There was no way she could tell her friend how frightened she was. She’d decided years before that the only way to keep it together was never to let anyone see how scared she was. No man, however handy he might be with his fists, not any of those pinch-faced bitches from Social Services, and certainly not Jason. Ever since the police had first come knocking with their serious faces, warning her, she’d been thinking about what it might be like to be separated from him. Not just for a few weeks, but for ever. She watched him sleeping, or stared at the back of his head as he knelt in front of the TV screen, and it made her want to be sick.
She got up and pressed her ear to the lounge door, held back the tears as she listened to her son puff-puffing and humming to himself. I’m the Fat Controller, she thought, and Thomas wouldn’t know what to do without him.
The Fat Controller can’t be shit-scared.
THIRTY-ONE
When Thorne entered the lobby of Grass-up Grange, DS Rob Gibbons was sitting behind the desk, reading a paperback. Thorne glanced at the cover: some fantasy rubbish.
‘Dragons and hobbits, all that kind of stuff?’ he asked.
Gibbons smiled, clearly unimpressed. ‘Not really.’
‘Where’s Spibey?’
‘Upstairs with the Gruesome Twosome,’ Gibbons said.
Walking up, Thorne wondered which of the stock answers he could give to Fowler and Dowd when they asked the inevitable question about how the inquiry was going. It was a reasonable question, all things considered, but such conversations were never easy.
Have you found the man who killed our mum/dad/brother/sister?
Why is this taking so long?
When are you going to catch him . . . ?
We’re doing our best. We’re making progress. There have been several significant developments. Whichever version of ‘no’ and ‘I don’t know’ he trotted out, Thorne was always left feeling slightly grubby. He’d talked about it to Louise more than once, and they’d agreed that there was nothing that could be done about it, and besides, wasn’t it better to give people who were grieving something to hope for? Perhaps, but it didn’t make lying to them any easier.
Any day when a case moved in the right direction was a good one, but they were few and far between, and the really good days, when an arrest - the right arrest - was made, gave hen’s teeth and rocking-horse shit a run for their money. Even then, of course, the possibility of a great day lay with the courts. A less than foolproof legal system meant that the best anyone could do at that stage was cross their fingers, move on to the next case and try not to worry.
‘If they screw up,’ Hendricks had said once, ‘it doesn’t mean you did.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Thorne had said. Because it wasn’t tricksy barristers or incompetent judges who had to face the toughest question of the lot, was it?
How could that happen?
Thorne stepped on to the top-floor landing. He could hear laughter coming from Graham Fowler’s apartment.
So, any chance we might get out of here soon, that you might catch this bloke? You know, the one who’s trying to kill us. Not for the first time, Thorne resolved to be as honest as possible, knowing that when the time came he would probably bottle it.
Forensically, they had about all they were ever going to get, and the phone number provided by Sarah Dowd had proved to be as useless as Thorne had feared. Her information, together with the sightings reported by Yvonne Kitson, was helping to put the picture together, but no more than that. Looking at it from almost any angle, Kitson’s grumbling sidekick might have had a point.
Thorne walked along the corridor, past the open doors of the vacant apartments. Each one looked clean and ready, should it be needed, and there was the faintest tang of new paint. Thorne wondered if Grass-up Grange was expecting a particularly fussy gangland informant, and then - for no good reason - if it was true that the Queen thought the world smelled of fresh paint. Hers was certainly a sweeter-smelling world than the one he and Phil Hendricks lived in.
The poor old soul did have a lot of waving to do though . . .
He knocked on the door of Fowler’s apartment. Said, ‘Brian, it’s Tom Thorne.’ Spibey gave him the four-digit entry code and Thorne walked in to find him at a table with Fowler and Dowd, a scattering of poker chips just visible between the takeaway cartons and beer cans. The room stank of curry and cigarettes.
Spibey, who was seated with his back to the door, held up his cards so that only Thorne could see. He was holding two kings and a jack. ‘Three-card brag. Fancy a few hands?’
