne wondered if, like him, he was thinking about what had happened between them a year before.

They had fallen out badly in the middle of a case. Hendricks had told him he was gay, at the same time as telling him what a selfish bastard he was being. Thorne had been gob smacked by the confession and shamed by the accusation – he knew that Hendricks had a point. His friend had gone out on a limb for him and suffered for it. Thorne hadn't been there to speak up on his friend's behalf when he should have been.

Back then, with the bodies piling up, Thorne hadn't even been there for himself.

It was the death of strangers that had eventually brought them back together, as it had brought them together in the first place.

'You want to know what Brendan thinks about you?'

Thorne shrugged, gestured with his can towards the slow-motion replay on the screen. 'Look, he should have scored, he was clean through. Couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo. No… just, you know…'

'Why is it that eventually, you always get round to asking if my boyfriends fancy you or not?'

'That's bollocks.'

'Don't get me wrong, you're usually quite subtle about it, but there's always some comment, some bit of fishing…'

'All in your twisted mind, mate…'

'He thinks you're a bit chunky.'

Thorne's show of mock annoyance, the raised voice and wounded expression, barely masked how genuinely pissed off he really was.

'Chunky? What does he mean, "chunky"?'

Hendricks sniggered and reached for the remote. The teams were coming out for the second half. 'Shut up, you tart…'

They watched in silence as twenty-two thoroughly bored-looking individuals with bad haircuts jogged half-heartedly out into the rain. Hendricks picked up the remote again and pressed mute.

'What about you anyway? Much going on horizontally?'

'Sod all. Turn the sound back on…'

'You never rang Anne Coburn, did you?'

Thorne shook his head and pictured the woman he'd been involved with a year ago.

'Why don't you call her?'

A question Thorne had asked himself often enough. 'No, mate. Far too complicated.'

'Don't worry about it, you're better off on your own.' Hendricks made a wanking gesture. 'That's… not complicated.'

'Right, but the conversation's awful.'

Hendricks turned the volume back up, but not very high. They said nothing for a minute or two, listened to the pundits doing much the same thing.

'You haven't said a lot about the case…' Hendricks said. Thorne hadn't even mentioned it, but he didn't need to. It was there all the time, the synapses sparking, the associations bursting into life in his brain and forcing themselves upon him, in spite of his best efforts.

Katie Choi's mother and father owned a Chinese restaurant in Forest Hill…

The programme on television, sponsored by Vauxhall… Would Charlie Garner grow up supporting Aston Villa now that he lived in the Midlands? Or had he already begun to cheer for a London club?

Was Charlie an Arsenal fan like the man lying on the sofa? The man who performed the post-mortem on his mother…

Thorne shifted in his chair, looked across at Hendricks. 'Not much to say.'

Hendricks nodded. 'Just waiting…'

'Yep, for a lot of things. Some tiny piece of fucking luck. Waiting for them to run out of patience and hand me back my uniform. Waiting for a body to show up.'

'Make it a warm one, will you?'

Thorne raised his eyebrows, snorted. 'We'll do our best, Phil.'

'I want the bastard fresh on her, you know?'

Thorne did know. A warm body, a crime scene crawling with evidence. That was what they all wanted.

He nodded at Hendricks and raised his can to him. His friend was someone you could measure yourself against. Someone Thorne did measure himself against. Hendricks's voice was flat, and the words could often sound harsh and ill thought through, but they sprang from somewhere deep and very clean, somewhere passionate and honest.

'Do you think he's still around?' The tone was casual, as if he was asking whether Thorne could see a goal on the cards, second half.

'Oh yeah… he's around,' Thorne said. 'It's just a question of whether he decides to let us know about it.'

Hendricks considered this for a moment. 'I think we can count on it. Man who enjoys slicing and dicing as much as he does…'

Thorne almost spilt his beer. Even for Hendricks, that was a good one. 'Slicing and dicing? Fuck, and they let you near grieving relatives?'

'Only when they're very short-staffed.'

'Turn it up.' The teams were about to kick off. They let a silence fall between them as they stared at the television, both trying to think about anything but warm bodies and cold slabs. After about ten minutes Thorne turned to Hendricks again.

'Fucking "chunky"?'

The second forty-five minutes was, if anything, less entertaining than the first. This, combined with beer and central heating, and the general level of fatigue that was creeping over everybody on the case, ensured that they were both asleep at just after eleven, when the phone rang.

It was Martin Palmer.

'There's more instructions. He wants to do it again.'

It was as if Thorne had been jolted awake with a cattle prod.

'When?'

'Tomorrow.'

'Fuck.' He looked across at Hendricks who was already walking towards the kitchen mouthing 'coffee'. Thorne nodded.

'He's going to do it again tomorrow.' Palmer sounded as if he was on the verge of tears. 'Can you stop him?'

'Just shut up, Palmer, OK? Shut up. Shit…'

Thorne could hear the beep on the line. That would be the boys in IT trying to reach him. They were monitoring Palmer's computer and would have seen the e-mail at the same time he had.

'Palmer…'

The beep on the line stopped, and immediately the landline began to ring. Hendricks came through from the kitchen and picked up the phone.

Thorne could have hung up and talked to the technicians, but he wanted to hear it now, that second, from the man it had been sent to.

'Palmer, is there anything else? What does the message say exactly?'

Palmer held back the sobs just long enough to tell him.