‘Come on, Tom—’
‘It’s a simple question.’
Jan considered it. ‘No, I don’t think so. It would just have made what’s happening now even more difficult.’
‘Fair enough,’ Thorne said.
‘Don’t you think?’
Thorne looked at the pavement for a few moments. ‘Well, I’ll call when . . . you know.’
They both nodded and walked away from one another. After a few steps, Thorne turned when Jan called out to him.
She said, ‘Just so you know, I can’t stand those bloody sandals either.’
Grantleigh Figgis lay back, knowing full well what was going on, and thought, God, it’s so quick.
Over the years, it had happened to people he knew – not well, but friends of friends – because now and again it was unavoidable, but he’d never imagined it would be like this, that it would hurt quite as much and happen so bloody fast.
Like being hit by a truck.
He’d always thought it would be more peaceful somehow, that there would be . . . drifting and time.
One second the sheer joy of the warm, syrupy smell that always meant something wonderful was coming; the flat thick with it, the anticipation of that blissful nothingness he needed so very much. A moment or two of quiet as he waited for the hit to spread and then . . . fuck! As if someone wearing size twelve boots had jumped on his chest.
Just a few faces after that, like he was looking down at them through dirty water: his poor, put-upon mother; a kid from school he thought he’d forgotten; the first boy he’d kissed, whose mouth had tasted of fags and the Remy Martin they’d stolen from his father’s drinks cabinet. Last thoughts then and the strange comfort of knowing they were last thoughts. That it didn’t matter what anyone thought of him, that they could piss all over his memory if that’s what they fancied and write what they liked, because he wouldn’t be there to see it.
That Cat would be all right and, please God, her little boy.
And that life, even as you lost it, was full of surprises.
THIRTY-THREE
Angie came bowling into the living room at a little after five a.m. Half-past stupid, still dark outside for pity’s sake yet she somehow managed to look fabulous, like she’d had a full night’s sleep and an hour to get herself ready. Obviously she was used to getting up early with a market stall to prepare, but even so.
Cat felt like shit, even if she was starting to get used to it.
The night before, once it had been decided that she’d stay the night, Angie had tried to persuade Cat that she should be the one sleeping on the sofa, but Cat wasn’t having it. It was something else she’d been getting used to. The sofa part, at least.
It had been the only thing they’d argued about.
Yes, she’d been OK on the phone, but with most of the day for Angie to mull over Dean Meade’s sleazy revelations in the newspaper, Cat had been fully prepared for a row. A stiff talking-to at the very least. Instead Angie had turned up with a bag of booze, and, more amazingly still, sympathy.
‘Look, I do understand,’ she’d said. ‘Not like it’s that unusual, under the circumstances.’
When Cat had tried to explain how terrible she felt for doing the dirty on Billy, Angie had been quick to stop her. ‘Trust me, I know how you feel, babe.’
‘What?’
‘Well, a few of the blokes I’ve been involved with weren’t exactly angels, put it that way.’
‘So?’
‘Went down the same road my brother did, a couple of them, and I wasn’t always a good girl while they were away.’
Cat was shocked. Over the years Billy had made one or two knowing remarks about Angie’s ‘complicated’ love-life, but it was still a surprise to discover those complications ran to boyfriends getting banged up and her cheating on them when they were inside.
‘They call it cheating, because that’s what it is,’ Cat said. ‘Not playing by the rules. Me and Billy talked about it before the trial, and even though we both knew it would be difficult, Billy said that there was one rule I could never break.’
Angie looked at her. ‘Billy said?’
‘Yeah, OK . . . but I agreed with him. It was the right thing to do. Two cheap bottles of fizzy plonk and Dean Meade making it obvious he was up for it and that number one rule went straight out of the window.’
‘Right.’ Angie had sat Cat down then, looked hard at her. ‘But it wasn’t like Billy stuck to his word either, was it?’
Angie had a point. After that first time, Billy had sworn he was never going back inside again; he’d made her a promise. For Kieron’s sake, he’d said.
Now, Cat struggled up off the sofa and into a dressing gown and asked Angie if she wanted coffee or something.