Thorne said that he couldn’t as he was only stopping by on his way to an appointment.
‘Go on,’ Dowd said. ‘You might change my luck, help me get some money back off this jammy bastard.’
‘Pure skill,’ Spibey said.
‘Where’s all the money come from anyway?’
Fowler nodded at Dowd. ‘Well, I came in here with about forty-six pence, but Andy’s subbed me.’
‘And I’m the only one losing,’ Dowd said.
Fowler slowly pumped his arms in the air, began tunelessly singing ‘Things Can Only Get Better’. It was clear that the empty cans were down to him.
Dowd looked at Thorne, shaking his head. ‘Like I told you, it’s a sick world.’
Thorne asked if everything was OK, and Spibey told him it was. Fowler and Dowd nodded their agreement, the two of them sitting there as if it were the most ordinary situation imaginable.
Neither seemed inclined to ask Thorne any difficult questions.
‘Go on then, sod off,’ Spibey said. ‘I’m about to clean these two out.’
‘Oh right, your pair of kings.’
Fowler and Dowd threw their hands down immediately.
‘Bloody hell!’ Spibey said.
Thorne grinned. ‘I’ll phone later tonight,’ he said. ‘OK?’ He would call Debbie Mitchell too, last thing.
Spibey caught up with him at the door. ‘Listen, Tom, I just thought this would take their minds off things, you know? Any problem?’
‘Not as far as I can see,’ Thorne said. Both men had been far more relaxed than the last time he had seen them, and a few hours’ harmless gambling had certainly got Thorne himself off the hook. If it worked with men whose lives had been targeted, he wondered if the chance of a quick flutter might be the key to diluting those awkward moments with desperate relatives.
I’m so confident that we’ll catch the man who killed your husband/wife/hamster that I’ll give you ten to one against us catching him. Stick a tenner on and it’s a win-win . . .
He decided to bring up the idea next time he saw Trevor Jesmond. See if the twat thought he was joking.
‘Have you eaten?’
Thorne suddenly felt guilty. ‘I grabbed a burger on the way over. Sorry. I thought you’d have had something.’
‘I can grab a sandwich later,’ Chamberlain said. ‘It’s fine.’ She held up her glass of wine. ‘I’ll probably need something to soak this up.’
The bar of the hotel in Bloomsbury was nice enough, but no bigger than a large sitting room, so Thorne and Chamberlain, once they’d got beyond the chit-chat, had needed to keep their voices down. The other occupants, a pair of blousy Midlands girls on the lash, were showing no such discretion. Thorne had twice come close to marching across and letting them know he had no interest in their jobs or boyfriends and suggesting that they might like to take their Bacardi Breezers somewhere else.
‘You’re turning into a miserable old git,’ Chamberlain said.
‘I was always a miserable git,’ Thorne said. ‘I just used to be younger.’
‘You think it’s the Job?’
‘Not really.’
‘That you’d be any less miserable if you worked in Currys?’
‘Christ, no.’
‘Well then.’
‘A week of that and I’d hang myself with one of their reasonably priced extension leads.’
‘So, cheer up,’ Chamberlain said.
She refilled their glasses then picked up the bar menu, tapping her fingers against it in time to the quasi-Celtic folk drivel being piped from the speakers in the ceiling. The girls at the next table laughed and Thorne thought about asking if he could have the drivel turned up a little.
‘You think there’s anything in what this bloke Reece told you?’
‘If it had been himself he was talking about, I’d probably have thought he was full of it. But it sounded . . . convincing.’
‘A convincing rumour.’
‘Got to be worth checking out though.’
Thorne knew that, as the inquiry stood, a call claiming that Anthony Garvey was the bastard son of Lord Lucan would be worth checking out. ‘So, tell me about this woman,’ he said.
Chamberlain inched forward in her chair. This was what she was being paid for. ‘Sandra Phipps. Well, Phipps as was. She’s been married twice since then. She lives out near Reading somewhere.’
