‘Thorne’s only doing his job,’ Debbie said.
Nina pulled faces at Jason as she spoke. ‘If he’d been doing it properly, there wouldn’t still be a police car outside the front door.’
‘He seems an OK bloke, though.’
‘I know what coppers are like,’ Nina said. ‘I’ve done plenty in my time.’ She got up to make the tea. ‘Come to think of it, I wonder if either of those two out there fancy a quick one.’
They both laughed and Jason laughed in turn. Debbie finished wiping the surfaces and finally sat down. Nina dropped a couple of slices of bread in the toaster, sniffed the milk.
‘Listen, I’ve got a job on this afternoon, is that all right?’
‘Does that mean you can take the night off?’
‘Maybe. I’ve done this bloke a few times, that’s the thing. He always calls me whenever he’s down from Manchester, and he always gives me a bit extra, so…’
‘You’d be stupid not to,’ Debbie said.
‘I need to start putting a bit aside as well, you know, if we’re going to get away.’ Nina bent down and nuzzled the back of Jason’s neck. ‘You want to go on holiday, sweetheart?’
Debbie smiled, knowing very well where every penny would be going, and said, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’
‘We should get some brochures,’ Nina said. ‘I’ll pick some up on the way back from this bloke’s hotel. You fancy Majorca?’
Debbie nodded. ‘Be good if you could give it a miss tonight, though. We can have a night in front of the box. I’ll make us spaghetti Bolognese or something.’
Brian Spibey was on the breakfast run. He’d dropped off a bacon and egg McMuffin at Fowler’s apartment and was on his way along the corridor with coffee and an almond croissant for Andrew Dowd. The smells were making him hungry, and he was keen to get stuck into the bacon sandwich he’d bought for himself that was getting cold down in the lobby. It was funny, he thought, how everyone liked different things for breakfast. That hobbit-fancier Gibbons had been peeling the lid off some poxy pot of muesli when Spibey had headed upstairs.
Thorne had called while Spibey was queuing in McDonald’s. He’d apologised for not phoning the night before as promised, explained that he’d been stuck in a meeting until late. Spibey had reassured him that everything was fine, that their guests were alive and kicking, and had tried to sound jokey when he’d told Thorne that there was no need to check up every five minutes.
‘I’ve been doing this a bit longer than you have,’ he’d said.
Thorne had sounded jokey enough himself. ‘I doubt that, Brian, but you certainly look as though you have.’
Cheeky sod.
He wasn’t sure that Thorne had altogether approved when he’d walked in on their card school. Funny, he’d never had Thorne down as any kind of stickler, and it would be a bit rich, bearing in mind some of the stories Spibey had heard about him over the years. Yes, by rights, he and Gibbons should both be sitting downstairs, glued to the security monitors, but Spibey liked to think he had got to know the two men in his charge pretty well and that he knew the best way to keep them relaxed and happy. They both had good reason to be stressed out, after all, and neither was the type for praying or settling down with a good book, he was sure about that much.
He entered the code for Dowd’s apartment, knocked and waited. ‘Grub’s up, Andy.’
Dowd opened the door and took the cup and paper bag.
‘They better find this bloke soon,’ Spibey said, ‘else you two are going to end up as a right pair of fat bastards. Me an’ all, come to that.’
Dowd didn’t seem to see the funny side and shook his head. ‘I don’t think Graham could put weight on even if he wanted to. The drugs have screwed up his metabolism.’
‘Right, fair enough,’ Spibey said, after a few seconds. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He took a few steps away, then turned as Dowd was about to close the door. ‘Listen, you up for another game of cards a bit later? Only Graham said he fancied it.’
Dowd had already bitten into his croissant. ‘Yeah, why not? Least he’s got some money to play with now.’
‘I’ll have that back, don’t you worry,’ Spibey said.
‘We’ll see.’
‘I’m telling you mate, I feel lucky.’
‘Well, you’re the only one round here who does,’ Dowd said.
THIRTY-FOUR
Her train arrived in Reading just before midday. A simple check of the voters’ register had revealed that Sandra Phipps – as she had been called thirty years previously – was not working, and Chamberlain guessed that lunchtime would be as good a time as any to catch her at home. If there was nobody in, she would find some way to kill an hour or two, perhaps see what Reading had to offer in the way of retail therapy, and try again later.
How threatening could a middle-aged woman carrying a couple of shopping bags be?
Waiting on the platform at Paddington, Chamberlain had been aware that this was the place where Anthony Garvey had collected the cash to fund his killing spree. Also where he had disposed of Chloe Sinclair’s body. She did not know if it was an ill omen or a good one, but she had focused instead on the possibilities of the day ahead: a positive outcome to the interview; the breakthrough she hoped she would be able to pass on to Tom Thorne.
Looking through her notes on the train, she had been unable to stop thinking about their session the night before. She wondered how the state he had been in – might still be in – had affected his ability to handle the inquiry. Had it weighed him down or fired him up? She knew that personal problems usually had an impact one way or the other, and remembered a spell of a few months, twenty years earlier, when she and Jack had been going through a rocky patch. Afterwards, to satisfy her curiosity, she had checked and been amazed to see that her arrest record had been better than ever.
She hoped it worked out the same way for Thorne.
It was a short trip from Reading station to Caversham, a small district a few minutes to the north of the town on the other side of the Thames. The taxi, whose driver gave a running commentary throughout the journey, crossed a large and ornate bridge into an area that looked more like the centre of a chocolate-box English village than a commuter suburb. He finally pulled up – as per Chamberlain’s instructions – a hundred yards or so short of a tidy-looking terraced house set back from the road and within spitting distance of the river.
Walking up to the house, Chamberlain could see rowing boats and steamers moored on both sides of the river, and a pair of swans treading water in mid-stream while a group of kids threw bread from the far bank, trying to spin the slices, like frisbees.
‘Got him, right in the neck,’ one of them shouted.
‘See if you can do it again…’
Chamberlain had already decided that, should the worst happen, she would move, a little nearer to London maybe, and that this was the kind of place she would choose. She loved being near the water, and though this stretch of river had a little less character, it was probably a damn sight cleaner than the English Channel.
And some of the people here were under fifty.
The door was opened by a surly-looking girl, aged fourteen or so, who stared at Chamberlain, careful not to open the door too far. Chamberlain remembered her notes. This would be Nicola, Sandra’s daughter by her third husband, who would be at work as manager of the local Tesco’s. Chamberlain toyed with freaking out the sour- faced little cow by using her name, but instead she just produced her photo ID and asked the girl if her mother was at home.
After a few seconds, the girl backed away from the door, then pushed it until it was almost closed again before disappearing. While Chamberlain waited, hearing the girl’s footsteps on the stairs followed by a muffled conversation, she started to believe that this was all going to work out the way everybody wanted. She wondered if the girl knew anything about a half-brother twice her age, a serial killer who might well have babysat her.
The woman apologised as she yanked the door wide. ‘Sorry… she’s not very chatty at the best of times,’ she said. ‘And she doesn’t like to see me upset.’
