uniformed officer, who he’d spoken to a couple of times and knew to be thick as a brick. ‘You’re better off where you are, mate.’

The officer straightened his back. ‘Sir?’

Thorne tapped on the screen. ‘You’ve got one of these. Decent bit of reinforced plastic between you and the rest of the world. Lose this and you’re in trouble, because that’s when you realise it’s not spit or fists you’ve got to worry about.’ He turned and walked towards the door. ‘Once that screen goes, mate, you’re stuffed.’

By midnight, the majority of the five hundred or so officers and police staff who worked at Colindale during the day had gone home, and the buzz around the station had faded to a barely discernible sputter. There was still a night-duty CID, of course, and a custody team, but as most of the rooms and offices had emptied, the place had taken on the slightly surreal atmosphere that many buildings acquired after hours: a thickening of the air and a humming in bright-white walls. Thorne remembered being in a school play once, rehearsing in the evening after he’d rushed home first to change out of his uniform. It had felt so weird and fantastic, so invigorating, to be in the building when it was empty. He’d run from classroom to classroom, charged into the gym in his Oxford bags and beetle-crusher shoes, and shouted swear words down the unlit corridors.

There was no such excitement in a police station once darkness fell.

Curiously, as the space around you increased, a feeling of claustrophobia took hold, while, outside, you knew only too well that crimes you would have to deal with the following day were taking place. Some types more than others, of course. Fraud happened during daylight hours, and drug-smuggling, and many kinds of theft. But night was when brutality flourished; when people suffered and died violently.

At night, in a police station, it felt like something was coming.

As far as the current cases went, the investigations had all but shut down until the morning. Adrian Farrell’s solicitor had insisted that his client be allowed to return to his cell and get eight hours’ sleep. Within the hour, Danny Donovan had demanded the same for Freestone and with the only lead on the Luke Mullen kidnap put to bed, there was nothing else that anyone could usefully be chasing. Now, there was little to be done but write the day up, drink too much coffee, then sit around feeling depressed and caffeined off your tits at the same time.

Russell Brigstocke walked into the CID room looking as though another cup or two of coffee wouldn’t hurt. ‘You two might as well piss off home,’ he said.

‘Beautifully put,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’m not arguing.’

Porter rose to her feet. ‘Are you sure, Guv?’ But she was already reaching for her bag.

‘I’ll need you back here in seven… and rested. So I don’t really want to see anyone getting nightcaps at the Oak.’

Thorne put on his leather jacket. ‘See anyone? You planning to go over there later then?’

‘I’m planning to get home, eventually.’ Brigstocke dropped into the seat that Porter had vacated. ‘Not that there’s much point.’

‘When did you last see your kids?’ Porter asked.

Brigstocke stared up at her in mock amazement. ‘I’ve got kids?

In the lobby, Thorne nodded to the uniform behind the screen, who nodded sheepishly in return and went back to being stumped by the Sun’s crossword.

‘How are you getting home?’ he asked Porter.

‘I should just make the last train from Colindale,’ she said. ‘Be there in an hour, with a bit of luck. Cab, otherwise.’

Thorne realised he still didn’t know where Porter lived. ‘Where have you got to get back to?’

‘Pimlico.’

‘I’ll drop you at the tube.’

‘Thanks.’

Thorne waited until they were street-side of the automatic door. ‘Listen, I’ve got a sofa bed. You’re more than welcome…’

‘Right.’

They were walking towards the car. Thorne didn’t want to turn and stare, and in the shadow between street lamps it was impossible to see at a glance how Porter was reacting. ‘I’m just thinking, you know, it’s an hour back to your place and I’m only in Kentish Town, so it might make sense. Like I say, it’s just a thought, but you’d probably get an hour or so’s more sleep.’

Though Thorne couldn’t see her face clearly, there was no mistaking the mischief in Porter’s voice. ‘Another hour in bed sounds good.’

‘Great.’

‘OK…’

‘Like I say, I’m only twenty minutes away. And, if you ask me, you’d be lucky to make Pimlico in an hour. So I reckon at least an extra hour’s sleep.’

‘You’re not exactly making it sound like a lot of fun,’ she said.

SEVENTEEN

Maggie had always been the one to handle difficult questions. She had been the one who had dropped whatever she was doing when the homework emergencies had arisen. When Luke and Juliet had been younger, of course, her husband had simply not been around much, but even after he’d retired that sort of thing had come down to her. It wasn’t about him not being clever enough. In most ways that seemed to matter, he was a lot brighter than she was, but aside from the maths – which Tony had always had an aptitude for – the responsibility for coming up with the right answer had usually rested with her. She knew the reigns of each Tudor monarch, could list symbols and atomic numbers for most chemical elements, and had drawn and labelled U- and V-shaped river valleys on two separate occasions.

She answered the other questions as well; the trickier sort. The ‘Where do we come from?’ and ‘What happens when we die?’ and ‘Why do boys and girls have different parts?’ questions.

But Maggie Mullen had never been asked such a difficult question before: ‘Is Luke going to be all right, Mum?’

She wasn’t sure what destroyed her the most: not knowing the answer or not being able to do what she imagined most other people would do in the same situation, and lie about it to protect her daughter.

‘I don’t know, pigeon.’

It wasn’t as though Maggie had any problem with lies in general. She told them when they needed telling. But she knew that Juliet would resent any clumsy effort to treat her like a child; to shield her from the painful reality of what was happening. It was hard, though, sometimes, knowing the right way to behave. Juliet was fourteen going on twenty-one, in the same way that she’d been nine going on fourteen. She’d been advising Maggie on how to dress, and what to eat, and which of her friends were worth a damn, for years, so there seemed little point in treating her as anything other than an adult now.

When the situation was so hideously grown up…

And yet, there was something in Juliet’s eyes, and around her plump, wet bottom lip, that made Maggie think of a doll her daughter used to cling to; that made her want to hold on to Juliet and squeeze for all she was worth. There was something that told Maggie how much Juliet needed to be held.

‘Where’s Dad, Mum?’

‘He went out, pigeon. I don’t know when he’ll be back.’

Or perhaps Maggie was the one who needed to be held; who looked for comfort while giving it to her daughter when she couldn’t find it elsewhere. She hated herself for the sudden, malicious thought; for judging him. She knew it was unwarranted, implying a lack of concern for her that should have been forgivable, considering.

She could see in every half look, in every glimpse of him moving across a doorway, how crushed he was. How

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