Death Message (26 page)

The drawer refused to slide out easily, and Thorne had to kneel down and wrench it an inch or so at a time. The TDC offered a helping hand and snorted when he looked down and saw what was inside. 'Bugger me, he could open his own shop.'

There were perhaps a dozen assorted handsets. Spare batteries and chargers. SIM cards lying loose, in blister packs or mounted, unused, on plastic cards.

'He doesn't have anything else,' Thorne said. 'What he's doing is everything to him.' He nudged some of the hardware to one side with a gloved finger. 'He's spent time putting it all together.'

'I hope there isn't one of those for each message he's planning to send.'

Thorne knew the young TDC was joking, but caught his breath nonetheless; poking around among the Nokias and Samsungs, as if they were knives or handguns. He remembered what Kitson had said in the pub.

'How much revenge can anyone want?'

He reached for something at the back of the drawer and pulled out a sheaf of papers, bound with several elastic bands. He read the first page, then gently turned back the corner to look at the second.

The TDC was trying his best to read over Thorne's shoulder. 'What you got, old love letters?'

'Not old,' Thorne said, eventually. Now he knew for certain that Brooks hadn't gone anywhere; that if they had missed him, it could not have been by very much. He beckoned the exhibits officer over and handed the letters across. 'I want copies of those as soon as,' he said.

'You want what?'

Thorne repeated the request, his words lost the first time beneath those of Russell Brigstocke, who was walking up and down the room, clapping his hands and urging everyone to get a move on.

Brooks stood with half a dozen others at the end of the road, watching the comings and goings.

As soon as he'd seen the copper waving cars on, seen the tape strung between lamp-posts and the 'Diversion' sign, he'd known that something was up. He'd parked a few roads down and walked back to see what was happening.

'There's enough of them,' the man next to him said. 'Must be pretty serious.'

A woman behind him leaned forward. 'Someone told me they saw coppers with machine-guns.'

He'd got back to the flat around six that morning, shaved and got changed, then headed out again straight away. There had been no point trying to sleep, he knew that, and with business on the other side of the river, he'd wanted to beat the traffic.

How had they found him? How close had they come to ending it all? He looked up at the window to the flat and found himself wondering if Tom Thorne was in there.

Thought about the text messages the night before.

Losing the flat was annoying, but it wasn't the end of the world.

There were people he could count on to find him somewhere to crash until all this was over. That wouldn't be a problem. Same thing with the cash: he was still owed plenty of favours. He could get himself some new clothes, a few new phones, whatever else he needed.

This wasn't going to hold anything up.

He turned and walked back towards the car. Left the woman moaning about getting back into her house, needing to cook the kids' tea.

The letters were the only thing that really mattered, of course. But all he'd lost were the bits of paper. Ink and scraps.

Every word was in his head.

It was like being stone-cold sober when everyone around you was three sheets to the wind.

The breakthrough in finding Brooks' flat had lifted everyone's mood, and back at Becke House Brigstocke and the rest of the team went about their business with a new enthusiasm, as though an imminent arrest were now a foregone conclusion. But Thorne felt as though he were watching it all from the outside, unable to share in the excitement, knowing that the isolation was of nobody's making but his own.

It wasn't as though he hadn't fucked up before, but he couldn't remember ever being this far out of his depth, with no other option than to keep kicking away from the shore.

Brigstocke led a briefing at four o'clock.

While most of the team had been busy in Hammersmith, others had followed up on the discovery of Cowans' body the night before. Interviews with residents of the canal-side flats had so far proved unproductive, and the CCTV cameras had contained nothing but footage of a late-night drinker reeling around on the bank. The conclusion was that Cowans had been dumped in another part of the canal, near to where they'd found his van shortly after finding him. That his body had drifted and remained trapped behind the narrowboat for more than twenty-four hours until it had been discovered. A preliminary PM report indicated that Cowans had been killed by several blows to the head, in the same way as Tucker and Skinner.