Something rang the faintest of bells with Thorne.
‘What?’
For a second or two he almost nailed it, but the noise from the adjoining table made it difficult to concentrate. ‘Nothing. When are you going to see her?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘She know you’re coming?’
‘I thought it might be best if I just turned up,’ Chamberlain said. ‘If she is Anthony Garvey’s mother, I’d rather not give her any time to think about it, cook up false alibis.’
Thorne agreed that it was a good idea. He knew how easily the bond between a parent and their child could breed credulity and twist into denial. It was hard to condemn unconditional love, even when it bordered on stupidity, but if it came close to a perversion of justice, a line had to be drawn.
He remembered a woman who had flown at him a few years back, after her son had been jailed for kicking an Asian shopkeeper to death. He’d held her at arm’s length until she’d been restrained. Stood there with gobbets of spit running down his shirt, wondering if the woman hated him as much as she hated herself.
And he remembered Chloe Sinclair’s mother and the father of Greg and Alex Macken. A different sort of unconditional love.
He knew where his sympathies lay.
‘You want me to come with you?’ he asked.
‘Right,’ Chamberlain said. ‘I do all the donkey work and you step in at the finish.’
‘Not at all.’
‘You don’t think I’m up to it?’
‘No, I mean . . . yes, ’course I do. I just thought you might want some company.’ Thorne shook his head. ‘Bloody hell, you’re turning into a touchy old git.’
Chamberlain emptied her glass. ‘Less of the “old”, you cheeky sod.’
‘Pardon me.’ Thorne finished his own wine and sat back for a few moments. He noticed that one of the Midlands girls, despite the grating voice, was not unattractive. He thought about Louise and quickly turned his attention back to Chamberlain. ‘’Course, even if this woman is Garvey’s mother, she might well have no idea where he is.’
‘Or he might be popping round every Sunday with a bunch of flowers. We don’t know, do we? At the very least we might get a real name.’
‘True.’
‘Maybe more.’
‘God, I hope so.’
‘This one’s wound you up, hasn’t it?’ Chamberlain asked.
Thorne took a few seconds to gather his thoughts, which weren’t coming quite as quickly or cleanly as usual. ‘The weird thing is that I’m almost grateful for it. Just when you think you might be getting . . . desensitised to this stuff, some freak like Garvey comes along and you find there’s a bit of you that’s still . . . Shit, can’t think of the word.’
‘I know what you’re saying.’
‘And there’s other things . . . things at home or whatever. They change the way you react to people. Make you angrier, sadder. Jack all your reactions up a few notches so you can’t switch off quite so easily.’
‘What things?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Thorne shook his head. ‘I’m talking shite, that’s all.’
Chamberlain waited, but Thorne waved the subject away as though it weren’t worth their time and effort. The music had dropped in tempo, like Clannad on Mogadon. They watched the barman flirting with the two girls as he gathered up their empties.
‘Are you driving?’ Chamberlain asked. She held up the spent wine bottle to let Thorne see how much they’d put away.
‘Well, I was.’ Thorne had driven home the previous night when he shouldn’t have, but aside from being a little further over the limit now than he had been then, he didn’t feel like calling it a night just yet. ‘Getting a cab shouldn’t be a problem, though.’
‘Shall we get another bottle, then?’
He had parked in an NCP, which meant that, on top of the taxi fare, he would probably need to take out a second mortgage if he was going to pick the car up the next morning. He could always try claiming it on expenses. ‘Might as well,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to order some food anyway.’
‘We could just go up to my room, if you like.’
‘Steady, Carol.’
‘Behave yourself.’ Chamberlain smiled, enjoying it. ‘I’ve got a couple of bottles up there, that’s all, so it’s free and it’s a damn sight nicer than this rubbish. I can always ring down for a sandwich.’
