Palmer was not a victim though. Palmer was on remand, charged with murder.
'Sorry, no. What's the point, anyway? They've taken the body away, she's not there any more. There's nothing there any more…' Thorne said this, but didn't know for sure. The body would probably have been removed by now, but he didn't know what else might be happening at the site.
'I don't care. I want to see.'
'Forget it.' Thorne stood up, took a few steps in no particular direction.
'Before, you were helping us locate the body, fair enough, but this is pointless. Even if I was in favour of it, which I'm not, I couldn't get it authorised.'
'Please.'
'Shut up.' With Palmer, it always seemed to go the same way. He made Thorne feel something that was almost like sympathy, whatever it was turning quickly to something that was definitely anger. 'Why the fuck should I try to…?'
Palmer shoved back his chair and stood up fast. Through the window at the far end of the room, Thorne could see one of the prison officers moving to check that everything was all right. He had been about to signal that there was no problem when Palmer had said what Thorne had been desperate to hear since those first few days after he'd handed himself in.
'There's something else I want to tell you…'
Now, in his flat, the phone was ringing.
Thorne got up, turned off the television and stereo en route and fetched the phone from the table by the front door. Stepping sideways to avoid the unfinished sandwich on a plate on the floor, he dropped backwards over the arm of the chair leaving his legs dangling, and hit the button.
It was his dad. They hadn't spoken for a week or so.
'Tom…'
'How's it going?'
'Fine, you know.'
'Gags tonight, or quizzes?'
'Tom, it's Dad.'
'I know.' Thorne laughed. 'You all right?' His dad breathed heavily down the phone at him. 'Listen, you never told me how it went down the Legion.'
'What?'
'The trick you were going to pull. You called me and asked me about the worst killers.'
There was a pause. 'I didn't…'
'That smallpox thing. It was a joke to play on your mates. Remember? It was a couple of weeks ago, I think.'
'No. Sorry. No idea what you're on about. Smallpox?'
'Come on, yes you do. You asked me for the names of the worst killers….
'What, you mean diseases?'
'Yeah, that was the point, I think. Forget it. Wasn't one of your best anyway.'
'Is this a windup?'
Thorne laughed again, pulled a face. 'Well if it is, it's not me that's doing it…'
'Just piss off, all right…'
'Dad…?' Thorne swung his legs over the arm of the chair, sat up straight.
'Who the hell d'you think you're talking to? Talking to me like that…'
Thorne was suddenly concerned, but tried his very best not to sound it. 'Look, calm down, Dad. It doesn't matter OK. OK?'
There was silence then, save for the laboured breathing. Ten, fifteen seconds…
'Dad, I-'
'Go to hell, you little fucker!'
An explosion of rage, then the dialing tone.
TWENTY-TWO
Karen McMahon's parents hadn't been informed about the finding of a body, at least, not officially. That wouldn't be done until tests had been completed, but being asked to provide material for a DNA comparison must have given them a fair idea. A call out of the blue fifteen years down the line, and suddenly they would be thinking about finally laying their daughter to rest.
Karen McMahon's parents would not yet have visited the site of this, her first grave. When they did, they wouldn't have a great deal of trouble finding it.
Over forty-eight hours now since they'd found the bones, the bin bags and the carpet. The equipment, the paraphernalia, was already long gone. Now it was just a muddy hole, its location marked by footprints, a few scraps of crime-scene tape, and the small pile of rocks which Nicklin had used to keep the animals away which now stood like some parody of a headstone.
They'd probably come down with Vic Perks, the parents, when they came…
Perks had been very clear about wanting to visit. He'd sounded grateful when Thorne had told him – grateful and devastated.
'Would it have been quick, do you think?' Palmer had been staring down into the drainage ditch for several minutes, saying nothing. The sudden question took Thorne a little by surprise.
'To bury her?'
'To kill her.'
Thorne pictured the rotten black rope hanging loose around the bones of the neck where once it had bitten tight against the flesh. He remembered Carol Garner's post-mortem report. 'Not quick enough,' he said.
Palmer stepped back from the ditch and turned away. He looked up towards the top of the embankment where the back-up officers sat in their car – the Vectra parked up next to Thorne's Mondeo. It was raining gently. Both cars were splattered with mud. At the foot of the slope, Holland, in a yellow waterproof jacket, wandered up and down, glancing across occasionally at Thorne and Palmer, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else.
'Smart lied to me,' Palmer said.
Thorne had heard stranger things said, but he couldn't remember when. 'Did he?' he said, thinking: he did a lot more than fucking lie to you…
'Something happened the day Karen went missing.' He cleared his throat, corrected himself. 'The day she was killed. When the three of us were together down here.' He began to move, each step taking an age, as though he were walking in slow motion. Thorne moved after him, taking two steps to each one of Palmer's. They'd cut the grass and the earth felt spongy beneath his feet. He was aware of Holland away to his right at the edge of his vision, the bright jacket vivid against the dark bank behind him.
'It was a trick,' Palmer said. 'I don't know for sure whether they were both in on it. It doesn't matter now anyway. I thought Karen… wanted me, and I felt excited. She wanted me, you see. Not Smart.' His voice was a little higher than usual, as if the memory were forcing it closer to the way it had sounded fifteen years before. He shrugged.
'Like I say, it was a joke. I was being made a fool of, but I didn't know that then. I was excited, more than I'd ever been, more than I have ever been. What happened wasn't intentional. I'd tell you if it were, you could hardly think any worse of me, but it genuinely was not.' He took a breath. 'I exposed myself to her.'
Palmer had stopped moving and turned to look at Thorne as he arrived at his shoulder. 'I'm well aware of how… insignificant this sounds now. Then, at that moment, I would have taken my life in a heartbeat if I'd had the means. If I'd had the courage. When I turned round I saw the joke, I could see that they had probably been conspiring, but the look on Karen's face was horrible. She was disgusted. Not comic disgust, real horror, like she was reminded of something…
'I've wondered since if perhaps she was being abused, if the sight of me brought something back.' He nodded to himself. 'Useless to speculate now, I know…
