Holland and his girlfriend were another couple who had been talking about getting out of London, and about Holland giving up the Job. Thorne wondered if that was something else that was not being mentioned for fear of reigniting an argument. He had always been convinced that Holland should stay where he was, but he would never have said so. If Sophie so much as got wind of Thorne’s opinion, she would fight tooth and nail to do the opposite.
So he kept his mouth shut, content that Holland was still there.
‘We’ll get the official ID done first thing in the morning,’ Thorne said. ‘Then bring the husband in for a chat.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘You never know, we might get lucky.’
Holland snorted, nodded across to where the uniformed officer was now working at the sole of his shoe with a twig, flicking out the shit. ‘That kind of lucky,’ he said.
They both looked up as a plane passed low overhead, lights blinking, on its way to Luton. Thorne watched it move fast across a clear sky and swallowed hard. Eight weeks earlier, he and Louise had gone to Greece together for their first proper holiday as a couple. They had spent most days lying by a pool reading trashy books and done nothing more culturally demanding than work out how to ask for beer and grilled squid in the local taverna. They’d both tried hard not to talk about work and had laughed a lot. One day, Louise had rubbed cream into Thorne’s shoulders where he’d got burned, and said, ‘This is as far as it goes for me in terms of non-sexual intimate contact, all right? I’m not into squeezing other people’s blackheads and I will not be wiping your arse if you break both your arms.’
She’d bought the pregnancy testing kit on their final morning there. Used it just before they’d gone out to dinner that last night.
Thorne was sitting in the car when Hendricks came out.
He’d checked his phone and tried both flats, but Louise hadn’t got back yet and there were no messages. He’d listened to the radio for a while then called again to no avail. Louise’s mobile was switched off and Thorne guessed it was too late to ring the hospital.
Hendricks walked around to the passenger side and got in. He’d changed out of the protective suit and was wearing black jeans and a skinny-rib sweater over a white T-shirt. ‘Just about done,’ he said.
Thorne grunted.
‘You OK?’
‘Sorry… yeah.’ Thorne turned and looked. Nodded and smiled.
A skein of red and blue ink was just visible above the neckline, but most of Phil Hendricks’ tattoos were hidden. Much to the relief of his superiors, a good few of the piercings remained out of sight, too. Thorne was happy to have been spared the graphic details, but knew that some had been done in honour of a new boyfriend, one for each conquest. There hadn’t been a new piercing for quite a while.
It was not what many people expected a pathologist to look like, but Hendricks was the best Thorne had ever worked with; and still – despite the many ups and downs – the closest friend he had.
‘Fancy a pint later?’ Thorne asked.
‘What about Louise?’
‘She’ll be fine.’
‘No.’ Hendricks grinned. ‘I mean she’ll be jealous.’
‘We’ll make it up to her,’ Thorne said. In truth, he was the one who had suffered from jealousy. He and Louise had been together almost a year and a half, having met when Thorne was seconded to help out on a kidnap case she had been working, but it had taken her only a couple of weeks to get as close to Phil Hendricks as Thorne had managed in ten years. There were times, especially early on, when it had been disconcerting; when he’d found himself resenting them their friendship.
One night, when the three of them were out together, Thorne had got pissed and called Louise a ‘fag-hag’. She and Phil had laughed, and Phil had said how ironic that was, because Thorne was the one acting like an old queen.
‘Yeah, OK then,’ Hendricks said. He looked towards the house, from which officers had begun to drift in twos and threes. ‘Mind you, if I’m going to be elbows deep in that poor cow first thing in the morning, I’d better just have the one.’
‘Well, I’m having way more than one,’ Thorne said. ‘So we’d best go to my local. I’ll give you a lift.’
Hendricks nodded, let his head drop back and closed his eyes. Thorne had given up trying to find any decent country music and had tuned the radio into Magic FM. It was nearly ten o’clock, and 10cc were winding up an uninterrupted hour of easy-listening oldies.
‘He brought his own bag,’ Hendricks said.
‘What?’
‘The bag he used to suffocate her. He knew what he was doing. You can’t just grab some carrier bag out of the kitchen – they’re a waste of time. Most of them have got holes in, so your vegetables don’t sweat or whatever. You want something air-tight, obviously, and it needs to be a bit stronger, so it won’t get cut to ribbons by your victim’s fingernails, if she’s got any.’ Hendricks tapped his fingers on the dash in time to the music. ‘Also, with a nice, clear polythene bag, you can see the face while you’re doing it. I think that’s probably important.’
‘So, he was organised.’
‘He came prepared.’
‘He didn’t bring the vinegar bottle, though.’
‘No, I’m guessing that was improvised. First thing he could grab hold of to hit her with.’
‘Then he gets the bag out once she’s down.’
Hendricks nodded. ‘Might even have hit her hard enough to do the job before he had a chance to suffocate her.’
‘I suppose we should hope so.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ Hendricks said. ‘You ask me, the bottle was just to make sure she wasn’t going to struggle too much. He wanted to kill her with the bag. Like I said, I reckon he wanted to watch.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I’ll know tomorrow.’
The windows were beginning to steam up, so Thorne turned on the fan. They listened to the news for a couple of minutes. There was nothing to lift the mood even slightly and there was nothing in the sports round-up to get excited about. The football season was still only a month or so old and, with neither of their teams in action, none of the night’s results proved particularly significant.
‘Six weeks until we stuff you again,’ Hendricks said. A committed Gunner, he was still relishing the double that Arsenal had done over Spurs in the north London derbies the previous season.
‘Right… ’
Hendricks was laughing and saying something else, but Thorne had stopped listening. He was staring down at the screen of his mobile, thumbing through the menu and checking he hadn’t missed a message.
‘Tom?’
Making sure he still had a decent signal.
‘Tom? You OK, mate?’
Thorne put the phone away and turned.
‘Is Louise all right?’ Hendricks waited, saw something in Thorne’s face. ‘Shit, is it the baby?’
‘What? How d’you know…?’ Thorne pushed back hard in his seat and stared straight ahead. He and Louise had agreed to tell nobody for the first three months. A good friend of hers had lost one early on.
‘Don’t be pissed off,’ Hendricks said. ‘I forced it out of her.’
‘’Course you did.’
‘To be honest, I think she was desperate to spill the beans.’ Hendricks looked for a softening in Thorne’s demeanour but saw none. ‘Come on, who else was she going to tell?’
Thorne glanced across, spat it out. ‘I don’t know, her mother?’
‘I think she might have told her as well.’
‘Fuck’s sake!’
