“You’ll know what I’m on about soon enough.” Brigstocke dialed a number, pointed toward the piece of paper. “Well done on this, Jason. Your luck was in, no question…”
“Oh, it was pure bloody jam, guv, I know that.”
“Luck’s no use to anybody unless they use it. It sounds like you dealt with this Brereton bloke very well.”
Mackillop handled the praise like someone with far greater experience. Just a small nod. But Brigstocke caught the spasm of delight on his face, like a stifled sneeze, in the second or two before the TDC turned to walk toward the door.
Brigstocke leaned back in his chair and listened to the phone ringing on the other end of the line. He was as absurdly excited as Mackillop had been by the prospect of giving Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Jesmond the first piece of genuinely good news in a while.
The four of them-Thorne, Spike, Caroline, and Terry T-sat around a table in a grotty cafe behind the Charing Cross Road. Terry had returned from his travels with a few extra quid in his pocket and had insisted on shelling out on tea and doughnuts for everyone. This, and the fact that he was able to make the word cunt sound like a term of endearment, made Thorne take to him straightaway.
“You the cunt who’s been sleeping in my pitch?” Terry had said on being introduced. The voice was high and hoarse, ripening a thick London accent.
Thorne had thought about it for a few seconds. “Yeah, I think that’ll be me. Just keeping it warm for you, obviously.”
“Fair play, mate…”
Terry T was every bit as tall as Spike had described, but he was also spookily thin. He was, Thorne guessed, somewhere in his late thirties, but he looked a damn sight older, with sunken cheeks, very few teeth, and what appeared to be no hair at all beneath a floppy green hat. Like a cross between Nosferatu and the King of the Gypsies. A feather dangled from one ear and he’d taken off his scarf to reveal a heavy-looking, tarnished padlock on a chain around his neck, which had turned the skin beneath it distinctly green.
Terry had seen Thorne staring and reached up to finger the chain. “Lost the fuckin’ key, didn’t I?”
“So where you been then, Tel? What you been doing…?”
Spike was buzzing, and for more than just the usual reason. He was excited to have his friend back. Thorne felt a peculiar twinge of something that might have been jealousy, though it was probably no more than a sugar rush from the doughnuts.
“Been all over,” Terry T said. “Up north to Birmingham and Liverpool, then even further, mate. Up with the chilly Jockos.”
Spike dipped a doughnut into a glass of Coke, let the drips fall off. “I thought most of them were here in London.”
“Plenty more where they came from,” Terry said.
Spike rolled his eyes, put on a cod-Scottish accent, and mumbled something incomprehensible. “It’s fucking disgusting,” he said. “They come down here, they beg on our street corners, they drink our Special Brew…”
Terry and Caroline laughed.
“How d’you get around?” Thorne asked.
“Hitching, mostly. Got a couple of free trains by keeping an eye out for the ticket collector and spending a lot of time in the bog.”
“I bet it’s a bit colder on the streets up there.”
“I was indoors, mate. Sofa-surfing…”
Instinctively, Thorne looked to Spike for an explanation.
Spike held out his arms as if riding a surfboard, repeated the phrase in a silly American accent. “Sofasurfing. Moving around, like. Dossing down on people’s floors, sofas, what-ever…”
“Loads of people do it,” Caroline said. She’d poured a small mound of sugar onto the tabletop and had been absently toying with it: drawing patterns in the grains with her finger. All at once she chopped the edge of her hand onto the table and swept the sugar onto the floor. “You think there’s a lot of people sleeping on the street and in the hostels, you can multiply that by tens of thousands…”
More of those who, conveniently, could never be counted when the official figures were being produced; more of the so-called hidden homeless. Thorne suddenly wondered if Terry T knew what had been going on while he was traveling. What had happened to some of those who had been unable to hide.
“So how long have you been away, Terry?”
Caroline flashed Thorne a look. He could see that she knew what was going through his mind, but he couldn’t be sure what she was trying to tell him.
“Christ… it was a few days after that poor bastard got his head kicked in round Golden Square. When was that?”
“A couple of months ago,” Spike said.
“Did they ever catch the bloke who did it?”
Terry couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a paper or watched the news; he knew nothing of those who had died after that first victim. Caroline brought him up to date: she told him about the murders of Ray Mannion and Paddy Hayes; she leaned across to grab one of Terry T’s long, bony hands and told him what had happened to Radio Bob.
Spike edged toward Thorne. “Terry and Bob were mates,” he said. Like it wasn’t obvious enough…
“Do they know why?” Terry asked eventually.
Spike snorted. “Not got a clue, if you ask me, like.”
“There’s supposedly an undercover copper sleeping rough,” Caroline said. “To try and catch him.”
“They reckon the killer might be a copper,” Thorne said.
There was a small bowl on the table filled with sachets and sealed tubes: sugar, vinegar, mustard, mayonnaise. Caroline grabbed a handful and dropped them into her bag. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against Spike. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, whistling something between his teeth.
Terry took out a plastic wallet and shook some money onto the table to settle the bill. “He’ll be a dead copper if I get hold of him
…”
They walked up to Centre Point, then stopped and stood about for a quarter of an hour. For a few, strange minutes Thorne felt like a teenager again; content to hang around with friends, not doing anything in particular. Just talking bollocks and winding one another up. Happy enough to say nothing at all if the mood wasn’t right.
The feeling passed quickly enough. This was not about relishing space and free time and the absence of responsibility. It was about being lost.
They moved off again, crossing Oxford Street and heading north. “I can’t fucking believe I wasn’t here,” Terry said. “I can’t believe I missed Bob’s funeral.”
Caroline caught up with him. “Listen, I’m sure you and some of the other lads can get together later and have a few drinks for him, eh?”
“More than a few,” Terry said.
Caroline looked at Thorne. “You up for that?” “Better watch him, though, Tel.” Spike pointed at
Thorne and began to shadowbox. “After a couple of cans he thinks he’s Lennox Lewis…”
“I don’t really know what I’m doing later,” Thorne said. “I’ve got to find a decent place to get some kip.”
Terry turned to him. “I was only joking about my pitch, mate. Plenty of room in there for two if you want to stick around for a bit.”
Spike whistled. “You on the turn, Tel?”
“I’ll see…” Thorne said.
Caroline punched him on the shoulder. “Tonight’s sorted, so don’t bother arguing. It’s going to piss down later, so you’re coming underground with us…”
Major Stephen Brereton had been as good as his word. By mid-afternoon, photos and descriptions of the four men in the tank crew were being faxed through to the incident room. Holland and Kitson had stood over the machine as the information came through, inch by inch. They cleared a desk, laid it all out, and looked for the answer that they hoped would be somewhere in front of them. Brigstocke had been right in guessing that the
