room at Scotland Yard. There were six other people around the table, each with a notepad and a pair of freshly sharpened pencils in front of them. There were water jugs and glasses near either end. Thorne smiled through the minute or two of small talk, wondering how people would react if he let his head drop on to the table or asked for a cold beer, and waiting for the powerful smell of bullshit to start rising on the thermal of hot air.
The Association of Chief Police Officers was responsible for bringing such panels together, and its representative, the Area Homicide Commander, was chairing the meeting. Alistair Johns was a short, stocky man in his early fifties, with a permanently pinched expression, as though he were always walking through heavy rain. He brought the meeting to order, making sure that everyone around the table knew one another. Aside from Trevor Jesmond and Russell Brigstocke, there was a surly-looking DS named Proctor from the Community Relations Unit and a woman named Paula Hughes, who Thorne gathered was a civilian press officer. Another woman, a WPC whose name he failed to catch during a stifled yawn, was taking the minutes. Thorne caught her eye. She looked as though she’d had enough already, or perhaps she was thinking about the work that lay ahead: typing up her notes, circulating endless emails and preparing a bound report for everyone from the Commissioner to the Mayor.
‘We need to crack on,’ Johns said. ‘Obviously this is an ongoing inquiry and I’m grateful to DCI Brigstocke and DI Thorne for taking the time to be here.’
Thorne looked across at Brigstocke, who suddenly appeared to find the tabletop uniquely fascinating.
‘But we may well be looking at problems down the line, as far as the public perception of our handling of the case goes, so we need to take a few decisions now. Start preparing answers for some of the questions that are bound to be asked, whether we get a result or not.’
‘We’ll get a result,’ Jesmond said. He nodded towards Brigstocke, whose interest in the tabletop seemed only to increase. Jesmond’s confidence was to be expected, of course; the last thing Johns wanted to hear was doubt or uncertainty. A bit of gung-ho positivity always went a long way with the brass.
The smell of bullshit was kicking in nice and early.
When Thorne had first heard about critical incident panels, he had presumed that they were convened as a result of terrorist incidents and the like, but he had quickly discovered that they were little more than forums for the mitigation of bad publicity; to discuss cases that were likely to attract criticism from the press or community groups. They were little more than damage-limitation exercises. Often, they were all about getting your retaliation in first.
‘We need to talk about the media,’ Johns said. ‘How we use, or don’t use them as the inquiry moves forward. Obviously, we’ve kept our powder dry as far as the serial elements of these killings is concerned.’
‘Dry-ish.’ Thorne spoke instinctively and held the stare when he caught a look from Jesmond that suggested he should have kept his mouth shut. ‘At least one journalist has already put it together.’
Johns glanced down at his notes. ‘Nicholas Maier. But he’s assured you he understands the importance of discretion.’
‘He understands that we’ll feed him information about the case to keep him quiet. If he’s lucky, maybe enough to get a book out of it.’
‘Not much we can do about it,’ Brigstocke said.
Jesmond launched into a tirade about Nicholas Maier and his ‘ilk’ making a living out of the suffering of others. He called them ‘hacks’ and ‘leeches’, said that they were no more than a few links up the food chain from the killers themselves. There were nods and appreciative murmurs from all but one person around the table. Jesmond’s comments had sounded heartfelt, but Thorne knew that the only thing the Superintendent was really passionate about was his own progress up the greasy pole. The two men exchanged glances again, and Thorne smiled like a good boy. He could not help wondering which hack would be ghost-writing Jesmond’s autobiography a few years down the line.
‘We will be keeping a close eye on Mr Maier,’ Johns said. ‘But obviously our main focus this morning is on the hunt for our three potential victims.’ He glanced down at his papers. ‘Andrew Dowd, Simon Walsh and Graham Fowler.’
‘As far as that goes, we feel the time might have come to start circulating pictures,’ Brigstocke said.
Thorne looked across at his DCI and felt a surge of admiration for the man. He had been worryingly non- committal on the way into the meeting and Thorne would not have put money on which way he was liable to jump.
‘You’d be ready to move quickly on that?’ Johns asked.
Brigstocke nodded. ‘The photos of Fowler and Walsh are long out of date, but they’re the best we’ve got: an old driving licence shot of Walsh from the DVLA and the most recent photo that Fowler’s father was able to find. We should be able to get some good ones of Andrew Dowd from his wife as soon as we’re given the word.’
‘If she hasn’t cut them all up,’ Jesmond said. ‘Sounds like a bit of a bitch.’
Johns looked towards Paula Hughes. She had a mop of brown curls and, for Thorne’s money, showed a few too many teeth when she smiled.
‘We can get them into all the nationals by tomorrow,’ she said. ‘And the six o’clock news tonight, if we’re quick.’
Johns nodded, scribbled a note or two.
‘We’re still… concerned,’ Jesmond said. ‘About alerting Garvey to the fact that we’re on to him.’
Thorne’s sigh was clearly audible to everyone at the table. Heads turned. ‘I think he’s well aware of that,’ he said. ‘I think that suits him just fine. Why else would he be leaving the X-ray fragments?’
Jesmond’s eyes hardened. ‘It’s extremely dangerous to make any kind of presumption about a man like Anthony Garvey. We’re not exactly dealing with a rational mind.’
‘All the more reason to take no chances.’
‘I agree completely. So why broadcast pictures of the very people he intends to kill?’
‘So we can find them.’ You fucking idiot. The words sounded so loud in Thorne’s head that, for a second or two, he wondered if he’d spoken them out loud. He caught the eye of the WPC taking notes. Clearly, he hadn’t needed to.
‘We have to at least consider the possibility that we might be helping him.’
‘I think he knows who he’s after.’ Thorne fought to keep the sarcasm from his voice. ‘And if we don’t do everything we can now, he’s likely to find them before we do.’
‘Why should he be able to do that?’
‘He’s been searching a damn sight longer than we have.’ Thorne made sure he had Johns’ attention. ‘And if we don’t use these photos, it’s going to start looking like he’s trying a damn sight harder, too.’
Jesmond reddened and tapped his pencil against the edge of the table. It heartened Thorne enormously to see that the sandy hair was a little more wispy than the last time he had seen him, the face a little more veined.
‘I’m sorry,’ Thorne said. ‘I really don’t understand why you’re so worried.’
‘What if we use these pictures in the press and Garvey kills someone?’
‘What if we don’t and he kills someone anyway?’
‘Well, obviously, either scenario is one we’ll try to avoid. But we do need to think about which is the least… problematic.’
‘Problematic?’ As Thorne stared at Jesmond, he remembered reading about an American car company that had discovered a potentially dangerous fault on one of its models. After considering their options, the management decided not to alert the public. They had calculated that it would be more expensive to organise a national recall of the affected vehicles than to pay damages to the injured and the relatives of those killed.
More problematic…
‘This is what we need to talk about,’ Johns said. ‘We don’t want to be accused of not doing all we could have done, should this information come to light.’
‘Which it will,’ Thorne said.
Jesmond shook his head. ‘As long as we keep the link between the victims quiet, it’s not a criticism that can be levelled.’
‘The papers will get hold of it,’ Thorne said. ‘There are far too many gobshites around, and too many journalists waving chequebooks. And the whole story’s going to come out anyway when Maier’s next book’s published.’
Thorne thought he saw concern pass across Jesmond’s face, but it was no more than momentary. Jesmond knew that, in all probability, he would have moved on by the time anything damaging emerged. His successor would have to deal with the fallout. Thorne guessed that Johns was thinking the same thing.
