on. It was all spelled out in the Murder Investigation Manual: the public had to be reassured, advised, appealed to.
The Met, of course, was also doing the smart thing by covering its arse. God forbid any more bodies should turn up and they had forgotten that the public also needed to be warned.
“So, what do you think?” Brigstocke said. “Any bright ideas?”
“I think you need to forget about mineral water and go and get yourself a proper drink. A beer gut’s the least of your worries.”
“Seriously…”
“Seriously?” Thorne swilled what little beer there was left around in the bottom of his glass. “You should have tried picking my brains before you bought me three pints of Stella, mate.” He puffed out his cheeks, let the air out slowly. “My afternoon of ‘recruitment demographics’ is shot to shit as it is.”
THREE
It was a forty-minute tube ride home from St. James’s Park. As soon as he walked through his front door that evening, he took the CD from his Walkman and transferred it into his main deck. It was part of a boxed set of outtakes and demos from the American Recordings sessions, released a few months after Johnny Cash had died in 2003. Thorne cued up “Redemption Song”-a cover of the Bob Marley classic that Cash had recorded with Joe Strummer. Neither of them had lived to see its release.
Thorne moved around the kitchen, making tea, wondering at how Marley and Strummer could both have gone so young, while Mick Hucknall and Phil Collins were still walking around.
Though he’d been joking with Brigstocke, Thorne hadn’t actually got a whole lot done that afternoon. He’d stared at columns of figures, had stabbed perfunctorily at his keyboard, but all the time he’d been thinking about Paddy Hayes and the machines that were keeping him alive. Thinking about the letter the man had carried in his pocket. About the damn good look those who knew him had needed before they were able to confirm his identity.
Thorne carried his tea through to the sitting room. He sat and considered everything that Brigstocke had told him, and why. Now that those who were seemingly being targeted had stopped talking to the police, the investigation would stutter and stall very bloody quickly. In all probability, it would grind spectacularly to a halt.
Russell Brigstocke had to have been pretty desperate to come to him for advice in the first place. From what Thorne had heard about the case, that desperation was well founded.
So, what do you think?
In the silence between the tracks, Thorne could hear the distant hum of traffic from the Kentish Town Road, the rumble of a train on the overground line that ran to Camden Town or Gospel Oak. He felt suddenly nostalgic for those few months earlier in the year when he’d shared the flat with Phil Hendricks, whose own place was being treated for damp. It had been cramped and chaotic, with Hendricks dossing down on the sofa bed, and there’d been a good deal of arguing. He remembered the two of them drunkenly rowing about football the day before Hendricks had moved out. That would have been a couple of weeks before the fire…
Before the fire. Not “before my father died.”
That was the way his mind tended to go: the comforting way, toward the absolute. There was a fire. The fire was a fact. So was his father’s death, of course, but even to form the phrase in his head was to invite in the doubt and the torment to fuck with him for a time. To crack open the carapace of everyday nonsense and force that fissure wider, until it gaped. Until Thorne could do nothing but shut himself down and wait for the churning in his guts and the pounding in his head to stop.
He guessed that Hendricks had done the postmortems on Mannion and the first victim. That he’d also do the PM on Paddy Hayes when the time came. Hendricks hadn’t mentioned the case when they’d spoken, but then Holland had been a bit cagey about it, too. Thorne knew that they were trying to protect him. They believed he was better off where he was. Uninvolved.
Grief and work, so everybody seemed to think, were mutually exclusive. Each got in the way of the other.
Any bright ideas?
Perhaps, though, he wasn’t sure how bright it was…
Moving to the window, Thorne could feel the draft creeping beneath the sash. Not so long ago the country had been at a standstill for a week as temperatures climbed toward three figures. Now, three weeks into August, the summer was on its last legs. He thought about how those who lived on the streets were at the mercy of the seasons. How that first hint of autumn would change everything. For those who slept outdoors, who had no other options, a harsh winter could be far more serious than any amount of burst pipes or shunts on black ice.
Not so long ago…
Thorne blinked and remembered the feel of the pew beneath him. The smell of himself, sweating in a black suit. No more than three rows filled and most of them there to support him. Feeling a bead of perspiration roll behind his ear and creep down inside the tight, white collar. Knowing he would soon have to stand up and say something
…
He couldn’t carry on with what he was doing now. He wasn’t ready to go back to what he’d done before. He could work through grief, or he could grieve at work, but guilt choked the life out of everything.
He moved quickly to the phone and dialed.
“You should think about sending an officer in undercover. Among the rough sleepers.” Thorne wasn’t sure if Brigstocke was thinking about his suggestion or had just been stunned into silence. “It makes sense,” he continued. “Nobody’s talking to you. I can’t see there are many other options.”
“It’ll take too long to set up.”
“I don’t see why; it isn’t complicated. You’re sending one officer onto the streets, into that community. All we need to set up is a simple line of communication with him.”
“I’ll talk to Jesmond, see what he thinks. See if he can find anybody. Thanks for the call, Tom…”
“Give it some thought, will you?”
A shorter silence this time and then a snort. “How much more have you had to drink since lunchtime?”
“I can do this, Russell. I did the course…”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid. An Undercover Two course?”
“Right…”
“And how many years ago was that?”
Thorne tuned Brigstocke out momentarily. Elvis was rubbing herself against his shins. He wondered who would feed her if he was away for a while. The woman upstairs would do it if he asked her nicely. She had a couple of her own cats…
“I’m hardly going deep inside an organized-crime firm, am I?” Thorne said. “I can’t see how this can be high risk. We’re talking about gathering information, that’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes…”
“So you haven’t really thought about this bloke who’s going round kicking people to death?”
“I want to help catch the fucker, yes.”
“What, you think you can… draw him out or something?”
“I don’t see how I could…”
“Some crap like that?”
“No.”
“How does putting yourself in danger help anyone, Tom? How does it help you?”
“I’m just going to sleep rough, for Christ’s sake,” Thorne said. “Presuming for a second that this killer is still around, how can it be dangerous if he doesn’t know I’m there?”
He heard the click of a lighter on the other end of the phone. There was a pause and then the noisy
