Holland took over. 'Can we talk about this harassment business? Exactly what is happening, as you understand it?'
She sat down. 'I went over all this on the phone.'
Holland took out a notebook on cue. Thorne had to admire the timing. She sighed and carried on. 'Right, well, Dad's been getting these phone calls… Oh, and there was somebody taking photos outside his house, but it's mainly the phone calls.'
'Your dad told you about this?'
'No, my brother James rang me. Dad's really upset and angry, and James thought I ought to know what was going on. To add another professional voice of complaint, I suppose. James and I don't exactly chat every day, so I guessed it was something important when I got his message.'
She began to chew intently at a fingernail. Thorne noticed that they were all bitten to the quick, some raw and bloody.
It was time to dig a little. 'So you and James are not… close?'
She looked up and he could see her considering a reply, and whether to give it. Was this territory she felt safe bringing strangers into? Maybe it was Holland's smile that did the trick.
'We're not a hugely close family. You must know most of this…'
They looked at her as if they didn't 'know anything at all.
'James and I aren't best friends, no. Dad and I don't get on either, if you must know, but that doesn't mean I want to see him upset.'
Holland nodded, full of understanding. 'Of course not.'
She began to speak slowly, but with a detectable relish.
'James and Dad like to think they're close, but really there's a lot of denial flying about. They fell out a bit a few years ago when James went off the rails a little, and now he just sees the old man as a glorified bank manager who's there to dole out cars and deposits on flats, so that good old James can fuck up anything he turns his hand to and not really worry about it.'
Thorne stirred the pot a little. 'I'm sure he does worry about it.'
'Oh, yeah, you've had the pleasure of meeting James, he told me. Christ, how bitter do I sound?' She tried to laugh, but it caught at the back of her throat.
Thorne's voice was quiet, measured. 'And how does your dad feel?'
'Guilty.' An instinctive answer. Word association. Thorne willed his face to show nothing Let her carry on dishing the family dirt.
'Guilty that Mum was off her face on tranquilisers and he was too pissed to drive. Guilty that he put her on the fucking tranquilisers in the first place. Guilty that he screwed up both his kids. Guilty that he didn't die instead of her. We're big on guilt, the Bishops. But Jeremy's the top man.'
Tranquilisers. That made a lot of sense. Was the Midazolam doing to his victims in a few short minutes what the tranquilisers had done to his wife over a number of years? Was all this about something as prosaic as revenge? No, not revenge exactly but… Thorne didn't know what.
Almost as soon as he'd thought it, he knew that it was too simplistic and, in a strange way, too poetic. The answer to this case wouldn't lie in everyday motives tied up in Christmas cracker psychology.
But he was getting under the skin of Jeremy Bishop. He gazed across at Bishop's daughter. She looked exhausted. She had been saying something she had not articulated for a while, or so it seemed to Thorne. She was speaking as if he and Holland weren't there. He needed, gently, to remind her that they were.
'And what about you, Rebecca? What are you guilty about?'
She looked at Thorne as if he was mad. Wasn't it obvious?
'That I wasn't in the car.'
While Tom Thorne was questioning Rebecca Bishop, a hundred miles away, her father, was having lunch with the woman who, at least in theory, was sleeping with him. He'd rung the night before. Anne had grabbed at the phone, hoping it might be Thorne, and was more than a little thrown when she'd heard Jeremy's voice. They'd agreed to meet. A pasta place in Clerkenwell, more or less midway between Queen Square and the Royal London. The hug was perhaps a little forced but the wine soon relaxed them and the conversation flowed easily enough. They talked about work. Stressful – hard to go home and relax. Tiring – when was it anything else? He was starting to think about a change of direction; she was intrigued. She was disappointed and upset about Alison's setback; he was sympathetic.
They talked about children. Was she expecting too much of Rachel? Was she too pushy? He told her not to give herself a hard time over it. He'd always expected the best from Rebecca and James and almost certainly had been too pushy. He was proud of Rebecca, and maybe James would work out soon what he wanted.
She told him he should be proud of both of them. Then a silence, which was just the right side of awkward, when Bishop broke it. 'Did you not phone because your boyfriend told you not to?'
Anne lit a cigarette, her third since they had finished the meal. 'You didn't call me either.'
'I was worried it might be awkward. I've read the papers and clearly I can't be a suspect any more, but he still seems to have something of a… problem with me.'
She flicked non-existent ash into the ashtray. 'I haven't spoken to Tom in over a week.' Bishop raised an eyebrow. More nervous ash-flicking. 'We've never really talked about you, anyway, Jeremy. Best to keep the personal and the professional separate.'
Bishop leaned forward and smil6d, interlocking long, slender fingers and resting his chin on them. He stared deep into her eyes. 'I do understand all that, Jimmy, and I know this is hard for you. But what do you really think?'
She held the eye-contact and tried with all her heart and soul to imagine this man the way Tom Thorne did. She couldn't do it. 'Jeremy, I don't…'
'I heard a story yesterday about a GP with a morphine addiction. He'd prescribe it to his older patients, then he'd make house calls and steal it back from them. They'd come into the surgery thinking they'd lost it, you know, going doolally in their old age. He'd smile at them, full of understanding, and prescribe them some more. And so on.'
Anne was not hugely shocked. Many doctors had problems with addiction. There was even a rehab centre exclusively for those who worked in the medical profession. Bishop carried on: 'The guy who told me this had known the man for twenty-odd years and had absolutely no idea.'
She looked at him. Holding her breath. His voice was barely a whisper.
'People have secrets, Anne.'
Anne looked down and fixed her eyes on the cigarette she was stubbing out in the ashtray. Carefully and deliberately she removed any trace of burning ember. What did he expect her to say? Was this just a piece of typically theatrical and provocative weirdness or…?
She looked up and signaled for the bill, then turned back to him, smiling. 'Talking of secrets, Jeremy, are you seeing somebody?'
His mood seemed to change in a moment. She saw it, and thought about backing off but decided against it. She wanted to turn the tables a little, to enjoy his awkwardness.
'You are, aren't you? Why are you being so coy?' She saw something like an answer in his eyes. 'Do I know her?'
He stared down at the tablecloth. 'It's not really serious and it's probably not going to last very long for all sorts of reasons, but if I talk about it, it will be like I'm cursing it somehow. Condemning it to an early grave.'
She laughed. Why this sudden superstition? 'Come on, since when have-'
'No.' His tone stopped the tail end of her laughter in its tracks. End of conversation.
'It would be like wishing it dead.'
Thorne arrived home fizzing and fidgety. There were people he needed to call. His dad. Hendricks. Anne, of course. But he felt too energised.
It had happened as he'd stepped out of Kentish Town tube station and was wondering which lucky off- license would have the benefit of his business on the way home. The conversation behind him had gone something like this. 'Big Issue…'
'Get a fucking job!'
'This is my job, you arsehole!'
