‘I thought about that, but he’s not doing them in the same order their mothers were murdered.’
‘No point trying to second guess a nutcase,’ Kitson said.
Thorne said that she was probably right. He’d wasted too much time trying to do that in the past.
‘Oh, and I bumped into a friend of yours.’
‘Not too many of those about,’ Thorne said.
‘Bloke called Spike. Told me to say hello to you.’
Thorne feathered the brake of the BMW as his memory fired a series of unwelcome images into his mind: a network of tunnels; a couple making love inside a coffin-sized cardboard box; a syringe blooming with blood. ‘Was there a woman with him?’ he asked.
‘Not that I could see,’ Kitson said. ‘He looked pretty far gone, to be honest.’
Thorne thought about Spike and a woman named One-Day Caroline, who had loved each other and the drug that was killing them so fiercely. If Caroline had managed to get off the streets – and he hoped that was why she was no longer around – staying away from the one person who might drag her back on to them was probably a good idea. There had been a child as well, a boy. Thorne squeezed the steering wheel, willing himself to remember the name.
‘I’ll catch up with you tomorrow, then,’ Kitson said, breaking the silence.
He knew this was why he had been happy to let somebody else interview the rough sleepers. He had no desire to revisit a period of his life that had been so out of kilter, both personally and professionally. No need to step back into the shadows.
‘Right. Tomorrow.’ He jumped a red light at the Archway roundabout, still buzzing with the drink and with those images from his past, and wondering who he was trying to fool. Asking himself if his life now – professionally and personally – was really any better than it had been back then.
He cracked the window to let in some cold air, silently wished Spike well and drove on.
‘Tom…?’
Robbie. The kid’s name was Robbie.
THIRTY
Malcolm Reece, the man whose name had been provided by Raymond Garvey’s ex-wife, still worked for British Telecom, though, in the three decades since Jenny Duggan had first met him, he had risen from being an engineer to a service installation manager. He was based in a small office on an ugly industrial park in Staines, a Thames- side town in the London commuter belt that looked as depressing as it sounded.
He was decidedly frosty from the moment Chamberlain walked in.
‘Look, I’ve already spoken to the police once.’
‘I know,’ Chamberlain said.
‘Told them where I was on whatever dates… bloody ridiculous.’
Officers had spoken to Reece a fortnight earlier, as soon as the Garvey connection to the killings had been established. He had been eliminated from their enquiries almost immediately, but the record of the interview meant that Chamberlain had been able to track him down very quickly. ‘I’m actually here to talk to you about something else,’ she said.
Reece looked up from his desk, his head almost perfectly framed by a large year planner on the wall behind him. ‘Well, I haven’t got all day, so…’
‘Some of the fun and games you and Ray Garvey got up to, thirty-odd years ago.’
‘Fun and games?’
‘I spoke to his ex-wife. She told me the two of you were quite a pair back then.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Right couple of likely lads, she said.’
Reece leaned back in his chair, and gradually a smile that said, ‘It’s a fair cop’ spread across his doughy features. Chamberlain smiled back, suitably conspiratorial. Although looking at him now, the only thing Malcolm Reece seemed likely to do was burst the buttons on his pale blue nylon shirt or drop dead from heart failure.
Chamberlain put him somewhere in his mid-fifties, maybe a year or two younger than she was, and it was hard to envisage him as the man whom Jenny Duggan had described as never going short of female company. He was bloated and jowly, with glasses perched halfway down a drinker’s nose. He had kept his hair, but it was grey and wiry, the kind she remembered her father having.
‘Blimey, you’re going back a fair way,’ Reece said. ‘And there was a bit more about me then, if you know what I mean.’
Chamberlain nodded, thinking: I doubt that.
‘I was single, for a start.’
‘Ray Garvey wasn’t, though, was he?’
‘Neither were a lot of the girls,’ Reece said. ‘Didn’t seem to matter much to anyone, though.’ He took off his glasses and leaned forward. ‘Look, it wasn’t like there were orgies every day, anything like that. We were lucky, that’s all. A lot of the girls in the office back then were very attractive and they didn’t mind a bit of flirting. We were in our twenties, for God’s sake. Come on, you must have been the same.’
Chamberlain reddened a little, in spite of herself.
‘I mean, that’s all it was most of the time, harmless flirting. Every so often you’d have a drink and things might go a bit further, but it was just a bit of fun at work, you know? These days, you as much as tell a woman she looks nice and you get slapped with a, what do you call it… sexual harassment charge.’
Thinking that she’d like to slap him in a way that would be rather more painful, Chamberlain told him that she sympathised, that things were even worse in the police force. ‘So, you and Ray put it about a bit, then?’
‘Well, like you said, Ray was married, so he had to be more careful.’ He unfastened his top button and loosened his tie, enjoying himself. ‘I was probably more of a naughty boy than he was. I told you though, some of those girls didn’t need a lot of encouragement.’ He grinned. ‘A couple of gin and tonics was usually more than enough.’
‘Can you remember any names?’
‘The girls, you mean?’
‘Sounds like it might be a long list.’
‘Bloody hell, now you’re asking.’
‘Come on,’ Chamberlain said, smiling, still playing the game. ‘I know what you blokes are like. You can’t remember to put the bins out, but you can remember the name of every girl you ever copped off with.’
‘Well…’
‘Ray, I’m talking about.’
Reece looked disappointed. Eventually, he said, ‘I suppose he had a few over the years.’
‘Anyone special?’
Reece thought about it. ‘Maybe one girl, worked as a secretary. A little bit older than he was, if I remember, and married. Yeah, he was seeing her for a while on the quiet.’
‘Name?’
‘Sandra.’ He closed his eyes and fished for a surname. When it came to him, he snapped his fingers and pointed at Chamberlain, delighted with himself. ‘Phipps!’ He shook his head. ‘Bloody hell… Sandra Phipps.’
Chamberlain noted down the name and stood to go.
‘That all finished when she left, though,’ Reece said. ‘She moved away, I think. In fact, there were a few rumours flying about at the time.’
‘Rumours about what?’
‘Well, Ray didn’t say much, but I know one or two people thought she might have been up the duff.’
Chamberlain nodded, as though the information were of no more than minor interest.
‘You on the train?’ Reece asked.
She said that she was, and when he offered her a lift to the station she lied and told him that she had pre- ordered a taxi. Reece walked her out of the building and up close, pushing through the swing doors, she noticed that he smelled quite good. As he told her how nice it had been to meet her, Chamberlain thought, just for a second
