‘Kingston,’ Strang said.
‘Someone can stay with you and . . . your wife, is it?’ From the corner of his eye, Thorne saw Strang shaking his head, but it was too late.
Macken snapped his head round and stared hard at Thorne. His mouth fell open as though a dreadful image had suddenly been recalled and there was something desperate in his eyes; a plea, a prayer. ‘Not after Liz,’ he said. ‘Not after what happened to Elizabeth.’
Thorne looked at Strang.
‘Mr Macken’s wife, I think, sir.’ Strang lowered his voice. ‘He’s been banging on about this all the way from Kingston.’
‘Jesus, no. Jesus, Jesus . . .’
‘Is your wife all right, Mr Macken?’
‘Partner, not wife. We never saw the need to get married.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Liz was killed,’ Macken said, simple and sad. ‘Fifteen years ago. Murdered, like her children.’
Thorne had felt it begin as soon as he’d asked the question and seen the look on Macken’s face. The tingle, feathering the skin at the nape of his neck, starting to spread before Macken had even finished speaking.
Somewhere behind him, he heard Holland mutter, ‘Bloody hell-fire. ’
The fact that they had never married explained why ‘Macken’ had not registered with Thorne earlier in the day; the children’s surname taken from their father and not shared with their dead mother. Now, he remembered the seven names on the list of Raymond Garvey’s victims: ‘Elizabeth O’Connor’ had been third from the top.
Thorne spoke her killer’s name quietly, and could only watch as Martin Macken’s face collapsed in on itself and he fell back, moaning, against the side of the car. ‘Jesus . . . Jesus . . . Jesus . . .’
Thorne was already reaching for his phone and walking away fast, aware of Strang calling after him, asking what he should do about Mr Macken. Scrolling through the phone’s contact list, he marched past Holland, told him he’d better get in touch with his girlfriend to let her know he was going to be home very late.
Then Holland was shouting after him as well.
It was easy enough getting through to the Incident Room in Leicester, but it took some cajoling, then a minute or two’s concentrated shouting and swearing, to get Paul Brewer’s home number.
‘In a hurry to arrange that drink?’ Brewer asked.
‘I’m coming up to Leicester tonight,’ Thorne said. ‘And I want to talk to Catherine Burke’s boyfriend. I need you to sort that out for me.’
‘Sort it out?’
‘Make sure he knows I’m coming. Make sure he stays in, and waits up.’
‘Christ, is this about Catherine’s mother?’ It sounded as though Brewer were suppressing a yawn. ‘I told you, I already spoke to him about that.’
‘I know you did, Paul,’ Thorne said. ‘The problem is, he lied.’
NINE
There was a FOR SALE sign outside the two-bedroom flat that Jamie Paice had, until three weeks before, shared with Catherine Burke. Thorne was staring at it as the door was opened and a young man in jeans and a Leicester City shirt began ranting about how late it was, and how he couldn’t see what was so important. How he was really sick of answering questions when he’d only just buried his girlfriend.
Thorne introduced himself and Holland. Said, ‘Coffee would be nice.’
They followed Paice upstairs, and while he went straight on into a small kitchen, Thorne and Holland turned into a living room dominated by a black leather sofa and matching armchairs. A blonde woman in her twenties sat cradling a bottle of beer in front of a large plasma television. After a brief staring contest, she reluctantly turned off the TV and introduced herself as Dawn Turner.
‘I’m just a friend,’ she said, without being asked. ‘I was a friend of Catherine.’
Thorne nodded. She was wearing a cap-sleeved T-shirt that did her no favours, with a transparent bra-strap visible on each shoulder. It was sweltering in the room. Thorne and Holland took off their jackets and sat down on the sofa.
‘It’s been really hard for Jamie,’ Turner said. She put her bottle down by the side of her chair. ‘Last few weeks.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Thorne said.
They had made good time getting out of London and even with Thorne keeping the BMW at a well-behaved seventy-five all the way, they had hit the outskirts of Leicester within an hour and a half of leaving Holloway. It was pushing ten o’clock by the time Jamie Paice sauntered into the living room with two mugs of coffee and fresh beers for himself and his ‘friend’. He dropped into the armchair he took a good, long look at his watch.
