heard them just outside, murmuring. He looked out through the broken window towards the embankment opposite. There was a housing estate at the top, where Smart lived, and he'd seen people emptying their bins down there, using the grassy, green bank as a rubbish tip. Shitting in it, every bit as much as Karen or Nicklin did.
He still loved the place though. He knew where there was a foxes' earth hidden in the roots of a large oak tree. He'd once found a baby jay at the foot of the very same tree, bright blue and puffed-up, meowing like a cat, calling for its mother. He knew where to find massive blackberries and which species of butterfly were attracted by the bud that flourished all over the place, and he knew where he could find slow worms and grass snakes nesting beneath rusting sheets of corrugated iron…
He was startled by a footstep next to him, the sound of broken glass being ground into concrete. He turned quickly to see Nicklin at his shoulder, smiling like he'd finally found something.
'Karen wants to do it with you.' His tone, matter of fact. Palmer said nothing. Nicklin took a drag on his cigarette, waited, and shrugged. 'I'll tell her you're not up for it then, shall I?'
'Everything?' Palmer's voice, helium-high, his breathing ragged.
'That's what she said. She's had it with loads of blokes, done all sorts, it's not a big deal really. Probably suck you off as well…' He ran a hand across his head. His normally thick black hair had been cut suede head-short for the summer.
'What does she want me to do?'
'Just fuck her, mate.' Then a snort and a laugh. Nicklin's voice high too, his movements jerky. Excited…
Palmer turned to look at him, his palm already pressing against the front of his trousers. 'No… I want to. I just mean, does she want me to go outside or will she…? Come on, Stu… what?' Trying to force a smile. Mates together. Not scared.
'Just get it out. She's probably got her pants off already. I'll go and get her.' Nicklin flicked his cigarette into the corner and strolled outside.
After a few seconds, Palmer could hear him round the side of the building, whispering to Karen. He strained to hear the noise of clothing being removed, listened for the sounds that he always imagined he would hear before sex – a moan in the throat, a catch in the breath. The only breathing he could hear was his own; rapid, desperate, unsexy, as he loosened his belt and reached for his zip. He turned away from the doorway and stared at the wall, trying to calm down. Trying not to think of the things she was going to do to him. Someone had scrawled a cock on the dusty grey breezeblocks. He looked down at his own, far less impressive member and began to rub at the red marks around his belly where his waistband had pinched. He heard movement in the doorway behind him. Her voice was almost enough to end it before it had even begun.
'Ready then, Martin?'
His hand had moved to his cock without him even realising it. He was moaning softly and stroking himself even as he was turning round to look at her, smiling…
Karen and Nicklin stood in the doorway, their mouths open, clutching on to one another, waiting for the best moment to let the laughter out. Karen was the first to crack, but the laugh died almost as soon as it came out of her mouth and she looked quickly away. Nicklin began to howl, slapping his sides as Palmer had seen people do in films. Nicklin saw the look on his victim's face and spat out his scorn in between the laughs. 'Fuck, Palmer, it was a joke. I was joking…'
Karen glanced back. 'Jesus…'
Nicklin pointed at Palmer's crotch with a groan of disgust and Palmer's fist tightened instinctively around his soft, shriveled penis. Karen leaned against the doorframe. 'Jesus, Martin…'
'You've upset her now,' Nicklin said. Karen began to cry softly and the amusement vanished from Nicklin's voice in an instant. 'You really have upset her, you stupid bastard. Because you don't know a fucking joke when you hear one, you pervert…'
There was nothing left to do then but run, as he should have done that day in the park, and the summer before that, and a dozen or more times in between.
He ran without stopping to dress himself, clutching his trousers to his waist, bolting through the doorway, between the boy with the short black hair who was tugging with his teeth at the wrapper of a chocolate bar, and the girl in the blue dress who was sobbing. He ran away towards the grassy, green embankment. He ran, his head down, towards the housing estate. Wiping the tears away as he charged through the long couch grass and clattered across a rusting sheet of corrugated iron.
He ran far away from the nest of snakes.
FIVE
'How are they working together?'
It was the first question Brigstocke had asked him the previous night on the phone, and it was the first question he put to them now as a group. They were gathered in the bigger of the two offices. Brigstocke, Thorne, Holland and McEvoy. The core of an investigation that had been sizeable before and overnight had become the biggest that London had seen in a long time. Thorne's answer now, was the same as it had been a few hours earlier. He had no idea, but he hoped that together, they might come up with something, anything, that might point the hundreds of officers and civilians working on the case in the right direction. The hundreds working in the industry of killing…
'It seems likely that they kill alternate victims.' Brigstocke looked as though he hadn't had a lot of sleep the night before. Thorne hadn't had a great deal himself, but he hadn't had Jesmond giving him grief at the same time. Thorne looked at his DCI and saw, as if he needed another one, an object lesson in the benefits of avoiding promotion. He didn't need a lecture from a desk jockey like Jesmond. He knew full well that those wondrous, imaginary places where the buck stopped and where credit, if any, would be due, were a long way apart.
Brigstocke leaned forward, his fingers interlocked in front of him on the desk, his voice a little hoarse but crackling with urgency all the same. 'The evidence suggests that they are different types, psychologically as well as physically, but we need to know how they.., interact. Do they attack their victims together and simply carry out the actual killing individually? Maybe one kills while the other keeps a lookout…
'I don't think that's likely.' Holland was the first to speak up. Thorne was as impressed as always at the confidence, at how far he'd come in a year.
Brigstocke nodded. 'Go on, Holland…'
'Margie Knight's statement made no mention of a second man… of anybody else at all in the immediate vicinity as far as I can remember, and nothing that Charlie Garner has said would indicate that there was more than one man.'
'Have another word with Margie Knight,' Brigstocke said. His eyes met Thorne's.
'I'll give the Enrights a ring.' Thorne was already hoping that he would not need to speak to them again in person. At least not until he had good news. 'Holland's right though, sir, the boy's said nothing at any time about two men…'
One was bad enough wasn't it, Charlie?
'I think we're forgetting about the time element here.' McEvoy sounded as tired as Brigstocke. Thorne looked across at her and thought that she didn't look a whole lot better.. 'They could have killed Carol Garner and Ruth Murray together, or at least both have been present when she was killed, but the stabbings in July almost overlap time wise and they were miles apart. Each of them has got to be working on their own.'
'I agree,' Thorne said. It was about as much as he was sure of.
'OK, so the chances are that, even though they kill on the same day, they kill separately, but we have to presume that they plan these murders carefully. For Christ's sake, they must get together to work everything out, discuss dates…'
Thorne shook his head. 'I don't think we can presume anything.'
It was possible that the men they were after might never even have met. Thorne had read about a pair of killers in the United States who did their butchering separately but who got their kicks out of communicating with each other. They discussed the selection of potential victims by phone and over the Internet. They egged each
