him. It was usually one of two reactions: he was avoided or ignored. In the first instance, pedestrians would steer clear, the more sensitive doing their best to make that feint to one side as unobtrusive as possible. In the second, he seemed to become completely invisible, as passersby simply pretended that they hadn’t seen him at all. Both reactions were gloriously British in their sly dishonesty, but no more so, Thorne decided, than some people’s when confronted by people whom they actually knew. When greeting those they perhaps hadn’t seen for a while. There was one phrase that Thorne particularly hated; it could cover a multitude of sins and was trotted out no matter how sick or sad the person on the receiving end appeared. No matter how frightful their clothes or hair, or how much weight they’d put on since the last time you’d seen them: “You look well…”
Suddenly a hand fell onto Thorne’s shoulder and a rheumy-eyed whippet of a man he’d talked to once or twice leaned down close to him. “Great days, eh?” The man breathed sweet sherry into Thorne’s face. “Great days…”
Thorne had no idea what the man was talking about. He watched him walk away and accost someone at the next table, then turned back to Healey. “I’ve met some fascinating people, though,” he said.
“What’s it been now? A month or so?”
“Something like that. You lose track.” Thorne wasn’t sure exactly how many rough sleepers came within the Lift’s remit, but he couldn’t help wondering if Healey knew as much about all his clients. “What about you?”
“Sorry?”
Thorne was thinking about what Healey had said when they’d met in the corridor a couple of weeks before. “We’re both ‘new boys,’ remember? How are you settling in?”
“Oh… settled now, most definitely. Thank you for asking.”
“Just talking,” Thorne said.
“People can be suspicious of a new broom, you know? You just need to get your head down and get on with it, whatever anyone else thinks. A certain amount of tunnel vision definitely helps.”
The concern in Healey’s voice had gone and been replaced by something a little more abrasive. Thorne saw that there was a resolve behind the nice-butdim accent and the do-gooder appearance. He also understood exactly what Healey was saying. Tunnel vision was something he’d been accused of himself, though it was usually described somewhat less politely.
“It could help get you off the street,” Healey said.
“Maybe it’s what put me on it.”
“You want to talk about that?”
“Not hugely…”
When Healey began removing the foil from his yogurt carton, Thorne stood up and took his coat from the back of the chair.
“I enjoyed the chat,” Healey said.
Thorne bent to pile his empty plate and cup onto the tray. “You need to get out more,” he said.
He slid his tray onto a trolley near the food counter, then looked back to make sure that Healey hadn’t gone anywhere. He wanted to check to see if there’d been any messages, and as long as Healey was still eating, it was the perfect time to nip up to the office and get his phone back.
Looks played a major part in it; that’s how Russell Brigstocke felt anyway. It was like being a hardman, like being feared. Yes, it was about what was inside your head, about having the will to dish out pain, and to take it, but once you had it going on up there, then what you looked like was the next most important thing. The set of your mouth, and the way your eyes absorbed the light-the way they sucked it in and smothered it-counted far more than your size, or how much weight your punch packed.
It seemed to Brigstocke that Jason Mackillop looked like a copper. He had short hair and skin that was pitted with acne scars. He was heavyset beneath a blue M amp;S suit, and he stood awkwardly, as though he were designed to be permanently leaning on something: the roof of an unmarked vehicle; the windowsill in an airless interview room; a bar. What Mackillop looked like of course was a casting director’s idea of a copper, but as most of those who did the job for real looked like financial advisers-Brogstocke himself included, if he were being honest-that was probably no bad thing. At that moment, with the TDC standing in front of his desk and brightening the day right up, he decided that Jason Mackillop was the sort of copper he could do with a damn sight more of.
“Right, let’s have those names…” Brigstocke said.
The list of soldiers in the Glorious photograph had been divided up and Mackillop had been the one who had struck lucky. Among those in his allocation had been the writer of the original article, and not only had First Lieutenant Stephen Brereton been fairly easy to trace, but he’d had no great trouble providing the relevant information. Mackillop had already explained to Brigstocke how Brereton-now a major in the Corporate Communications Department of the MOD-had remembered Chris Jago pretty well. He’d talked about their time in Bremenhaven; about Jago’s fondness for German beer and German girls. He’d told Mackillop how each crew in the troop had been tight with one another; how a friendly rivalry between the different crews had been actively encouraged. Brereton hadn’t seemed to mind too much that he could not be told why the police were so interested, and had said he’d be happy to have a look through some of his old Gulf War journals and diaries. After no more than ten minutes, he’d called back with the names of the other three men who’d manned a Challenger tank alongside Chris Jago in the early part of 1991.
“That major down in Somerset… Poulter? He said that these crews got moved about all the time, that they were sometimes shifted around in battle situations. How can Brereton be certain these are the men who were in that tank on February 26, 1991?”
“He isn’t,” Mackillop said. “Not absolutely, one hundred percent I mean. I gave him the exact date and he told me that his memory wasn’t that good, but that he thought he’d remember if there’d been any injuries or last-minute transfers, you know? He wouldn’t stake his life on it, but he couldn’t recall any particular reason why that crew should have been split up.”
“Right…” Brigstocke was holding out a hand, waiting to take the piece of paper.
Instead, Mackillop looked at his list, read the names to the DCI: “Trooper Christopher Jago, he was the gunner; Lance Corporal Ryan Eales, the loader/operator; Trooper Alec Bonser was the driver, and the tank commander was Corporal Ian Hadingham. I reckon this was our crew, guv.” Then he stepped forward and passed the paper across the desk.
Jago. Eales. Bonser. Hadingham.
Brigstocke stared down at the names of four men who surely held the key to solving a series of murders. Four men who themselves had committed murder and who now appeared to be paying for it with their own lives.
“Obviously, we’re still in the dark about which one of them is our first victim,” Mackillop said. “It could be Eales, Bonser, or Hadingham.”
Brigstocke nodded. “Now we’ve ID’d the crew, we can put a bit more pressure on the Army Personnel Centre-”
“I’m already on it, guv.”
“I can’t actually promote you until you’ve made DC, you know, Jason.”
Mackillop reddened. “Well, I’m not on it exactly, but Major Brereton said he’d talk to them and try to get at least the basic stuff to us A.S.A.P.”
“Basic stuff?”
“Individual pictures of the soldiers, and maybe some of the details that are in their records: height, weight, color of hair, blood group with a bit of luck. Hopefully, we should be able to figure out which one our mystery corpse is.”
“Hopefully.” Brigstocke was thinking that they’d need more than a photo. The killer hadn’t left any of the victims in a state that was particularly recognizable. “He reckons he can do that, does he, this Major Brereton?”
“He sounded like there was every chance, yeah. I think they respond better when requests for information come from other soldiers.”
Brigstocke picked up the phone. “Not like the way most people on the Job respond to each other, then?”
“Guv…?”