‘I’m doing you a favour here, to be honest,’ Paice said. ‘So this better be important. Doesn’t look like you’re here to tell me you’ve found the fucker who killed Cath.’
Thorne smiled, as though he simply hadn’t heard him. ‘Selling the place, Jamie?’
Paice looked across at Turner and shook his head in disbelief. ‘That what you came all this way to ask me? You want to make an offer?’
‘Just interested. I saw the sign.’
‘We were planning to sell anyway. Me and Cath had looked at a few places already when she was killed.’
‘The police thought that might have had something to do with what happened,’ Turner said. ‘They reckoned whoever killed her might have come round pretending to look at the flat. I think they checked with the estate agents and that.’
‘I’m sure they did,’ Thorne said.
Holland shuffled to the edge of the sofa and looked at Paice. He nodded towards Turner. ‘Did you ask your friend round when you knew we were coming?’ he asked.
‘Why would I do that?’
‘A bit of moral support.’
Paice said nothing, took a swig from his bottle.
‘So, she was here anyway?’
‘Brewer said there was something you wanted to talk to me about.’ Paice leaned back in his chair and spread his arms. ‘Can we get on with it?’
‘You were shopping in town when Catherine was killed,’ Holland said.
‘Christ, are we going through this again?’
‘Looking for a computer game you wanted, that’s what you said. But you didn’t buy anything in the end.’
‘It’s not what I said. It’s what happened.’
‘This is stupid,’ Turner said. ‘The police checked all that an’ all. Went to the shops Jamie went into.’
‘We could always check again,’ Thorne said.
‘Do what you bloody like,’ Paice said. ‘Maybe I should be talking to a solicitor, check out how much I can sue you bastards for.’
‘A solicitor might be a good idea,’ Holland said.
‘What?’ Paice suddenly looked furious and began rocking slowly in the chair, his knuckles whitening around the neck of his beer bottle.
‘It’s all right, Jamie.’ Looking daggers at Holland as she went, Turner moved across and sat down on the arm of Paice’s chair. She laid a hand on his shoulder and told him that he needed to calm down; that getting worked up wouldn’t do any good, or bring Catherine back.
‘She’s telling the truth,’ Holland said. ‘And it’s about time you did.’
Thorne had been happy to sit there and let Holland get stuck into Jamie Paice. They knew very well that his alibi checked out, and they had not driven a hundred miles because they thought he’d killed Catherine Burke or anyone else. But for some reason he had lied to Paul Brewer, they felt sure about that, and in these situations it always paid to put the subject firmly on the back foot.
Holland had made a good job of it, and not for the first time. Thorne had told him once, a year or so back, how impressed he had been. Holland had laughed, then told Thorne that when it came to making people feel uncomfortable, he’d learned from the master. ‘I don’t mean watching you in interview rooms or anything,’ Holland had said, enjoying himself. ‘Just, you know, how you are with people . . . all the time.’
‘You were asked how Ca
therine’s mother had died,’ Thorne said. He waited until Paice was looking at him. ‘And you talked a lot of rubbish.’
‘When Brewer rang and asked, you mean?’ Paice seemed genuinely confused. Turner was squeezing his shoulder, trying to say something, but he wouldn’t let her speak. ‘I told him. I don’t understand.’
‘You said Catherine’s mother died of cancer.’
‘Right, same as her dad. He died a few years ago, stomach cancer I think, and her mum died when Cath was a kid. I’m not sure what sort—’
‘Why are you lying?’
‘I’m not. She died of cancer.’
‘No,’ Thorne said. ‘She didn’t.’ He was as certain as he could be that Catherine Burke’s mother had been murdered fifteen years before, just as the mothers of Emily Walker and Alex and Greg Macken had been. There was nobody named Burke on the list of victims that was folded in Thorne’s pocket, but nor was there a Macken or a Walker. There were any number of reasons why the surnames of parent and child might not match, but the link between the four most recent murder victims could no longer be in any doubt.
‘This is mental,’ Paice said. He shifted forward, trying to get up, but was pressed gently back into his chair.
