slowly toward the exit.
“They can get a bit naughty as well, so you need to be careful. You look like you can take care of yourself, though…”
A few months ago, Thorne might have agreed with him. Right now he felt weak and incapable. Then he remembered the anger that had boiled up as he’d dragged Moony from one side of the street to the other.. .
Near the door that led from the cafe into the reception area, a trophy cabinet was mounted on the wall. There were a number of highly polished cups and shields, and a note taped to the glass showing the position of the center’s five-a-side team in the Street League.
Spike turned to Thorne as though divine inspiration had struck. “I knew some football fans who had ’em. What you were asking about before. A couple of Chelsea boys who had tattoos with their blood group or what have you. They had blue dotted lines an’ all, tattooed around their wrists and necks, saying ‘cut here’…”
Thorne thought about what Holland had been saying on the phone: Something Something Football Association. He found it hard to believe that either of the men with the mysterious tattoos was a football hooligan, but it might still be worth considering.***
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought he might be dead…
While he was talking to Susan Jago, Stone told himself that it could have been an awful lot worse. It wasn’t exactly a bolt from the blue. They were the ones nobody wanted.
I’m sorry to have to tell you that your son/daughter/husband/wife
… I’m afraid there’s been an accident… I think perhaps you might want to sit down.
Every copper he knew had their own way of handling those awkward moments, his or her own style. The death message was usually delivered in person, of course, but as this was more of a confirmation than anything, it was decided that a phone call would not be improper. Even so, he’d been annoyed when Holland had palmed the job off on him, but, all in all, it hadn’t gone too badly. He’d told Susan Jago about the hit-and-run; about the scar on the dead man’s arm that had been detailed in the postmortem report, and led them to believe that the victim had been her brother…
“I don’t understand why they couldn’t get hold of any of us when they found him.”
“Your brother had no identification, Miss Jago. There was no way to-”
“How bloody hard did they try?”
“I couldn’t possibly say, I’m afraid.”
Sam Karim walked past Stone’s desk and raised his eyebrows. Stone shook his head, puffed out his cheeks.
“It’s just the thought that nobody was with him,” she said. “You know?”
“Of course. We understand, and we’re all very sorry for your loss.” It was a phrase he’d picked up from American cop shows.
“Couldn’t they have put something in the press and on TV? Like they did with the man I thought was Chris?”
“They did. Locally…”
Susan Jago repeated the word on an exasperated breath. There was a pause and Stone waited, expecting there to be tears. They didn’t come.
“Right, well, I’m sorry to be… you know, the bearer-”
“It’s all right. It’s a relief in a funny sort of way.”
“I forgot to say, about the tattoos. We know now that some of the letters are a blood group. Your brother had his blood group tattooed on his arm. We wondered if you had any idea why.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
Stone began to doodle in the corner of his notebook. “So you don’t know what it means?”
“I have to go now. I’ve got to try and find out where they’ve buried my brother.”
“Right. I’m sorry…”
There was another pause. Then: “Will you remember to thank Dr. Hendricks for me?”
Brigstocke was clearly still on his diet.
“You need to get a few pork pies down you, Rus sell. You’re starting to look gaunt.”
“I can’t say that you’re looking too good yourself…”
Thorne and Brigstocke had arranged to meet up in
Chelsea, a good distance south of the West End. They stood together outside the Royal Hospital, lingering awkwardly for a few minutes like spies who’ve forgotten their code words, before they started to walk. “I was going to ask,” Thorne said. “That fascinating report I did so much work on at Scotland Yard. I do hope someone’s polishing it up.”
“I think they binned it,” Brigstocke said. “Excellent…”
They walked through the grounds of the hospital-still an almshouse for more than four hundred red-coated Chelsea Pensioners-past the National
Army Museum and down toward Albert Bridge. “I bet Phil Hendricks is pleased with himself,”
Thorne said.
“Actually, he’s pissed off because he didn’t see it before. AB negative is the rarest blood group of the lot, and even though he typed those letters out himself several times on the postmortem report, he never made the connection with the tattoo.”
“Tell him well done from me, but that he shouldn’t make a habit of it. If he carries on playing detective,
I might have to start slicing up corpses.”
Brigstocke laughed. “Quite right, too. God forbid he should make us look like we don’t know what we’re doing…”
“Did you see the PM report on Jago?”
“It was faxed over this morning, and I managed to get hold of the original SIO in Nottingham.” “And?”
“It was a hit-and-run. As to whether it was a deliberate hit-and-run…”
“We’ve got two rough sleepers,” Thorne said.
“Both with practically identical tattoos, and both dying violent deaths. What are the odds of there not being a connection?”
“I think we’re working on the presumption that they’re connected.”
“It’s just a question of finding the link between
Christopher Jago and our friend in Westminster
Morgue…”
It was a few minutes before seven o’clock and the bridge was already illuminated; the lamps swooping and arcing above the dusty-pink metalwork. “It blows this serial-killer shit out of the water, anyway,” Thorne said.
Brigstocke looked genuinely curious. “I really don’t see why.”
“The MO, for a kickoff. He runs one over in Nottingham, then six months later he comes down to
London and kicks another one to death.”
“More than another one.”
“It’s the first victim that counts. It’s about him and Jago. The others are nothing to do with it.” “I’m not sure their nearest and dearest would agree, Tom…”
Thorne hadn’t meant it to come out that way. All the same, he knew he was in danger of focusing too hard on the first victim, and of forgetting those still mourning the other men who had died. He thought about Paddy Hayes’s son pulling the plug; about
Caroline and the others trying to smile through Radio Bob’s funeral.
“So what about this blood-group business?” Brigstocke asked.
On the left of them, Battersea Park lay spread out to the east. Thorne could make out a few joggers and cyclists moving along the avenues. There was some sort of event taking place by the Peace Pagoda. “I can’t see that it’s medical,” Thorne said. “The first victim didn’t have any condition that would make it necessary. What about Jago?”
“No, nothing.”
“Right…”
“A bracelet’s a damn sight easier anyway.” “What about the football angle?”
Brigstocke had already heard Holland’s thoughts on what the initials might stand for, and Thorne had told
