Walker cleared his throat. ‘It just felt wrong the minute I came through the door,’ he said.
‘Wrong?’
‘Different…’
‘This would have been what time?’
‘Just before five,’ Walker said. ‘I run a chess club after school on a Wednesday. Otherwise it would have been earlier.’
Thorne glanced over at Holland, made sure he saw the significance, then nodded to Walker to continue.
‘I caught a whiff of something, which was… the blood, obviously. There was a vase on the floor in the hall, and water everywhere. She must have tried to fight him off, don’t you think?’
‘We’re still trying to put it all together,’ Holland said.
‘So, I was calling Emily’s name out in the hall, and then I walked into the kitchen. Well, you saw it.’
‘And you phoned us straight away, didn’t you?’ Thorne glanced down at his notes, although he knew the time very well. ‘We’ve got the call to the emergency services logged at four fifty-six. You sounded very calm.’
‘Did I? I think I was just in shock.’ Walker shook his head, breathed noisily for ten seconds, then said, ‘I can’t even remember calling.’
‘What about afterwards?’ Thorne asked. ‘Do you remember running out into the street? Knocking on your next-door neighbour’s door and shouting about the blood?’
More shaking of the head. ‘Sort of.’ Walker ’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I can’t remember exactly what I said… shouted. I can remember my throat being sore afterwards and not knowing why. I was kneeling down with Emily by then, waiting for someone to come. It seemed to be taking ages, you know?’ The tears were coming now, but Walker did not seem bothered. He casually lowered his head and pushed them away with the heel of his hand when he needed to. ‘I really wanted to touch her,’ he said. ‘I knew I shouldn’t, because it would mess up the evidence or whatever. Seen too many of those TV shows, I think. But I just wanted to hold her hand for a few minutes. To reach inside that bag and tuck her hair behind her ear.’
Holland looked hard at Thorne until he got the nod. ‘Do you want to take a few minutes, Mr Walker?’ He pushed back his chair, mumbled something about finding some tissues.
‘Actually, I think we can leave it there,’ Thorne said.
Walker nodded, the gratitude evident in his eyes before he closed them.
As soon as Holland had stopped the tape, Thorne was out of his chair and moving towards the door. ‘Right, let’s see if we can get you a cab organised.’
Walker rose slowly to his feet. ‘The hardest thing was telling Emily’s dad,’ he said. ‘After what happened to Emily’s mother, I mean.’ He turned to look at Thorne. ‘How bloody unlucky can one family get?’
‘Sorry, I’m not with you,’ Thorne said.
Walker seemed confused. He looked at Holland, who shook his head to indicate that he was every bit as in the dark.
‘Oh, I thought you must have known,’ Walker said. ‘My wife’s mother was murdered herself, fifteen years ago. Emily’s maiden name was Sharpe.’
Thorne could do no more than say ‘sorry’ again. As a matter of course, Emily Walker’s name had been run through the CRIMINT system to see if she had a criminal history, but there was nothing on record. A tragedy in her family’s past would certainly not have been considered relevant criminal intelligence.
Walker was still looking from Thorne to Holland and back, as though he were expecting the name he had mentioned to be recognised. He reached for his jacket and, when he spoke, it was clear he was well used to what he was saying being the end of a conversation.
‘She was one of Raymond Garvey’s.’
They watched Walker ’s taxi pull away, and began walking in the other direction, back towards the Peel Centre. It wasn’t quite ten yet. The morning was mild, but there was the lightest drizzle in the air.
‘I made a call before he came in,’ Holland said. ‘He was back at school by two. Didn’t leave until a quarter to five. I can talk to Hendricks again if you like, double-check to see if he’s sure about the timings.’
‘Don’t bother,’ Thorne said.
They picked up the pace a little in an effort to stay as dry as possible.
‘I was thinking about him going back to school after he’d had his lunch,’ Holland said. ‘Suddenly had this image of the killer watching him leave, marching straight up and ringing the doorbell. Emily opening it, thinking her old man had forgotten something.’
Thorne shook his head. ‘Times still don’t fit.’
‘Just had that image, you know?’
They walked on, turning left on to Aerodrome Road and falling into step within a few paces.
‘I think you were right the other night,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s somebody she knew. Not well… not necessarily, anyway. Maybe he works in a local shop, does next-door’s garden, whatever.’
‘A face she recognises.’
‘That’s all he needs to be. You heard what Walker said about if it had been a different day. Sounds like whoever killed Emily had been watching, and for a while. He knew their movements, knew when the time was right.’
‘So he targeted her?’
‘Looks that way. He wasn’t just ringing doorbells until someone answered that he liked the look of.’
‘Why Emily, though?’ Holland asked.
Thorne looked sideways at him and Holland acknowledged the stupidity of asking the question now, when they had so little to go on. When there were a thousand answers, and none at all. They both knew that the true answer, if they ever found it, would almost certainly give them their best chance of catching whoever had killed Emily Walker. At that moment, Thorne could do no better than a muttered ‘Christ knows’, before jogging across the road and walking quickly towards the main gate.
‘That’s weird though, isn’t it, this Garvey business?’ Holland was doing his best to keep up, a few feet behind Thorne. ‘Before my time, but shit… that was a big case, wasn’t it?’
Ahead of him, Thorne was waving his ID at the officer inside the control box.
‘Did you work on it?’
Half a minute later, it was Holland ’s turn to wait, light rain blowing into his face, while his warrant card was checked. Thorne was already twenty feet clear of the barrier and moving across the car-park towards Becke House. He didn’t appear to have heard Holland ’s question.
Thorne had worked on the Raymond Garvey investigation, though not in any significant way. He’d knocked on a few doors, been part of a fingertip-search team one night. At the time, it was the biggest investigation for a decade or more, with hundreds of detectives working to catch a man who would eventually murder seven women. There can’t have been too many officers in the Met who had not been involved in some capacity.
Inside Becke House, Thorne walked into the lift and jabbed the button for the third floor, thinking back.
He was an up-the-sergeant’s-arse, eager-to-please detective constable back then. Kentish Town CID, the station no more than five minutes’ walk from where he lived now.
The lift doors were stubbornly refusing to close, so Thorne stabbed at the button again. He was ashamed that he could remember every detail of a blue suit he used to wear back then and the number plate of the car he’d been driving around in, but not the names of Raymond Garvey’s victims.
The door finally slid shut.
Not a single one…
He told himself that it was always the way, especially with a series of killings. How many of Dennis Nilsen’s fifteen victims could he name, or Colin Ireland’s five? Could he remember any of Harold Shipman’s two hundred or more?
Out of the lift, he walked down the corridor, past the Major Incident Room and towards the small office he shared with DI Yvonne Kitson.
It was different with his own cases, of course. He could remember every name, every face; each ‘before’ and ‘after’ photograph. Her mother’s name might not have been as instantly familiar as it should have been, but Thorne knew he would never forget Emily Walker’s.
Kitson had left a note on his desk about a case that was due in court the following week and some evidence
