confectioner's custard and leathery grey skin. Behind the wire-framed spectacles the eyes were watery, and he had big discoloured teeth, like old-fashioned sweets in a jar, which clacked noisily together when he spoke and sometimes when he didn't.
'You do remember Palmer and Nicklin being close?' Thorne asked. Bowles pushed himself away from the edge of the desk with a small grunt and moved across to the window. His tie was askew and there were chalk marks around his crotch. 'I don't recall a great deal about them at all. I don't think I liked either of them very much but that isn't unusual. Math is the lesson where the most disruption occurs. The taller one… was that Palmer?' Thorne nodded. 'He let himself get distracted by his friend. There…' He pointed to a corner of the room.
'The two of them messing about at the back. Passing notes and laughing. Palmer's homework was good, I think, but in class he was… somewhere else.'
'Could you not have split them up? Moved Palmer to the front…?'
Bowles shrugged, stared out of the window. 'I never really had them for that long, you see. They would probably have gone into different streams anyway that September, but of course they got expelled.' He raised his hand, rubbed with a finger at a dirty spot on the window.
'An older boy, can't remember his name. They grabbed him outside the school gates, dragged him into the park, I think…'
Thorne knew the story. Palmer had told him. His eyes filling behind his glasses, the nodding slow and sorrowful as he looked back at himself down the wrong end of the telescope, sweating as he relived it. Each detail preserved in the hideous aspic of shameful memory. The big feet in scuffed brogues, rooted t o the spot, refusing to carry him away. The thick fingers, closing slowly around the brown, pimpled grip of the air pistol.
Thorne knew then that this had been the moment when everything had changed. From then on it had been unavoidable. He thought about what Bowles had just told him. A couple more months and Palmer and Nicklin would have been in different streams, moving along different paths; Nicklin's influence on the younger boy not as strong. Would they have drifted apart then? Might a few months, all those years ago, have saved the lives of five women?
At least five women…
There was a knock at the door and Holland entered. Thorne nodded in his direction. 'This is Detective Constable Holland…'
Bowles peered theatrically across the room, feigning shock. 'Looks like a bloody sixth former.' Holland shrugged and smiled at the feeble joke.
'Did you follow their progress after they'd been expelled?' Thorne asked.
The teacher shook his head vigorously. 'Didn't miss either of them for a second. Nicklin was nothing but trouble and Palmer was just a big blob. Not his fault, I suppose. Boys his age can be terribly awkward, find it difficult to fit in. Like a lump of Plasticine that needs shaping. Palmer just got shaped by the wrong person, I think.'
Thorne nodded at Holland. Time to make a move. 'Thanks Mr. Bowles.' Thorne handed over a card, which Bowles took without looking at it. 'If there's anything else that occurs to you…'
'I taught myself to juggle when I was younger,' Bowles announced.
'I'd do a bit for the class. Last day of term, that sort of thing. I can remember doing it for their class – Palmer and Nicklin's class. Cascade of five balls, six on a good day. Balancing a chair…' He pointed at a heavy looking wooden chair behind the desk on the platform. '… One of those chairs, on my chin. Do you know that Marsden's younger than I am?'
Thorne was itching to get away. 'Sorry, sir?'
'Headmaster. They brought Marsden in a couple of years ago, from outside. I'm ten years older than he is.' He threw his arms wide, as if the sense of what he was saying was obvious for all to see. 'Be glad to get out of here to tell you the truth. Can't even manage three balls these days…'
Holland opened the door, and Thorne gratefully took a few steps towards it. 'We'll be on our way, sir.'
Bowles nodded and spoke quietly. 'What's Nicklin done?'
'I'm afraid we can't…'
'Of course not, I'm sorry I asked. Do you know, I hadn't thought about either of those boys in years until I was told it was them you wanted to talk to me about? I've taught hundreds of boys. I can't remember most of them to be honest. I can recall the work sometimes, but not faces. Ever since I heard those two names again, I've been thinking about them a good deal. Thinking about him. There's a look on your face, Inspector Thorne, whenever you talk about him, did you know that?'
Thorne knew it would be pointless to deny it, to express surprise. His face hid nothing. It never had. Not the scorn he felt for some, not the pity for others. The creases in his face folded as naturally into genuine expressions of horror, disgust and rage as those of a bad actor might shape themselves into their phony counterparts. His face fell easily into darkness; the scowl more at home there than the smile. Though the smile was the rarer, it was arguably the more powerful. Both had got him into plenty of trouble.
Bowles moved to the door to show them out. 'I suspect that now I shall be thinking about Stuart Nicklin often.' The watery eyes studied Thorne's face. 'The boy's moved on from air pistols, hasn't he?'
Thorne thought about Rosemary Vincent: the memory of an argument on the phone, the photograph turned over and over in her hand that day at the press conference. The hole in her precious daughter's head. The shadow moved across Thorne's face as he answered the teacher's question.
'Yes. He's moved on.'
He was thinking about something that had happened a long time ago. Years earlier, back when he'd still been Stuart Nicklin and supporting himself by tossing off sad old men and confused young ones, he'd learned about making the appropriate response to a situation. Another rent boy, a spiteful little prick who was older and uglier, had stolen some of his customers. Not his regulars, they were loyal, but some of the passing trade. The fucker was undercutting, a tenner here, twenty notes there, a bit more cash and we'll forget about the condom poaching punters to make some last ditch money before his looks went altogether. Understandable, but very bloody annoying. He was furious. He wanted to do something to punish the thieving toe rag, the little bitch, but he knew that the sensible thing, the appropriate thing to do would be to ignore it. Let it go and move on. There were plenty of punters to go around and there was no need to risk trouble with the police. No need to rock the boat. That would be stupid.
He was also thinking about what was happening right now. They were afraid he was going to disappear. Scared shitless that, with his partner taken, he would pack up and head for the hills. If that was what they were afraid of, he knew that it was exactly what he should do. It was the appropriate response. They didn't want him to melt away and then resurface when the time was right to start again. So, that was the right thing for him to do. It was simple and sensible. It was self-preservation.
It would be hard, there was no question of that. He loved what he was doing. He was very good at it and he loved that too. It was a rush like nothing he could remember, and even without the added buzz of the other, even without Palmer playing along for real, he knew that not doing it would be like dulling all his senses. Stopping would be like cutting off the oxygen to the very best part of himself. Giving it up would be like going to sleep for a while. It wouldn't be for ever, it might not even have to be for very long, but it would be very bloody hard. Still, it made sense. It was the appropriate thing to do, so he would have to try.
He would try to stop.
Years earlier, back when he'd still been Stuart Nicklin, having decided not to do anything stupid, he'd made a few calls and lured the thieving rent boy to an empty flat he sometimes used off Glasshouse Street. It was February and freezing. From the small window he could see the crowds in scarves and heavy coats, moving across Piccadilly Circus. He could just make out the icicles dangling from the bow of Eros and the frost on the steps leading up to the statue, sparkling in the multicoloured neon from the vast signs above. When the boy arrived, Nicklin beat him unconscious with a house brick, stuck a funnel in his mouth and poured a gallon of bright blue anti-freeze down his throat.
In its own way, an appropriate response. After all, it was a very cold night.
He was thinking.
He would try to stop…
Thorne, too, was thinking about something that had happened a long time ago…
The boy he'd last seen trudging towards school sporting a feather cut, though he wasn't an awful lot taller,
