still my friend. I'm sure he still thinks of himself that way at any rate. He wouldn't try to kill me…
Thorne had said nothing, dragged a chair across to the window. That had been many hours ago. Since then they'd sat, or moved slowly around each other, saying virtually nothing as it grew dark, Thorne occasionally talking on the radio to the officers in the unmarked cars at the front and rear and to those on foot. Six officers were present, seven including Thorne. Still, the sudden crackle of static from the radio, the shrill ring of the telephone or a shout from an adjacent flat were enough to tighten something momentarily in his guts, to increase the beats per minute by a couple.
'What do you think of me, Mr. Thorne?'
Palmer had been perched close to the television. Thorne had turned the sound right down. Palmer leaned forward, switched the set off and swung round to look at Thorne who was sitting straight-backed on the sofa, eyes closed. He had his mobile in one hand, his radio in the other.
He spoke without opening his eyes. 'Nothing. I think.., nothing of you.'
'Sorry, I'm being dim. You think nothing of me or you don't think of me at all? It's confusing. Which do you mean?'
Now Thorne opened his eyes and his voice was tight with what might have been irritation. 'Either. Both. Turn the television back Palmer got up and moved across to take the chair opposite Thorne. As he sat down, Thorne stood and stretched, produced a yawn from somewhere. 'I'm going to get another coffee…'
'You must have seen a lot of killers, Inspector.' Palmer's voice was quiet, a whisper almost, but as always, he sounded like he had a heavy cold: nasal and laboured, the chest faintly wheezy between phrases.
'You've been in rooms with plenty of people who've done the same as me. Breathed the same air as a few who've done a lot worse I should think. I don't know, kids.., what have you.' Thorne said nothing, but the coffee seemed forgotten. He wasn't going anywhere. 'So why do I make you so uncomfortable?'
Thorne took a step towards Palmer, annoyed suddenly that he seemed so relaxed. Palmer drew back in his chair a little. 'You know that I'm here to catch him. Not to protect you. You do fucking well know that, don't you?'
Palmer nodded. Thorne stayed angry, groping for words. 'By the way, my dodgy knee makes me uncomfortable, one or two of my superiors often make me uncomfortable, wind makes me fucking uncomfortable. You
…'
'What? I make you sick? I make you want to hurt me?'
Thorne turned away and walked towards the window. He checked his watch as he went. It was a little after half past nine. He stared down at the courtyard outside, at the high green fencing and the quiet street on the other side of it. He could see one of the cars sitting a hundred yards or so away, could just make out the figures of the two officers inside. He imagined their tiredness, their irritation, and his own began to vanish, like dirty water down a drain. He waited a minute or two. 'I'm impressed you waited so long.'
Palmer pushed up his glasses, shook his head a little. 'Waited for what?'
'To give me the 'I'm not like him' speech.'
'I wasn't…'
Thorne didn't take his eyes from the street below. He held up his hand to cut Palmer off. 'If that's what you're building up to here, you needn't bother. I don't care, and for what it's worth, I think you're actually worse.' He turned to see Palmer lowering his head, clasping his hands to his chest. 'Nicklin, you know, the one you reckon still thinks of himself as your friend, is a maniac. Psychopath, sociopath, whatever. I don't know why he kills. Not exactly. He likes it, he gets off on it, it's the only way he can express himself, sad little fucker. And he gets an extra kick out of getting you to do it as well.
'So, with you it's a bit easier isn't it? We know exactly why you kill.'
Palmer raised his head, blinked slowly behind his glasses. Thorne acknowledged the small plea he saw in Palmer's eyes.
'All right, past tense, we know exactly why you killed. You killed because he told you to. Pure and simple. To my mind, that makes you worse than he is.'
Thorne turned back to the window. 'He slaughters women in front of their children, and you're worse.'
It was several minutes later that Thorne heard the sigh of the armchair as Palmer stood up, and a few moments after that when he saw the shadow creep across the floor at his feet, and felt the presence of the man behind him.
'Have you ever been really afraid, Inspector Thorne?'
Outside it was cold and clear, but as he stared out at the night, the thoughts came against his will.
Thorne saw the rain suddenly begin to come down in sheets, and he was driving too fast along the dark, wet streets of south-west London, following a car with tail-lights like the eyes of a monster… He was moving through the corridors of a house full of whispers, the voices of those for whom it had been the last place they'd spent any time alive.
He was climbing, blind into an attic, rising up through the floor of a room that would soon be drenched in blood. What he saw when his eyes adjusted to the bright light stopped him dead like a palm pressed hard into his chest, took the breath out of him as effectively as any fist…
Now, one year on, the night was cold but clear, and as the memory receded, Thorne felt his heartbeat start to slow. While his breathing grew less shallow, he watched unmoving as the reflection of the man in the window grew larger and a killer drew closer to him. Palmer spoke slowly, the deep nasal voice emotionless, almost robotic. He gazed straight ahead, as if talking to the distorted image of himself in the windowpane. 'Whatever it is you're thinking, however bad it is, or was, imagine living with it. Not now and again. Not when you've had a few too many and it comes rushing at you out of nowhere. Not in the middle of the night when you wake up sweating and you thank God or whoever as mercifully it drifts away from you, but all the time.
'I'm talking about living with something that paralyses you, that turns your skin to something wet and unknown, even to your own touch. Something that makes your bowels boil and your blood freeze, that ties you up and cuts you off utterly, from every person but the one who frightens you, the one who generates the power of the fear itself, the one to whom you are bound and beholden.
'Now, imagine living with it to the point where, in spite of how much you hate and dread it, eventually it becomes something that you cannot bear to be without. It becomes a thing that you crave – the tightening in the chest, the rush as it hits you, the jolt as it does its work. The spidery touch of it, delicate and deadly, climbing up your body, from your toes to somewhere just behind your eyes, and yes, in your groin, always down there…
'By now, you need to be afraid to feel alive. The fear is the worst feeling in the world, the very worst, until it isn't there any more and you realise that there's a worse feeling.
'These aren't excuses, though I'm sure they sound like it. It isn't as simple as I'm making it sound, I'm not saying it is. What I did was not just.., a reaction. There was obviously some foul and desperate part of me that wanted to turn the tables, that wanted to make others afraid.'
Palmer shook his head, as if arguing politely with the other him on the dark side of the glass. 'No. No, I didn't do the terrible things I've done just because I was afraid. I don't even know if it was him I was afraid of, or whether I was being afraid for him, on his behalf.
'He was frightened of nothing, you see. He is frightened of nothing…'
Thorne did not want to turn to look at Palmer. Instead he looked hard at the reflection: the mouth turned mournfully down, the tears obvious despite the dirt on the window and the low light. At that moment, and Thorne would always be amazed by this, Palmer reminded him of nothing so much as one of those giant bears in some eastern European shithole. A lumbering thing, de-clawed and degraded, dancing in a collar and chain while idiots threw coins and those who watched it on the news at home threw bigger ones to try and put a stop to it.
Thorne was equally surprised by his own tone of voice when he spoke. It was, if anything, reassuring; so at odds with his anger of a few minutes ago. He was speaking for Palmer's benefit, as much as for his own.
'If he's out there,' Thorne said, 'he should be frightened.'
Palmer moved slowly forwards and placed a huge hand against the window, the fingertips whitening as he pressed against the pane. Thorne glanced sideways and watched Palmer staring out into the darkness at his past: distant, recent and somewhere in between.
'He's out there. He's always been out there.'
Holland woke and looked at his watch, panic-stricken.
