Nothing.
From behind the second door he heard a small, muffled thud. The thumping in his chest was anything but.
'It always comes down to the final door, Tommy:
' Open it…'
'She'll come walking through the front door in a minute and you'll feel like a right tit…'
Thorne opened the door.
He cried out, staggering backwards in sudden shock as something flew, hissing, out of the room and into his legs. He pushed himself off the wall and watched, his heart smashing against his chest as a cat careered into the living room. He heard the bang as it clattered through the cat flap in the kitchen door.
Then he could smell it.
Cat skit and something else. Something more familiar and far more disgusting. Tangy and metallic, and so strong he could have licked it out of the air. His tongue on a dying battery.
Resigned to the harder stuff…
Resigned to the inevitability of what he was going to see, Thorne stepped forward into the darkened room and reached for the light switch.
There were four more cats. One stared down at him from the top of the wardrobe while a second hopped lazily from a highly polished dressing-table. Two more were on the bed. Curled up across the body of Margaret Byrne.
She lay straight, down the edge of the left-hand side of the bed, her hands by her side, her head back and turned towards him. One eye was half open but not as wide as the scarlet smile across her neck, the incision made gaping by the angle of her head on the pillow.
'Sweet Christ…'
The blood was pooled beneath her collar-bone and had overflowed across her left side and on to the duvet, from where it still dripped slowly on to the patterned blue carpet. One side of her pink blouse was sopping red. A foot or so from where Thorne was standing, frozen to the spot, there was another bloodstain, already sunk in and brown. Spatter patterns snaked away across the carpet, reaching as far as the wall on the opposite side of the bed. He could see straight away that this was where she'd been attacked, before being laid out on the bed to die, he guessed, a short time later. While her killer watched. Something glinting on the carpet near the end of the bed caught his eye. An earring, perhaps. He could see a necklace too, and rings, and a wooden jewelry box on its side by the wall.
Margaret Byrne had tried to save the few things she had which were precious. But the man she had tried to save them from had not come to rob her.
Once again the nagging voice of procedure. He was contaminating a crime scene. He needed to get out. He regretted not asking Holland about her when he'd had the chance. Now he had to stand in a carpeted and perfumed slaughterhouse and piece it together. It wasn't hard to get a feeling for her. Of her. The cats and the neatly arranged bottles and jars on the dressing-table told him enough. He felt behind him for the solidity of the wall, leaned back against it and lowered himself slowly to the floor. The cat that had been sniffing around, a small black and-white one, ambled over and nuzzled his shins. Thorne reached into his pocket for his phone and held it, dangling between his knees.
He wanted to stay with Margaret for a while before he made the call.
When the cars arrived Thorne was sitting on the doorstep, staring at the woman in the window opposite. The cat, who would not leave him alone, was making itself comfortable on his lap. Holland walked up and hovered. After a few moments Thorne looked up with a twisted smile. He had expected Tughan and was relieved not to see him. He couldn't see anybody he thought might be Brewer either.
'Been promoted, Holland?'
Holland said nothing. Remembering his conversation with Maggie Byrne on the same spot the day before, he was a word, a heartbeat from tears. Thorne watched the SOCO's steaming up the passageway with their equipment. He had felt the same way as Holland fifteen minutes earlier but now a strange calm had begun to settle over him.
'He executed her, Dave. He broke into her house and executed her.'
Holland looked straight back at him and spoke evenly, his face showing nothing.
'He's been busy.'
PART THREE
I'm going to chuck Tim today. Does that sound a bit sudden?
Sorry, I know it's out of the blue and maybe I should have built up to it a bit more, but I've been thinking about it for a good while.
Thinking about it.
Like I can do anything else. I'm hardly in a position to discuss boyfriend problems with my best mate, even if l was sure I still had one. Well, I could, but it would be the dullest girly gossip in history. Barley water and blackboards are no substitute for booze and fags and a home-delivery pizza. And staring isn't laughing, is it?
But I have been thinking a lot about Tim and how unhappy he is. It's a real old line, I know, but it's for his sake rather than mine. Chucking him, I mean. I won't be trotting out shite like 'I love you but I'm not in love with you or 'I think we should just be friends: To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what I will say. I say 'say'. Obviously I mean 'blink' and 'twitch' while the poor sod tries to keep the smile plastered to his face as he does his best to work out what the fuck I'm on about. It's not as if I've got anything to go on, nothing I've ever seen in a film or on telly. Tearful farewells to terminally ill loved ones are ten a penny but this is pretty sodding unique. Never seen this on East Enders or Brookside. It's probably only a matter of time, of course. They'll drag it out over a couple of months. Milk it a bit. Probably be the big Christmas cliffhanger with the tragic, yet still very sexy young woman in the hospital bed blinking like buggery while her hunky boyfriend kneels by the side of the bed, sobbing his heart out and telling her that he still loves her no matter what.
Yeah, right…
So I don't really know how I'm going to do it, but it's got to be done. I've only ever dumped one person. I was seventeen and he copped off with one of my mates at a party. Had his hand up her bra while I was in the queue for the toilet. Even so, the actual chucking was pretty tricky, and bear in mind, that was when I was vertical with a working gob.
The way I am now, it's shaping up to be a nightmare. I know that in letting Tim off this very nasty hook, I'm probably coming across like some selfless, saintly figure, but the sad truth is that actually I'm just being a right selfish cow. Because the fact is that he won't do it.
And I can't stand to see the pain in his eyes any more when he looks at me.
He doesn't know what to do, bless him. He talks, slowly. He talks and he uses the pointer like Anne showed him but I know he can't bear it. He's always been a bit of a girl about hospitals and blood and anything like that.
He said that he wished it had happened to him instead of me, and I know he means it. Before it sounds like this is me setting him free, or some cobblers like that, so he can go off and find someone else, I should say that if I ever get out of here and get myself sorted out, he'd better come running straight back, and I won't want to hear about what he's been up to and who with.
The truth is simple. He can't stand to see me hurt, and I feel the same way about him. And he looks utterly crushed all the time he's with me and it's my fault. I'm five feet fuck-all and I can't move a muscle and I'm squashing all the life out of him. So best to knock it on the head for now. Not the best choice of words probably but that's not something I get a lot of say in these days.
He's not going to like it. He'll cry most probably, big soft thing, or shout. Actually that would be good, there's nothing like a bit of a scene to get the nurses going, but I think that when he goes home and thinks about it he'll be
