She shook her head. 'He didn't really talk about it and I didn't really want to know. Not once he'd moved into plain clothes, anyway. I knew there was a good deal of secret stuff, some seriously nasty people they were after, but he didn't bring it home with him, if you know what I mean.'
'Sensible,' Kitson said.
Hobbs shifted his son gently to one side and leaned forward. 'I thought this was just about… identification.'
'It is,' Holland said. He had already put a call in to Chris Talbot's former DCI at Serious and Organised, but was still waiting to hear back. So far, Alison had certainly said nothing to suggest that the work her former husband was doing would not have brought him into contact with Alan Langford ten years before.
'You think the fact that Chris was a copper is important?' Alison asked.
'Yes, it might be.'
'Might have had something to do with what happened, you mean?'
'Well, as I said before-'
The door to the living room opened suddenly and a boy walked in – twelve or thirteen, with shoulder-length hair and a My Chemical Romance sweatshirt. He stopped as soon as he saw that there were visitors, shifted awkwardly from one trainer to the other. 'My World of Warcraft account needs topping up,' he said, looking at the carpet.
'I'll sort it out later,' Hobbs said.
The boy mumbled a 'thanks' and left quickly.
'That was Jack,' Alison said.
Holland and Kitson nodded; the maths was easy enough. Chris Talbot's son.
'Stupid bloody computer game,' Hobbs said.
There was a slightly uncomfortable silence until Alison got up, saying 'oh' as though she had remembered something and going to fetch a cardboard box that Holland had seen at the bottom of the stairs on their way in.
'I got this down from the loft,' she said. 'It's a few of Chris's things. I thought they might be useful.' She laid it on the carpet in front of Holland and he leaned down to look at it. 'There's a few photos and some other bits and pieces. Not much, really. Considering.'
'That's great,' Kitson said. 'Thank you.'
Holland lifted the flaps of the box, tried to make his question as casual as possible. 'I don't suppose you'd know if Chris had his appendix out,' he said.
Alison looked taken aback, then nodded slowly. 'I think so. I mean, there was a scar, but you should probably check with Chris's mum. I can put you in touch with her, but we don't really talk much these days.' She shrugged, summoned a thin smile. 'She wasn't exactly thrilled when Stuart and I got married.'
Kitson said, 'It's difficult.'
Alison squeezed her husband's hand.
'Did he ever have an operation to put pins into his leg?' Holland asked.
'Yeah, Chris smashed his leg up playing rugby, the silly sod,' Alison broke into a smile. 'He was pretty good, actually. Played for the Met's first fifteen a couple of times.'
Holland nodded, impressed. He reached down and began rummaging in the box, but could not resist a glance across at Stuart Hobbs.
'I play football,' Hobbs said.
Holland looked up at Alison and he could see then that she knew they had found Chris Talbot's body. He had no idea what she still felt for the man to whom she had been married and whom she now knew to be dead, but the swell of sympathy he felt was not just because of her loss. He could see that the woman simply did not know how she was supposed to react. Sitting there as wife and widow, ten years on, with her new husband and his firm handshake.
Alison laughed softly, remembering. 'He used to have all sorts of problems with airport X-ray machines…'
'Be even worse these days,' Hobbs said.
Holland pulled a framed photograph of a rugby team from the box. He looked for Chris Talbot's name at the bottom and found him halfway along the second row. His arms were folded high on his chest and his ears stuck out. Holland could not detect much of a resemblance to the boy he had seen a few minutes earlier.
Kitson started to say something about Jack and DNA, but Holland was no longer paying attention.
He was staring at the photograph.
Two along from where Chris Talbot was standing was a face Holland recognised.
Ten minutes later, he and Kitson were walking back towards the car.
'We have to tell Thorne,' Kitson said.
Holland held up a hand. He already had his phone out and was listening to a message. 'Sonia Murray,' he said. 'Asking me to call her back urgently.' He shook his head, unable to place the name.
'I've seen her name somewhere,' Kitson said.
Then Holland remembered an attractive black woman, the barrage of abuse as she walked along the landing.
Sonia Murray was the police liaison officer at Wakefield Prison.
FORTY-TWO
Thorne's mood had been bad enough already when he'd got the call from Fraser…
He had managed to find a copy of the previous day's Daily Mail and having bitten back the bile – he had only been looking for a report on the Spurs – Villa game anyway – had taken it to the cafe to read over breakfast. The match report had been brief and uninformative, probably because there was no scope to make any comment on illegal immigrants or dole scroungers, but flicking through the paper he had come across a double-page article written by Adam Chambers' girlfriend.
Natalie Bennett had been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. Although there was little doubt she had lied, the charges had been dropped following her boyfriend's acquittal. In the article, beneath a caption that read 'Picking up the Pieces', she movingly described her efforts to rebuild her life after the trauma she and Adam had endured. There was a photo of her smiling bravely.
If Thorne had been served his breakfast by then, he would have heaved it up across the table.
Even more disturbingly, Bennett mentioned that she and Chambers were currently working on a book that would 'lift the lid' on the abysmal failings of the police investigation and in which the full extent of their suffering would be revealed. Thorne read on, thinking things could not get any worse, until he spotted that the book was being co-written by a hack journalist and true-crime writer called Nick Maier. Thorne had had dealings with Maier in the past, and the thought of him profiting in any way from what had happened to Andrea Keane turned his stomach still further.
By the time he had thrown the paper away, his appetite had all but gone and the call from Fraser killed it altogether.
Now, he was stepping gingerly through a crime scene, in the apartment from which Candela Bernal had fallen to her death the night before.
'You seen many jumpers?' Fraser asked.
'She didn't jump, Peter.'
'Just saying. They take their glasses off, did you know that? I saw it in an old episode of Inspector Morse.'
'She didn't wear glasses,' Thorne said, 'and she didn't fucking jump.'
'I know, OK? Just making conversation, Christ…'
The sliding door that led to the balcony was open and there were more officers working outside. A blue tarpaulin that had been secured to the railings snapped and fluttered in the wind.
'Why was nobody watching this place?' Thorne asked. 'We told her there would be protection.'
