He wasn't burnt out yet…
If he disliked his office, his feelings for the Incident Room were closer to pure hatred. There was so much more of it. A room of sharp corners and dead air. A long, dirty window, the light diffused through an off-white vertical blind, one blade permanently broken and crumpled onto the windowsill, where it lay among the corpses of a hundred long-dead bluebottles. A dozen or more desks. Sharp corners waiting to catch a thigh or tear the back of a hand. There was one in particular that caught Thorne several times a week, no matter how hard he tried to avoid it. The room was a feng shui nightmare. Not that he had any truck whatsoever with that kind of rubbish. The only rearrangement of furniture and personal belongings that he had any belief in, involved burglars and fences.
He dragged the chair across the room behind him, steering well clear of the lethal desktop. He planted himself at the far end, in front of the wall, and stared.
Jane Lovell. Katie Choi. Ruth Murray. Carol Garner. Photocopies of photos on a ratty, cork pinboard.
And file names on a computer, sticky labels on jars in a mortuary… Arrows and swooping lines marked in thick, black felt-tip pen on a wipe-clean chart. Lines that linked grainy prints of the four victims to lists of dates, times and locations. Beneath these was another batch of names in a row of wonky columns. Margie Knight. Michael Murrell. Lyn Gibson.
Charlie Garner…
Witnesses. Friends. Family. Figures at the periphery of the case diagram. Thorne stared at the chart. A few nights before, he had sat and thought about the hundreds, the thousands of those whose livelihood depended on killing. Now, he thought about the more unwilling participants. Those who had not chosen to play any part in the process – a process that ended with their names scribbled on a wipe clean board.
Those hundreds of lives touched by a single death. Jane Lovell. Katie Choi. Ruth Murray. Carol Garner. Four single deaths. Two twisted killers. Thorne stared at the names and pictures on the wall in front of him and felt it slipping away. The case was going cold. They were losing it.
Thorne turned at a commotion behind him and saw Brigstocke marching across the office in his direction. A step or two behind the DCI was a man Thorne recognised from the press conference a few days earlier. He couldn't remember the name…
'Tom, this is Steve Norman, our new Senior Press Officer.'
Norman, that was it. Soberly suited and suitably respectful as he'd welcomed the ladies and gentlemen of the media into the briefing room at Scotland Yard, and smoothed the way for Trevor Jesmond with a few easy jokes. Nothing that might compromise the seriousness of the investigation of course, or distract the attention of the cameras from their intended target. Clearly he was someone who could tailor his demeanour to any occasion.
Thorne stood. Norman stepped smartly forward and reached for his hand. He was a smallish man, sinewy and energised. His black hair was gelled and swept back, and his dark eyes held Thorne's as their hands met.
'Pleased to meet you, Tom.'
There were perhaps forty people in the room – detectives, uniforms and civilian auxiliaries. The hubbub, the noise of phones ringing and printers whirring, was not inconsiderable. Thorne, for reasons he couldn't explain, felt forty pairs of eyes upon him and imagined that the entire place had fallen silent.
Brigstocke gestured towards the other side of the room. 'Let's go into the office shall we. You can't hear yourself think in here…'
Thorne led the way. Brigstocke and Norman walked a few paces behind, and despite his best efforts, Thorne could hear nothing of their murmured conversation. As he glanced back over his shoulder, he caught his thigh on the sharp corner of the deadly desktop.
'Fuck!'
The stab of pain was intense. He kicked the leg of the desk. The eyes of the woman behind it widened in alarm, her arms spreading to prevent a tottering tower of paperwork from collapsing. When Thorne reached the door to his office, still rubbing the top of his thigh, Holland, who was on a coffee run, caught his eye. The DC's raised eyebrows asked the question. Thorne's tiny shrug gave the answer. Your guess is as good as mine, mate… Once inside, Thorne poured himself into a chair and was a little disconcerted to see that Brigstocke was still standing and Norman was leaning casually against a desk. They were both looking down at him.
'It's clear that the media are not giving up on this until we've got a result…' Brigstocke said. It was the voice he usually reserved for superior officers. 'So it's important that we keep Steve up to speed with everything.' Thorne was hugely relieved that Brigstocke hadn't gone as far as mentioning the fabled hymn sheet that they were all supposed to be singing from.
Norman flashed the smile that Thorne had seen him use to such good effect when he'd introduced Jesmond at the press conference.
'Russell's already filled me in. I just wanted to introduce myself properly, and apologise in advance, because at some point I will become a pain in the arse.'
Thorne, who didn't doubt it for a second, did his best to summon up something like a smile in return. 'I'm sure I'll cope.'
Norman nodded, pushed himself away from the edge of the desk, strolled across to the window. 'If a media type says 'off the record', my advice usually would be to shut the fuck up very bloody quickly, but off the record, Tom…' Brigstocke laughed. Thorne sort of joined in. 'Anything I should know about?'
'Impossible to say,' Thorne said. 'I don't know how many things you don't know.' Norman didn't turn from the window so Thorne couldn't judge his reaction, but Brigstocke's was clear enough. Thorne knew that he'd better play along. 'We'll make sure you're the first to know if anything significant breaks. We're chasing up a few leads…'
Norman turned from the window and looked straight at Thorne.
'Listen, I don't really expect to be the first person to know anything, but it's always a good idea to use the press. If you don't, give them a chance and they'll have you…' Th0rne didn't bother even trying to think of a smart-arse answer, because he knew Norman was right.
He'd seen too many good policemen eaten up. If the appetite was to be satisfied, he needed to tolerate people like Norman.
'Right now, they're getting a bit impatient,' Norman said. 'We've made a major breakthrough, no question about it, but we need to follow it up.'
'We should never have made it public. The fact that the killers are working together…'
Norman dropped the matey tone as if it was a turd. 'That was not down to me, Inspector, as you well know. My job was, and is, to implement the decisions taken at a far higher level than this, as far as they affect the Met's relations with the media.' He looked across at Brigstocke, cocked his head.
Was that clear enough?
Brigstocke took a few steps towards Thorne, put his hands on the back of the chair.
'Anything from the meeting with Bracher?'
Thorne was uncomfortable discussing the case as it was actually unfolding with Norman in the room, but he understood that Brigstocke was angling for something, anything, that he might be able to throw to the press office.
'Not really.' He turned to look at Norman. 'But we should be able to let you have a definitive e-fit of the man we think killed Jane Lovell and Ruth Murray very soon.'
Norman seemed inordinately pleased. 'Great… that's great. Excellent. I'm going to get us maximum exposure. Every front page in the country, every major news and current affairs show…'
There was a knock and Sarah McEvoy stuck her head round the door. 'Sir I… oh sorry, I'll come back…'
Norman threw up his hands. 'I'm about done here, Russell…' He started walking towards the half-opened door. Brigstocke beckoned McEvoy in. 'It's OK, Sarah.' McEvoy stepped into the room and stood aside as Norman walked past her. Thorne could see him sizing her up, checking her body over, before he turned at the doorway.
'Obviously a DNA match would have been fabulous, but just having a print is the next best thing. If you get him, when you get him, they'll convict him. Media relations can help you get him, Tom.'
Brigstocke nodded, looked at Thorne. 'I'll see you out, Steve…'
Norman said something to McEvoy, and Brigstocke said something to both of them as he and Norman took