The lack of progress on this front made the discovery in Hammersmith all the more important.

'Obviously, we've yet to examine all the evidence taken from the house,' Brigstocke said. 'But by tomorrow morning, I reckon we're going to have a decent number of leads to chase. We took a lot of stuff out of there.'

Thorne stood off to one side. It was possible that Brigstocke was right to be as bullish as he was. That they might get to Marcus Brooks quickly, before Thorne received any more messages. Thorne might still have some awkward questions to answer, but it would probably be the best outcome for everyone, himself included.

Whether the second copper - the man indirectly responsible for the deaths of Angela Georgiou and her son; the man who had probably killed both Tipper and Skinner - would ever be caught was another matter.

One that troubled Thorne deeply.

'We took a notebook away which we're hoping will be significant,' Brigstocke said. 'There are a couple of phone numbers scribbled in there which we'll be chasing up.'

Thorne's stomach clenched. He wondered if the number he'd texted to Brooks was one of them; if he'd be answering those awkward questions sooner rather than later. He stared out at the ranks gathered in the briefing room and hoped the worry wasn't showing on his face.

Whatever Brigstocke's problems were, he was showing no signs of them. In fact, he seemed newly focused; up for it. 'You've all got copies of the E-fit which our helpful security guard came up with, and which has gone out to the press overnight. This is what Brooks looks like now.'

Thorne stared at the picture. Marcus Brooks had cut his hair very short and his face was thinner than it had been when he went into prison. A very different man, in every sense.

Brigstocke continued: 'The security guard also reckons that Brooks might be driving a dark blue or black Ford Mondeo. An old one. It was parked outside the house several times and we certainly can't trace it to anyone living in the street. It's only a vague description, but it's something we need to be aware of.'

Holland stuck a hand up. 'Presuming it was bought for cash, we could start looking at the local used-car dealers.'

'Got to be worth a shot,' Brigstocke said. 'Let's check out the back copies of
Loot
and Auto Trader while we're at it. We need a registration number.' He turned to Thorne. 'Anything to add, Tom?'

All sorts of things, Thorne thought, but instead he just echoed the DCI's positive message. Said that they were getting close, and that they wouldn't have a better chance of a result than they did at that moment. He assured them that the man they were after would try to kill again; reminded them that it didn't matter who he was targeting. Whether it was a copper or a biker or a little old lady, they needed to catch Marcus Brooks before there was another victim.

Brigstocke stepped forward again. 'We've worked a lot of hours over the last few days and most of you are fucked, I know. So anyone who isn't on a late one tonight, stay out of the pub, OK? Go home, get eight hours, then get yourselves in here first thing and put this to bed. Then we can all go back to a few nice easy domestics and drug shootings.'

With the briefing over, the assembled officers scattered fast, moving back to phones and computers. There was a good deal of upbeat hubbub. Someone shouted, 'Come on, let's fucking have it.'

Thorne watched the inquiry shifting up a gear.

Stone-cold sober...

Later, Brigstocke called Thorne and Kitson into his office.

'We need to get something out of today,' he said. 'There was no message before he killed Cowans, so it looks like he's decided to stop making things so easy for us.'

Kitson nudged Thorne. 'Or maybe he's just gone off Tom.'

Thorne summoned a smile, or something close to it.

'Maybe he thinks he's cleared his debt,' she said. 'The whole message thing was just for Nicklin's benefit, right? Doesn't mean Brooks has to keep doing it.'

Brigstocke agreed that it made sense. 'Any luck with Sedat's girlfriend earlier?'

'I was just writing it up,' Kitson said. 'A big, fat "fuck all", I'm afraid.'

'Could be there's fuck all to get.'

'She might just want some attention,' Thorne suggested.

'I'm going to have another crack at her tomorrow.' Kitson looked as determined as Brigstocke had done at the briefing. 'She's scared, that's all. Maybe she's scared of whoever killed Sedat, because I think she knows who that is.'

