spitting out men and women with bags and briefcases. They climb into cars or hop on to bikes or stride away towards buses and tubes.
Calvert's door stays resolutely shut.
Thorne sits and stares at the dirty white van. Letters on the side: E J. CALVERT BUTCHER.
Butcher…
Stupid! He's being so stupid. He needs to start his car and get himself to work, and have a laugh with some of the other lads and maybe help to organise this leaving party and forget he ever met Francis John Calvert, and instead he finds himself walking across the street. He finds himself knocking on a dirty green front door. He finds himself starting to sweat when he gets no answer.
In the respectfully muted euphoria of the days to come, before the astonishing truth that Calvert had been interviewed on four separate occasions emerges, before the resignations, before the national scandal.., there will be words of praise for Detective Constable Thomas Thorne. A young officer using his initiative. Doing his job. Putting any thoughts for his own safety out of his mind. Out of his mind…
It is as if he is watching himself, like a nosy bystander. He has no idea why he tries the front door. Why he leans against it. Why he runs back to his car and takes a truncheon from the boot.
Calvert's wife looks surprised to see him. Her eyes are wide as he walks into her kitchen, breath held, heart thumping. She lies on the floor, her head against the dirty white door of the cupboard underneath the sink. The bruise around her neck is beginning to turn black. She still has a wooden spoon in her hand.
She was the first to die. She had to be. The children would tell him that much.
Denise Calvert. 32. Strangled.
Thorne moves through the flat like a deep-sea diver exploring a wreck. The silence is pounding in his ears. His movements feel slow and oddly graceful, and there are ghosts in the water all around him…
He finds them in the small bedroom at the back of the flat. They are laid out next to each other on the floor, between the bunk beds and the small, single mattress. He cannot take his eyes off the six tiny white feet. Unable to fill his lungs, he drops to his knees and crawls across the floor. He takes in what he is seeing but there is a blunt refusal to process the information correctly. Grabbing at a breath he lets out a scream. He screams at the dead girls. He pleads with them. Please… you'll be late for school He is actually begging them to save him.
With that breath he smells the shampoo in their hair. He smells the freshly washed nightdresses and the urine that has soaked them. He sees the stain on the mattress on the floor where he must have taken each of them. The girls have been laid out side by side, their arms across their chest in some grotesque approximation of peacefulness. But they did not die peacefully.
Lauren Calvert. 11. Samantha Calvert. 9. Anne Marie Calvert. 5. Suffocated.
Three little girls, who screamed and fought and kicked and ran to find their mummy and then screamed even louder – their mother already dead, the only state in which she will allow this horror to be visited upon her children then the man they love and trust closed the bedroom door, and they fluttered around in a panic, like moths trapped inside a light fitting. They crashed into walls, and clutched each other and when he grabbed one and pulled her down to the mattress on the floor, they bit and scratched and cried, and went somewhere far better with their tiny fingers clawing at the flesh of those strong, callused hands.
Thorne has to believe that. He cannot accept that they smiled at their daddy as he laid the pillow across their faces.
He will not accept that.
It might be thirty minutes later when he finds Calvert. He has no idea how long he's spent in that tiny box room trying to understand. Thinking about Jan. The child they are desperate for.
He pushes open the door to the living room and his senses are immediately bludgeoned. He smells whisky, so strong he almost chokes on it, and the pungent aroma of gunpowder, which until this moment he has only ever known on a firing range.
He sees the body on the floor in front of the hearth. The brain caked to the mirror above the tiled mantelpiece. Francis John Calvert. 3 7. Suicide by gunshot.
Thorne walks across the grimy mushroom-coloured carpet like a sleepwalker. Not looking down as his foot sends an empty' whisky bottle clattering into the skirting board. Not taking his eye off Calvert. The outstretched arm is still holding the gun. The underpants are brown with congealed blood. When had this happened? Last night or first thing this morning?
The hands are unmarked by small fingers.
Thorne stands above the body, his arms hanging heavy by his sides, his breathing deep and desperate. He leans forward, knowing what's going to happen, amazed considering that he's had no breakfast. The spasm, when it comes, moves swiftly from guts to chest and then throat, and he vomits, steaming, wet and bitter, across what's left of Francis Calvert's face.
'It wasn't your fault, Tom. I know it must have been horrible, but you can't think it happened because of you.'
Thorne lay on the settee and stared at his dull magnolia ceiling. Somewhere in the distance the siren of a fire engine or an ambulance was wailing desperately.
Anne squeezed his hand, feeling like a doctor. She thought quickly of Alison. 'You were right when you thought it was an aberration. You finding them was just a coincidence. A horrible coincidence…'
Thorne had no more to say. The tiredness that had been clutching at him all day now had a firm grip and he didn't feel like struggling any more. He craved unconsciousness, a blackness that would see everything he'd remembered and described put back where it belonged. The rusty bolts slammed back into place.
He closed his eyes and let it come.
Anne had kept it together while Thorne was telling his story, willing her face to show nothing, but now she let the tears come. Thinking about the little girls. Thinking about her own daughter's tiny white feet.
It was easy to see what drove this man. What had created this obsession with.., knowing. She hoped in time that he would see his feelings for Jeremy as no more than phantoms. Distorted echoes of a past horror. She hoped they could all move on.
She would be there to help him.
She shivered slightly. The shadow was still moving across them and its chill gathered at her shoulder. She laid her head on Thorne's chest which, within a few moments, began to rise and fall regularly, in sleep. The pictures are still fuzzy but the words are clearer now. Like watching a film I've seen before, but since the last time I saw it my eyesight's gone funny and it's all a bit jumpy. We're in the kitchen. Me and him.
I tell him to put his bag down anywhere and I'm still swigging the champagne and asking him if he wants a cup of coffee or a beer or something. He says nice things about the flat. I grab a can of beer that Tim's left in the fridge. He opens it and I'm still talking about the party. about the wankers in the club. Blokes on the sniff. He's sympathetic, saying he knows what men are like, and that I can hardly blame them, can I?
Music comes in for a few seconds as I turn the radio on, and then some static as I try to tune it in to something good, and then I give up.
He says he needs to make a phone call and he does, but I can't hear him saying anything. He's just muttering quietly. I'm still rattling on but I can barely make out what I'm saying now. Just gabbling. Something about starting to feel a bit sick but I don't think he's really listening. I'm apologising for being so out of it. He must think I'm really fucking sad, slumped on the kitchen floor, leaning against a cupboard, hardly able to speak. Not at all, he says, and I can hear him unzipping his bag. Rummaging inside. There's nothing wrong with having a good time, he says. Going for it. Fucking right I tell him, but that's not how it comes out of my mouth.
I can hear my shoes squeak across the tiles as he drags me to the other side of the kitchen. My earrings and my necklace clinking as he drops them into a dish.
The groaning noise is me.
I sound like I can't actually speak at all. Can't. Like a baby. Or an old person with no teeth in, and half their brain gone. I'm trying to say something but it's just a noise. He's telling me to be quiet. Telling me not to bother trying. His hands are on me now and he's describing everything he's doing. Telling me not to worry and to trust him. Talking me through it. He tells me the names of muscles when he touches them.
Stupid names. Medical.
He catches his breath and then he's quiet for a while. A couple of minutes.
And I can't hear myself saying a single thing about it. Not a word of complaint, just the drip, drip, drip of my
