Death Message

‘Thank you.’

‘You sound like shit, though. Were you on the piss last night?’

It felt like it. Except that he could remember exactly what he’d been doing. ‘I wish,’ he said.

‘We going to see each other later?’

‘Can I call you in a bit?’

‘Oh, OK.’

‘I’m just on my way out the door.’

He’d been standing in the kitchen wearing nothing but underpants, waiting for the kettle to boil; on his way nowhere. His only thought had been to keep the conversation short. He could hardly say, ‘This phone’s being monitored, so for Christ’s sake don’t say anything embarrassing. Anything that might drop me in the shit…’

He’d decided that he’d tell her later on, in person.

Not that he would tell her everything.

As it was, Louise had been the one to cry off the previous evening, when the wife of an Albanian gangster had been hauled into a car outside Waitrose just before the end of the day.

Now, in his office, Thorne thought about Louise; about the look on her face when she stared at him and unhooked her bra. He decided that was definitely something worth looking forward to. And that unless Marcus Brooks decided to step up his game and slaughtered the Mayor, the Commissioner and their families, he was going to see her, and that look, later.

The look on Marcus Brooks’ face was harder to read. For the umpteenth time, Thorne opened the file on his desk and stared down at the man who’d received the shocking message that had started it all – the death message – five months before. Who had come out of prison, made his plans and begun sending messages of his own.

The hair was dark, short. The eyes were darker; ‘brown’, according to the information printed below the picture. This was all that Thorne could tell for certain. It wasn’t just the blank expression that might equally have been masking simple boredom or murderous fury. Or that the picture itself was six years old, and that prison, as Thorne had seen only too well with Nicklin, could change a person’s appearance as radically as any surgery.

Thorne was simply unable to get a handle on who Marcus Brooks was, and his picture did not tell the whole story. Common sense told him he was dealing with a man who knew how to take care of himself; who might watch a man die and not blink. But the man Nicklin had described, the man Thorne had heard in the silence down a phone line, had also been destroyed by grief. Had been hollowed out by it.

He thought that most faces gave it all away. Was sure that almost anyone presented with a photograph of him would not have needed more than one quick look. Would say: Copper. Lives alone. Doesn’t mix too well with others.

But Marcus Brooks’ picture was a lot less revealing. Thorne could only hope that if and when it came to it, he could look into the man’s eyes and understand what they were telling him. Lives, his own included, had depended on a lot less.

Meantime, try as he might, he couldn’t see the person behind the picture.

It was like looking at one of the cartoons around his online poker table.

DS Adrian Nunn had called earlier in the day for a quick chat. He’d moaned about his workload, about caps on overtime, and had asked Thorne what time his shift was ending.

When Thorne walked out of Becke House a little after six, Nunn was waiting for him. He was wearing his Gestapo coat again.

‘Tube or car?’ Nunn asked.

‘I’m on the Tube.’

Nunn fell into step with him. ‘Suits me. I can get the Northern Line straight down to Embankment. District from there all the way to Putney.’

‘Going back to work?’

‘No, but I only live round the corner from the office. It’s pretty handy.’

‘That’s still a three-hour round trip,’ Thorne said. ‘I’m guessing you want more than just a quick chat. Mind you, you wanted more than that when you rang, didn’t you?’

They walked quickly through drizzle up Aerodrome Road, and left towards the Tube station. Past Colindale Park and the British Newspaper Library. Thorne had used the place several times, trawling through the back copies and the microfiche in search of some crucial piece of information. He’d always ended up spending longer in there than he’d needed. Losing himself in stories and pictures that had no relevance to the case he was working; enjoying the feel of the crisp, yellowing pages of the old editions. Pre-Page Three. When Spurs had a team, and celebrities were famous for doing something.

‘I just wanted to stress that everything we talked about the other day remains confidential,’ Nunn said.

‘Go on then.’

Nunn smiled, but only with his mouth.

‘It seems a bit bloody odd,’ Thorne said, ‘that you should be so adamant about it. Considering Skinner’s dead, I mean.’

‘Nothing’s changed.’

‘Try telling that to Mrs Skinner.’

‘Things don’t just stop, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘“T”s to cross and “i”s to dot, right?’

‘Little things like whether Mrs Skinner gets her husband’s police pension if it turns out there would have been sufficient evidence to press charges against him.’

Thorne almost laughed for the first time in a day or more. ‘Is that what this is all about?’

‘I’m just making a point. This has got to run its course.’

‘Look, I know you lot love all this cloak-and-dagger shit,’ Thorne said. ‘But the fact that Skinner may not have been completely kosher has probably got quite a lot to do with why he’s dead. Why several people are dead. So it’s not like we can keep this a secret. I’ve already spoken to my DCI about it. It’s part of our case.’

Nunn looked up at the information board; thinking about it. ‘As long as you really try to keep out of our way,’ he said.

They didn’t have to wait long for a southbound train, and Thorne was grateful. Standing on the platform was conducive to nothing more than small talk and he was fresh out of it. The train was more or less empty: they had a carriage to themselves. It was surprisingly hot once the doors had shut and they were moving, and Nunn stood to take off his coat; folded it across his knees.

‘Is that really true?’ Thorne asked. ‘That nothing’s changed?’ He was desperate to know exactly what Nunn had meant. Was the status of the investigation still active for such prosaic reasons as Nunn had suggested, or was there something else going on? Were they actively pursuing a second officer?

‘Nothing substantial,’ Nunn said.

‘Well, thanks for sorting that one out for me.’ Thorne wondered if DPS recruits did courses in remaining amicably non-committal. If they shared classroom space with politicians and certain women he’d been involved with. ‘Good result, or bad?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘Skinner being murdered.’

‘Hang on a minute…’

‘I’m serious. We both know Skinner was as bent as a nine-bob note, even though nobody’s come out and said it, so what do the powers-that-be make of his getting knocked off? Are they happy enough to be rid of a corrupt officer without having to go to the trouble of actually doing it themselves? Saves embarrassment, I would have thought.’

‘Nobody’s embarrassed.’

‘And what about you? You’ve lost the chance to nick him. Don’t you feel a bit… robbed?’

‘More than a bit,’ Nunn said, enjoying how much his answer took Thorne aback. ‘That’s a shock, right? Don’t you think that getting shot of a seriously corrupt officer is every bit as rewarding as catching a killer, or a gang of armed robbers, or nicking a drug dealer? I’ve done all those things, and I can promise you that it is. Every bit.’

Thorne could only shrug, but he wasn’t sure he believed Nunn. At least, he wasn’t certain he would feel the same way; would get the same satisfaction from nabbing a bent copper