The Dying Hours (5 page)

After a late breakfast, Thorne fetched the Sunday papers and they walked across to Brockwell Park. It was not exactly warm, but the day was bright enough and Alfie got more excited the closer they got to the children’s playground.

‘Eh-owd,’ he said. ‘Eh-owd…’

There were plenty of other people at the play area and they needed to wait a few minutes before Alfie could get a turn on the swings. Thorne stood with Helen while she pushed.

‘You OK?’ she asked.

He had not told Helen about his trip to Stanmore the night before, telling her when he finally got home that he’d been out for a drink with one of the boys from the station. Last-minute thing. He had stopped off on his way back to pick up a couple of cans and drunk them in the car. It helped with the breath, with the lie, but he had needed them anyway.

‘Still tired, I think,’ Thorne said. He was doing his best to appear cheerful, but wasn’t sure that he was making too good a job of it. He had that kind of face and he knew it, a default expression that often made others wary. Thorne could be pig-in-shit happy and people would still ask him what the matter was.

They sat for a while watching as Alfie jumped on and off a series of raised, plastic stepping stones, letting out a loud yelp of excitement each time he did it. When he landed awkwardly and fell, Helen was off the bench in an instant. Thorne had not been watching but jumped up as soon as he saw Helen do it. Alfie got to his feet, his face screwed up tight as though he had not decided whether to laugh or cry and when he opted for the former and climbed back on to the stepping stone, Thorne and Helen sat down again. They pulled the papers out of a plastic bag and Thorne began looking for a report on the Spurs game.

‘Sometimes I think I worry about him too much,’ Helen said. ‘That I’m being overprotective.’

‘You’re bound to be,’ Thorne said.

She looked at him, a hint of suspicion. ‘Why?’

He put the paper down. ‘Well, your job for a kick-off.’ Helen was a DS on a Child Abuse Investigation Team. She had told Thorne stories that had been hard to listen to. ‘You’ve seen what happens when parents don’t give a shit.’

She shook her head. ‘Kids aren’t abused just because their parents don’t give a shit.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Helen stared at her son, waved when he looked briefly in her direction before toddling away again. ‘Maybe it’s because it’s just me and him. Well, it
was
…’ She hesitated, a little flustered.

‘I know.’

‘I mean, for quite a while.’

Though he and Helen had come together following the siege in which she had become involved months earlier, he had actually met her briefly more than a year before that. Her partner, Paul, had been killed in unusual circumstances and Helen – heavily pregnant – had taken it upon herself to try and find out why. Thorne knew that Paul had not necessarily been Alfie’s father, that there had been an affair before Paul had died. Thanks to listening equipment installed by a surveillance team during the siege, a
lot
of people knew, though he and Helen had never talked about it.

‘Louise lost a baby,’ Thorne said. ‘Not long before we split up.’

Helen reached for his hand.

Thorne had not spoken too much about his previous relationship. Louise was just his ‘ex’. ‘Actually, it’s probably why we split up, you know, looking back on it.’

‘It’s hard,’ Helen said.

‘I didn’t react very well.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘I think the problem was I didn’t react
enough
,’ Thorne said. ‘Something like that happens and it’s no good if you both… go to pieces, so I was the one that just got on with things. Work, whatever. I think it came across like I didn’t care enough. I know that’s how it came across.’ He turned, saw that Helen was staring at him. ‘I did though…’

Helen was about to speak when Thorne’s mobile rang. When he answered and recognised the voice on the other end, he stood up and walked away from the bench.

‘Thorne? We need a quick chat.’

There was a roving uniformed chief superintendent on call at all times on either side of the river. They were there to give the necessary authority when required: to extend custody from twenty-four to thirty-six hours, to ‘ping’ a suspect’s mobile phone. What Christine Treasure called the ‘sneaky-beaky’ stuff. They were also there, of course, to dish out the slaps when they were deemed to be called for. One of the few crumbs of comfort Thorne had gained from his move to uniform was that he would no longer have to deal with the one senior officer he had come closest to thumping during his years on the Murder Squad. The unctuous weasel who had taken sitting on the fence to Olympic heights and who returned Thorne’s evident antipathy with interest. Thorne had been horrified to discover, within a day or two of taking up his new post, that the chief super working south of the river was that very same weasel.

Trevor bloody Jesmond.

