Death Message

Nothing of them.

He turned into the side street where the Mondeo was parked. Thought about the quickest way to go. With any luck he’d be able to get another picture tonight, maybe a video.

Then he could put Tom Thorne out of his misery.

… And tell Robbie that he’s going to have to prove it! I want to see that he’s just as good as he tells me he is when he visits. We’ll get straight over the park as soon as I’m back and I’ll put him through his paces. Both feet, tell him. I want to see him shooting with both feet. He’ll have to, if he’s ever going to get that trial at West Ham he’s always on about. And I’ll start taking him to see a few games as well, tell him that.

Christ, I can’t wait…

When I say ‘as soon as I’m back’, obviously there’s one or two other things I’d like to do first, if you get my drift! Actually, between bed and home cooking, I can’t see Rob dragging me out of the house for at least a week.

Fifteen fucking days, angel, that’s all. Thirteen probably, by the time this gets to you. That’s nothing. It’s less than the average holiday, but the stupid thing is it’s going to feel like ten times as long. It’s the hardest part, the end of it, everyone knows that. When a lot of blokes inside start to go mental…

Talking of holidays, though, we should get away, soon as we can. Where d’you fancy? Somewhere hot with a fuck-off big pool. Why don’t you look into it, and see what’s around? Only thing is, I’m not sure when Rob’s on holiday from school.

I don’t care where we go to be honest, so you decide. It’s all going to feel like a holiday from now on…

Thorne laid the photocopied sheet down on the table. The letter that had never been sent; that had been written the day before Marcus Brooks had received the death message.

He walked across to the computer. The game was running, but he’d sat out half an hour earlier. He’d logged on when he had arrived back at the flat, hoping that a few hands might take his mind off things a little, but it would have taken a damn sight more than poker. He watched for five minutes, then sat down again.

Unusually, Johnny Cash wasn’t helping: ‘I See a Darkness’ torn from him; that ragged voice imploring his friend to pull the smiles inside and save him from death.

Thorne reached across to rub a finger under the cat’s chin and thought about the look on his friend’s face when Hendricks had walked away from him outside the club the night before. Louise’s face, too, pale and tight, across the breakfast table.

Christ, and seeing Jan…

Would she really have called him to tell him about the baby? It must at least have crossed her mind that he deserved to know. Or maybe just that he would think he deserved it. Now he did know, he felt all sorts of emotions, and he felt bad because pleasure wasn’t among them.

He looked back at the letter on the table. He imagined Marcus Brooks walking back to his cell, having been told about his girlfriend and son; putting the envelope away in a drawer. It must have felt like he’d been hit by that car. He probably wished he had been.

It wasn’t as though Thorne usually had any problem with hate, and it should have been easy to hate Marcus Brooks for what he’d been about to do to Hendricks. But pity came easier.

The same went for himself, this time of night, with a can of beer in his hand and Cash on the stereo.

So much easier to feel got-at and ganged-up-on than ashamed.

He moved quickly when the doorbell went, Elvis half a second behind him, jumping down and tearing under the TV, like she thought there was nothing good coming.

Louise walked in without a word, without looking at Thorne, and stopped in the middle of the living room.

Thorne closed the door and followed. ‘What?’

She dropped her bag and started to take off her coat.

‘Is everything OK?’

‘I had a question,’ she said.

‘I don’t understand. Did you get all the way home?’

‘You squeezed my hand.’ Now she looked at him. ‘When you were talking to Jan. When we were standing around on the pavement.’

‘Did I?’

Louise nodded, tossed her coat on to the sofa.

‘OK…’ Thorne just stood, no idea where this might be going.

‘Did you think I might be upset?’ she said. ‘Because it was your ex-wife; because I might feel embarrassed, or awkward, or whatever?’ She took a breath. Tried to smile, or tried not to, Thorne couldn’t tell. ‘Or because she was pregnant?’

Thorne stepped across and turned down the stereo. He was flustered; felt instinctively that a lot depended on his answer. He pushed fingers through his hair, laced them together on top of his head. ‘I don’t know. I just… squeezed your hand.’

When Louise finally looked up at him, the smile was there. Shaky and uncertain of itself. Pushed out of shape by the tremble in her bottom lip.

‘It was nice,’ she said.

Afterwards, Thorne went to the bathroom to flush away the condom, and brought back some toilet paper so that Louise could wipe herself.

‘That was nice,’ he said.

They talked for a while about Brooks and the letters. Louise said she was always amazed that more people who had lost loved ones violently didn’t wreak violence in return; those who had lost children especially. Said she couldn’t imagine…

Thorne told her about his trip to Holland’s place. That Holland was thinking about getting out of the city. ‘Maybe even the Job,’ he said.

‘You ever thought about it?’ Louise asked. It was something they’d joked about before; that every copper joked about. She stopped him before he could come back with a flippant remark. ‘Really, I mean.’

‘I’ve wished that there was something else I could do,’ Thorne said. ‘Anything else.’

‘We all hate what we do from time to time.’

‘It’s what we can’t do.’

Louise raised her head, eased herself on to her belly and looked down at him. ‘Was it one case?’

There were a few; names and cases that prompted something more than a wink or a war story. That pressed ice against his skin still, and fluttered in the gut. A list of dangerous men and women; and of dead ones. He guessed that Marcus Brooks would take his place on one list or another.

Names, cases.

But it was none of them…

‘Twenty-odd years ago,’ Thorne said. ‘I was a baby copper working out of Brixton nick. We got called out to a council flat in Thornton Heath, one of those crappy sixties blocks on three or four levels; an old guy, in his mid- seventies. He’d come back one afternoon and found a couple of kids turning the place over. They were never going to find anything worth having, so they were just making a mess of the place, and when this old man turned up, they started taking it out on him.’

‘Did you find them?’

Thorne shook his head slowly; frowning with concentration, trying to remember. ‘There were dogs on his wallpaper… brown on green. And he had a collection of cards out of packets of tea. Hundreds of the things, with old footballers and cricketers on them. Tom Finney and W.G. Grace. Me and this other copper were picking them off the carpet while we waited for the ambulance.’ He pulled up his legs, arranged the duvet around the two of them. ‘They smashed his face up pretty badly, broke his arm and two or three ribs. Could have been worse, I suppose, but he was in hospital for a couple of weeks.’

He turned his eyes to Louise’s. She was waiting; knowing there had to be more.

‘Anyway, we got called back, a month after the break-in. I remember seeing that the address was the same