'Might make the little shitehawk a bit more talkative.'
'Or do the exact opposite,' Thorne said.
Boyle shrugged and agreed that was the more likely outcome, that warning Grover might well have been one of the main reasons Cook was killed in the first place. 'Don't get me wrong,' he said. 'I feel sorry for the wife, course I do. But it's hard not to think that Cook got what was coming to him.'
'I think that's a bit harsh.'
'Maybe, but he knew the risks. You take dirty money from that sort of pondlife, all bets are off.' Boyle shook his head. 'Cook was bent and that's the one thing I can never get past with people. Whatever else, you keep a straight bat, right?'
This was clearly something of a hobby-horse, so Thorne just nodded and said, 'Right.'
'Same as on the Job. I don't care whether it's a few quid here and there or if you're swiping kilos of coke left, right and centre, a bent copper's a bent copper and I don't want to know.' He gave a sly smile. 'I can tell which ones are bent, an' all.'
'You reckon?' He thought of Anna Carpenter and her in-built lie-detector. Now, here was someone else who thought he had a nose for dishonesty.
'Oh yes, mate.' Boyle pointed. 'I had you figured out within the first five minutes.'
'Go on…'
Boyle paused for comic effect. 'You're a wanker, but you're a straight wanker.'
Thorne laughed, held up his can when Boyle raised his.
They sat in silence for half a minute. It had just reached the point where Thorne was about to ask if they should turn on the TV.
'She was weird, though, wasn't she?' Boyle said. 'Cook's missus.'
'I've seen people react in stranger ways than that,' Thorne said.
'Oh yeah, me too.' Boyle took a long swig of beer and relaxed into his chair, clearly relishing the opportunity to swap war stories. Or perhaps just to talk. 'A mate of mine got slapped in the face once, when he had to break the news. This woman went mental and just smacked him good and proper, like it was his fault.'
'Everyone reacts differently,' Thorne said.
'Yeah, right, for sure.'
Thorne had seen sudden death affect people in more ways than he could count. He had known people laugh their way through the bad news, as though Thorne and whichever officer he had been with at the time were playing some elaborate practical joke. It took time to sink in with most people, but none he could remember were quite as calm as Pat Cook. Her denial was almost childlike, a game of pretend.
'It knocks you for six, even when you know it's coming,' Boyle said.
Thorne nodded, sensing where Boyle was going.
'Like with my Anne. I mean, for those last couple of months we were talking about it all the time… planning for it, because Annie didn't like loose ends, you know? But then, at the very end, it was still… bad.' He took another drink. 'You think you're prepared for it but you're not, that's all I'm saying. It's still like the world stops.'
'It must have been rough,' Thorne said.
'I can't tell you, mate.'
'How old was…?'
'She was forty-two.' His fingers busied themselves on the arm of the chair, picking at a loose thread, a speck of dirt, or nothing at all. 'No bloody age, is it?'
'You seem to be doing OK, though, Andy,' Thorne said. 'I'm sure she'd be proud of you.'
'She'd be bloody amazed, mate.'
'I mean it.'
Boyle drained the can and crushed it. 'You get on with it, don't you? Nothing else you can do.'
Thorne wondered how it would be for Pat Cook in the coming weeks and months. For some, it was helpful to focus all their energy into a simple hatred for whomever they deemed responsible. For others, it was easier to blame themselves.
I should never have let him go out
I should have picked her up.
If only, if only, if only…
He wondered, too, which way Andrea Keane's family would go, now the justice system had decreed that Adam Chambers should be free to walk around, to breathe fresh air and talk to anyone he liked about the young woman they had lost. At least the law had given them a target; perhaps, for some of them, that would help.
'Do you want another?' Boyle asked, brandishing the distorted can.
'I've not finished this one.'
'You don't mind if I do?'
'It's your house,' Thorne said. He watched Boyle head towards the kitchen, still thinking about Andrea Keane's parents. Hoping that what had happened in that courtroom did not slowly destroy what little was left of them.
It was probably a vain hope, he knew that.
A single murder cost many lives.
Having flown in the face of all her instincts and been extra nice to Frank, she had still not been allowed to leave the office a minute before five-thirty, so Anna had hit the rush hour full on. It had taken almost an hour and a half to drive the eight miles from Victoria to her parents' place in Wimbledon. Plenty of time to ask herself why she was bothering.
And to build up her courage.
Even so, having pulled up outside the house, she needed another five minutes before she felt ready to go inside. She sat in the car and stared at what had once been her home: a four-bedroom house with a decent garden and views over the common, no more than a ten-minute walk from the All England Club.
'That'll all be yours one day,' her friend Rob had said.
'I think I've been written out of the will,' Anna had said.
Neither of them had really been joking.
Now, her father turned from the fridge and carried the milk across to where Anna was sitting at the kitchen table.
'Must be some weird, primal thing,' Anna said. 'Every time I come back here I get this urge to eat cereal.'
Her father smiled. 'I always make sure I've got some in.'
'Thanks.'
'I only ever have a slice of toast, and your mum…'
'Right, I know. If she was having Rice Krispies, it wouldn't be milk she'd be pouring over them.' Anna glanced up and saw the look on her father's face. 'Stupid joke. Sorry…'
She started eating.
'She'll be glad you've come, you know.'
'What?'
'I told her you were coming over and she will ask me all about it later, when you've gone.'
'When she's sober.'
'She'll ask me what we talked about.'
'If I said anything about her, you mean.'
Her father searched for the words but gave up and turned away. He picked up a cloth that was draped over the sink and began wiping the work surfaces. Anna watched him, thinking: This nonsense is making him older. It's ridiculous…
Robert Carpenter was still a year or two the right side of sixty, and until recently had worked full time at one of the city's largest accounting firms. But he had been going into the office less and less since his wife had begun drinking heavily again, and Anna knew that his firm's tolerance would last only so long. She felt guilty about it every day, although she knew very well that it was not her fault.
'She does talk about you, you know.'
Anna dropped her spoon and sat back hard in her chair. She saw that her father was startled, but she was