‘You’re all right.’ Angie put on a black leather jacket, checked her face in the mirror by the front door. ‘I’ll grab tea and a bacon roll when I get to the market. Nice to have a natter with the lads, you know.’
Cat showed her out and walked across the hall with her to the lift.
‘Thanks for last night. You’ve no idea how much I needed to hear that.’
‘No worries. I’ll call you later.’
‘I mean, I still feel like a dirty cow and I do need to talk to Billy about it, but it really helped.’
Angie turned to hug her, then nodded over her shoulder. ‘Hello . . . ’
Cat turned and they both stared at the half-open door to Grantleigh Figgis’s flat.
‘He never leaves the door open,’ Cat said. ‘Especially not now.’
Angie sucked her teeth. ‘Yeah, well, if I was him I’d put a few extra padlocks on it.’
‘It wouldn’t be open if he’d gone out.’
‘Actually, forget extra locks. I’d just leave the fucking country.’
Cat was already walking towards the open door.
Angie shouted after her. ‘What are you so bothered about him for?’ She sighed and followed Cat back across the hall. ‘Just leave it . . . ’
Cat said, ‘Grant?’ and nudged the door open with her slippered foot.
Then she said, ‘Oh Christ.’
An hour later, back at Cat’s place, drinking sweet tea with a generous shot of whisky in it, Angie looked up from the sofa at DC Ajay Roth as if he was an idiot and said, ‘Do you not think I know what a body looks like?’
‘I’m just trying to find out what happened right before you called us.’
‘Listen, it was obvious he was dead.’
‘You could tell that from looking round the door?’
‘He was blue, for God’s sake.’
In the kitchen, Thorne was talking to Catrin Coyne. She pulled her dressing gown a little tighter across her chest and nodded towards the living room. ‘When we found him, Angie said, “You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out why he’s topped himself”.’ She leaned back against the worktop. The shadows under her eyes were almost black. ‘You think she’s right?’
‘Well . . . ’
‘Guilt.’ Cat was staring down. ‘Couldn’t live with himself probably, that’s what she meant.’
‘We don’t know anything yet.’ Thorne saw her look at him and realised how that had sounded. We don’t know why Grantleigh Figgis is dead, we don’t know if Grantleigh Figgis took your son, we don’t know what happened to your son. We don’t know our arse from our elbow. As things stood, he could hardly blame her for thinking they were clueless about everything. ‘Hopefully we’ll have a better idea when they’ve finished next door.’
‘Right.’ Cat nodded slowly. ‘A better idea.’
Behind her, in a glass-fronted cupboard, Thorne could see a mug with a bright cartoonish K on the side. The fridge was all but covered with the boy’s paintings and drawings. ‘Obviously I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve got any more information—’
A uniformed PC wandered in looking a little sheepish and apologised for interrupting. He said, ‘We’ve got the pathologist on the phone and there’s
a problem.’
Thorne told Cat he’d be back as soon as he could and followed the PC outside. ‘What problem?’
‘Him,’ the PC said.
‘Who?’
‘The pathologist. He sounds like a right stroppy sod. Says he isn’t coming over.’
Walking back into Figgis’s flat, Thorne could see that the body had yet to be moved. Figgis lay half on and half off his sofa, one arm crooked against the carpet, a thin red belt tied tight, just above the elbow. A dried trail of blood snaked down the arm from the spot where the needle had gone in. The syringe was on the floor – having presumably fallen out when the arm had dropped – and lay alongside the bent and blackened spoon, the disposable lighter, and the plastic bottle of lemon juice he had used to cook the heroin.
‘Here we are again.’
Thorne looked up and recognised one of the SOCOs who had been there three days earlier when they’d examined the flat after Figgis’s arrest and who was now dusting a small plastic bag for fingerprints. Before he could respond, Thorne saw Russell Brigstocke waving him across to the corner of the room, his hand clamped across the mouthpiece of a cordless phone.
Brigstocke thrust the phone towards him. ‘Good luck.’