‘I understand you’ve been rather overstepping your boundaries,’ Jesmond said. His tone was that unique mixture of emotions that Thorne knew only too well. Disgust at the behaviour and unbridled delight at being able to stamp on whoever was responsible. ‘Some things never change, do they?’

‘Been talking to Neil Hackett then,’ Thorne said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘That’s a yes then.’

‘It doesn’t matter who I’ve been talking to, because now I’m talking to you.’

‘I thought we could be looking at a murder.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘That it might be part of a pattern.’

‘You thought wrong, didn’t you?’

Thorne swallowed. ‘Looks like it.’

‘Besides which, that’s not your job,’ Jesmond said. ‘Much as you might wish it still were.’

The man was strictly a by-the-book merchant, so Thorne had asked himself what on earth
Jesmond
could have done to find himself working on Borough. Had he been caught with the Commander’s wife? Mother? Dog? It was far more likely that he had requested the transfer purely out of a desire to make Thorne’s life as miserable as possible.

He was extremely good at it.

‘I get that,’ Thorne said. He turned and saw that Helen was watching him. If he appeared less than delirious a few minutes ago, he wondered what his face was showing now.

‘Good. You’ve been warned.’ Jesmond let that sink in, then chuckled. Fingernails on a blackboard. ‘Just like old times.’

Thorne grunted.

‘Best not make a habit of it though, eh? You might not relish what you’re doing at the moment, but trust me, you’d enjoy being a sergeant a damn sight less.’

When Jesmond had hung up, Thorne walked back to the bench and sat down. He picked up a paper, did nothing with it.

‘All right?’

Helen had clearly heard enough to get the gist. ‘Jesmond,’ Thorne said.

‘Ah…’

‘Yeah, well, that’s me told.’ Thorne opened his paper. ‘Hackett clearly had a major problem with me going across that bridge, so MIT is now strictly off-limits.’

‘This still about that double suicide?’

Thorne continued to turn the pages.

‘You never finished telling me about what happened with you and Louise,’ Helen said. ‘What we were talking about before.’

Thorne shook his head. ‘I think the moment’s gone, don’t you?’

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Helen read her paper while Thorne stared towards the playground, every shout and squeal cutting right through him. His phone chimed in his pocket and he took his time reaching for it, guessing that Jesmond had not finished with him.

The text was from Hendricks.

Cooper paperwork done
.

A few minutes later, Thorne said, ‘I think I might go out for a drink with Phil a bit later.’

‘Yeah, OK.’

‘I’ll probably stay at the flat.’

‘Makes sense,’ Helen said. ‘You don’t need to drive.’

Thorne nodded. ‘I wouldn’t be very good company anyway.’

Helen looked up as Alfie came running across. He wrapped himself around Thorne’s leg and wiped a runny nose against his jacket.

She said, ‘Whatever you think.’

He’s heading west for this one.

The travelling doesn’t bother him a great deal. He’d always known he’d need to do a fair amount of running around and, besides, it gives him a chance to see a bit more of the city. He’d missed London. Missed it more than some of his family in the end, but that wasn’t much of a contest. He’d given what was left of them up as a bad lot the same time they’d turned their backs on him. If they couldn’t be bothered, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to try too hard.

You got back what you put in, that was the way he saw it.

He drives out through Shepherd’s Bush towards the Westway, first time he’s seen the place in thirty-odd years. He knocked around here a fair bit as a younger man, back when you could still see speedway or greyhound racing at White City Stadium and the BBC made shows at the Empire and Lime Grove studios, where the Beatles recorded their first-ever broadcast. He recalls some of the scrapes in the Springbok or the Crown and Sceptre, the odd spot of argy-bargy with the QPR boys on match days, and he remembers plenty of more serious business done later on. Here and in Chiswick. In the West End too, of course. Not better days, necessarily, he’s not soft about it, not sentimental. Different, though, no arguing with that.

He was sentimental, he’d hardly have that bag sitting on the back seat, would he? He wouldn’t be bowling along the A40 on his way to use what was in it.

Thinking about how this one’s likely to play out, he can’t even remember why he chose to do things this way, why he wanted to make each one different. It was probably just because he’d had so much time to sit on his backside and think about it. He’d made a plan, so he was going to stick to it, simple as that. It wasn’t even as if one method was any more or less enjoyable than another, because enjoyment didn’t enter into it, not really. No question it made things a bit more interesting though, added a bit of mustard to the proceedings. Variety might well be the spice of life, but it definitely made death a bit more interesting too.

