‘
He held up the plastic bag he was carrying. Laid it down gently on the edge of the bed and began to delve inside.
‘Here you go,’ he said.
When he’d first seen what had happened, he’d been afraid that the accident was going to do the job for him. He’d written one of his letters, telling her just how furious and frustrated he was. But once it became clear that the situation was improving, that Hodson’s condition wasn’t life-threatening, he began to think that it might have done him an enormous favour. Now, looking at the state Ricky Hodson had been left in, he knew that he’d been spot on.
There were wires running all over the shop; machines either side of the bed with bags hanging off them. There were dressings along both of Hodson’s arms where he’d taken the skin off and a brace around his neck. He’d punctured a lung, apparently, as well as shattering his hip and pelvis, and one leg had been smashed up so badly that he’d been lucky to keep it, by all accounts.
‘Jesus, Ricky. What a mess.’
Hodson’s eyes were moving back and forth quickly now. A beam of panic cutting through the fog of sedation; allowing out a few sputtered words, slurred and hoarse. ‘You’re in the wrong room, mate…’
He took out a sorry-looking bunch of grapes and held them up for inspection. Then went back into the bag and produced a paperback book. He put them both on the table then reached across to rub the back of his hand across Hodson’s unmarked face. It rasped against the man’s stubble.
‘At least you were wearing a helmet,’ he said.
He took the rag from his pocket and pushed it quickly into Hodson’s mouth, forcing his head down into the pillow. He winced as his fingers caught on the teeth, before bringing the bag around and slipping it over Hodson’s head. He gathered up the plastic, wrapped the handles around his fingers and squeezed, tightening his hands below the jaw to get a decent seal.
The metal bed-head rattled, but not for very long.
He watched as the thin, crappy plastic was sucked in, as it wrapped and crinkled around the nose. He waited until it slowed, then turned his eyes to the window; looked out at the distant lights, his hands still clamped tight above the neck-brace.
It was probably Watford…
He turned back again and leaned in, as the bag slapped gently one last time against Ricky Hodson’s face. ‘That black ice is a bastard, eh?’
Thorne had been leaving messages for Louise since early afternoon, but she hadn’t called back until he’d been on his way home.
He’d told her that he’d had an ‘interesting’ day. Said he’d give her the gory details later if she fancied it, that he’d be happy to get over to her place. Louise had confirmed she wouldn’t be working horrendously late, but that she really ought to get an early night, if that was OK. She’d said she would call him if she changed her mind; if she found herself utterly unable to get through the night without him. Thorne had told her he’d be waiting for the call.
The Bengal Lancer had been about to close, but, as a favoured customer, the manager was happy to let Thorne sit at the bar with a couple of the waiters and work his way through a plate of onion bhajis and lamb tikka while the cleaners carried on around him. It did the trick. When he’d walked in, Thorne was still pissed off with Louise, but two pints of Kingfisher and a few off-colour stories had put him in a far better mood by the time he got home, just before ten-thirty.
He fed Elvis, stuck some washing in and caught the end of
Thorne decided that, for a while at least, this was more fun than gambling. He sat and thought, scribbling notes on a piece of paper normally reserved for assessments of rival poker players. Then he fired off an email to Hendricks, proposing
Waiting to see if Hendricks would come back with anything, Thorne remembered his phone. His original handset had been sent back from Newlands Park that lunchtime and was now sitting, sealed inside its Jiffy bag, on the table by the front door.
Thorne fetched scissors from the kitchen and cut into the parcel while keeping one eye on a potentially dirty film on Channel Five and racking his brain for more comedy titles. He decided, as he worked, that this was male multitasking at its most advanced. That the tight-arsed jobsworth at Newlands Park was clearly trying to get his own back, having wrapped up the phone in several layers of impenetrable plastic packaging.
It took him almost ten minutes to dig out the Nokia. Then ten more to retrieve the battery and the SIM, each of which had been mummified separately. By the time Thorne finally put everything together, the film had finished and he’d used up all the swear words he knew.
He switched on the phone. Watched as the signal and battery indicators appeared. He looked at the screen for ten seconds… fifteen, then laid the handset down and went back to the computer.
The moment he sat down, the tone sounded, and the phone began to vibrate on the table. Calls were being diverted through to his new phone, but you couldn’t divert text and MMS.
He had a message waiting.
SIX
Mid-morning, Thursday, and for the second time that week Brigstocke sat staring at Tom Thorne’s mobile phone. He tapped at the screen. ‘Is that some sort of wire on the right-hand side?’
Thorne walked around the desk, leaned down and looked over Brigstocke’s shoulder. He stared at the picture which had arrived the night before. There was no blood this time, no signs of violence. To the casual observer, the man on the screen might even have looked asleep; a notion reinforced by the fact that his head was resting on a white pillow.
But Thorne was no casual observer.
He looked hard at the light, wavy line that snaked down one edge of the picture and almost touched the dead man’s face at the bottom of the screen. ‘It’s clear,’ Thorne said. ‘Like a tube, or a cable…’
Brigstocke stared then shook his head, defeated. ‘Let’s see what they can do at Newlands Park.’
Holland peered in at the glass and pushed the door open at the signal from Thorne. He announced that T- Mobile had finally come back with details on the original message: the call had been made via a mast on top of an office block in Acton.
In the Incident Room and beyond, the team was working flat out. As of a few hours previously, when Thorne had received the second photograph, the inquiry had been substantially upgraded. Officers moved across from other cases – including the Sedat murder, and several being worked by other teams – had already established that this latest message had been sent from another prepay handset, this time on the Orange network. A request for cell- site intelligence had been lodged overnight and steps were being taken to locate where the phone had been purchased. Providing they were able to pinpoint the retail outlet, and based on an average turnover of stock, this could mean wading through a month’s worth of CCTV footage or more. It might provide evidence that could be useful if they ever got an offender into a courtroom, but it was highly unlikely to help in catching them. Like much else that the team were busy knuckling down to, it was like collecting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with no idea what the finished picture was supposed to look like.
‘How quickly can Orange get us the cell-site?’
Holland looked pleased with himself. ‘I lied and told them T-Mobile had really pulled the stops out for us,’ he
