'I'd better be getting off as well,' he said. Eve gave him a cod leer. 'You won't be getting off with anyone if you don't buy yourself a bed. I'll take you to IKEA at the weekend…'
'Oh please God, no,' Thorne said'.
Thorne could see Keith striding along the street a hundred yards or so ahead of him. He hung back, trying not to catch up. Feeling awkward, the goodnights having been said, and not wanting to go through it again. Thorne was relieved when he saw Keith turn off on to a side street. Keith looked back and stared at him for a few seconds before he moved out of sight.
When Thorne reached the turning and looked, there was no sign of him.
As he hurried towards the bus stop on Dalston Lane, Thorne admitted something rather puzzling, to himself. He'd asked Eve about staying the night at her place only because of what she'd already told him about Denise. Because he'd known very well that it wasn't going to happen. He actually felt comfortable that it hadn't…
There was a dodgy-looking burger van opposite the bus stop and Thorne was suddenly starving. The late- night bagel bakery was five minutes' walk away. It was a toss-up between food poisoning and the risk of missing the last bus.
Ten minutes later the bus rumbled into view and he was already wishing he hadn't had the burger. As he rummaged in his jacket for the exact change, Thorne wondered why on earth he should be feeling something like relief that he was on his way home alone.
The man on the machine next to him stopped pedaling and sat for a few moments, eyes closed, getting his breath back. The man climbed off and walked across to the water fountain. Still pedaling fast, he watched as the man gulped down water, flung his sweat-towel around his neck and walked through into the weights room.
When the song he was listening to had finished, he unplugged his headphones, got off the bike and followed him.
Howard Anthony Southern was a creature of habit and woes serious about looking after himself. These two things meant that keeping an eye on him, getting to know him, was not only easy but fairly enjoyable. He worked out anyway, but a few extra hours a week couldn't hurt. It was easy enough to join the same gym and make sure h was here at the same time that Southern was as often as he could. That wasn't always straightforward, of course. Sometimes he couldn't get away, but he'd seen enough to know what he was dealing with. He knew enough already. That Southern had done what he'd done, that his name was on the list, was more than enough. Still, it was good to find out a bit more. To know for certain how much stronger than Southern he was, how easy it would be to take him when the time came. To see his face contorted and running with sweat. To glimpse in advance what it would be like as he strained against the ligature…
He walked through into the weights room. Southern was on the pec-fly. He took a seat next to him on the mid-row, began to work. He could see instantly that Southern was eying up a woman on the other side of the room. She was bending and stretching, her flesh taut against the black lycra. Southern pressed his forearms towards each other, grunting with the effort, all the time watching the woman in the mirror that ran along one wall.
He knew this was why Howard Southern came here. He wondered if Southern had offended again since his release. Was he more careful having been caught once? He might have been getting away with it for years, is he watching the woman in the mirror and thinking about forcing himself on her? Working himself into a lather, his eyes like sweaty hands on her, convincing himself just how much she wanted it… The weights dropped back with a clang as Southern released the handles. He turned and puffed out his cheeks.
'Why do we do it?'
This was a bonus. He'd been planning to talk to Southern today anyway. To strike up a casual conversation at the juice bar maybe, or in the locker room…
'It's bloody madness, isn't it?' Southern nodded towards the woman in the black leotard. 'Here I am killing myself for the likes of her: He smiled back at Southern, thinking that the idea was right, but that he had an altogether different reason.
FOURTEEN
Carol Chamberlain was three-quarters of a team of two. She had been assigned a research officer, but ex- Detective Sergeant Graham McKee was, to us a favourite phrase of her husband's, about as useful as a chocolate teapot. When he wasn't in the pub, he made it perfectly clear that he thought Carol should have been the one making coffee and phone calls, while he was out doing the interviews. A few years ago, she'd have had his undersized balls on a platter. Now she just got on with doing the job, his as well as her own. It might take a bit longer, but at least it would get done properly. She believed in that. She couldn't be sure yet, but if the case she was on now had been handled properly first time round, there might well have been no need for her to be doing anything at all.
The drive to Hastings hadn't taken her as long as she'd thought, but she'd left early to be on the safe side. Jack had got up with her, made her some breakfast while she got ready. She could see that he was unhappy that she was going out on a Sunday but he'd tried to make a joke of it.
'Bloody unsociable hours. Sunday gone for a burton. Now I know you're working for the police force again…'
She checked her make-up in the mirror before she got out of the car. Maybe she'd overdone the foundation a little but it was too late now. She was pleased with her hair, though; she'd run a rinse through it the night before to get rid of most of the grey. Jack had told her she looked great.
She walked up to the front door and knocked, telling herself to calm down, that she'd done this a thousand times, that there was no need to grip on to the handle of her briefcase as though it were stopping her from falling…
'Sheila? I'm Carol Chamberlain from AMRU. We spoke on the phone…'
Carol could see that the woman who answered the door was clearly not expecting someone who looked like her, rinse or no rinse. She had gained a stone in weight for each year that she'd been out of the force, and at a little over five feet tall she knew very well how it looked. Her hair could be as fashionable and artificially auburn as she wanted, but – whatever lies Jack might tell her – she could do little about, the rest of it. However sharp she felt, she knew that those thirty years on the job showed in her face. Some mornings she stared at herself in-the bathroom mirror. She looked into her dark, disappearing eyes. Saw currants sinking into cake mix…
The woman opened the front door a little wider. However disappointed or confused she might be, Carol hoped that good old British reserve would prevent Sheila Franklin saying anything about it.
'I'll put the kettle on,' she said eventually. In the kitchen, while tea was being made, they spoke about weather and traffic. Sheila Franklin wiped down surfaces and washed up teaspoons as she went. Settled a few minutes later in the small, simply furnished living room, her face crinkled into a frown of confusion.
'I'm sorry, but I thought you said that the cage was being reopened…'
Carol had said no such thing. 'I'm sorry if you were misled. I'm reexamining the case, and if it's considered worthwhile, it might be reopened.'
'I see…'
'How long were you and Alan married?'
Alan Franklin's widow was a tall, very thin woman whom Carol would have put in her mid-to late fifties. Not a great deal older than she was herself. Her hair was pulled back from a face dominated by green eyes that did not stay fixed on any one spot for more than a few seconds. From behind the rim of her teacup, her gaze darted around like a meerkat's as she answered Carol's questions. She'd met Franklin in 1983. He would have been in his late forties by then, ten years older than she was. He'd left his first wife and a job in Colchester a few years before that and moved to Hastings to start again. They'd met at work and married only a few months later.
'Alan was a fast worker,' she said, laughing. '. Very smooth, he was. Mind you, I didn't put up much of a struggle.'
As always, Carol had done her homework. She was up to speed with what very few background details there were. 'How did Alan's kids react? What would they have been then? Sixteen? Seventeen…?'
Sheila smiled, but there was something forced about it. 'Something like that. I'm not even sure how old they are now. In all the time we were married, I think I saw the boys once. Only one of them bothered to show his face
