Death Message (13 page)

'Not sure I know what you mean.'

'Must be catching,' Thorne said, smiling. 'Didn't I come out with much the same crap on the train?'

Brigstocke looked around, his eyes moving beyond Thorne and catching those of several others turning quickly back to desktops. Gazes shifting to nothing or dropping down to shoes. He tried, but could summon only the weakest of bedside smiles. 'I think I'll get some tea in the canteen,' he said.

Thorne watched Brigstocke go and heard the volume of conversation climb as soon as he'd left the room. Coppers were rarely short of opinions, and they gossiped almost as much as they took the piss.

He picked up the tea Brigstocke had left untouched and carried it through to his office. Yvonne Kitson was busy trying to type too quickly; swearing and stabbing at the delete key every time she made a mistake. 'Our visitors gone?' she asked.

Thorne nodded, blew on to his tea. 'They didn't stop in here, then?'

Kitson looked up. 'I'm clean as a whistle, mate,' she said.

'Goes without saying.'

'There was that wanker from Vice I punched in the knackers when he grabbed my arse at Andy Stone's birthday party, but I don't think he'll have told anybody...'

Thorne laughed and, looking across at Kitson frowning over her keyboard, decided that she was looking pretty good. A couple of years before, her life - private and professional - had almost fallen apart after an affair with a senior officer. These days, although the Job still mattered, she seemed to care about the
career
much less, and to Thorne's eye, it suited her. She'd traded in the harsh lines of the designer business suits for outfits that were a little softer. The blunt bob had become shaggy, and the face it framed belonged to someone who knew she didn't need to try so hard.

There had never been a hint of anything between himself and Yvonne Kitson, but Thorne had guiltily entertained an impure thought or two when the occasion demanded it. He would never mention this to Louise, of course. Or to anyone else he worked with, come to that.

'Heard you had fun with Stuart Nicklin this morning,' Kitson said suddenly.

'"Fun" is probably too strong a word.'

'Did the trick, though. Things are really moving on this.' She nodded towards his desk. 'We've got the cell-site details on the second message and the PM report came in while you were away. Both in your in-tray.'

'Oh.' Thorne reached across for the files.

'You don't seem overly chuffed about it.'

'I'm ecstatic, you know me.' He began turning pages. 'But I always think it's slightly weird when a killer isn't trying awfully hard not to get caught. You know?'

'I wouldn't mind a few more like that,' Kitson said.

Thorne saw that the second call had been made via a cell-site within half a mile of the Abbey Hospital. Brooks had almost certainly sent the message as soon as he'd taken the picture; within minutes of killing Ricky Hodson. He glanced through the post-mortem report, not surprised to see that Hodson had died as a result of suffocation. They had, after all, found the murder weapon lying next to the bed, the inside of the plastic bag still slick with the victim's hot breath and spittle. Armed as he now was with an accurate time of death, Thorne was keen to see what the pathologist's estimate had been. He flicked forward to it and decided he would take great delight in telling Phil Hendricks he'd been half an hour out.

'Where are we on Sedat?'

'I'm getting pissed about, to be honest,' Kitson said. 'First they prioritise your case, so mine goes on the back burner. Then, as soon as this Turkish councillor or whoever he is starts moaning on the local news, they expect me to jump. I don't know whether I'm coming or fucking going.'

'Like a fart in a colander,' Thorne said. 'That's what my old man used to say.' Kitson chuckled. 'It'll sort itself out, Yvonne.'

'We
did
get a call.' She stood and moved around her desk, picking at a stray thread on the sleeve of her jacket. 'Some woman rang the Incident Room. Went on about knowing who'd killed Deniz, like she really knew him. She got hysterical in the end and hung up. Scared or upset, I'm not sure which. Both, maybe.'

'Genuine, you reckon?'

'I don't know. Yeah, I think so.'

'Maybe she'll call back.'

'Maybe I'll get bumped off it again if your bloke decides to do any more bikers in...'

Karim's face appeared at the window in the door and Thorne waved him inside. 'No details,' he said. 'Just Regulation Nines is all I know.'

