'Good to have you back, Tom.'
Tughan's thin lips arranged themselves into what might pass as a smile. Thorne thought he looked like a gargoyle. Holland made himself scarce and Thorne settled into a chair opposite his fellow DI. The comments of other officers were acknowledged with a nod and a lighthearted comment, and some of the smiles were undoubtedly sincere, but there were other faces he was less pleased to see again.
'How's the head, Tommy? Now you know how it feels, mate.,.
His calendar girls.
Yes, he knew what it felt like to have the power over your own body taken away. He'd been out of control so many times that it was almost familiar, but that loss went hand in hand with a warm, sleepy feeling that the booze threw in for good measure. The wine came with a little something special to ease the pain of smashed furniture or grazed knuckles. But the drug had taken him to places he never wanted to see again.
'He took away everything we had, Tommy…'
'I wanted to struggle…'
'We all did…'
'… to fight for my life, Tommy:
Tughan's mouth was moving but the sound was coming from a long way away.
Christine. Susan. Madeleine. And Helen. Drugged into oblivion and confronted by a monster. He'd confronted nothing but ghosts. The memories of ghosts. He thought about Alison. He needed to see her. He was still around and he wanted her to know that. He was still around only because that had been what the fucker wanted. He'd realised that straight away and hated the fucker for having the power to spare him. He'd chosen to give him his life.
He had made a mistake.
'He should have killed me:
'Don't say that, Tommy. Who would we have left to talk to?'
'Tom? Are you feeling all right? You shouldn't have come in.'
Thorne turned his eyes from the wall. He stood up and walked around the desk, catching Holland's eye as he put his hand on Nick Tughan's shoulder. 'Not caught him yet, then, Nick?'
Tughan laughed. Nails on a blackboard. I'll leave that to you, Tom. You're the one with the instincts, aren't you?'
Thorne stiffened. 'The one with experience.' He spoke the word as if he were naming a child molester. 'We're just getting on with the job, following leads. One or two of them yours, as a matter of fact.'
'Tom… '
Keable was speaking from the doorway of his office. Thorne looked up and he retreated, the invitation to join him unmistakable.
'I'll catch up with you later, Nick. Why don't you email me what you've got?'
Thorne walked across to Keable's office. He could hear Holland and one of the other DC's laughing as he went. Business as usual. But not for him.
Anne wanted to talk to Alison. Her workload meant that it was becoming increasingly difficult to spend a significant amount of time with her every day and they had stuff to catch up on.
He joined her a second or two after she stepped into the lift.
'David.'
'On the way up to see your locked-in case, I suppose. Any developments?'
'Do you care?'
He pressed the button and the doors started to close. There really wasn't a great deal to look at as a tactic to avoid what was sure to be an unpleasant encounter. She wondered instead if it was possible to escape from a lift using a trap-door in the roof as she had seen people do so often in films.
'I was sorry to hear about the attack on your policeman friend.'
They'd certainly done it in The Towering Inferno.
'Just after your cosy dinner trois with Jeremy, wasn't it?'
And Hannibal Lecter did it in Silence of the Lambs. Just after he'd cut that man's face off. Hmm.
'Anne?'
'Yes, it was, and no, you're not sorry, you're just a twat.'
The lift reached the second floor and Anne stepped out the moment the doors opened. Higgins stood preventing them from closing. 'Hanging around with police officers is obviously doing marvels for your vocabulary, Anne.'
'You're awfully well informed about what I'm up to, David. Using our daughter as a spy is rather pathetic, though.'
'Oh, I thought you two had no secrets?'
Not usually, but maybe it was time that changed. She'd need to talk to Rachel. He was now wearing that hideous smirk she remembered him reserving for tiny triumphs or the expectation of dutiful sex. She smiled at him, feeling nothing but pity.
'Why are you here, David?'
'Just because we're divorcing doesn't mean that I'm not interested in your life. I am.'
She stepped towards him. Did she see him actually flinch? 'There was an Oprah or a Ricki Lake recently about divorcing couples, did you catch it? This woman said that it was only when she was divorcing Duane or Marion or whoever, that she realised how much she loved him. It's weird, because all it's making me realise is how much I wanted to divorce you in the first place.'
The smirk had gone and she could see that the quiff was beginning to wilt slightly, but she could still feel the sharp tingle of the slap in a parked car, and picture the look in his eye after he'd spat at her in an Italian restaurant. Now he tried hard to look world-weary, but just looked old.
'You've become bitter, Anne.'
'And your hair is utterly ridiculous. I'm busy, David.'
The lift doors moved to close again, and Higgins was finding it hard to retain his balance. 'Aren't you at all interested in my life, Anne? What I'm doing?'
He was getting rusty – dollying up the ball like that. She couldn't wait to smash it home. 'OK, David. Are you still fucking that radiotherapist?'
She heard the doors closing as she walked away up the corridor. She knew that he'd never be certain if she'd heard his pathetic parting 'Give my love to Jeremy,' but it didn't matter either way.
She couldn't wait to tell Alison.
'Sit down, Tom.'
Thorne moved to take the uncomfortable brown plastic seat so generously offered. 'Fuck, this sounds a bit serious. Am I going to get a bollocking for being whacked over the head and pumped full of shit?'
'Why are you here, Tom? Do you think we can't manage without you?'
'No, sir.'
'Stop pissing about, Tom.' Keable passed a hand across his face. He was probably trying to appear thoughtful, thought Thorne, or maybe he was just tired. All he had succeeded in doing was roughing up his voluminous eyebrows and making himself look like a bald wolf man. Keable puffed out his cheeks. 'Do you feel rough?'
'What are these leads that Tughan's talking about?'
'There was a note, Tom.'
Thorne was out of his chair in a second. 'At the flat?
Show me…'
Keable opened a drawer and produced a dog-eared photocopied sheet of A4. He handed it to Thorne. 'The original's still at Lambeth.'
Thorne nodded. The Forensic Science Services Laboratory. 'Waste of time..,'
'I know.'
Thorne sat down and read. Typed as before. The same smug familiarity in every sentence. The same enjoyment and belief in a unique and wonderfully detached sense of humour. The same sickening self-love…
