TWENTY
As Thorne drove towards the Edgware Road, he found himself fighting to stay awake. The noise of six empty beer cans, rattling around in the footwell, was helping, but it was still a struggle. It had been a long night, and a bleak one. Not even the spectacle of Holland on the phone that morning, squirming and looking pained as he tried sheepishly to explain to Sophie where he'd spent the night, had raised the spirits.
They'd talked long into the night. Holland told Thorne what had happened to Michael and Eileen Doyle. They'd done it with tablets. The police had been called to the house on Windsor Road by a neighbour. She'd presumed they'd gone away to stay with relatives after what had happened to Helen.
A PC found them in an upstairs bedroom. They were holding hands.
In spite of what Holland had already had to drink, Thorne dug out a few cans and they'd sat up talking about everything and nothing. Parents, partners, the job. As the drink met the tiredness head on, Holland had started to drift off, and Thorne began to ramble vaguely about the girls. About Christine and Susan and Madeleine. And Helen. He didn't say anything about their voices He didn't mention how strange he found it that he never heard the voice of Maggie Byrne.
Thorne wondered if Holland heard it. He never asked him.
The note lay beside him on the passenger seat, safely Wrapped up. He saw himself handing it over in exchange for a warrant. He heard himself reading Jeremy Bishop his rights. He pictured himself leading the good doctor away, down the front path, past his terracotta pots full of dead and dying flowers.
Then he arrived at work and it all fell apart.
'They couldn't get a thing. Sorry, Tom.'
Keable did look sorry. But not as sorry as Thorne. They'd been waiting for him, Keable and Tughan, to fuck him up the second he stepped out of the lift.
'A ring's a difficult enough thing to print anyway by all accounts. A small surface area. This one was just a mess Dozens of partials but nothing worth writing up. We even sent it over to the Yard. SO3 have got better equipment, but -'
'What about dead skin on the inside? Hairs from a finger?' Thorne was trying to sound reasonable. Tughan shook his head. 'The bloke I spoke to said it was a forensic nightmare. It's been up and down the country, for Christ's sake, handled by God knows how many people.'
Thorne slumped back against the lift doors and felt fury fighting a battle with tiredness for control of him.
'Did you at least check the hallmark? Check it and you'll find out that ring was made the same year Bishop got married.'
Keable nodded but Tughan was in no mood to humour Thorne. 'Listen, even if we do get something, the chain of evidence is nonexistent.'
The fury won the battle. 'And whose fault is that? This has been one huge fuck-up from start to finish. I should have had a warrant by now. I should be tearing that bastard's house apart. This case should be over by now over.'
Tughan moved back towards his desk. 'It was only ever a slim possibility, Tom. We knew that even if you didn't. What were you planning to do anyway? Slip it on to Bishop's finger like a fucking glass slipper?'
Thorne waited until Tughan's self-indulgent chuckle had finished. 'How are you planning to spend the money the newspaper paid you, Nick?'
The colour rose immediately to Tughan's hollow cheeks. Keable stared hard at him, then back to Thorne, deciding finally that accusations would be best left until another day. 'Listen, Tom,' Keable said, 'Nobody's more upset about this than me and I'm going to crack some heads, trust me.'
And now Thorne felt the tiredness come rushing at him. He could barely keep his head erect. He closed his eyes. He had no idea how long they'd been closed when Keable next spoke. 'We've got this latest note. It's a significant development.'
'Another press conference?'
'I think it would be a good idea, yes.'
Thorne called the lift back up. Raising his arm and bringing his finger to the button was a struggle. He had an idea now of the effort it took for Alison to blink. He wanted to go home. He had no intention of hanging around and answering phones. He needed to lie down and switch himself off.
One final question: 'Is Jeremy Bishop this investigation's prime suspect?'
Keable hesitated a fraction too long before replying, but Thorne didn't hear the answer anyway, thanks to the roaring in his ears.
He was driving much too fast along the Marylebone Road. The exertion of steering, of concentrating, was leaving him wringing with sweat, which dripped from him as he leaned forward, crippled with exhaustion. It took every last ounce of energy he had to tap out a rhythm on the wheel, as the music exploded from the speakers.
He turned up the volume as high as it would go. He winced. The cheap speakers distorted the sound, turning the treble into shattering glass and the bass into a collision. The music, if it could still be called that, was shaking the car apart, but he would have made it even louder if he could. He wanted to be bludgeoned by the noise. He wanted to be hypnotised.
He wanted to be anaesthetised…
He swerved into the inside lane, reached for his phone and pulled up just past Madame Tussaud's.
He flicked on the hazards turned down the music and hit the speed dial.
A long queue of tourists was standing in the rain, waiting to get in and gawp at the waxy doppelgangers of pop stars, politicians and sportsmen. And,. of course, mass murderers: the Chamber of Horrors was always the most popular attraction.
Anywhere.
The violent death gravy train…
She picked up.
'It's me… I'm sorry about yesterday.'
'OK…' Sounding unsure, hedging her bets.
'Look, Anne, everything's changed, fucked up to be honest, and I just wanted to tell you…' Your ex boyfriend's off the hook. '… the evidence I thought I had hasn't.., materialised, so just ignore what I said, all right?'
'What about Jeremy?'
'Can I see you later?'
'Is he still a suspect?'
This time it was Thorne's turn to hesitate too long before replying.
'Can you come over later?'
'Listen, Tom, I won't say I'm not pleased because I am. I'm sorry about yesterday too, though…'
In the background Thorne could hear a doctor being paged. He waited until it had finished. 'Anne…'
'I'll be over about five-ish. I'm on call tonight so I'll sneak away from here early. All right?'
It was very all right.
He'd legislated for some ineptitude. There had been a little give built into his thinking. But this was way beyond anything he'd imagined.
Fucking morons. Stupid fucking idiots.
It was stupid to expect any kind of equilibrium, he knew that, but this kind of unpredictability was so fucking annoying. He'd started to feel the depression take hold again the second he'd put the phone down, wrapping itself around him, like a dark, itchy blanket. Making him scratch. Making him smell.
He walked up and down in straight lines. Up one board and down the other. Moving slowly across the room in vertical lines. Up one, his bare feet cool against the bleached floorboards. Down the other, his toes caressing each knot and whorl of the beautifully smooth wood. Up and down, his fingers stroking the straight, puckered lines that ran across his stomach.
Up and down, his breathing slowing, the white walls soothing…
