it.
“What have you found?”
“Like I said before, I can’t-”
“Okay, I get it. Look, there were one or two rumors about something. No more than that, as far as I can remember.”
“About a tank crew?”
“Yeah… I think so.”
“So, here’s the thing,” Thorne said. “If someone else was involved, someone apart from the four men in a tank crew, who might it be?” He glanced up again. The couple on the walkway were now embracing.
“I’m not with you,” Ward said. “It could be virtually anybody. You’re not really giving me a great deal to go on.”
“Another individual. A fifth man, present when this incident took place.”
“A fifth soldier, you mean?”
“I suppose so…”
“Where precisely are we talking about?”
“I don’t really know. We have to presume it’s somewhere off the beaten track.”
“ Everywhere was off the beaten track, mate,” Ward said. “You just mean that geographically, the incident happened in isolation, right?”
That much, Thorne could be fairly certain of. “Yes.”
“So we’re talking about someone with access to a vehicle, then. An officer, perhaps?”
Perhaps, thought Thorne. They were certainly talking about someone who’d had no problem telling the four crewmen what to do. Someone whose orders had been followed.
Perhaps…
It was as positive as they were going to get.
“I have to make a small professional plea at this point,” Ward said. “Can you make sure I’m first in line if this ever comes out?”
Thorne was slightly nonplussed. Ward was clearly every bit as ambitious as he was sharp. Still, bearing in mind that Thorne had called him, it was a reasonable enough request. “I’m not sure I’ll have a lot of say in it, to be honest…”
“This is what I do, Tom. Seriously, if there does come a time when whatever this is can be made public, I hope to hell you’ll come to me. Like I said before, I’m seriously bloody intrigued.”
“Right…”
“Whenever you like, Tom. And it goes without saying that my sources always remain confidential. No names, no pack drill.”
“I’ve got it.”
“And there are perks, of course.”
“Are there?”
“Do you want to see the game next week or not?”
Thorne could think of nothing he’d like more. Cursing bad luck and worse timing, he explained to Ward that, much as he’d love the tickets, he’d be far too busy to use them.
Russell Brigstocke viewed the prospect of a conversation with Steve Norman in much the same way as a trip to the dentist: it was something necessary but usually unpleasant. You could put it off and put it off, but you always had to go through with the bloody thing in the end.
And you had to wash your mouth out afterward…
The nature of the investigation meant Brigstocke had been forced to endure a good deal more contact with the Press Office than would normally have been the case. The media had been all over them since Jesmond’s first press conference, and Norman-whatever anyone thought of him personally-had proved extremely adept at his job. He’d kept the media’s appetite for information sated, and had called in favors from reporters when they were needed. And one was very definitely needed now.
Using the press had brought them, circuitously, to Chris Jago. Now, as the hunt for Ryan Eales ran out of steam, using it again might be the team’s last hope of a result. They had already run a fifteen-year-old picture of Eales in the Standard -inside the issue with the photo of Terry Turner on the front-describing the soldier as someone whom “the police would very much like to talk to in connection with…”
The calls were coming in, but they needed more, and they needed them faster.
“I think I can swing Crimewatch again,” Norman had said.
“Tonight?”
Over the phone, the senior press officer’s voice had sounded even more nasal, more irritating, than it did face-to-face. “This is still a major inquiry, Russell, so I think it should be doable. They’ll bump something else off until next week…”
They’d broadcast a reconstruction of Paddy Hayes’s killing on the show-which BBC1 put out live on a Friday evening-a month or so before, and there had been a further appeal for information after Robert Asker’s murder. In itself, this had gone down as something of a coup. The program makers were notoriously squeamish, with a distaste for anything overtly graphic. The sensitivities of the viewers had to be their primary concern. Murder was acceptable, but only if it was tastefully done, and not too scary.
Taking the case onto such a show was usually a last resort, but most senior officers still considered it worth doing. It was television, so when they were asked for help, people reacted in much the same way as they would to a phone-in question on a quiz show: the answer might not be the right one, but there was always a healthy response.
“So what do we think?”
“That’s great, Steve,” Brigstocke had said. “Thanks.” The platitude had screamed inside his skull like the squeal of a dentist’s drill.
“Just a quick update, yes? Something in the ‘urgently need to trace’ roundup toward the end of the show.”
“That’s all we need.”
“We’ll get Eales’s picture in vision for as long as possible. Wait for the phone lines to light up.” “Let’s hope so…”
“Well, even if nothing concrete comes of it, it’s as much about being seen to do something a lot of the time, right?”
Brigstocke had been desperate to hang up by this point. To rinse and spit. “I’d better go and talk to the chief superintendent,” he’d said. “We probably need to put our heads together…”
“How clean is your suit?” Norman had asked.
Brigstocke had spoken to Trevor Jesmond after that, talked about tone and message and budget. Then he’d phoned home and asked his wife to set the video. Now he stepped into the incident room and called for hush. The TV appeal would generate a lot of calls. A fair few nutters would come crawling out of the woodwork, but they would all have to be listened to, their information transcribed as if it were the Word of God, and every lead, no matter how iffy it sounded, would need chasing up.
“Usual good news, bad news routine,” he said. “Most of you can forget about your weekend. Fishing, football, feet up, trip to B and Q with the missus. Not going to happen…”
A voice from the back of the room: “Is this the good news or the bad news?”
Brigstocke shouted above the laughter. “But the overtime’s been approved…”
Thorne felt happier, more sure of himself and his surroundings, as the noise of traffic began to grow louder; as people moved around him in all directions and he could taste the fumes. Moving away from the Barbican’s eerie sprawl, he walked up what had once been Grub Street, and thought about his conversation with a man whose profession, in its worst excesses, had come to be associated with the name.
There’d been no thunderbolts of insight, of course; nothing to quicken the pulse overmuch. But there was enough to think about. Thorne had already considered the possibility that the man behind the video camera had been an officer. It was a reasonable enough supposition, but it was still interesting to hear it from Ward; to have the notion validated by someone who’d actually been there. There was no room for more than four men in a Challenger tank. The fifth man had to have got there under his own steam. If Brigstocke could eke any more