He pulls across into the inside lane, in no great hurry. Singing that Beatles song about lonely people and funerals nobody goes to, and thinking that the music definitely
was
a damn sight better back then.

Thinking that variety is something he hasn’t had in a long time.

‘I’d only have thrashed you anyway,’ Hendricks said.

‘Yeah, course you would.’

‘And it really upsets me when you cry like a girl.’

Thorne was bemoaning the fact that they could no longer play pool in the Grafton Arms. The room upstairs where they had spent many evenings playing for beer was now a multi-purpose ‘function suite’. Salsa classes, birthday parties and a comedy night once a month, to which Hendricks had insisted on dragging Thorne a few weeks earlier. Thorne had made the mistake of sitting near the front and been mercilessly picked on by a hectoring compère. He was still not sure how the comic had found out he was Old Bill – the smart money was on Hendricks, of course – but the ribbing had carried on for most of the evening, the man milking as many cheap laughs as possible from asking, ‘Can I smell bacon?’ every time he came on stage.

After the show, Thorne had sought the comic out at the bar and congratulated him on doing a good job. The comic had shrugged and said, ‘No hard feelings, mate.’ Thorne said what he thought he should say, that he didn’t know how anyone could get up there in front of all those people, hardest job in the world. The comic had grinned and said, ‘Money for jam, mate. Hundred and twenty quid, cash in hand.’

‘I hope you’re declaring that,’ Thorne had said. As the comedian’s mouth fell open, Thorne had leaned closer and said, ‘Oink!’ before sauntering away.

‘So, curry back at yours, is it?’ Hendricks asked. He raised a bottle of Czech lager and put a third of it away.

Thorne swallowed a mouthful of Guinness. ‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘At least you can walk home now, instead of stinking up the sheets on my sofa bed.’

‘We’ll see what kind of state I’m in, shall we?’

Hendricks had recently moved into a flat in Camden, which was no more than a ten-minute walk from Thorne’s in Kentish Town. The pub was spitting distance away from Thorne’s place and he had dropped the car off before walking back to meet Hendricks.

‘All settled in?’

‘Still in boxes, mate.’

‘Well it’s not too late to change your mind,’ Thorne said. ‘Admit you’ve paid way over the odds for what’s basically a tin shed.’

Hendricks had bought one of the futuristic-looking, aluminium-clad flats on the banks of the Regent’s Canal. The flats – the work of the same designer responsible for the Sainsbury’s directly opposite – were highly prized, but Thorne thought they looked like space-age toilets and said as much.

‘I like it,’ Hendricks said. ‘Besides, it’s dead handy for the supermarket, or if I ever fancy throwing myself in the canal.’ He raised his beer. ‘Talking of which…’

‘Yeah,’ Thorne said. ‘I suppose we should get it over with.’

‘Hang on, I thought this was why you were so desperate to meet up.’

It had been. Thorne had spent the day clinging to the hope that Hendricks might have found something to explain why the Cooper suicides had felt so wrong. That the bodies themselves might have provided the answer. Driving north though, the notion that double-checking the post-mortems could possibly vindicate him or somehow justify the unholy amounts of crap that had rained down in the last few days had begun to appear ridiculous. Worse than childish. By the time he was pulling up outside his flat, he was resigned to being there for no other reason than a simple and overwhelming need to see his friend. To get some sympathy and to get wasted.

Now, twenty minutes and a pint and a half into it, he said, ‘Go on then.’

‘Your bog-standard insulin overdose,’ Hendricks said. ‘Nice easy one.’

‘Suicide, yeah?’

‘Nothing else going on that I could see.’

Thorne nodded, drank.

‘I mean the old man had a touch of liver disease and some of his wife’s arteries were none too clever, but that’s what happens at their age. Well, you’ll find out yourself soon enough.’

Thorne put his beer down. ‘What if someone gave them those injections?’

‘No signs of struggle,’ Hendricks said. ‘No tissue under fingernails.’

Thorne grunted. That much had been obvious at the crime scene. ‘There’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘Buggered if I know,’ Thorne said. He stared down at the table. ‘It’s doing my head in.’

‘This? Or the whole thing? The uniform, I mean.’