‘It’s true, Jamie,’ Turner said. ‘Cath’s mum was murdered by a man named Raymond Garvey.’
Paice looked up at her, and as soon as he had placed the name, he began shaking his head. ‘You’re kidding? He killed loads, didn’t he?’
‘Seven,’ Turner said. She looked at Thorne, received a small nod of confirmation. ‘Cath’s mum was the third or fourth, I think.’
Paice took a long pull on his bottle, held the beer in his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. ‘So, why didn’t she tell me? Why was there this made-up cancer story?’
‘She just got sick of it,’ Turner said. ‘People wanting to know what it was like. I mean, what did they think it was like?’ She was talking to Holland and Thorne as much as to Paice now, tearing pieces of the label from her beer bottle, balling them up in her palm. ‘She used to get pestered by people writing books about it and making TV documentaries. There was even one bloke she used to go out with who she reckoned . . . got off on it. Sickos, you know? So, a few years ago she just decided she’d had enough. Changed her name, moved to a different side of the city and never talked about it to anyone. I’d known Cath since we were at school, but I was the only one she still spoke to who knew what had happened when she was a kid. Apart from me, nobody had a clue. Nobody at work. Not Jamie.’
Thorne looked at Paice. ‘How long had the two of you been together?’
Paice looked shell-shocked. ‘A year and a half.’ He moved the bottle towards his mouth, stared at it. ‘Christ . . .’
‘Why “Burke”,’ Holland asked.
Turner lobbed the rolled-up pieces of the label into a wicker wastepaper basket in the corner. ‘It was her mum’s maiden name,’ she said. ‘She never really had anything of her mum’s after she died. Her dad drank quite a bit afterwards, and ended up flogging anything he could find to pay for it. Her mum’s name was about the only thing of hers that Cath could keep.’
Thorne knew they were just about done. He glanced down towards his jacket, which he had dropped on to the floor by the side of the sofa. ‘How old was she when it happened?’
‘Eleven,’ Turner said. ‘Our first year at big school.’ She closed her eyes for five seconds . . . ten, then stood up and moved back to her own chair. ‘It really messed her up. For ever, you know?’
‘The drugs, right?’
‘Well, who wouldn’t?’
Reaching for the jacket, Thorne saw the eyes of the man in the armchair drift down to his feet and knew that Jamie Paice had been more than happy to keep his girlfriend company; to get out of it with her on whatever pills Catherine had managed to smuggle out of the hospital.
‘Garvey killed Catherine’s mum while she was sunbathing,’ Turner said. ‘Climbed over a fence and battered her to death in broad daylight. ’ She looked at what was left in her bottle, then finished it quickly. ‘Catherine found her in the garden when she came home from school.’
Fifteen minutes later, a mile or so from the M1, Holland said, ‘Should be back by midnight with a bit of luck.’
‘I think it’s probably best if we stay over,’ Thorne said.
‘What?’
‘Have a couple of drinks, get our heads down, then head back first thing.’
Holland looked less than thrilled. ‘I didn’t warn Sophie.’
‘Well, we’re both in the same boat.’ Thorne slowed down and began studying the road-signs. ‘We passed a place on the way in. Be handy for the motorway in the morning.’
‘Shit . . . I haven’t got any overnight stuff.’
‘We can get you a toothbrush from somewhere,’ Thorne said. ‘And don’t tell me you’ve never worn the same pair of pants two days running. ’
‘It’s mad though,’ Holland said. ‘We’re only an hour and a bit away from home.’
‘I’m tired.’
‘I’m happy to drive, if you want to sleep.’
‘I want to stay over,’ Thorne said.
It was somewhere between a Travelodge and a borstal, with wood-effect plastic on every available surface, pan-pipe music coming from speakers too high up to rip off the wall and a worrying smell in the lobby. They checked in fast and tried not to breathe too much. Thorne did his best to be pleasant and jokey, failing to elicit a smile from the woman behind the desk, then as neither he nor Holland could face seeing his room without at least one drink inside them, they moved straight from the sumptuous reception area into what passed for a bar.
It wasn’t yet eleven o’clock but the place - half a dozen tables and some artificial plants - was virtually empty. Two middle-aged men in suits were huddled at a table by the door and a woman in her early thirties sat at one end of the bar, flicking through a magazine. There was no sign of any staff.