'More than one?' Thorne said.

Karim nodded slowly.

A Regulation Nine notice was the initial paperwork issued to any officer under investigation. It outlined the details of the allegation and notified the subject that paperwork was being seized and that he or she had the right to reply. For anybody served one, a Reg Nine signalled the start of proceedings, however trivial or otherwise the complaint against them had been.

It was their first sniff of the shit they were in.

'Who else?' Kitson asked.

Karim looked towards Thorne. 'Well it's usually him, so fucked if I know...'

Thorne started slightly at the noise: his phone's message tone sounding from inside his jacket. He reached for it, leaving Kitson and Karim to turn away and carry on their conversation.

The message display itself was blank, as usual.

He scrolled down to look at what was attached.

After a few moments, he became aware that Kitson and Karim were saying nothing. That they were watching, stock-still, as he stared at the movement on the screen. As soon as it had finished he looked up, answering their unspoken question with a small nod, before pushing himself away from the desk.

Heading out of the door...

The canteen was on the same floor, on the opposite side of the building to the offices. Thorne could smell it within thirty seconds, was bearing down on Russell Brigstocke's table a minute later.

If Brigstocke looked less than delighted to see him, one glance at what Thorne was holding, at the expression on his face as he marched across the linoleum, changed his outlook instantly.

'Fuck...'

Thorne dropped in next to him, slid the phone across and pressed the button. 'This one's alive,' he said. 'At least he was.'

Brigstocke watched the fifteen-second clip, barely breathing. When it was finished he said, 'Play it again.' And after watching a second time: 'It's another one we won't need to send to Newlands Park.'

Thorne took a second. 'I'm not with you.'

'I know who this is,' Brigstocke said. 'Because I worked with him.' One hand reached for his tea, and with the other he pushed the phone back along the table, looking suddenly pale and tired. 'He's a copper.'

Detective Inspector Paul Skinner stared down at the screen and chewed slowly on his top lip as he watched himself: walking along the street; stopping briefly to stare into a shop window; turning at one point and looking directly towards the camera. When the short video clip finished, frozen on a blurry shot of himself and a female passer-by, Skinner sucked his teeth and handed the phone back to Thorne.

'Fucking weird, that is.'

Skinner, Thorne and Holland were standing in the large, dimly lit kitchen of a Victorian semi-detached house in Stoke Newington. It was a lively enough location: Clissold Park on the doorstep; a busy market on Church Street at the weekends. Once popular with dissenters and radicals, this area of north London retained a multi-ethnic, Bohemian feel, in the village at least; easygoing, peaceful. But Skinner's house was no more than a few streets from where, in 1967, Reggie Kray had murdered Jack 'The Hat' McVitie, skewering him repeatedly with a carving knife. And not a million miles away from where, nearly forty years later, someone had done much the same thing to Deniz Sedat.

Skinner's wife put her head around the door; asked again if Thorne or Holland would like anything to drink. Skinner said no on their behalf and sat back down at an orangey pine table.

He pointed to Thorne's mobile phone. 'That was yesterday.'

'When?' Holland said.

'I'd nipped out to get a sandwich, same as usual. Half twelve, quarter to one, something like that.' He pointed again. 'That's a hundred yards from my nick...'

Skinner was based at Albany Street station in Camden, on a borough public protection unit. It was a nice cushy number, the sort of job that most coppers would kill to get, towards the end of their thirty years in. Checking to see that the occasional sex offender was where they should be was about as stressful as it got. Meetings and beanbag sessions, as much tea and biscuits as you could handle, and no likelihood of anything eating into your weekends. Plenty of free time to garden or golf. Or to see how much beer you could get down your neck, which seemed to be the way Paul Skinner preferred to pass his Saturday mornings.

A can of bitter and the sports pages of the Daily Star were both open on the table in front of him. As he had known in advance that Thorne and Holland were coming, Paul Skinner was clearly not too bothered what sort of an impression he gave.

He was somewhere in his mid-fifties. An open-necked white shirt hung off a frame that was slight but still muscled. His sandy-coloured hair was thinning but just about doing its job, and the eyes were bright behind steel-rimmed specs.

