wanted to share things like that with him. She wanted to share everything with him. She could have helped. He told her that he wanted to share everything with her and that one day soon he would. She felt her mouth go dry. She knew that he was talking about sex.
He'd asked if it had been very bad after he'd stormed out of the comedy club. She told him that the woman comedian had picked on her for a bit but then it had been the interval and she'd sneaked out. They laughed, wondering what the rest of the audience would have been saying about them. He said he'd buy her a new skirt to replace the one that got covered in beer. He told her he'd buy her lots of things.
They'd dallied over saying goodbye, but eventually Rachel said that she really had to go. She told him she'd call him later and that she loved him and they hung up at the same time.
And then she'd carried on getting ready for school. Anne was in a meeting and would be for the next couple of hours. Thorne was not unhappy about it. He'd asked at Reception and now he walked towards the lifts, breathing a sigh of relief. If he had run into her it would have been fine. He'd have handled it and so would she, but it was probably best to leave it a day or two.
He hoped that it would all be over by then. The day before, after the call from Sally Byrne, they hadn't been able to talk about anything. Once an arrest had been made, once the arrest had been made, they would be able to talk about it all. It wouldn't be easy for Anne but he would be there to help her through it.
If she still wanted him.
He'd seen it lots of times with those who'd been close to killers. He remembered how hard it had been for Calvert's mother and father, though that had been very different. It was a kind of death and there would be a proper mourning to be done. Anne would need to grieve for the friend she'd lost. She would be losing him in many ways, and she'd need to grieve for all of them. This was without the guilt she was bound to feel, and the shame at having been his friend in the first place, and the guilt she would feel because of the shame.
In all probability, she would also be the first port of call for his children and would need to comfort them and deal with their feelings. Then she would have the press to deal with. If they couldn't hound a killer, they would hound a killer's friends. None of it was going to be easy. Anne would be looking for someone to blame. It was probably best, then, to avoid confrontation for a while. To stay out of the line of fire. It still might all turn to shit anyway. He'd known plenty of cases, a lot more straightforward than this one, where a result had slipped away from them at the last minute. A fuck-up or, God forbid, a legal technicality was waiting around every corner to bury cocksure detective inspectors. Thorne wasn't counting any chickens. However, he was buoyant enough to be here in the first place, stepping into the lift and wondering exactly how he was going to explain everything. Because it wasn't Anne he had come to see anyway.
Going into Alison's room was a shock. Anne hadn't told him she was back on a ventilator, even though he'd known how susceptible she would always be to infection. The room was noisier again, more cluttered, but the girl at the centre of it still drew his eye and his heart as she had done from the first time he'd seen her. She'd had her hair cut since the last time he'd been here. That was the day he'd brought Bishop's photo in, just before he'd been told about the 'anonymous' accusations and things had spiraled out of control.
Everything was under control again now.
He moved slowly towards the bed, walking past the blackboard, now folded away and lying against the wall covered in a white sheet. Had Alison heard him come in?
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He knew how limited her field of vision was and didn't want to make her jump.
He caught himself. Jump? Silly bastard. He knew so little about what her life was like. What it had become. He'd promised himself he'd look into it and hadn't. He'd heard about people who'd had amputations and could still feel the limbs that had gone. Was it like that for Alison?
Could she still feel or even imagine she was feeling what it was like to jump or run or kick or kiss?
He stopped at the end of the bed where he knew she could see him. Her eyeball skittered back and forth for a few seconds. She blinked.
Hello.
He moved to the side of the bed, reaching for the plastic orange chair and looking around the room, casually, as if he were just another visitor fumbling for a suitable bedside pleasantry. He could see no flowers anywhere. There was nothing to do but begin talking.
'Hello, Alison. I hope you don't mind me just turning up but there are a few things I wanted to explain. Because nobody else has, really, and I think you have a right to know. Dr Coburn will have given you all the medical stuff.., the medical side of things, but I wanted to try and tell you what happened to you. After you left the club that night. Obviously we don't really know how much you remember. Probably nothing.'
He helped himself to a much-needed drink from the water jug on the bedside table. He wondered why there was a water jug when Alison couldn't drink.
'Exactly what happened between you leaving the nightclub and getting home is guesswork, really, but it doesn't matter. You can tell us about where you met the man with the champagne when you get off this ventilator and get a bit better, but we know that he came into your house, and that the drug in the champagne would have been taking effect, and that there'd have been nothing you could do when he… put his hands on you.'
There was a loud crash from the corridor outside. He saw Alison react. A momentary tension in the skin around the eyes. Sounds were obviously so important. He just needed to get to it now. Stop pissing about. He'd told parents how their children had died. Why should this be so difficult?
'Anyway, Alison, here's the thing. You didn't survive. I mean.., yes, of course you did, but that was actually what he wanted.'
He patted the edge of the bed, cast an eye towards the machines, the monitors, the tubes, and back to Alison's face.
'This… is what he wanted, what he was trying to achieve.
'It sounds mad, I know it does, and that's because it is. He wasn't trying to kill you. He might easily have killed you because what he did to you is actually incredibly difficult. He's tried before and since, and not been successful… and other women have died. So…'
So what? Thorne wondered whether he should ever have started this. What should he tell her now? How lucky she'd been?
'That's it. I won't tell you that you were fortunate not to die. That's really something only you can.., have feelings about. But you were strong enough.., not to die, so I'm sure you're strong enough to get yourself out of here.
'I have no idea why he did this, Alison. I wish I could tell you I did. I could make something up, but the truth is I haven't got a bloody clue.
'I can tell you one thing, though, and I suppose that's why I've come if I'm honest. He's going to tell me why he did it very soon. I want you to know that. Very soon. He's going to look me in the eye and tell me.'
He took her hand. Squeezed.
'Then I'm going to put the fucker in prison for the rest of his life.'
Really? I see. Well, thanks for popping by and dropping that little snippet into the conversation.
He did this to me deliberately. Wants me like this. Wired up, fucked up.
Right…
It's hard to take news any other way than calmly when you're like this. My reactions always tend to look a bit similar. On the outside anyway. I might seem a bit placid. Anybody looking at me would be thinking, Ooh, didn't she take it well?
Inside's another matter.
Raging. Understanding what it means when your blood boils, because I can feel it bubbling. I can feel it moving through my veins like lava. Because I know now. I know for certain. I'd sort of worked it out anyway.
I've been thinking it had to be something like that.
Something fucking twisted.
I've had a lot of time to think about it and you don't have to be a genius to work out that something strange was going on. There wasn't a mark on me.
There was nothing sexual. Anne told me.
I thought early on that maybe he was trying to break my neck but there wasn't even a bruise. I reckon it's really quite easy to kill somebody if you want to and I've been wondering why he didn't want to.