'Get it out of her then,' Brigstocke said. 'See if we can get both these jobs off the books by the end of the week.'

Kitson and Thorne walked slowly back down the corridor towards their office.

'He seems happier,' Thorne said.

'
Seems
...'

'Maybe whatever it was has gone away.'

'Since when do the DPS "go away"?'

'Serious, you reckon?'

'That's the thing with them,' Kitson said. 'You never know. He might have lost it and battered someone in an interview room or he might have nicked some paper clips. They still have the same look on their faces.'

They stopped at the door and Thorne offered to go and get them both coffee.

'You OK?' Kitson asked.

'Like he said at the briefing. Fucked.'

'Well, go and have a night in with Louise. Get your end away and forget about it until tomorrow.'

Thorne seriously doubted he would be doing both. 'Listen, if Sedat's girlfriend
does
know something, I'm sure you'll get it.'

'I'm going to give it a go.'

'Take it easy with her, though. Talk to her somewhere she's more relaxed. Everyone's scared in the bin, even if they've got no reason to be.' Kitson just nodded. 'Sorry,' Thorne said. 'I'm not trying to tell you how to handle it.'

'That's fine,' Kitson said. 'I'll take any advice you've got. As long as you remember to take mine.'

Thorne went to fetch the coffees, thinking about how easy it was to stick your oar in, to be objective, when it wasn't your own case. Not that he felt like the Brooks case was his any more. Not his to
work, at any rate.

Walking across to the kettle, he glanced at the whiteboard; at the job mapped out in numbers, names and black lines; times of death and photographs of wounds. He almost expected to see his own name right next to those of the dead and the prime suspect. In the middle of the board, among the list of those central to the inquiry, instead of scribbled in capitals at the top.

When Thorne had called Louise to say that he wouldn't be back late, and to ask what time she was likely to get away, they'd talked about going to see a movie. She'd seemed in a good mood, certainly relative to the one she'd been in at half past six that morning. They'd argued good-naturedly for a few minutes about what to see before deciding not to bother.

When Thorne got home he suggested trying a new Thai place that had opened on Kentish Town Road, but Louise had other ideas. She had brought stuff round and seemed determined to cook. While she was sorting dinner, Thorne nipped out to fetch a bottle of wine.

Louise looked at the bottle when Thorne got back. Asked how much it had cost, and seemed pleased when he told her.

'Cheap beer and expensive wine,' she said. 'That's one of the things I liked about you first off.'

'
One of the things?'

'OK, the only thing,' she said. 'Now I come to think about it.'

They ate pasta at the small table in Thorne's living room. Got through the wine, and listened to a June Carter Cash compilation Thorne had picked up for next to nothing on eBay.

'That stuff the other night.' Louise reached across for an empty plate.

'What stuff?' Thorne said, knowing perfectly well.

'It didn't mean that I wanted anything, you know? That I want to have a baby, now, this minute. But I don't think there's anything wrong in talking about it.'

'It's fine...'

'It isn't fine, because it obviously freaked you out. So, I just want to make sure we understand each other.'

'Does this mean we need to get into the cheap beer?'

'I'm serious.'

Louise explained that despite what had happened in bed that night, she really did not want to get pregnant. That wasn't to say she wouldn't want to have a child one day, but she had a career to put first for a few more years.

'I look at someone like Yvonne Kitson,' she said, 'see her trying to juggle work around three kids, and I'm not sure I'd ever be able to do it.'

Thorne thought about Louise's reaction when they'd talked about Kitson and he'd accused her of being jealous. He wondered if he'd touched even more of a nerve than he'd realised.

'I'd be stupid to have a kid now.'

'It's fine,' Thorne repeated.

'You keep saying that, but I don't think it is. I'm worried that you think I'm desperate for you to knock me up or something. That I'm some sort of nutter who's going to stick pins in all your condoms or nick a pram from outside Tesco's. Really, I'm happy with the way things are.'