‘This is DS Thorne. Who am I speaking to?’
‘Hendricks,’ the man said. A nasal, northern accent, Manchester by the sound of it. ‘With a CKS, not an X like the guitarist, yeah? Are you going to be as much of a pain in the arse as your colleagues?’
Thorne was momentarily speechless.
‘Now, like I tried to explain to the last bloke, there’s really no need for me to come over there.’
‘You’re the on-call pathologist, aren’t you?’
‘Quite right, and here I am on a call, but you’re looking at a bog-standard overdose, right?’
‘Appears that way,’ Thorne said.
‘Spoons and shit, a needle knocking about, yeah? I mean, I don’t want to tell you your job or anything.’
‘That’s good,’ Thorne said. ‘Because I wouldn’t want to lose my temper.’
‘I’m just saying, there’s no point me hauling my arse up there to tell you what you already know. Sound reasonable to you?’
‘Not really, no.’ Thorne moved closer into the corner, aware that everyone in the room was looking at him. ‘This death is connected to a serious and ongoing inquiry that is anything but bog-standard.’
‘Oh, right. Sounds exciting, but not really my problem.’
‘What?’
‘Get your dead junkie over here and I’ll do what I do. Until then, any idiot can tell you he’s dead, have a stab at when he might have popped off; I mean, it’s not difficult. So there’s no need to panic, is there?’
‘Nobody’s panicking.’
‘What it sounds like.’
‘We’re just trying to be professional.’
‘Well that’s a bonus, because I wouldn’t want to work with amateurs, would I?’
Thorne looked round at Brigstocke. He shook his head and made the universally recognised gesture to indicate that the man he was talking to was somebody who overindulged in self-love. ‘PM as soon as though, right?’
‘Definitely. I’ll be ready to carve him up for you first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘Sorry,’ Thorne said, ‘but that’s not going to be soon enough. We need this one done on the hurry-up.’
‘Best I can do, mate.’
‘Are you trying to piss me off?’
‘Listen, you’re welcome to shop around, see if there’s anyone else who can do it sooner – and best of British with that, by the way – but I’m up to my elbows right now. Literally, as it happens, in some bloke whose wife caved his head in with a steam iron. Nine o’clock do you?’
Brigstocke was waving, mouthing. What’s going on?
‘I’ll have to make some calls and let you know,’ Thorne said.
‘Up to you, mate.’
Thorne listened to the dial tone for a few seconds and muttered, ‘Arrogant twat.’
‘Sounds like someone needs a slap,’ Brigstocke said.
Thorne thought the pathologist needed several, though it would have to wait until the following day. All being well, once the post-mortem was out of the way, he wouldn’t have to see the bloke again, because it was a long time since he had come across anybody he’d taken a dislike to quite so quickly.
THIRTY-FOUR
Josh shakes his head and says, ‘The Hulk would smash blue Power Ranger. He’d smash him into little pieces.’
‘What about Blue and Red Power Rangers together?’ Kieron asks.
A nod, slow and certain. ‘Yeah, the Hulk could smash both of them.’ Josh grins as he demonstrates with his fist, pounding it against the floor. Smash, smash, smash . . .
‘Are you sure?’
‘He’s the Hulk.’
‘But they’ve got super-speed and super-strength,’ Kieron says.
Josh shrugs, unimpressed.
‘I bet he couldn’t smash the Power Rangers and the Ninja Turtles if they all tried to fight him. Like, in a team.’
‘Yeah, he could,’ Josh says.
‘All of them?’
‘The Hulk would just crush every single one of them. He’d squash every turtle, easy.’ He squeezes his fist and roars. ‘Like a grape.’ He roars louder and sticks his chest out.
That makes Kieron laugh and he doesn’t really care any more which one of the super-heroes would win in a fight. It usually ends up like this. Once, they were arguing about who would win out of Ant Man and Spiderman and Josh said that Ant Man would just crawl up Spiderman’s bum and then go normal size, and he acted it out with all the noises, and that made Kieron laugh until he thought he’d wet himself.
