list and will be doing the allocations.' Thorne dropped his notes on to a chair, pulled his jacket from the back of it, almost done. 'Right, that's it. Remfry's were particularly nasty offences. Maybe someone wasn't convinced he'd paid for them…'
The DC with the porno moustache smirked and muttered something to the uniform in front of him. Thorne pulled on his jacket and narrowed his eyes.
'What?'
Suddenly, he might just as well have been that teacher, holding out a hand, demanding to see whatever was being chewed. The DC spat it out. 'Seems to me that whoever killed Remfry did everyone a favour. Fucker asked for everything he got.'
It was far from being the first such comment Thorne had heard since the DNA match had come back. He looked across at the DC. He knew that he should slap the cocky sod down. He knew that he should make a speech about their jobs as police officers, their need to be dispassionate, whatever the case, whoever the victim. He should talk about debts having been paid and maybe even dig out stuff about one man's life being worth no more and no less than any other. He couldn't be arsed. deg
Dave Holland was always happiest deferring to rank or, if he got the chance, pulling it. When it was just himself and another DC, things were never clear-cut and it made him uncomfortable. It was simple. As a DC, he deferred to a DS and above, while he was able to large it with trainee detectives and wooden tops. Out and about with a fellow DC, and things should just settle into a natural pattern. It was down to personality, to clout.
With Andy Stone, Holland felt outranked. He didn't know why and it niggled him.
They'd got on well enough so far, but Stone could be a bit 'up himself'. He had a coolness, a flashiness, Holland reckoned, that he turned on around women and superior officers. Stone was clearly fit and good-looking. He had very short dark hair and blue eyes and though Holland wasn't certain, when Stone walked around, it looked as though he knew the effect he was having. What Holland eras sure of was that Stone's suits were cut that bit better, and that around him he felt like a ruddy-cheeked boy scout. Holland would probably still edge it as housewives' choice, but they all wanted to mother him. He doubted they wanted to mother Andy Stone.
Stone could also be over-cocky when it came to slagging off their superiors, and though Holland wasn't averse to the game himself, it got a bit tricky when it came to Tom Thorne. Holland knew the DI's faults well enough. He'd been on the receiving end of his temper, had been dragged down with him on more than one occasion… Yet, for all that, having Thorne think well of him, consider that something he'd done was worthwhile, was, for Holland, pretty much as good as it could get.
He'd been on the team a lot longer than Andy Stone, and Holland thought that should have counted for something. It didn't appear to. It had been Stone who'd done most of the talking when they'd shown up bright and early on Mary Remfry's doorstep with a search warrant.
'Good morning, Mrs. Remfry.' Stone's voice was surprisingly light for such a tall man. 'We have a warrant to enter and…'
She'd turned away then and, leaving the door open, had trudged away down the thickly carpeted hallway without a word. Somewhere inside a dog was barking.
Stone and Holland had entered and stood at the bottom of the stairs deciding who should start where. Stone made for the living room where, through the partially opened door, they could see a silver haired man slumped in an armchair, lost in Kilroy. As Stone leaned on the door he hissed to Holland, nodding towards the kitchen where Mrs. Remfry had seemed to be heading.
'Cup of tea on the cards, you reckon?'
It wasn't:
It seemed odd to Holland, needing a warrant to search a victim's house. Still, like Stone had said, Remfry was a convicted rapist and the mother's attitude hadn't really given them a lot of choice. It wasn't just the grief at her son's death turning to anger. It was a genuine fury at what she saw as the implication in one particular line of questioning. Considering the manner and circumstances of her son's death, it was a necessary line to pursue, but she was having no truck with it at all.
'Dougie was a ladies' man, always. A proper ladies' man.'
She was saying it again, now, having suddenly appeared in the doorway of her son's bedroom where Holland was methodically going through drawers and cupboards. Mary Remfry, mid-fifties, tugging a cardigan tightly over her night-dress, watched, but did not really take in what Holland was doing. Her mind was concentrated on talking at him.
'Dougie loved women and women loved him right back. That's gospel, that is.'
Holland was considerate going through the room. He would have been whether Mrs. Remfry had been watching or not, but he made the extra effort to be respectful as he sorted through drawers full of vests and pants and thrust a gloved hand into pillowcases and duvet covers. In the short time since his release, Remfry had obviously not acquired much in the way of new clothing or possessions, but there seemed to be a good deal still here from the time before he went to prison. There was plenty from before he ever left school…
'He never went short where birds was concerned,' Remfry's mother said. 'Even after he came out they was still sniffing round. Calling him up. You listening to me?'
Holland half turned, half nodded and, as if on cue, pulled out a decent-sized stash of porn magazines from beneath the single bed.
'See?' Mary Remfry pointed at the magazines. 'You won't find any men in them.' She sounded as proud as if Holland was dusting off a degree certificate or a Nobel Prize nomination. As it was, he squatted by the bed, flicking through the pile of yellowing Razzles, Escorts and Fiestas, feeling his face flush, turning away from the proud mother in the doorway. The magazines all dated from the mid-to late eighties, well before Dougie began his days at Her Majesty's pleasure, banged up with six hundred and fifty other men.
Holland pushed the dirty mags to one side, reached back under the bed, and pulled out a brown plastic bag, folded over on itself several times. He let the bag drop open and a bundle of envelopes, bound with a thick elastic band, fell on to the carpet.
As soon as he saw the address, neatly typed on the topmost envelope, Holland felt a tingle of excitement. Just a small one. What he was looking at would probably mean nothing, but it was almost certainly more significant than fifteen-year-old socks and ancient stroke mags.
'Andy…!'
Mary Remfry wrapped her cardigan a little tighter around herself and took a step into the room. 'What have you got there?'
Holland could hear Stone's feet on the stairs. He slipped off the elastic band, reached inside the first envelope and pulled out the letter.
'So we can definitely rule out auto-erotic asphyxiation, then?' DCI Russell Brigstocke, a little embarrassed, looked around the table at Thorne, at Phil Hendricks, at DI Yvonne Kitson.
'Well, I'm not sure we can rule anything out,' Thorne said. 'But I think the 'auto' bit implies that you do it yourself.' '
'You know what I mean, smartarse…'
'Nothing erotic went on in that room,' Hendricks said. Brigstocke nodded. 'No chance it was an extreme sex game that went wrong?' Thorne smirked. Brigstocke caught the look. 'What?'
Thorne said nothing. 'Look, I'm just asking the questions…'
'Asking the questions that Jesmond told you to ask,' Thorne said. He made no secret of his opinion that their Detective Chief Superintendent had sprung fully formed from some course that turned out politically astute, organisationally capable drones. Acceptable faces with a neat line in facile questions, a good grasp of economic realities and, as it happened, an aversion to anybody called Thorne.
'They're questions that need answering,' Brigstocke said. 'Could it have been some sort of sex game?'
Thorne found it hard to believe that the likes of Trevor Jesmond had ever done the things that he, Brigstocke or any other copper did, day in and day out. It was unimaginable that he had ever broken up a fist fight at chucking-out time, or fiddled his expenses, or stood between a knife and the body it was intended for.
Or told a mother that her only son had been sodomised and strangled to death in a grotty hotel room.
'It wasn't a game,' Thorne said.
Brigstocke looked at Hendricks and Kitson. He sighed. 'I'll take your expressions of thinly disguised scorn as agreement with DI Thorne then, shall I?' He pushed his glasses up his nose with the crook of his first finger, then