'So, Marcus Brooks still not ringing any bells?' Thorne asked.

Skinner had a habit of licking his lips all the time, as though they were dry and sore, or he was contemplating taking a bite out of someone. He licked them again before taking a quick swig of beer. 'Not even slightly,' he said. The accent was pure south London; the voice gruff enough to go with it. 'And I've got a decent memory for names, so...'

'What about the Black Dogs?'

'Bikers, right?' Thorne nodded. 'Nasty fuckers, I've heard.'

'You've never had any dealings with them?'

'I know people who have.' Skinner looked from Thorne to Holland. 'This bloke Brooks. One of them, is he?'

Thorne explained the part Marcus Brooks had once played in the history of the Black Dogs motorcycle club. His time in prison and the unsolved deaths of his family. The part he was playing now.

'Jesus... you never know how people are going to react, do you? Something like that happens, tips them over the edge.'

'Right,' Holland pushed himself away from the worktop and leaned against the opposite wall. 'And now he's taking pictures of you.'

Skinner licked his lips, stared down through the hole in the top of his beer can.

'We need to find out why,' Thorne said.

'Like I said, the name means bugger all, but I think I remember that original case, as it goes.'

'July 2000...'

'Yeah. Geezer getting done by a burglar, sounds familiar. I think I was just starting on the Flying Squad at the time, but I had a few mates on Organised Crime, you know? This was not long after I moved across from the old AMIP East, which was where I knew your guvnor from.' He turned to look at Holland; explained himself as though he were talking to a wet-behind-the-ears trainee. 'AMIP. Area Major Incident Pool. "Homicide East", as it is now.'

Holland could see that Thorne was smirking and had to look away. 'Cheers...'

'Change the names of fucking everything,' Skinner said. 'Every ten minutes.'

'You don't have any connection with the officers who investigated the Tipper murder?' Thorne asked.

'Not that I can think of.'

'You don't know Sharon Lilley?'

Skinner shook his head; emptied his can. 'Not surprised Russell Brigstocke made DCI, though. He was a decent bloke.'

'Still is,' Thorne said.

'Can lick all the right arses if he has to, mind you. Knows the game.'

Thorne would normally have agreed, but he remembered Brigstocke's face the day before, after his session with the DPS. 'Listen, you might not know Marcus Brooks,' he said, 'or at least not know how you know him...'

'I
don't know him.'

Thorne held up his hands, said, 'Right, whatever,' but he was keen to move this along. They'd explained about the picture messages when they'd called the night before, gone through it again when they'd first arrived, but Skinner did not seem to have grasped the seriousness of the situation. It was as though he'd been shown a clip of somebody else. 'The bad news is that he seems to know you.'

'And that's not good for anyone's health,' Holland added. 'The people whose photos we get sent have definitely looked better.'

Skinner thought about it. 'Why is Brooks sending
you these messages, anyway?'

'He was in prison with someone I put away,' Thorne said. 'Someone who thought it might be fun to get me involved.'

'Well, maybe that's what the connection is to me.'

'Sorry?'

'Like that, through a third party.'

'It's possible...'

'Maybe I put a friend of his away some time. One of his family.'

'Maybe.' Thorne thought it was unlikely. And he knew that Skinner thought it was unlikely, too. While they were talking long shots, Thorne decided to chance his arm. 'I don't suppose the names Jennings and Squire mean anything, do they? Coppers.'

Skinner looked blank. 'I've met a lot of coppers.' He shrugged. 'I had a skipper called Jenner, when I worked in Kennington...'

'Doesn't matter,' Thorne said. 'We'll check into that third-party thing, but in the meantime, if you think of anything...' Skinner nodded, pushing himself up and stepping around Holland to get to the fridge. 'Obviously we'll be putting a watch on the house, clearing some time off with your DCI.'

Skinner shut the fridge door. There was another beer in his hand. 'Will you fuck,' he said. 'I can watch out for myself and I certainly don't need time off. I think I'm safe enough at work, don't you?'