that had been blown to the floor. ‘I don’t know, maybe if you used staples or paperclips?’ She eased off her jacket and dropped her handbag, then continued as though addressing a young child or a very stupid dog. ‘Or went completely crazy and typed things up. On. Your. Computer.’
Thorne groaned as he straightened up and again as he dropped back into his chair. ‘You’re a bloody genius,’ he said.
‘It’s just common sense.’ Kitson took the lid from the takeaway coffee she had brought in with her, spooned the froth into her mouth. ‘Unfortunately, most men aren’t exactly blessed with too much of that.’
‘Oh, right,’ Thorne said. ‘Are we talking about me or Ian?’ The name was as much as Thorne knew about the boyfriend Kitson had been seeing for several months, but after her much-discussed fall from grace, he could hardly blame her for keeping her private life as private as possible. ‘Poor sod screwed up over the weekend, did he?’ Her smile told Thorne he was right on the money.
‘I’m just saying, if women ran things…’
‘Be better, would it?’
‘… the world wouldn’t be in such bloody chaos.’
‘Except once a month,’ Thorne said. ‘When things would go extremely tits up.’
Kitson’s smile widened around the plastic spoon. ‘How was your Sunday, smart-arse?’
Thorne had spent most of the previous day alone, which had suited him well enough. Louise had driven down to see her parents in Sussex and although Thorne got on perfectly well with both of them, she hadn’t bothered to ask if he wanted to come along. If Hendricks was right, and Louise had told her mum about the pregnancy, she probably preferred to be on her own when she broke the news that there no longer was one.
He had not seen the need to ask.
He had made himself a toasted ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, then watched Spurs grind out a piss-poor goalless draw against Manchester City. Louise got home just before he had the chance to be bored all over again by Match of the Day 2 and they spent what was left of the evening arguing about when she was going back to work.
She had rung her office from the hospital that first afternoon, telling them she had a stomach bug, and had decided that four days off sick was more than enough. Thorne disagreed, said he thought she needed longer. Louise told him that it was her body and her decision to make, that she felt as fine as she was ever fucking-well going to, and that she was going back first thing on Monday.
Thorne had left an hour earlier than usual this morning, to beat the traffic and to avoid a repeat of the argument. He looked up at the clock on the wall above Kitson’s desk. Louise would be getting to Scotland Yard, where the Kidnap Unit was based, around now.
‘My body, my decision…’
He dropped his eyes, nodded at Kitson. ‘My Sunday was pretty quiet,’ he said.
Once the team had gathered for the morning briefing, it quickly became apparent that others connected to the twin inquiries had been considerably busier than Tom Thorne over the previous thirty-six hours.
‘We’ve been able to match the DNA sample gathered from beneath the fingernails of Catherine Burke in Leicester to that taken from hairs on Emily Walker’s clothing. So we’re now officially looking for the same individual in connection with both of these murders.’ Russell Brigstocke took a moment, looked from face to face.
Said, ‘One killer.’
Karim moved his fist from beneath his chin and raised a finger. ‘Are we releasing this?’ he asked.
‘Not yet,’ Brigstocke said.
‘And we know the Leicester lot won’t, do we?’
‘They know they’re not supposed to.’ Brigstocke shrugged. ‘Look, an inquiry like this means there’s obviously double the chance of something being leaked. Some idiot in uniform out to impress a reporter he’s trying to get into bed, whatever.’ He raised his hands to quiet the predictable reaction. ‘So, all we can do is try to keep the lid on at our end. We all know how the press works, how mental things can get if they catch a sniff of a serial killer.’ He scanned the faces again, pausing for a second or two when he reached Thorne’s, before carrying on.
Thorne knew that Brigstocke was at least half right. The tabloids would certainly go to town. While the broadsheets would use the phrase sparingly and probably use inverted commas, the red-tops would show no such restraint. Same with TV: the BBC would at least want to be seen to avoid sensationalism, while for the likes of Sky News and Channel Five those two words would become something of a mantra.
He also knew very well why Brigstocke had sought him out to push home his point. He guessed that, were he to Google his own name, he would find it cropping up on more than one of those websites he had come across the previous week. His name, alongside those of the men and women he had hunted.
Palmer. Nicklin. Bishop.
One who took the lives of strangers because he was afraid not to; a man who got others to murder for him; a killer whose unluckiest victim did not die at all…
Thorne’s mind was yanked back from its wandering as the lights went out and an image appeared on the screen.
‘The FSS in Leicester sent us the fragment of X-ray found on Catherine Burke’s body.’ Brigstocke pointed up at the screen. ‘And we can see how it fits alongside the piece that Emily Walker was holding.’ The small black pieces of celluloid had been blown up, and though it was still not clear what had been X-rayed, the magnification clearly showed where the full-sized image had been cut – a jagged line that almost disappeared when they were pushed together. ‘The fact that the killer left these for us to find would indicate that he wants us to piece them together. Although, as yet, we’re none the wiser about these.’ He pointed to a barely legible series of letters and numbers that ran in three lines along the top of each piece, then nodded to the back of the room.
The slide changed and an image appeared showing the conjoined sequence of letters and numbers magnified still further:
VEY48
ADD
PHONY
‘Write them down,’ Brigstocke said. He watched as eyes dropped to notebooks all around the room. ‘Now, there are obviously pieces missing on either side…’
Next to Thorne, Kitson scribbled and mumbled, ‘Like a jigsaw puzzle.’
‘Except we don’t have a box with the picture on,’ Thorne said.
‘Right, let’s crack on.’ Brigstocke took one last look at the screen. ‘But if anyone fancies doing some major arse-licking and spending every minute of their spare time trying to figure that out for us, I’ll be extremely grateful.’
‘Better than a bloody sudoku,’ Karim said.
Brigstocke smiled. ‘Not that anyone’s going to have any spare time, you understand.’
As exaggerated groans broke out either side of him, Thorne stared, unblinking, at the picture. The sequence of numbers and letters.
‘As yet, we’re none the wiser…’
He imagined the killer working with nail scissors, his face creased in concentration. Pictured him later sweating and bloodstained, carefully laying each piece into a victim’s palm and folding the dead fingers around it.
‘There are obviously pieces missing…’
Thorne stared at the gaps.
Half an hour later, when the team had dispersed, Thorne and Kitson wandered across to Brigstocke’s office for a less formal briefing. For the DCI, daily sessions like this were a chance to catch up with senior members of his team and talk about ways to take the inquiry forward. To air grievances, or talk through ideas someone might be too embarrassed to suggest in a larger meeting. A year or two earlier, the cigarettes would have come out; before that, back in the days of Cortinas and fitting up Irishmen, the secret stash of Scotch or vodka.
When Thorne and Kitson arrived, the door to Brigstocke’s office was open. He was on the phone, but as soon as he saw them, he beckoned them inside and motioned for Kitson to shut the door.
