used to be simply Stuart, lifted up the bat which came away wet and a little sticky. He hoisted the dripping wooden blade high above his head and brought it back down again with every ounce of strength in his body. He felt the shudder up his arm and across his shoulders. He closed his eyes, and the colours and shapes that swam about in the blackness were like the blood flying into the dirt, and the pulped body of the frog sailing gloriously across the blue and into the long grass…
The man who was variously First Friend and Blast From The Past and occasionally Ghost Of Summer, lifted and swung, lifted and swung, and each time he thought would be the last, but each new contact, each vibration, shook loose some new desire in him, liberated the hunger again and he felt the urge in his head and the action down his arms…
Finally, after many minutes, the man who had signed his most recent e-mail Night Watchman stopped and looked down at the swirls of bone and brain and blood making new patterns in what was already a somewhat garish carpet.
It took him thirty seconds or so to regain his breath, and then he was moving, quickly. He removed the gloves, wiped down the bat and put it back into the bag, having already taken out the fresh set of clothes. He stepped away from the body, taking care to mind his shoes. He didn't want to be walking bloody footprints all round the place for the rest of the day.
In less than ten minutes he was changed and ready to go, with plenty of time left to get to work. As he closed the front door behind him he checked his wristwatch. He tut-tutted at his carelessness. The face of the watch was flecked with blood. Someone, he wasn't certain who, had once said something Thorne was particularly fond of. A phrase he'd heard and never forgotten. Knock hard, life is deaf
It was a sentiment he did his best to live by, but there were occasions, many of them in fact, when those around him might have been happier had he tried to keep the noise down a little. Times when they seemed unwilling to discover what might be on the other side of the door.
Usually, this would only make Tom Thorne knock harder, bang louder. Today, even he was not sure he wanted to see that door opened. Today, a man was going to die a violent death. A man who, but for Thorne, but for the course he had chosen to follow, might otherwise live. It was pretty much that simple, and it was not a pleasant thought to be bouncing around in your head from the second you opened your eyes in the morning.
Thorne rushed into work like a madman, but if he had imagined it might be… easier, with people around him, among the team – at the heart of things – he was wrong.
It was as if his colleagues, no, not just his colleagues – the woman in the newsagent, the postman, every driver he'd cut up on the North Circular on the way into work – all of them, could see his guilty thought, his dark admission. It was as though it had become visible, like a tiny spot floating across his eyeball. They all saw the terrible thought and processed it, and instantly, they all produced their own thought to keep it company.
You're right. It was, is, will be your fault… Wednesday, 9 January. A wet and windy and godforsaken fucker of a Wednesday, when it was easy to see why its children were full of woe. A shitty, dreary, dry wank of a day. A day for watching clocks and losing tempers, and listening for phones.
A day for talking about it.
Thorne, Brigstocke, Holland and McEvoy. Sitting around a table, the rain beating against the windows. Talking about it.
'A man, this time. Is that important?'
'Like he said in the mail, ringing in the changes.'
'It feels like he's playing a game.'
'With Palmer, or with us?'
'What the fuck does 'Night Watchman' mean anyway?'
'Like a security guard…'
'Or in cricket, you know? Someone they send in late on. Someone who's dispensable.'
'Sounds a bit odd. Does he think he's dispensable?'
'I doubt it…'
'I'm not sure how seriously we should take any of it.'
'Any of it,' Thorne said, 'except for the killing.'
Talking about it, because that's all they could do. Everybody keen to make their contribution.
Jesmond on the phone to Brigstocke: 'This will probably be our only chance, Russell. Make sure you don't blow it.'
Steve Norman, who Thorne was disliking more and more each time he encountered him, on a cheery visit from the press office, annoyingly only spitting distance away above the station at Colindale:
'Well, everything's geared up at our end, Tom.' He laughed then.
'Bloody press have been making up stories for years anyway, about time we had a go.' Thorne neglected to laugh along, but Norman seemed not to notice. 'Just to let you know, ready and waiting when it goes off…'
Waiting.
To an extent of course, they were always waiting: Thorne, Brigstocke and the rest of them. Those at the shitty end of it. Waiting for the next call, the next case. Waiting for the one that would do their heads in, or fuck their lives up. Waiting to open the wrong door or pull over the wrong motor – the one with the mad fucker in it. Waiting for the knife or the bullet, or if they were clever and lucky, just waiting it out. Waiting for the pension.
This was a different kind of waiting though. This was far crueler. Now they had been given.., parameters.
They knew when, sort of. They knew the sex of the victim. Christ they even knew how he was going to be killed – the death to which this man, whoever he was, had been doomed. They had been shown what few have seen, and yet, at the same time they were powerless to change the picture. It was like being some not quite all- knowing, not quite all-seeing force, hamstrung by the missing pieces of the jigsaw. Omnipotent and impotent.
Like being God with Alzheimer's.
It was just a matter of exactly when and exactly where. Then, yes, then, they would move. Then, the springs tightened beyond endurance would be released and they would move like streaks of fucking lightning, blazing to wherever this man's violent compulsions led them, praying that it would turn out to be worth it. Thorne sat at his desk wondering whether anything could be worth this, remembering the conversation he'd had a few short hours earlier. He stared out through the rain-streaked windows into the glowering, grey sky. Into the face of Phil Hendricks, those dark eyes lit up. Make it a warm one, will you?
At lunchtime, a fleet of mopeds delivered a mountain of pizzas. Thorne and Brigstocke shared an extra large Spicy Meat Feast, but not equally. Brigstocke's reply when this fact was pointed out, was not one Thorne felt like arguing with, even if the DCI did have a broad grin plastered across his greasy chops as he spoke.
'If I'm going to sit on fences, I'll need a fatter arse, won't I? So stop moaning.'
Thorne wasn't very hungry anyway.
The small talk didn't feel forced or awkward, just a little inappropriate. Like a bad joke at a funeral where everyone's turned up way too early and they're standing around waiting for the body to arrive. Which was, of course, exactly what they were doing.
'How're the kids?'
Brigstocke's eyes widened as he slurped up a string of red-hot mozzarella. He had four kids under six and was often to be found spark out at his desk in the middle of the afternoon. Often, but not during this case.
'Little bastards,' Brigstocke mumbled. 'Glad to be here if I'm honest, whatever the circumstances.'
Thorne knew what he meant. He'd come into work more than once for pretty much the same reason, except that in his case, the only person he was escaping from was himself.
'Everybody reckons it gets easier, but fucked if I can see when. The time they're old enough to start making their own breakfasts and sticking on Cartoon Network, so you can stay in bed for a bit longer, is just about the same time they start bunking off school and doing crack. Just a different set of things to worry about. Do you want that last bit?'
Thorne shook his head and watched as Brigstocke pushed the entire slice of pizza into his mouth. He grunted with satisfaction, then started looking around and waggling his oily fingers.
'I'll grab some paper towels from the Gents,' Thorne said. He could hear Holland and McEvoy laughing about something in the adjacent office as he moved across to the door.
He stopped and turned, his hand on the metal door handle. His palm slippery with sweat and grease. 'I
