upset, so things are tense all round.”
Thorne knew that Maxwell was right to be worried. For anyone left behind after a murder, life was changed, was blighted forever. The others sleeping rough on the streets were the closest thing these murder victims had to friends and family. Even if the man responsible was caught, readjustment would not be easy. Maxwell and others like him would be the ones who had to deal with the fallout…
“So, run it by me,” Thorne said.
“It’s this tattoo thing. We know that the tattoo on the first victim isn’t unique anymore, right? Susan Jago thinks the one her brother’s got is a bit different, but it’s got to be fairly close to identical or she wouldn’t have thought it was him. So we can look for it. We can try and find another one. I mean, all this is dependent on her brother being dead, so it might be a waste of time, but…”
“Have you talked to Brigstocke about this?”
“It’s probably a stupid idea. I was just thinking about how I could do something to help Susan Jago.”
Thorne pulled up his knees, hugged them to his chest. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“It’s not complicated. I just went to a few Web sites. The Pathological Society of Great Britain, the Association of Clinical Pathologists, the Royal College of Pathologists…”
“How many bloody pathologists are there?”
“I went on to the message boards and described the tattoo. Asked anyone who’d come across anything similar to get in touch. The RCP’s got an online database which I can access because I’m a member, so I basically sent out a mass e-mail to pretty much every pathologist in the country. If Chris Jago is dead, this might be a way to trace him. Like I said, probably a waste of time…”
“Worth a try, though,” Thorne said.
“Actually, it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I managed to sign up for a course on stem-cell differentiation and I applied for a credit card.”
“There you go, then.”
They looked up and watched as a gaggle of jabbering American teenagers hurried past in a frenzy of clean hair and perfect teeth. When the group had cleared, Thorne found himself staring across the pavement, exchanging blank looks with a man wearing a sandwich board. Thorne had earned enough in the morning to treat himself to the?4.95 all-youcan-eat Chinese buffet being advertised…
“Why didn’t you go home to have a shower?” Hendricks said.
“You and Brendan really do tell each other everything.”
“Seriously, though…”
Thorne looked at him as if he were losing his mind. “I’m supposed to be working undercover, Phil. I can hardly just pop home when I’m feeling a bit grubby.”
“That’s crap. This is a transient community, you know it is. People come and go all the time. No one’s keeping tabs on you, are they? Nobody’s going to bat an eyelid if you disappear for an afternoon. You could jump on a tube and go home for a few hours. Recharge your batteries. You could watch a game and get a decent bloody curry if you felt like it.”
“I’ve got a job to do.”
“It’s mental…”
“Have you finished?” Thorne leaned forward, began to scoop up the coins from his flattened rucksack. A ten-pence piece fell to the pavement and rolled toward the man with the sandwich board. “Haven’t you got any bodies waiting for you?”
The young trainee detective constable would have found conversation on just about any topic more interesting than the work he was supposed to be doing, but the salacious detail was coming thick and fast.
“I swear, I’m knackered, mate,” Stone said. “She wants a good seeing to every lunchtime. I’ve hardly got time to squeeze in a sandwich.”
Karim leered. “What? She’s kinky about food, as well?”
Stone, Karim, and Holland were gathered around an L-shaped arrangement of desks in the incident room. The TDC, whose name was Mackillop, sat at a computer, his mouth hanging slightly open.
“You can keep your eighteen-year-olds,” Stone said. “This woman’s divorced, in her forties…”
Karim lifted his backside onto the desk, slapped out a complex rhythm on his thighs. “Single and up for it.”
“She’s fit, she knows what she’s doing…”
“She’s obviously desperate,” Holland said.
Stone nodded, laughing. “She’s fucking grateful, is what she is. And she goes like a bat in a biscuit tin.”
The reaction from the other three was predictably noisy. The laughter began to die down quickly when Kitson was spotted coming across. Mackillop was tapping at his keyboard again by the time she arrived at the desk.
“What am I missing?” she said.
Stone didn’t miss a beat. “Not a lot, guv. Just talking about that pair of plonkers with the horse…”
“Right.” She didn’t buy it for a minute.
Holland saw her flush slightly as she picked up a piece of paper from the desk and pretended to read it. He knew very well that Kitson had once been used to this. That the sudden descent of awkward silences onto groups of her colleagues had been an everyday occurrence for her. He felt bad, but there was little he could do. She was one of the boys only up to a point, and even if they were happy to tell her what they’d been talking about, the lie had already made it impossible. What could he possibly say, anyway: It’s okay, guv, we were talking about Stoney’s sex life, not yours?
After a minute or two of stilted shoptalk, Kitson drifted away. Soon afterward, Holland did the same.
The coffee machine had been on the blink for months now, and had been replaced by a cheap kettle, mugs from home, and catering-size packs of tea and coffee from the cash-and-carry. With Sam Karim in the office, only the foolish or the desperate brought in biscuits.
While Holland waited for the kettle to boil, he considered the way he reacted these days to the racy tales of Stone’s love life. He was generally hugely disapproving or insanely jealous; either way, his reaction was more extreme than it would have been before the baby. He’d decided that, although Andy Stone liked himself a little too much, he was basically all right. He could be flash and lazy and prone to getting only half the job done, but he was a lot better than some.
It was hard to work with someone for a while and then watch them promoted above you, but Holland had been impressed by the generosity of Stone’s reaction when he’d made sergeant. Much to his own surprise, Holland had been hungry-at first, anyway-for the “sirs” and the “guvs.” For the deference to rank. Though it didn’t kick in properly until you made inspector, Holland made sure he got it where he could. But with Stone he was never really bothered one way or another. Perhaps it was similar to the working relationship he normally had with Tom Thorne: the lack of emphasis placed on seniority, which Holland hoped said something pretty decent about both of them…
“Make one for me, would you, Dave?”
He turned to see Brigstocke beside him. Everyone pulled rank when they wanted a cup of tea making.
Holland tossed a tea bag into his own mug and another into one with world’s greatest dad emblazoned on the side.
“How was DI Thorne when you spoke to him last night?” Brigstocke asked. “I know he must have been pissed off when you told him about Susan Jago.”
“ Very pissed off.”
“Apart from that, though?”
“Okay, I suppose…”
“I passed that stuff about the different groups on to Paul Cochrane, by the way.”
Holland nodded. Cochrane was the profiler Brigstocke had brought in via the National Crime Faculty. “Good.”
“He was already taking it into account, in fact.”
“Right…” Holland unscrewed the top off the milk. He raised the plastic bottle to his nose and took a sniff.
“I should have had a coffee,” Brigstocke said. “I’m half-asleep.”
