'l know.'
'Christ, people saw the car. Bloody idiots thought they saw the car, thought they saw Karen…'
Thorne was a fraction of a second from reaching out a hand and placing it on the old man's arm, when Perks turned away, shaking his head. He leaned on the wall, fixed his gaze on the shoreline. The tide was almost fully out. Thorne stared down at the assorted detritus revealed by the retreating water, squatting in the sludge. Tyres, dozens of them, broken crates and of course the ubiquitous supermarket trolleys. How the hell did these things get here? He couldn't imagine anybody unloading the weekly shop into the back of the car and then merrily hoisting their trolley off the nearest bridge. Yet here they were, probably deeply symbolic of something or other, but to Thorne, right at this minute, just a bunch of old trolleys stuck in the mud.
This was a fairly typical bankside treasure trove, though Thorne had often come across more exotic items. A number of artificial limbs. A 1968 Harley-Davidson. A dead white bull-terrier, bloated and snarling like a hideous space hopper.
And of course, the occasional body.
Every so often the river gave them up. Gently laid them out on a sandy bank, coughed them up into a tangled bed of weeds or spat them onto the mud. Most were never identified, never claimed, remaining as anonymous as the supermarket trolleys. Many still waited to be discovered, moving up and down the river far below the surface. Their eyelashes and fingernails, the flakes of their skin, snacked upon by sea trout, salmon and seahorses.
Thorne wondered how quickly, 'if at all, the body of Karen McMahon would be given up, released into his care so that he could learn things from it…
'Two things,' Perks said suddenly. Thorne turned to him, waiting. 'I know I won't be the first person you call, or the second. Probably won't be high up on the list at all. Get to me as quickly as you can though, will you? When you find her?'
Thorne nodded. He hadn't needed to be asked.
'What's the other thing?'
Perks turned to him, shivering, tucking his scarf down inside his car coat. 'I want to be the one that tells Karen McMahon's mother.'
Holland stood in the doorway, blocking it. McEvoy moved to go past him. He moved to prevent her.
She laughed without a trace of humour. 'This is stupid.'
'Yes, it is,' Holland said. 'If you come into the office and I'm here, you turn around and leave. I come in when you're already here, you get up and go…'
'So, ask the DCI if you can move offices.'
'Right. What am I supposed to tell him?'
'Anything you like.'
'… that we're suddenly not getting on?'
Holland sighed and stepped forwards, giving McEvoy little choice but to move back a step or two. He closed the door.
'We're not doing our jobs properly, Sarah.'
McEvoy narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice. 'You're on that one again, are you?'
'I said we, Sarah. Both of us need to sort this out before it goes too far.'
'Is that a threat? Going to grass me up, Holland?'
Holland brushed past her, sank into a chair. 'Jesus, Sarah, you're so paranoid.'
'Yeah? Well you should see me when I've done a few lines.' She glared at him, standing her ground but wanting more than anything to throw open the door and run. Wanting to bolt into the toilets and open her bag and sniff up a little confidence It was almost as if Holland could see the need in her face. 'And have you? Done a few today?' McEvoy said nothing, but felt the burning start behind her eyes. 'Where do you keep it? When you're here I mean. In your bag is it? In here somewhere…?' Holland's eyes scanned the room. 'Better pray none of the trainee sniffer dogs ever gets loose in here…'
She cried easily these days. The tears could come at almost any time. They were just gathering in the corners of her eyes, only a drop or two, and easily pressed back with the heel of her hand, but still enough to stop Holland dead in his tracks.
'Sarah…' 'No/'
Her hands dropped back to her sides and she raised her head. Not a trace of softness remained in the set of her features. The anger always followed the tears and she welcomed it. She was on safer ground then. A clenched fist and a tightness in the chest felt more comfortable than the taste of saltwater in her mouth.
'Listen, I don't want your help and I don't need your advice. I certainly don't need telling what's good for me, work-wise or any other fucking-wise.'
'Nobody's trying to tell you…'
'A few fucks and a grope in the car park does not give you any rights at all, OK? And I didn't hear you complaining the other day when you were giving me one on the bathroom floor. Grunting and pushing me into the side of the toilet…'
'I only want…'
'Just leave it alone. I don't do it at work.'
The single knock was followed instantly by the noise of the door opening and they both turned at the same time. McEvoy instinctively took a step towards the door. Neither she nor Holland had a clue whether the man in the sharp suit with, the slicked-back hair who was walking into the office had heard any of their conversation, but it was all either of them was thinking during the exchange that followed.
'I'm looking for McEvoy.'
'I'm DS McEvoy. Do you not know how to knock?'
'I knocked.'
'You knock, you wait, you get asked to come in, you come in. It's pretty bloody straightforward.'
'Who's got time? I'm DCI Derek Lickwood from SCG east.' He dropped an overcoat on to a chair, held out a hand. 'You're nothing like you sound on the phone.'
Thorne got on to the Docklands Light Railway at Island Gardens which straddled the Greenwich Meridian. Here, a filed Victorian walkway ran right under the river, connecting with the south shore near the Cutty Sark. In no time at all, the train was rattling through the heart of Canary Wharf; the view as breathtaking to Thorne as any he had just seen staring across the Thames.
It was a bizarre journey. A matter of minutes separated one of the oldest parts of London from the brand new developments that were changing the skyline for ever: from nineteenth-century tea clipper in Greenwich dry dock to forty-foot yacht in Limehouse Basin; from the classical elegance of the Queen's House to the very different beauty of the new skyscraper, days away from becoming the tallest building in the city; from stucco and slate to steel and mirrored glass in a couple of minutes.
The DLR was as close as the city got to a time machine. Now Thorne needed to make a far shorter journey back in time. Just the tiniest hop back, seventeen years to the summer of 1985. A hot summer. Live Aid, French nuclear testing, Brixton ready to boil over. DC Tom Thorne, newly married, standing in a stuffy interview room with a man named Francis Calvert, everything about to change.
And a young girl who, while Thorne was fighting to get the smell of death off his clothes, may or may not have climbed into a car. A girl whose picture grew smaller and finally dropped off the front pages as bigger stories exploded on to them. A girl who almost certainly died alone and afraid on a warm night when perhaps people danced at Wembley stadium or threw petrol bombs on Electric Avenue, or sat at home like Tom Thorne, trying to keep the rest of the world well away. Thorne put his head back and looked out of the window. Walls and windows and endless stretches of spray-painted metal moved past him in a blur. Seventeen years ago when Karen McMahon had disappeared, he'd been somewhere else. Now, perhaps they could finally help each other.
The train rumbled on towards Bank where he would change: Northern line back to Hendon and a few hours in the office before driving back out to south-east London again later on. He closed his eyes and pictured himself twenty years down the road – being sat down in a grotty pub or walked along the river by some spunked-up wannabe; a fast-track thirty something DI only too eager to tell him how he'd got it so very wrong all those years before, how he'd screwed up and how they were re-opening the case and how, finally, now, they could put his mistakes right… He pictured himself smiling and saying, fair enough mate, but you'll have to tell me which case
