out a teapot from somewhere and poured milk into a jug, despite Thorne's curmudgeonly protestations that hot soup and toasted crumpets would have been more suitable, considering the testicle-free brass monkeys that were knocking about.
Hendricks told Thorne he was a soft southern bastard. Thorne ignored him. Louise only took issue with 'soft'.
Once tea was done with, the wine came out and they sat and drank as the Sunday evening doldrums kicked in early. The light faded outside, and when the conversation turned equally dark, Louise announced that she was going to have a bath.
Thorne opened another bottle. 'I should have worked harder at school.'
'You what?'
'Got enough qualifications to go to university. Got myself a job that didn't make me feel like this quite as much.'
'I shouldn't worry about it,' Hendricks said. 'I doubt you were bright enough anyway.' He smiled, raised his glass. 'This is almost certainly all you're fit for.'
It was a trick Hendricks had used a good few times before. The banter and the piss-take as ways of easing Thorne out of a black mood. It worked more often than not, but tonight Hendricks had an uphill struggle, and Thorne told him so.
'Who said I was joking?' Hendricks asked.
'You're probably right,' Thorne said. 'I wouldn't have stuck it for so long otherwise.'
'Maybe you need to move up.'
'As in…?'
'You've been an inspector since I was a sodding medical student.'
'Suits me.'
'What's so wrong about an extra pip and a better parking space?'
'Nothing… if I want to sit on my arse all day. Spend most of my time having to crawl up Jesmond's.'
'Get you out of the firing line for a bit.'
'I'd rather wash a corpse.'
'I can arrange that,' Hendricks said. He refilled both their glasses, nodded towards the bathroom. 'Listen, you should be in there scrubbing her back instead of sitting out here talking crap with me.'
Thorne manufactured a smile, but he was thinking about the enthusiasm that fizzed up and out of Anna Carpenter. He had felt the same thing, had probably felt it, back before he had stood over the body of a dead child. Before he'd watched a man tortured and done nothing. A lifetime or two before he'd seen a murderer waltz out of a courtroom to be feted by the media.
'Why not sit the exam at least?' Hendricks asked. 'Might take your mind off stuff.'
Five minutes later, the pathologist was getting to his feet, complaining that the Northern Line would be even slower than usual thanks to weekend track repairs. At the front door, he pulled Thorne into their usual awkward embrace and winked. 'With a bit of luck, that bathwater will still be warm.'
Thorne walked back into the living room and drained his glass. He looked up a phone number in his diary and dialled.
'Steve? It's Tom Thorne.'
Stephen Keane was not a man who said a great deal, at least not in Thorne's experience. Then again, Thorne had not known him long or in anything like normal circumstances. He might ordinarily have been as mouthy as all hell, there was really no way to know, but since his daughter had been murdered, he had been a man of few words.
Now, it took Andrea Keane's father a few seconds to find a couple.
'Oh. Hi.'
'I just called to… see how you were doing. Both of you.'
'We're OK.'
'I meant to call earlier, so I'm sorry-'
'Is this because Chambers was on the radio?'
'Did you hear it?'
'A friend called us, told us about it.'
'It was a disgrace. What can I say?' Thorne was sitting on the edge of the sofa now, shaking his head. 'If there was anything we could have done to stop it, we would have, I promise you that. You shouldn't have to sit and listen to that.'
'Look, I'm right in the middle of something, so-'
'No problem. Sorry to… Not a problem at all.'
There was a pause. Voices in the background at Keane's end. Thorne's breathing loud against the plastic handset.
'What do you want?'
'Like I said, I just wanted to see how things were going.' Thorne eased himself on to the floor. 'I don't know… I thought it might help.'
'Help you or me, Mr Thorne?'
Howard Cook held the car door open, waited as his wife walked slowly down the path from the restaurant, then gently took her arm and guided her as she leaned down and folded herself painfully into the passenger seat.
'In you go, love.'
The arthritis had been getting steadily worse, so there had been at least an ounce or two of truth in what he'd told that copper. He had known for a while that Pat would need a lot more care as time went on. What had happened at the prison might have speeded up his decision, but he had been thinking about retirement anyway.
It was basically a pub, but they did good food and it was only a ten-minute drive, so they treated themselves to dinner there a few times each month. Now and again, they came with friends – a couple Pat knew from the library or one of the other prison officers and his wife – and once they'd brought their eldest and his girlfriend, on one of the rare occasions when he'd deigned to visit. But they were happy enough on their own.
'How was your lamb, love?' she asked.
'Very tender. What about your steak?'
'A bit rare for me, if I'm honest, but they're so nice in there you don't like to say anything, do you? And the pudding was lovely.'
'Let's get home, shall we?' he said.
Heading back through the narrow, unlit lanes towards the village, they left the radio off, same as always. Happy enough to chat. In thirty-two years of married life they had never run out of things to say to each other. Plenty of people envied them, told them it was the secret to a long and happy marriage.
That and knowing when not to talk about certain things.
Driving home, they continued the conversation that had begun back in the pub, over steak and lamb and a bottle of rose. They talked about the kids, and where they might go for a holiday this year and what they were going to do with Pat's mother, who was eighty-five and barely able to leave the house. They talked about almost everything except where the money was going to come from and the retirement which had been taken out of the blue, several years too early. Cook was relieved that his wife knew him well enough to leave it alone. When he had told her about his decision a few days before, he had made it clear that he was not at all keen to discuss it further. She had nodded, concerned but understanding, and he had drawn her into a reassuring hug.
'It's done and dusted, love, so what's the point?'
Just how done and dusted any of it really was remained to be seen, but he didn't think that Boyle and his team would be going away any time soon. Cook had brazened it out when they had first confronted him, not knowing what else to do. He had told that London copper to dig away to his heart's content, cocky as you like, but now he lived in fear of the knock at the door and a smiling Andy Boyle on the other side of it.
'Good news, Howard. Not for you, mind… '
The money he'd been given for those first few 'favours' – the mobile phone business and what have you – was already long gone, and there would certainly be no more cash until things had quietened down. But he had no
