Mackillop put down the phone, took a deep breath, and snatched up the piece of paper on which he’d been scribbling. He needed to pass on the information quickly, but for a second or two he wasn’t completely certain as to whom. Should he observe the chain of command or just go straight to the most senior officer he could find? If he did, would he risk putting noses out of joint? It was fantastic to impress, but it might be a very bad move to alienate those just a step or two farther up the ladder than he was.
He glanced around the incident room, feeling the paper warm against his sweaty fingers. They were a good bunch, by and large, with no more tossers than you’d expect on any team of this size: Andy Stone was the sort of bloke you’d like as a mate, but Mackillop was unsure how good a copper he was; Kitson seemed well liked, but she sometimes had that look, like you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her; Holland could be a bit distant, though he’d only just been promoted, and was bound to have a lot on his plate. Mackillop had never met Tom Thorne, the team’s absent DI, but he’d certainly heard enough about him…
Looking around, trying to make his mind up, he saw that Kitson was watching him from a spot by the coffee machine. Her eye flicked from his face to the piece of paper he was now wafting nervously from the end of his outstretched arm.
“All right, Jason?”
“Guv…”
Mackillop walked across, decision made, and within a minute he knew it had been the right one. Once he’d finished telling her about the phone call and shown her what he’d written down, Kitson had done exactly as he’d hoped she’d do: she’d congratulated him on a job well done, then pointed him straight toward the DCI’s office.
He couldn’t see Spike or One-Day Caroline, and guessed they’d be in later, but there were plenty of faces Thorne did recognize as he looked around. He saw Holy Joe, and the drunk who’d shouted at him outside St. Clement Danes, and others he’d exchanged a story or two with at the soup runs around the Strand.
He asked if any of the unfamiliar faces belonged to Terry T.
Brendan Maxwell craned his head, panned quickly around the cafe, then went back to his breakfast. “No, I can’t see him. Why?”
“That’s his spot I’ve been bedding down in most nights and Spike reckons he’s coming back. So I’ve got to find somewhere else.”
“Doesn’t hurt to move around a bit,” Maxwell said.
Thorne rammed the last of an egg-and-bacon roll into his mouth and answered with his mouth full. “S’pose not…”
“A lot of my clients have been moving around a bit more lately.” They had been talking quietly anyway, but now Maxwell lowered his voice until it was barely above a whisper. “Some of them have taken to sleeping in a different place every night, or getting themselves indoors. For obvious reasons.”
“I don’t want to go into a hostel,” Thorne said.
He had purposely gone into the Lift early. The battery on his mobile was very low and he was borrowing a charger in Maxwell’s office. They’d gone down to the cafe for breakfast while they waited.
Maxwell took a slurp of tea, then grunted and swallowed quickly as he remembered something. “Did that copper find you, by the way? He was going to look for you at the theater, I think…”
Thorne nodded. “He tracked me down eventually.” He remembered Holland telling him on the phone that he’d come here; that Maxwell had pointed him toward the theater doorway.
Since they’d met the day before in the park and Holland had shown him the magazine, Thorne had been anxiously waiting for news. It could only be a matter of time until they had names. It felt like they were turning a corner and picking up speed. Of course, he’d had the same feeling plenty of times before. Often, it just meant that you hit the brick wall that much faster.
“What’s Phil up to?” Thorne hadn’t seen Hendricks for nearly a fortnight.
The Irishman pointed a fork toward Thorne’s face. “He told me to make sure you took some painkillers if that was hurting…”
“They’re fucking ganging up on me,” Thorne said.
Maxwell looked confused for a moment, shrugged when Thorne shook his head. On the far side of the cafe, a plate crashed to the floor. Maxwell joined in with the cheer as loudly as anyone else. “You seeing a fair bit of the city, then?” he asked.
“I’m seeing a lot of it, yeah. But I don’t know that fair is the right word.”
“Not the stuff you see in the guidebooks, is it?”
“It’s like being on Panorama, ” Thorne said. “Only with more killing.”
In the queue at the counter behind them, voices were suddenly raised. Maxwell pushed back his chair and stood, ready to step in, but the man doing most of the shouting was already striding toward the door, telling anyone who’d listen that they could go fuck themselves.
Maxwell sat back down. “You like all that nasty stuff, though, right? Phil was telling me. All that blood and guts and Black Museum shit.”
Thorne felt slightly irritated. He didn’t know if Maxwell was being deliberately obtuse or if Hendricks had just put it across to him badly. Knowing how Hendricks had once tried to explain Thorne’s love of country music by telling Maxwell that he liked songs about death and lost dogs, this was certainly possible. “I like history,” he said. “In London, a lot of it’s just… dark.”
Maxwell pushed what was left of his breakfast around the plate. “Getting darker all the time,” he said.
Thorne sensed a figure looming behind him and twisted his neck round to see Lawrence Healey standing there, clutching a tray.
“May I join you?” Healey asked.
Maxwell put his fork down and threw back what was left of his tea. “I’m just on my way to a meeting. Tom?”
“Free country…” Thorne said.
Maxwell looked across the table before he turned to leave, something Thorne couldn’t read in his eyes. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need…”
Healey tucked into a bowl of what looked suspiciously like bran. There was a carton of yogurt on his tray and a cup of foul-smelling herbal tea. After a minute or two of silence and an exchange of awkward smiles, Healey cleared his throat. “I was going to ask how you were getting on, but looking at you, I’m not sure there’s any real need.”
“You should have seen the other bloke,” Thorne said.
“I saw him yesterday, as a matter of fact…”
Thorne didn’t know what to say.
Healey’s voice, even posher than Thorne remembered, suited a tone of wry amusement very well. “We have a weekly meeting with some of the officers from the Homeless Unit. Just a chat about anything that’s come up.” He stared across at Thorne for a few moments, nudged his glasses a little higher, then went back to his cereal.
Thorne watched Healey eat. He looked fit and tanned under a brushed-denim button-down shirt. That said, most people would have looked well compared to Thorne himself. Or to any of the blotchy or the blasted, the washed-out or pastyfaced characters that moved around them. “Thanks for the concern,” Thorne said. “But I really wouldn’t bother.”
“You might need some legal advice…”
“I’ll be fine.”
“We can help you with that.”
Thorne said nothing. He turned and looked at the noticeboard for a while, decided he’d probably give the poetry workshop a miss.
“Things going okay, though?” Healey asked. “Generally, I mean?”
“I’ve been better…”
“I know.”
“Really?”
“I do understand how hard it is.” Healey’s voice was lower suddenly. He reminded Thorne of an overearnest vicar. Or of Tony Blair. “It’s the adjustment that’s particularly difficult…”
Thorne had actually found adjusting to other people the trickiest thing of all; to the way other people saw
