'Hearing the news, there's a hammer blow to the skull, and the blows don't stop coming. Identifying the body. Waiting while it's stared at and quantified and filleted. The funeral to arrange, the loose ends, the belongings to sort through. The clothes to bag up for Oxfam. To bundle up and bury your face in…
'The lives that have got to be carried on with, while the pain settles, inside and out. A scalding in the belly, a scab to be picked at. Rage and guilt. That's agony a long way beyond the physical, Martin.
'That's not better in the morning, or in a week's time or a month's. That's terminal…'
Everybody and everything perfectly still. The room, freezing but suddenly airless. Finally the question, on a slow, shallow breath.
'What's his name?'
Thorne actually flinched, as Palmer raised his head with surprising speed. His eyes were red-rimmed beneath the thick lenses, and desperate. His voice came from somewhere a long way away.
'I don't know.'
Thorne pushed himself away from the table with a roar and charged back across the room towards the door. He wanted two things, badly. He wanted to punch a hole in Palmer's fleshy face and he wanted Palmer to think that he was going to.
'You had your fucking chance…'
'No, please.' There was terror in the voice, and helplessness. Thorne stopped at the door and turned. 'You don't understand. We were at school together…'
Thorne shrugged, raised his palms, waiting. And…?
Palmer turned his face slowly away from him. He cast his eyes back down to the wet tabletop. Down to his own indistinct reflection in the scarred and dirty metal.
'No… I don't know who he is. But I know who he was.'
PART TWO
TEN
Detective Superintendent Trevor Jesmond smiled like he was sucking on a lemon.
'Let me see if I've got this straight. There's a double murderer sit ring in the cells at Kentish Town right now, and you're suggesting that not only do we keep the fact that we've caught him to ourselves, but that we start filling the newspapers with stories of other murders that haven't even happened? Murders that we… make up?'
Jesmond raised an eyebrow and looked to the men on either side of him, Russell Brigstocke and Steve Norman.
The fourth man in the room rubbed at a mysterious white patch on the sleeve of his black leather jacket.
'In a nutshell.., yes.'
Thorne was watching Brigstocke and Norman as well, looking for a reaction, trying to gauge just how much, how many, he was up against. He thought that Brigstocke looked non-committal, the slight shake of his head unreadable. Norman, the oily media merchant, just looked bored.
Thorne spoke again, thinking: I've beaten tougher opposition than this. 'We didn't catch him.'
Jesmond stared. 'I'm sorry?'
'We didn't catch Palmer. He wandered in off the street.'
Brigstocke leaned forward. 'Tom, splitting hairs isn't…'
'It makes a difference.'
The DCI leaned back again, the head movement loud and clear this time. Don't go getting cocky and fucking up your chances, Tom. This whole idea sounds stupid enough as it is…
It was two days since Palmer had walked a little unsteadily into a police station with a head wound, a revolver and a few dark secrets to whisper. The idea had lodged itself in Thorne's head from the moment Palmer had first spoken to him.
I don't know who he is…
The idea grew, rolled around his brain like a snowball being pushed around a field, making more noise as it gained weight, groaning, until it was massive and immovable, impossible to ignore. Palmer had been like a man in a dream, terrified of waking up to the nightmare of an agonising reality.
He told Thorne all he knew. About the past and the messages and the terror, and Jesus, the excitement. He told him all he'd done. With his knife and his hands and the tears that had to be wiped away, so that he could see their faces properly as he killed them. Now, he wanted no more than to be punished for it. To be put somewhere secure. To be removed. Thorne though, wanted much more and as soon as the plan had become fully formed in his mind, he had offered Palmer a way, surprising and simple, to make the waking up more bearable. To end the nightmare…
Palmer had agreed in principle to all of it. Now, he sat waiting, as Thorne waited, for approval of what at the very least was an unorthodox move, and at the very worst, would end a career or two.
Jesmond shuffled his chair a little closer to the table, sat up straight.
'I have to tell you, I'm not convinced.'
You don't have to tell me anything, thought Thorne. It's written all over your pointless, pinched face. Spelt out in the red veins across your nose and cheeks…
Jesmond continued. 'Palmer is a multiple murderer, a serial killer if you want to be sensationalist about it…'
Norman nodded. 'Why not? It's what the press want.'
'Right. Now, we can give him to them. Now, we have a chance to ease what I assure you, Detective Inspector, is a great deal of pressure to get some results, and I must say I'm inclined to take it.'
Thorne tried to make it as clear-cut as he knew how. 'If we announce that we've got Palmer, we lose a far more dangerous killer.'
Jesmond flicked a finger across his thin lips, glanced down at the notes in front of him on the table. 'Smart Anthony Nicklin. As was.'
Thorne nodded. 'Yes, sir.'
''Far more dangerous' is a little bit over the top isn't it? Nastier, agreed, but he and Palmer have each killed twice, so…'
'That we know of, sir.'
Brigstocke nodded. 'I have to agree with DI Thorne, sir. Nicklin seems to be the more predatory of the two. Certainly the more violent.'
Thorne thinking, thank fuck, about time. 'Nicklin is the one that has arranged these killings. Without him the killings would stop. Without Palmer… I think he'll simply go to ground.'
There was a pause. Thorne looked over at Brigstocke but the DCI was looking at the table. Thorne shifted his gaze to the window. The sky was the colour of a long-dead fish. It was quietly drizzling. It was Norman who spoke up. 'And that's.., bad is it? Nicklin just disappearing?'
Thorne tried to sound informative, tried not to make Norman feel too stupid. 'He won't disappear for ever. He'll wait until he thinks it's safe, then start again. He'll do it differently. Maybe he'll move and start killing somewhere else.'
Norman nodded, but Thorne caught something in his look that told him he hadn't tried hard enough. Norman felt stupid… Brigstocke took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose. Thorne had a sudden, disconcerting memory of seeing him do the same thing, right before he punched the front teeth out of a pedophile's mouth. 'I'm not sure the papers will go for it, Tom. Knowingly running false murder stories could get them into deep shit with