They gathered their stuff together and moved towards the lifts. Thorne made sure his voice was raised as he walked, not altogether steadily, past the table at which the Midlands girls were sitting. ‘Why do women keep asking me to go up to their hotel rooms with them?’ he said.
Chamberlain shrugged. ‘It’s a mystery to me.’
A minute or so later, Thorne was grinning as the lift doors closed. ‘Mind you, the last one did want me to pay for it.’
THIRTY-TWO
Thorne perched on the end of the bed while Chamberlain sat in the small chair next to the window. The wine, from plastic bathroom glasses, went down easily enough, though it was hard to say if it was really any better than what they’d been drinking in the bar. Thorne was rapidly reaching the point where he could not have distinguished between Merlot and meths.
The first few glasses were taken up with chat about the case, but it seemed like small talk. They had said all that needed saying downstairs and both had been in the Job long enough to know that speculation was ultimately pointless, even when it was all you had left.
‘I’ll call as soon as I’ve spoken to Sandra Phipps,’ Chamberlain said. ‘If she does turn out to be Garvey’s mother, I’m guessing you’ll want a few words yourself.’
Thorne nodded, that faraway bell ringing again.
‘And if she isn’t, do you want me to go back to Malcolm Reece, see if there’s anyone else he can think of?’
‘Might as well,’ Thorne said.
‘Actually, I think he took rather a shine to me.’
‘Why wouldn’t he?’ Thorne spread his arms wide. ‘Attractive and mature lady, still got both her own hips. You have still got both your hips, haven’t you?’
‘Both fists as well,’ Chamberlain said. ‘And you should watch it, because I reckon you’ve drunk more than I have, so your reflexes are probably buggered.’
‘I wouldn’t fancy my chances stone-cold sober,’ Thorne said.
‘Long as you know.’
Thorne had thought about asking if there was any music, if he could turn on the radio, maybe, but he’d stopped himself. Fuzzy-headed as he was, he was still thinking clearly enough to sense that it might not be . . . appropriate, or at the very least that the connotations might be embarrassing, for one or other of them. The silences grew longer, or seemed to, broken only by the sound of yawns no longer stifled, and once by the laughter and muted conversation of people entering the room next door. For ten minutes, while Chamberlain talked about life in Worthing, Thorne sat in dread, waiting for those tell-tale bedtime noises to start coming through the walls. Would he and Chamberlain sit there mor
tified, he wondered, raising their voices and pretending they could hear nothing? Or would they piss themselves like naughty children and hold their plastic glasses to the wall? He poured himself another drink, concluding that, should it come to it, alcohol would clearly be the deciding factor.
With two and a bit bottles accounted for between them, Chamberlain said, ‘I told you how grateful I was for this, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, and you didn’t have to.’
‘I meant it, and you know it’s not just about the money.’
‘A chance to stay in a hotel, whatever . . . I know.’
‘I needed the break, Tom,’ Chamberlain said. ‘We both know the cancer’s coming back and I know Jack’s only trying to make the best of things, but we’re just drifting along, bored and talking rubbish like a pair of stupid teenagers.’
‘But it’s better to be . . . positive, surely?’
She shook her head, adamant. ‘The pretending’s doing my head in, tell you the truth. He’s doing my head in.’
Thorne took a deep breath. He was finding it increasingly hard to put the words in the right order. ‘I don’t quite know what you—’
‘I’m not saying I want to leave, anything like that.’
‘OK, because I thought you meant—’
‘It’s just that I want to slap him silly sometimes.’
Thorne was about to laugh, but Chamberlain cut him off.
‘Does that sound horrible?’
Thorne could manage no more than a shrug, a puff of boozy breath.
‘We were walking the dog the other week,’ Chamberlain said, ‘and obviously Jack needs to stop quite a bit and catch his breath. I just have to stand and wait, you know, listening to him wheezing and watching the dog disappear until he’s ready to carry on. So I was standing there this one day, thinking, I can run, you know? I can still run.’ She smiled sadly at Thorne. ‘Still got two good knees as well . . .’
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