relieved. For Christ's sake, our dream ticket, our magic-island scenario, the best we can fucking hope for, involves wheelchairs and computers and one of us winning the lottery to pay for it all, and me about as much use as one of my two-year-olds and I wouldn't wish that on anybody.
Tim cares about me, I know he does. But I couldn't bear to be pitied. Loved is fine. But not pitied.
And 'cares for' is not 'cares about; is it?
So Tim, think yourself lucky, pet, and I apologise in advance if, at the crucial moment in your posh wedding to some drop-dead gorgeous blonde, when the vicar says that bit about just cause or impediment', the door to the church crashes open and some spackhead in a wheelchair trundles in. Just ignore me and get on with it. I'll probably be pissed… Fuck me, did you hear what I said before?
'If I ever get out of here:
FOURTEEN
The cat had sat and watched, content, unblinking, as a woman who loved her had been smashed across the back of the head and bled dry like a pig. Now she sat staring down at the face of a man who didn't understand any more than she had. Rising and falling with him as he breathed. Rising and falling and watching his eyes. They were dosed but she followed the movements of his eyeballs, darting back and forth behind the eyelids like tiny trapped animals. Looking for a way out. Searching for a weak spot. Heads bulging behind the eyes, threatening to burst through the paper-thin skin…. and Maggie Byrne smiled and lay back on the bed. She kicked off her shoes and rubbed her feet together. He could hear the nylon of her tights crackling. He said something – a joke maybe. She threw back her head to laugh and the red line beneath her chin started to gape. She blushed and reached for a scarf and he told her that it didn't matter but she was already starting to cry. She shook her head and sobbed and tried to tie the scarf around her neck. The gash gaped wider until it looked like something on a fishmonger's slab. The not-so-slender neck, hacked into sections like tuna. Pink then a darker pink then red. And his words would not comfort her. And he tried to take her in his arms but they slipped from around her neck. And his hands were stroking her collarbone and his fingers were exploring the damp and clammy interior of the wound.
Testing for freshness.
Maggie Byrne tried to scream but it came whistling from her neck.
He opened his eyes…
He hadn't been asleep and it wasn't a dream. Just a mental snapshot, twisted. A memory adjusted and warped by the unwelcome addition of an imagination. Something that lived in the ghoulish and morbid corner of his subconscious having its bit of fun.
He opened his eyes…
And waited for the images to blur and become distant. Lying on the sofa, hearing his heartbeat slow down. Feeling the beads of sweat on his face evaporate. Letting something creep back into its corner.
Until the next time.
He opened his eyes and stared back at the cat sitting on his chest.
'Fuck off, Elvis!'
The cat jumped off Thorne and slunk away towards the bedroom. Maggie had beer] a big Elvis fan and had named the cat before it had been sexed. She'd always thought it was funny. Sally Byrne had taken a couple of her mother's cats back to Edinburgh with her, and the rest had gone to the PDSA, but Elvis had been Thorne's from the moment he'd opened the door to Maggie's bedroom and breathed in the blood. The cat seemed drawn to him, Sally had said. To need him, almost.
Almost as much as he needed her.
Just over two weeks now since he'd opened that bedroom door. Just over twenty-four hours since Margaret Byrne's funeral. Thorne didn't know about the arrangements for Leonie Holden. He was what he'd once heard Nick Tughan describe as 'out of the loop' on that one. Her funeral might well already have happened. They'd found her a few hours before he'd found Maggie Byrne, and if Phil Hendricks had got the bits of her he needed, safely labeled in jars, then the body would have been released back to those for whom it still meant something real. Something in their hearts and in their guts. Then they could say goodbye.
There would have been an official presence at her funeral, of course. It was often just some flowers but he could picture Tughan at the back of a church, in black like an assassin. He wondered if Frank Keable would have put in an appearance. Or somebody higher up. If the body count carried on rising they'd end up having to send the commissioner along. A thin smile and a wreath of white lilies spelling out 'Sorry, doing our best'. Thorne had never made a habit of attending the funerals of his victims.., the victims of his cases – on his cases. He'd go on the occasions when they thought there was a fair chance of the killer turning up. He'd stand at the back then, scanning the mourners, looking for one who didn't belong. There was no chance of the killer attending the funerals of these victims, though. He wanted to forget the dead ones. They were his failures.
It suddenly struck Thorne like a hammer to the chest that he had no idea when Helen Doyle had been buried. Buried, of course, not cremated. Leaving it open for a second post-mortem, should one be needed, or demanded much later by the accused.
Even dead, her body was not her own.
Thorne swung his feet to the floor, sat up and rubbed his eyes. The sweat was making them sting. He was starving. There was a headache starting…
It was time to stop hiding.
He'd emerged briefly to pay the respects he felt were due to Margaret Byrne, that he guessed she'd never received when she was alive. He'd hugged the daughter of a woman he'd known only in death. He'd held her close as she wept. He'd laughed as she talked about cats and waved as she climbed into the funeral car.
He'd looked across the all-but-empty church at Dave Holland, who sat stony-faced and stiff, like a sixth- former in an uncomfortable collar. They'd nodded to each other and looked away quickly. It was probably best to keep a little distance with so much accusation still flying around. So much blame to be doled out.
Thorne had given himself a fair bit of explaining to do and hadn't made a particularly good job of it. They knew it was Holland who'd told him about Margaret Byrne and given him her address. They couldn't prove it, but they knew. It didn't change anything. It didn't explain to anybody how the killer had found out. Or how the killer had known that Thorne was close to a positive identification. Or how the killer had been able to pop round to snuff out the threat before calmly going . about the business of slaughtering Leonie Holden.
Nothing was easily explained, but what was obvious to everyone was that Thorne had no business being anywhere near Margaret Byrne. He looked unreliable.
He felt responsible.
Margaret Byrne had died because of what she knew and what she could tell him. That was obvious. She'd died because Thorne knew who the killer was and because she could identify him and because somewhere, in an inept operation that he'd once been a part of, there was a leak big enough to sink a battleship.
Thorne had an idea or two about who, but was at a loss to explain how or why. The press getting hold of stuff, which now they had, was never a mystery. The solution was always there, lurking inside the bank balance of a constable with a gambling problem or some sergeant with too much alimony to pay. But this was something else entirely. This leak had led a killer back to Margaret Byrne's door with an iron bar and a scalpel. This was something infinitely more sinister and something to be guarded much more fiercely. Ranks were swiftly closed. Eyes turned outwards, fingers pointing. And now, for Thorne, everything was in the balance. Keable had just told him to sit and wait. Thorne had little argument. He was in trouble and decisions needed to be made at a higher level. It sounded good, k sounded like a plan of action, but Thorne knew that really Keable just had no idea what to do with him. And Thorne was already sick of sitting and waiting. The nagging headache was starting to scream. He stood and walked towards the bathroom in search of aspirin, but his eye was taken by the small red light winking at him from the table near the front door. Messages on his answering-machine.
'It's only Dad. Call me when you get a minute…'
' Tom… it's Anne. I'll call back.'
Then a voice he didn't recognise. A woman's voice. Quiet. Reluctant. A catch in the throat…
'Hello, we've never met. My name's Leonie Holden and I was murdered a week or so ago. I would have
