It wasn’t about Brooks. It was something more general; something she’d been saving up. He felt relieved, then irritated, then cold. His hand drifted down to cup his shrinking tackle as he turned to head for the bathroom to fetch the ratty dressing-gown.
‘Night then,’ she said.
His shoulders dropped, and he took a second. ‘What don’t I tell you?’
Her eyes rolled up, as though she had plenty to choose from. ‘All sorts.’ Then, like she’d plucked one out of the air. ‘Your father…’
‘I’ve told you.’
‘I know what happened. More or less. The fire, the fact that it might not have been an accident.’
Thorne sighed. Said it as though she might be stupid, and he was saying it for the last time. ‘There was a fire, and he died, and I don’t know, will never fucking know if the stupid fucker left the stove on, or if someone came into the house and gave him a helping hand. Is that OK?’
She nodded, meaning that it wasn’t.
‘I don’t see what else you want to know.’
‘How you feel about it.’ She put down her tea. ‘Christ, I-’
‘How do you think I feel?’
‘I’m asking.’
‘I’d’ve thought it would be fucking obvious.’
‘It isn’t.’
Thorne raised his arms in a gesture of helplessness; like maybe it was more her fault than his.
‘What about the man you think might have done it?’
Thorne shook his head, would not even say the name.
‘How do you feel about him?’
He studied his bare feet against the tiles; spoke to them. ‘I’m stark-bollock naked and I’m half asleep. I can’t even think straight. This is stupid…’
She took a step towards him, thrust her hands into the pockets of her dressing-gown. ‘We’ve been together five months and sometimes it feels like I’ve barely known you ten minutes. Five months, and the other night in bed I did something really fucking stupid. I’ve thought about it and, whatever I said, there must have been some small part of me that wanted it. Even if it was only for a few seconds.’ Her right hand came out of the dressing-gown pocket, clutched at a handful of material around her belly. ‘Some part of me wanted it, which is why I’m making tea in the middle of the night, because if I’m honest, I don’t feel like you tell me any more, really tell me any more, than you tell Phil, or Dave Holland, or the bloke you buy the fucking newspaper off in the morning.’ She stopped, and waited for Thorne to raise his head; looked for something in his face. ‘You’re right,’ she said, moving towards the door. ‘This is stupid.’
‘Can we talk about it tomorrow?’
Pushing past him, she said, ‘I’m sorry I woke you.’
TWENTY-FOUR
‘This job’s a fucking joke.’
‘You only just worked that out?’ Thorne asked.
Kitson walked past Thorne, who was waiting for toast, and dropped a herbal teabag into one of the small, metal teapots-for-one, which invariably dribbled your tea all over the table when you tried to use it. ‘A good-news, bad-news joke,’ she said. ‘A whole fucking series of them.’
Thorne reached for a foil-wrapped rectangle of butter and a sachet of jam, thinking that when Kitson was in a bad mood, she swore almost as much as Richard Rawlings did. His own language was industrial by any standards much of the time, but he’d started to notice it in others. Another hangover from his father’s final months, perhaps.
‘I take it you’ve got a joke for me, then…’
They carried their trays to a table; sat next to a group of detectives from another team who’d just come off the overnight shift. These officers ate their breakfasts in virtual silence; worn out, but relieved at having put a Friday allnighter behind them. Thorne had worked that shift enough to know that one or two would be having mixed feelings about a day ahead with their families; potentially tense and stressful after what was invariably the toughest eight hours of the week.
‘Good news: we’ve got the name of a man identified as our killer by the victim’s girlfriend.’ Kitson poured her tea. Used a paper serviette to mop up the spills. ‘Bad news: he’s disappeared.’
‘Kemal?’
‘The dry cleaner’s has been closed for a week and the neighbours haven’t clapped eyes on him. Done a bunk, by the look of it.’
Thorne spoke through a mouthful of toast. ‘Well, it’s certainly not great news if you need a shirt pressed, but it sounds like he’s your man.’
‘Right. Which is why it’s fucking bad news.’
One of the other detectives looked across, as though foul language from a woman this early in the day was putting him off his full English. Kitson stared back, leaving him in no doubt that there was plenty more where that came from.
‘He’ll turn up,’ Thorne said.
‘If he’s still in the country. Probably hiding out in some Turkish fishing village by now.’
‘You got people on the ports?’
‘It’s being “organised”.’ She put the word in inverted commas, as though to question the efficiency of those doing the organising. ‘But I reckon it’s too bloody late.’
‘Do you think he got wind that his sister knew? That she was likely to grass him up?’
‘Who knows?’
‘It would explain why she was so scared.’
‘Maybe she wasn’t the only one who was scared,’ Kitson said. ‘Deniz Sedat had some seriously unpleasant friends. If I was Hakan Kemal, it wouldn’t be the police I was most worried about.’
Thorne nodded, chewed his toast. Thinking that Kitson’s theory was all well and good, but that she hadn’t come across a certain sort of policeman as yet.
On his way to his office, Thorne walked past as Stone was running over his ‘women and bin-bags’ routine for an attractive admin officer. It seemed to be working for him.
This job’s a fucking joke…
Plenty of them flying around, and an unusually good atmosphere in the Incident Room. This in spite of the fact that most of those working would rather have been doing something else on a Saturday morning: having sex; watching
Just after breakfast, he’d received a text on his old mobile.
You were SO hot last night. You’re the best xxx
Hendricks. Thorne was smiling as he deleted the message. Thinking that a short stay in prison didn’t sound too bad as things stood, he’d told Hendricks about the live listening. He knew the cheeky bastard was doing it for the benefit of those intercepting the texts on that line; imagined the comments once they had traced the number.
Mid-morning, Thorne’s mood was taken down a notch or two by a call from Keith Bannard.
‘Been upsetting my snout?’
Tindall: a covert human information source, or CHIS, according to a thousand memos and expenses claims. But anyone wishing not to sound wholly ridiculous used the well-worn slang, beloved of every fictional cop from Jack Regan onwards.
‘Obviously he’s easily upset.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s me that gets the earache…’