‘Joint’s jumping,’ Holland said.
After a few minutes, a balding bundle of fun in a plum-coloured waistcoat materialised behind the bar and Thorne bought the drinks: a glass of Blossom Hill for himself and a pint of Stella for Holland. He asked about ordering some sandwiches and was told that the kitchen was short staffed. They carried their drinks to a table in the corner, Thorne grabbing half-eaten bowls of peanuts from the three adjacent tables before he sat down.
‘They’re covered in piss,’ Holland said.
Thorne already had a mouthful of nuts and was brushing the salt from his hands. He looked across and grunted, ‘What?’
Holland nodded down at the bowl. ‘From people who go to the bog and don’t wash their hands. I saw a thing on Oprah where they did these tests and found traces of piss in bowls of peanuts and pretzels, stuff they leave out on bars.’
Thorne shrugged. ‘I’m hungry.’
Holland helped himself to a handful. ‘Just telling you,’ he said.
The piped music had changed to what was probably Michael Bolton, but could also have been a large animal in great pain. The wine went down easily enough, though, and Thorne enjoyed the banter when Holland commented on the fact that he was drinking rosé. Thorne informed him that Louise had started buying it, that according to an article he’d seen, it was now extremely trendy.
‘Extremely gay,’ Holland said.
Thorne might have said something about that kind of comment upsetting Phil Hendricks, were it not exactly what Hendricks would have said himself. Instead, he pushed his empty glass across the table and reminded Holland it was his round. A few minutes later, Holland returned from the bar with another glass of wine, half a lager and four packets of piss-free crisps.
‘Don’t you feel a bit guilty?’ Holland asked. ‘About Paice, I mean. He obviously didn’t know about the Garvey thing.’
‘I don’t know about “obviously”.’
‘Did you see his face?’
Thorne took a few seconds. ‘Maybe he and his new girlfriend
cooked that story up.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Buggered if I know.’
‘Well, they deserve Oscars if they did.’ Holland downed what was left of his pint and poured the half into the empty glass. ‘Anyway, who says she’s his girlfriend?’
‘It was the first thing I thought, I suppose,’ Thorne said. ‘As soon as I walked in.’
Holland shook his head. ‘Never occurred to me. Some people have got nasty, suspicious minds.’
‘Difficult not to.’
‘That make you a good copper, you reckon?’ Holland smiled, but it didn’t sound as though he was joking. ‘Or a bad one?’
‘Probably just one who’s been doing it too long,’ Thorne said.
Holland leaned forward to see if there were any crisps left, but all the packets were empty. ‘So, how long was it before you stopped giving people the benefit of the doubt?’ he asked.
‘That’s the jury’s job, not mine,’ Thorne said.
‘Seriously.’
‘I don’t think I ever did . . . ever do.’ Thorne took a mouthful of wine. It was a little sweeter than the one Louise bought from Sainsbury’s. ‘If you start off assuming that everyone’s a twat, you’re unlikely to be disappointed. ’ He glanced towards the bar and saw the woman looking in their direction. He smiled, then turned back to Holland. ‘All right, I suppose I do feel a bit guilty,’ he said. ‘And stupid, for thinking this business with Jamie Paice might have been important.’
‘It might have been,’ Holland said. He held up his glass. ‘And right now we’d be toasting our success with something a bit more expensive. ’ He swilled the beer around, stared into it. ‘We’ve got to chase up everything, right, even if it is stupid, until we get lucky or this bloke makes a mistake.’
‘I’m hoping he’s already made one,’ Thorne said. ‘I don’t want to see any more pieces of that X-ray.’
A few minutes later, Holland asked, ‘So, why are we really here?’
‘I’m not with you.’
‘Sitting in this shit-hole instead of being at home in our own beds.’ The look on Holland’s face made it clear he was expecting to hear about how Thorne was in the doghouse with Louise, or trying to avoid some tedious dinner with her family and friends. Hoping to hear something he could laugh at or sympathise with; shaking his head in disbelief at the silly shit their girlfriends put them through. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to say.’
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