all…'
Thorne shot him a look. This kind of discussion was pointless, though Victor was, strictly speaking, correct. Alzheimer's could not be, could never be confirmed. They were 90 percent sure, though, which was about as good.., or bad, as it got.
'Same again, Victor…?'
'Are you listening, Jim?' Victor said. 'You can't be certain it's Alzheimer's…'
Thorne put a hand on Victor's arm. 'Victor…'
Then Victor shot him a look, and Thorne suddenly saw what was happening. He saw that he was trampling all over the feed to one of his dad's favourite lines. He felt sick with shame… His father put down his knife and fork, picked up his cue. 'That's right, Vic. The consultant told me that the only way they can be sure is to perform a post-mortem. I said, 'No, thank you very much. I don't think I'm too keen on one of those just yet!''
Victor and his father were still laughing loudly as Thorne stood at the bar waiting to get served…
The 'middle stage' of the dementia was how it had been described to him. It all sounded a bit vague, but Thorne figured that as long as there was another stage to go, things would be all right for a while longer. As long as the bad jokes outnumbered the moments of terror and despair, he would try not to be too worried. Just briefly, for a minute or two, Carol had wondered about what she was doing, had thought about swapping places with her husband. She was a middle-aged woman, for heaven's sake! She ought to be inside like Jack, curled up on the sofa in front of Heartbeat instead of wrapped up in an anorak, rummaging through filthy cardboard boxes in their freezing garage,
That had been before she'd got into it. As soon as she began to delve into all that was left of Alan Franklin's past – his first past – she'd stopped feeling the cold. She'd rediscovered that bizarre and exciting feeling of looking for something, getting after it, without having the foggiest bloody idea of exactly what 'it' was.
All around her, in front rooms and kitchens on her quiet little road in Worthing, women her age were doing crosswords, or losing themselves in crappy romances or pouring breakfast cereal into bowls ready for the morning…
Carol pulled a pile of dusty, blank paper out of one of the boxes, swept away the grime with the side of her hand. She wouldn't have swapped places with any one of those women… There was lots of paper in both boxes; reams of the stuff in a variety of sizes, once presumably white, but now yellowed and slightly damp. There were envelopes too, and smaller packages of file cards, sticky labels and rusted staples. Franklin had met Sheila while working for an insurance firm in Hastings, but had clearly wanted to hold on to a few odd souvenirs of the working life he'd had before. None of the other stuff would have caused pulses to quicken at the Antiques Roadshow: a couple of unused Letts diaries from 1975 and 1976; a bunch of keys on a Ford Escort key ring; plates and teacups wrapped up in old newspaper; a couple of Polaroid's inside a manila envelope – two boys; one a baby, the other a toddler, and later the same two as a pair of gawky, unsmiling teenagers.
Carol unwrapped the dry newspaper from around what turned out to be a large silver tankard. She laid it to one side and smoothed out the crumpled page on the garage floor. It was from a local paper. She looked at the date – presumably the day Franklin had walked out on, or been thrown out by, his wife. Not a great deal seemed to have happened in Colchester that day: a small protest about a proposed ring road; a leisure centre reopening after a refit; a smash-and-grab at the jeweller's on the High Street…
Carol smiled at a phrase she hadn't heard for many years. Smash and-grab. Not much more than twenty years ago and even the crimes seemed more innocent somehow…
She picked up the tankard which, after a closer look, she could see was silver-plated. In spite of the newspaper, it had blackened slightly on one side but she could make out an engraving. She held it up to the light from the bare bulb, and read:
From the boys at Baxters, May 1976.
Welcome back.
Have one to celebrate or more than one to forget the whole thing, Carol thought about ringing Sheila Franklin, but knew instinctively that she wouldn't be a great deal of help. Her husband had not shared his past with her. Maybe he went up into the loft once in a while and peered at it, or perhaps he was trying to forget it himself. Either way, Carol was pretty sure that she would have to work it out on her own. She'd start tomorrow. It couldn't be that hard. She'd get that lazy bastard McKee to make a few calls.
Wincing, Carol hauled herself up from where she'd been kneeling on the floor. She'd put a cushion down on the concrete but her knees still felt very sore. She switched off the garage light and stood for a few seconds in the darkness before going inside.
Wondering what Alan Franklin had cause to celebrate back in 1976. And what he might have wanted to forget…
On the twenty-five-minute train journey back from St. Albans, Thorne had the entire carriage to himself.
He reached into his bag for his CD Walkman and a couple of discs. He opened up an album by a band called Lambchop – a birthday present from Phil Hendricks which, until he'd shelled out three hundred quid in Tower Records, had been the only CD he'd owned for a day or two after the burglary. It was 'alt. country', Hendricks had told him. Apparently, Thorne needed to move with the times a little… Thorne pressed PLAY, let it come and thought about the curious goodbye he and the old man had shared.
Half an hour after Victor had left and whatever tea was still in the pot had gone stone cold, Thorne and his father had stood together on the doorstep. Both, for very different reasons, trying to find the right thing to say.
Jim Thorne had never been one for tactile displays of affection. Occasionally a handshake, but not today. Instead, with a twinkle in his eye, he had leaned in close and, as if imparting a great pearl of wisdom, told Thorne that 'Three Steps to Heaven' by Eddy Cochrane had been number one in the hit parade on the day he'd been born. Thorne kicked off his shoes, put his feet up. on the seat opposite. What his father had said, what he'd remembered, was, he supposed, touching in its own way…
The music in his headphones was slow, and lush and strange. Thorne couldn't make head or tail of the lyrics and there were horns, for crying out loud. Not Ring of Fire-style Tijuana trumpets, or mariachi, but proper horns, like you'd hear on a soul record… Thorne ejected the Lambchop CD, put it back into its jewel case. Another time, perhaps. He put on Steve Earle's 'Train a Comin' and closed his eyes.
Soul was all well and good, but there were times when guts sounded a whole lot better.
It was stupidly easy.
He never ceased to be amazed at how pathetic these animals were. How simple it was to lead them by the nose. By the nose between their legs… It was less than a week since the first casual remarks had been exchanged and already he could start thinking specifically about when and where Southern was going to be killed. It had been such a piece of piss that he half regretted all that effort with the others. The months of planning, the buildup, the letters. It might have been just as easy to wait until after they'd been released and collar them in a bar somewhere. Just smile and say hello. People like that, like Southern, didn't need subtlety. Fuckers didn't understand it, wouldn't recognise it. Using their cocks like blunt instruments…
He'd won Southern's trust quickly, and now that he had it, the rest-was fairly straightforward. Times and places. Arrangements. It was all about trust, about getting it and keeping it. The gaining of trust was something he was good at. People gave it to him all the time, like a gift, without him needing to ask for it.
By contrast, he never, ever gave it. Not any more. He knew very well what could happen if you did.
FIFTEEN
Carol lifted the handset and dialed, checking the number on her pad twice as she pressed each button carefully. She reached over to straighten a picture on the wall as the phone at the other end began to ring.
She had only been able to stand watching McKee tit about for so long before she'd taken over herself. Two and a half days spent on the phone, digging through records at Companies House, getting wound up. Reminding herself of how shit the job was most of the time.
'Nobody made you do it,' Jack had said. 'Nobody would think any the worse of you if you chucked it in.'
Nobody except her…
Tracking down Baxters, the company Alan Franklin had worked for in Colchester nearly thirty years before,
