you’re ranting like an idiot, and either way people are getting pissed off with you. Getting more pissed off with you…”
“Which people?”
Then, despite what Thorne had said a few moments earlier, Hendricks lowered his voice. “You weren’t ready to start work again.”
“That’s bollocks.”
“You came back too soon…”
It was not much more than eight weeks since Thorne’s father had died in a house fire. Jim Thorne had been suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s at the time of his death, and the blaze had almost certainly been no more than an accident. A misfired synapse. A piece of tragic forgetfulness.
There were other possibilities, though. Thorne had been working on a case involving a number of powerful organized-crime figures. It was possible that one of them-that one man in particular-had decided to strike at Thorne via those closest to him. To inflict pain that would stay with him far longer than anything of which a simple blade or bullet was capable.
Other possibilities…
Thorne was still coming to terms with a lot of things. Among them, the fact that he might never know for sure whether his father had been murdered. Either way, Thorne knew he was to blame.
“I would have come back earlier if I could,” Thorne said. “I’d’ve come back the day I buried him. What else am I going to do?”
Hendricks pushed himself out of the chair. “Do you want some tea?”
Thorne nodded and turned toward the fireplace. He leaned against the stripped-pine mantelpiece, staring at himself in the mirror above as he spat out the words. “Detective Chief Superintendent Jesmond is thinking about a few weeks’ ‘gardening leave.’ ”
Standing in front of Trevor Jesmond’s desk that afternoon, Thorne had felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He’d dug down deep for something like a smile. Deeper still for the flippant comeback.
“I’ve only got a window box…”
Now the anger rose up again, but quickly gave way to a perverse amusement at yet another, ridiculous euphemism. “Gardening leave,” he said. “How nice. How fucking cozy.”
It made sense, he supposed. You could hardly call it what it was: some pointless, hastily invented desk job designed to get shot of anyone who was causing a problem. Anyone embarrassing, but not quite sackable. Gardening sounded so much better than burned out, or fucked up. So much more pleasant than drunk, traumatized, or mental.
Hendricks had walked slowly toward the kitchen. “I think you should take it,” he said.
The next day, Thorne had discovered how the odds against him were stacking up.
“I’m in a corner here, aren’t I?”
Russell Brigstocke had looked down at his desktop. Straightened his blotter. “We’ll find you something that won’t drive you too barmy,” he said.
Thorne pointed across the desk at his DCI. A jokey threat. “You’d better.”
It was a close call as to which of them had been more embarrassed when the tears had suddenly appeared. Had sprung up in corners. Thorne had pressed the heel of his hand quickly against each eye, and wiped, and kicked the metal wastepaper basket halfway across Russell Brigstocke’s office.
“Fuck…”
Scotland Yard.
Perhaps the single most famous location in the history of detection. A place synonymous with the finest brains and with cutting-edge, crime-fighting technology. Where mysteries were solved and the complexities of the world’s most twisted criminal minds were examined.
Where for three weeks, Thorne had been forced to sit in a room no bigger than an airing cupboard, going quietly insane, and trying to work out how many ways a man could kill himself using only standard office equipment.
He had thought, understandably, that the Demographics of Recruitment could not possibly be as boring as it sounded. He had been wrong. Although, the first few days hadn’t been so bad. He’d been taught how the software program-with which he was supposed to turn hundreds of pages of research into a presentation document, complete with block graphs and pie charts-worked. His computer instructor was about as interesting as Thorne had expected him to be. But he was, at least, someone to talk to.
Then, left to his own devices, Thorne had quickly discovered the most enjoyable way to pass the time. He was just as quickly rumbled. It didn’t take someone long to work out that most of those Web sites being visited via one particular terminal had very little to do with the recruitment of ethnic minorities, or why more dog handlers seemed to come from the southwest. Overnight, and without warning, Internet access was denied, and from then on, outside the job itself, there was little for Thorne to do but eke out the daily paper and think about methods of killing himself.
He was considering death from a thousand papercuts when a face appeared around the door. It looked a little thinner than usual, and the smile was nervous. It had been four weeks since Thorne had seen the man who was at least partly responsible for putting him where he was, and Russell Brigstocke had every right to be apprehensive.
He held up a hand, and spoke before Thorne had a chance to say anything. “I’m sorry. I’ll buy you lunch.”
Thorne pretended to consider it. “Does it include beer?”
Brigstocke winced. “I’m on a bloody diet, but for you, yes.”
“Why are we still here?”
Thorne hadn’t even clocked the name of the place as they’d gone in. They’d come out of the Yard, turned up toward Parliament Square, and walked into the first pub they’d come to. The food was bog-standard-chili con carne that was welded to the dish in places and tepid in others-but they had decent crisps and Stella on draft.
A waitress was clearing away the crockery as Brigstocke came back from the bar with more drinks.
“What’s all this in aid of, anyway?” Thorne asked.
Brigstocke sat and leaned toward his glass. Took a sip of mineral water. “Why’s it have to be in aid of anything? Just friends having a drink.”
“You weren’t much of a friend a few weeks ago, in your office.”
Brigstocke made eye contact, held it for as long as was comfortable. “I was, Tom.”
The slightly awkward silence that followed was broken by murmured “sorrys” and “excuse me’s” as a big man who’d been wedged into the corner next to Thorne stood and squeezed out. Thorne pulled his battered, brown leather jacket from the back of a chair and folded it onto the bench next to him. Relaxed into the space. The pub was busy, but now they had something approaching a bit of privacy.
“Either you want to have a good moan about something,” Thorne said, “or you want to talk about a case that’s pissing you off.”
Brigstocke swallowed, nudged at his glasses with a knuckle. “Bit of both.”
“Midlife crisis?” Thorne asked.
“Come again?”
Thorne gestured with his glass. “Trendy new specs. Diet. You got a bit on the side, Russell?”
Brigstocke reddened slightly, pushed fingers through his thick, black hair. “Might just as well have, the amount of time I’m spending at home.”
“The rough-sleeper killings, right?” Thorne grinned, enjoying the look of surprise on Brigstocke’s face. “It’s not like I’ve been in Timbuktu, Russ. I spoke to Dave Holland on the phone a few nights ago. Saw a bit in the paper before that. A couple of bodies, isn’t it?”
“It was a couple…”
“Shit…”
“ ‘Shit’ is bang on. Deep shit is what we’re in.”
“There’s been a lid on this, right? It literally was a ‘bit’ I saw in the paper.”
“That was the way it was being played until last night. There’s going to be a press conference tomorrow afternoon.”
