expertise…
“I’m sure the DCI will take it in his stride. He must be getting used to disappointment by now.” Kitson turned sharply. “Sorry?”
“On this case, I mean.” Holland could see that
Kitson was annoyed, that she’d misunderstood him somehow. He tried to backpedal: “It’s been a bastard from the off, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t care what it has been. Christ, what sort of attitude is that?”
“I wasn’t implying anything, guv…”
Kitson shoved her arm through the straps of her bag, lifted it up onto her shoulder. “Sorry, Dave. I’m just cheesed off and a bit snappy.”
She walked toward the door and Holland followed.
“Is everything all right?” Even as he asked he guessed it was a pointless question. Kitson rarely revealed anything of her private life anymore. “My eldest got sent home from school yesterday for punching another kid. Some little toe-rag who was picking on his younger brother.” She looked at
Holland, unable to keep the grin at bay. “Of course, secretly I’m hugely proud of him…”
Holland smiled and opened the door for her. Kitson had really got herself back together of late.
A couple of years earlier she’d been seen as very much the role model for high-achieving female officers: on the fastest of fast tracks with job and family seemingly balanced perfectly. Then the news got out that her old man had caught her screwing a senior officer and had walked out, taking their three children with him. Though she’d got her kids back soon enough, everything else had unraveled very bloody quickly. It wasn’t the affair itself as much as the fact that it had become common knowledge that made things so tough, but she’d eventually come through it. She’d proved how bloody-minded she was, if nothing else.
In the last few months she’d started to return to her old self. Progress through the ranks would not be quite as mercurial from now on, but she didn’t seem overly concerned. She’d even begun seeing someone new; someone who most certainly was not a copper.
“He wouldn’t know the Criminal Justice Act from the hole in his arse,” she’d announced gleefully. Thorne had raised his head wearily from a copy of
Police. “Neither would a lot of coppers…” It was odd, but Kitson’s life had taken a turn for the better at around the same time that Thorne’s had begun its free fall. Now, with Thorne not around,
Kitson was more or less running the show day to day; reporting to Brigstocke, who, as nominal senior investigating officer, was kept busy enough dealing with the press and the pressure from above. Stepping out of the mortuary suite, Holland could see Hendricks and Jago on a bench at the other end of the narrow corridor. Jago was sobbing and shaking her head. Hendricks had his arm around her shoulder. Holland and Kitson walked toward them, talking quietly to each other as they went.
“Like I said, relief.”
“If she’s crying like that now…”
Kitson looked sideways at him. “She won’t have any tears left if her brother ever does turn up dead.” “I got the impression she’s expecting him to…” They arrived in front of the green plastic bench.
Jago looked up at them. Managed to blurt out a broken “sorry” between sobs.
“Don’t be silly, Susan,” Holland said.
“I know you’re desperate to get out of here,” Kitson said. “I just wanted to be certain about a few things.” She gave Hendricks a look. He moved to the end of the bench and Kitson slid in next to Jago. “The thing is, I don’t quite understand why you thought the picture was your brother in the first place. I know it’s not a real photo, but you sounded so certain when you called us.”
Jago took a few seconds, brought the crying under control. “It does look like Chris…” The accent was marked. Look rhyming with spook. She’d come down on the train that morning from Stoke-on-Trent. She nodded back toward the mortuary suite. “That poor sod probably did look a lot like Chris. It’s hard to tell, you know? I haven’t seen him in so long now that I’ve no idea what he might look like anymore, if he’s lost weight or grown a beard or whatever…” “I can see that, but even so…”
“It’s definitely not him, ’cause there was no scar.”
She rubbed her right arm, just above the elbow.
“Chris caught his arm on some barbed wire, there, when he was a kid. Trying to get a ball back.” “Right…”
“And the tattoo was wrong. I was so sure it was the same, you know? Then, when I saw it, I could tell it was different. Maybe it was the position of it. It might have been a bit lower down Chris’s arm than it was on… that bloke.”
“How exactly was it different?”
Jago started crying again, snatching breaths between the sobs. She raised her eyes to the ceiling and chewed her bottom lip.
Holland looked down at her. He’d thought she was somewhere in her early thirties, but seeing her now, he wondered if she might be younger. The mascara that was smeared all over her face made it difficult to tell one way or the other. She had very dark hair and extremely pale skin. Similar coloring to the dead man lying in a drawer along the corridor.
“How was the tattoo different?” Kitson asked again. “Different letters? Color? Was it laid out differently?”
Hendricks drew Jago a little closer, nodded his encouragement.
Between sobs: “I don’t… know.”
“You’re certain it is different, though?”
“Yes… I think so.”
Kitson glanced up at Holland, raised an eyebrow.
When she spoke again, her voice was still low and soothing, but Holland could hear the determination.
“Look, we know the man in the mortuary isn’t
Chris, which is great.” Holland caught Hendricks’s eye and had to look away for a second, embarrassed by the lie. “But I have to ask you if you recognized him at all. Had you ever seen him before?” The shake of the head was as definite as it could be. “I’m only asking you because of the tattoo. It’s such a unique design. Do you understand, Susan?
Why would someone have a tattoo so similar?” Again she brought the crying under control, pressing a sodden tissue hard into both eyes.
“There was a time, years ago, when Chris and his mates all went out one night and got one. They got pissed up and got their tattoos at the same time.
They got the same sort of thing done. I don’t know why. I don’t know what it means.”
Excitement flashed across Kitson’s face. “Chris and his mates? Is the man in the mortuary one of your brother’s mates, do you think? Is that possible?”
Jago shook her head. “I told you, no. I’ve never seen him before…”
The excitement had gone by the time Kitson had stood up. She nodded to Holland. “We’d better be getting back.” To Jago: “Do you want us to arrange a cab for you?”
Hendricks moved his arm from her shoulder and took hold of her hand. “Why don’t I give you a lift?” “Could you?”
“Yeah, no problem. I’ll run you to Euston…” She looked up at Holland and Kitson. “I’ll have to sort out my ticket when I get there. I’m not sure what train I’m allowed to get, because I got an open return.” Her eyes were red beneath a film of tears, but
Holland thought he could see real happiness in them for the first time. “I thought it was Christopher, you see? I didn’t think I’d be going straight back.”
Thorne raised his hands, backing away. Though he could make out precious little of what the man was saying, the words fuck, off, and bastard were clear enough, so he picked up the gist of it.
“Calm down, pal,” Spike said.
The man hurled another torrent of incoherent abuse at them and wheeled away, just managing to avoid walking straight into the wall behind him.
Spike hawked into the gutter and picked up his pace. “Fucking old tosser has a right go at me every time I