Josh does the grape’s squeaky voice. ‘Please don’t squash me!’ Then the Hulk’s low growl. ‘Die, you stupid little grape-turtle . . . ’
Kieron laughs again, but it sounds strange, now there’s all that new stuff on the walls. Black and rubbery.
‘Like the stuff Batman has,’ Josh says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Maybe you should pretend this is the Batcave.’
Kieron tries, but he can’t manage it, because he knows the Batcave would be bigger than this and not as cold and it wouldn’t smell as bad.
Josh is wearing the same yellow coat he’d been wearing when Kieron had last seen him, when they’d been playing hide and seek in the woods. Josh always says the coat makes him look like a giant banana, but it’s what he usually wears, except when they’re playing inside at his house, or at Kieron’s. If Kieron had the choice, he’d always prefer to be round at Josh’s, because Josh’s mum does amazing tea and there’s a TV in the kitchen and a garden with a trampoline and a football net. He thinks his mum prefers it, too. If Josh and his mum ever come round to the flat, his mum is always smiling too much and sometimes she’s a bit bad-tempered afterwards.
Kieron closes his eyes and tries to think about what Josh might say next.
Something funny . . .
‘If you were Ant Man, you could crawl up the man’s bum, the next time he comes down.’
Kieron tries to laugh, but it doesn’t seem like such a funny idea this time.
‘What would be the best superpower to have?’ Josh asks.
‘To be able to go invisible.’ Kieron answers quickly, because he’s thought about it. ‘So the man can’t find me. So when he comes down he’ll think I’ve gone, then he’ll leave the door open and I can get out.’
‘I’d be the Hulk,’ Josh says.
‘You always want to be the Hulk,’ Kieron says.
‘Because he’s the best.’
‘Yeah, he is the best,’ Kieron says.
Josh nods down at the shackle around Kieron’s ankle. ‘If I was the Hulk I could snap that stupid chain like it was made of jelly.’ He roars again and grabs the chain that’s attached to the wall. Kieron grabs it, too, and the pair of them pull and pull until they’re out of breath.
There’s nothing much they can say to each other after that.
Or, at least, Kieron is too tired to imagine what else they might say.
There’s just a boiler rumbling in the house above, water sloshing through pipes somewhere and the noise of a fly that’s stuck down here with him.
Kieron doesn’t know if it’s morning or night, but he lies down anyway.
Wonders if the Hulk ever cries; if his tears would be green.
He says goodnight to Josh and to his mum and tries to sleep.
THIRTY-FIVE
Initially at least, things had threatened to go every bit as pear-shaped at Hornsey mortuary as they had done the previous day on the phone. Worse, in fact. Thorne was not predisposed to getting along with the bolshy pathologist anyway, but it hadn’t helped that he’d immediately mistaken Dr Phil Hendricks (FRCPath) for one of the mortuary assistants.
Fortunately, the pathologist seemed a little less bolshy today.
‘Understandable,’ Hendricks said. He was fastening his plastic gown over tight black jeans and an equally tight black T-shirt with the fluorescent outline of a ribcage on the front. ‘I suppose.’
‘I just thought . . . ’ Thorne was gesturing, vaguely. Then he pointed straight at Hendricks. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to look like . . . that.’
‘Thought I’d be older?’
‘Yeah.’
‘A tad more conventional?’
‘You know.’ Thorne was still staring, waving his hands again. ‘All of it.’
Hendricks was a few years younger than Thorne and looked like someone who worked out regularly. He had what Thorne would have called a buzz-cut, but that seemed almost conformist compared to the alarming array of piercings on display. There were studs of various sizes running the length of each ear, rings through both nostrils and eyebrows, and a fearsome-looking spike protruding just below his bottom lip.
How can this weirdo kiss anyone, Thorne wondered, without stabbing them in the face?
Then there were the tattoos: Celtic rings and crucifixes; skulls, flames and hearts impaled on barbed wire. A snake curled down from the sleeve of his T-shirt and, when Hendricks turned round and asked Thorne to do his gown up for him, Thorne saw some hideous creature with scaly wings climbing the back of his neck.
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