He imagined the look that was passing between the two people who planned to kill him. He pictured something tender, an expression of the love between a man and a woman, who talked about having a baby together once he had been raped and strangled to death. Thorne moaned in pain as he twisted his head across to the other side. 'I'm guessing that the final part of this story involves the murders,' he said. 'Remfry and Welch and Dodd and Southern. Me as the symbolic climax. It's the middle bit that's still a mystery, after you disappeared. What happened between Franklin and the men in prison?
Why did you start killing again?'
'Lightning struck twice,' Eve said.
Then the doorbell rang…
Thorne tensed and raised his head, but their speed, their commitment, was overpowering. In a heartbeat they were on him, a knife pressed into each side of his throat, cutting off the breath he'd need before he had a chance to cry out…
Hedricks picked up almost immediately.
'Listen,' Holland said, 'I'm outside DI Thorne's place and I can't get any reply, but his phone's engaged…'
'He probably left it off the hook, while he's busy giving Eliza Doolittle a good seeing to.'
Holland felt ice at his neck. 'Sorry?'
'He had a hot date with his sexy florist. I'm not surprised he doesn't want to answer the door…'
'Oh, Jesus…'
'What is it?'
Holland told Hendricks about the pictures, about Mark and Sarah Foley. Hendricks announced that he was coming straight over. The panic Holland heard in the pathologist's voice stemmed the rising tide of it he felt in himself.
Then, looking across the' road, he saw the motorbike…
'Dave…?'
Holland felt the engine that was ticking over within him moving up a gear. 'Listen, Phil, before you leave, get on the phone. Call Brigstocke and fill him in. Get some back-up round here, now. And an ambulance…'
'What are you going to do?'
Holland was walking along the pavement, away from Thorne's place. He was thinking about the alleyway that he remembered running along the side of a house three or four doors up. 'I'm not sure…'
He was seeing a face through a crash helmet. Seeing the face of a killer, smiling at the lie within the truth.
'I've got a BMW myself…'
Smiling, because BMW make bikes as well as cars…
THIRTY-TWO
'Why don't you just get out now while you still can?' Thorne said.
'You'll spend the rest of your lives in prison. You'll never see each other again…'
Jameson sounded unconcerned. 'Don't get worked up. Whoever that was at your door, they've gone.'
Thorne twisted his head, aimed his voice towards Eve. 'People know you were coming over here, for fuck's sake. There'll be fibres, bits of skin everywhere. In the bed…'
'Of course there will,' Eve said. 'I'm your girlfriend. Which is why I'll be the one calling the police.'
Thorne was stunned, but he saw immediately that they would get away with it. It was very simple. With Thorne dead, Jameson would kiss his sister goodbye for a while and slip away. On his way out, he would kick in the door that she'd previously left open for him, make sure there Were signs of a forced entry.
Then she would dial 999…
He had no doubt that Eve would play the part of the traumatised witness and, later, the grieving girlfriend perfectly. He knew all too well how good she was, how convincingly she would pick up the pieces of her life. He could see the officers falling a little bit in love with her as they took her shocking statement.
The idea that they would not be made to pay for his death caused a surge of fury to rush through Thorne. He did not need it, but he felt a jolt of added determination to cling on fiercely to every second.
'Tell me about the lightning, Eve.'
She said nothing, but Jameson took the bait. 'Franklin was always going to pay for what he did. It just took me a while to get round to it…'
Jameson had moved to stand between Thorne and the door. Eve had crossed back to the bed. He presumed that Jameson was still holding the hood, and the washing line, but he could not be certain. Thorne guessed that Roger Noble had been fortunate dropping dead when he did. Something in Jameson's voice suggested that, had he still been alive, Jameson would have 'got round' to him as well…
'So why not leave it there?' Thorne asked.
'We did,' Eve said. 'Carried on with the lives we'd made, that we'd remade, for ourselves, until I had one too many slow dances at a party. Until some piece of shit thought that 'no' meant 'yes', and followed me home…'
Face down on the carpet, Thorne knew full well the expression on her face. He'd seen it before, the night they'd walked across London Fields and he'd told her about the case. Told her things she already knew far better than he did…
'Just think of this bloke as cutting re-offending rates…'
'It would be stupid to ask if you reported the rape to the police,'
Thorne said.
Jameson took a step towards him, his black boots moving into Thorne's field of vision. 'Very fucking stupid. We dealt with that one ourselves…'
Thorne remembered the other case Holland and Stone had pulled off CRIMINT. A man found raped and strangled in the boot of a car.
The ligature had been removed, but Thorne could now be pretty certain that it had been washing line.
He'd solved another murder in the last few moments before his own o..
'Which all brings us bang up to date,' Jameson said. To me, Thorne thought. He knew he was the last in a line of dead men, connected by the strongest, strangest thread of all. The family tie which refused to break, even when it had become twisted beyond all recognition.
'You kill the man you blame for the death of your mother and father, and for your abuse at the hands of the foster parent who replaces them. You kill the man who attacked your sister. You develop a taste for it…'
'Not a taste for killing, no.'
'My mistake. A taste for some perverted idea of justice…'
'Listen to yourself…'
'Tell me you don't enjoy it…'
Eve's voice was flat, barely above a whisper. 'I want to do this, now,' she said.
Thorne could feel her walking towards him. At the same time Jameson moved quickly, one step bringing him next to Thorne, another lifting a boot up and across Thorne's back, until he was straddling him.
Thorne knew what was coming, but refused to submit to it. He reacted instinctively, thrusting his legs backwards and pushing his groin down towards the carpet. Hands grabbed his legs, clawed at his thighs as they struggled to lift them, fought to bring his rear end upright, to make it accessible…
Pain and numbness had left the top half of Thorne's body as good as useless. It was no more than a dead thing, with only the dark mass that clung to his ribs still flourishing. Swinging inside him, wet and weighty, clattering off the wall of his chest as he kicked and thrashed.
'Stop it,' Jameson said.
Thorne cried out, the terror suddenly far greater than the rage. His voice sounded high and weak, and was quickly replaced by the deafening roar and squeal of agony as Jameson's gloved fist pounded into the side of his head, again and again, until Thorne could do nothing but let go, and be still, and wait for it to stop. Seconds