‘I don’t know. Bit of both.’

Hendricks sat back, sighed. ‘Come on then, let’s hear it.’

Thorne told him. The apparent suicide of an elderly couple for which there seemed no reason and the similarity to at least two other cases. The nagging doubt that had become a fixation. His clash with Neil Hackett and how it had all fallen apart the previous evening at that house in Stanmore. When he’d felt like an over-enthusiastic novice.

‘Jesus…’

‘“Jesus, that’s a really interesting theory” or “Jesus, how could you be such a knob”?’

‘Define “interesting”,’ Hendricks said.

‘There was no reason for the Coopers to do that,’ Thorne said. ‘No reason at all. There was something wrong in that bedroom.’

‘Yeah, but look at it from their point of view, Hackett and his lot. You’re not exactly giving them much to get worked up about, are you?’

Thorne reached down and pulled out a sheaf of papers from his bag. He slapped a file down on the table and pushed it across. ‘No reason for it,’ he said. ‘No reason for Brian Gibbs to slash his wrists in the bath.’ Another file. ‘No reason for Fiona Daniels to drown herself in the reservoir. Look at the statements from the families for God’s sake.’

Hendricks moved his beer as the paperwork piled up in front of him.

‘Look at it, Phil.’

Hendricks picked up a file and flicked through the pages. ‘Yeah, but what does “no reason” actually mean, though? Most of the time we’ve got no idea why people do
anything
. You know that better than anyone.’

Thorne shook his head, but he knew that his friend had a point. How often had he really known what was going on inside the head of a killer? Whenever some mild-mannered quantity surveyor butchered his wife and kids there were always friends and neighbours queuing up to tell people what a ‘perfect’ family they were. How it was the last thing anyone had expected. Was it really any different with loved ones? Had Thorne ever known what was going on inside his own parents’ heads? He’d certainly made a right royal balls-up of trying to figure Louise out and she would probably say the same thing about herself.

‘Sorry, mate, but it’s not enough,’ Hendricks said. ‘Thinking they “weren’t the type” to kill themselves counts for sod all.’

‘OK, but you can’t argue with the facts and figures.’ Thorne reached down, produced more papers. ‘I’ve looked into this and the numbers just don’t stack up. There’s only four hundred and something suicides in London every year and the majority of those are a lot younger than the people we’re talking about here. Agreed?’

Hendricks shrugged a ‘maybe’.

‘Now… you get into the over seventy-fives and it’s more like two hundred a year,
nationwide
. Women, it’s less than half that.’ He stabbed at the files on the table. ‘There’s two women in
there
, for God’s sake.’

Hendricks thought about it. ‘Sorry, but I don’t think those figures are quite as impressive as you think they are.’

‘
What?
’

‘Look, I do know about this stuff.’

‘Come on, Phil.’

Hendricks held his hands up. ‘All right, let’s be generous and call this a “cluster”. I don’t think it is for one minute, but even if it was, sometimes there’s just no explanation for these things. Remember a few years back? Twenty people killed themselves in one year, all under twenty-five, all in the same small town in south Wales. Now,
that
was a cluster, but nobody’s any the wiser about why it happened.’ He gathered up the files, squared them off. ‘There’s nothing… sinister about it. Or about this.’ He handed the files over. ‘There’s no bogeyman, mate.’

Thorne took the papers and shoved them hard back into his bag. He picked up his glass and sat back.

Hendricks grinned. ‘Look at you though.’

‘What?’ Thorne said.

‘With your “theories” and your actual “research”. You’re more of a detective now than when you
were
one.’ He picked up his beer bottle, prepared to empty it. ‘Sodding Inspector Morse! Have you started listening to opera and doing crosswords an’ all?’

Thorne looked at him; blinked slowly then swallowed fast.

‘Mind you, opera would definitely be preferable to your bloody cowboy music. Lonesome bloody whippoorwills or whatever.’ Hendricks saw Thorne’s expression. ‘What?’

‘What you said before.’

‘What, about opera?’

‘No…’ Thorne was already reaching for his phone.

Hendricks shook his head. ‘You’ve lost me, mate.’

‘Drink up,’ Thorne said.

‘It’s a bit early to eat, isn’t it?’

Thorne ignored him. He was looking through his list of recently dialled calls. Searching for a grieving son’s number.