Lifeless - 5 (2 page)

Charlie Garner aged three, who spent the best part of two days alone in a house with the body of his mother, clutching at a chocolate wrapper he'd licked clean, starving and dirty and screaming until a

neighbour knocked.

'Tom...'

Thorne stared out into the greyness for a few more seconds before turning back resignedly to DCI Russel Brigstocke.

As part of the major reorganisati0n of the Met a year or so earlier, a number of new squads had been established within the three nascent Serious Crime Groups. A unit consisting entirely of officers brought out of retirement had been set up expressly to investigate cold cases.

This unit, quickly christened the Crinkly Squad, was just one of a raft of new initiatives as part of a fresh and supposedly proactive approach to fighting crime in the capital. There were other squads specialising in

sexual assaults, violence against children and firearms offences. Then there was Team 3, Serious Crime Group (West).

Official y, this squad was devised to investigate cases whose parameters were outside those which might be investigated elsewhere - cases that didn't fit anybody else's remit. There were those, however, who suggested that SCG (West) 3 had been set up simply because no-one quite knew what to do with Detective Inspector Tom Thorne. Thorne himself reckoned that the truth was probably somewhere halfway between the two.

Russel Brigstocke was the senior officer and Thorne had known him for over ten years. He was a big man who cut a distinctive figure with horn-rimmed glasses and hair of which he was inordinately proud. It was thick and blue-black, and the DCI took great delight in teasing it up into a quiff of almost Elvis-like proportions. But if he was a caricaturist's dream, he could also be a suspect's worse nightmare. Thorne had seen Brigstocke with glasses off and fists clenched, hair flopping around his sweat-drenched forehead as he stalked around an interview room, shouting, threatening, carrying out the threat, looking for the truth.

'Carol Garner was a single mum. She was twenty-eight years old. Her husband died in a road accident three years ago, just after their son was born. She was a teacher. She was found dead in her home in Balham four days ago. There were no signs of forced entry. She'd arrived back at Euston station at six thirty p.m.. on the twenty-seventh having been to Birmingham to visit her parents. We think that the kil er fol owed her from the station, probably on the tube. We found a travelcard in her pocket.'

Brigstocke's voice was low and accentless, almost a monotone. Yet the litany of facts simply stated was horribly powerful. Thorne knew most of it, having been briefed by Brigstocke the day before, but stil

the words were like a series of punches, each harder than the last, combining to leave him aching and breathless. He could see that the others were no less shocked.

And he knew that they had yet to hear the worst.

Brigstocke continued. 'We can only speculate on how the kil er gained entry or how long he spent inside Carol Garner's home, but we know what he did when he was there...'

Brigstocke looked down the length of the table asking the man at the other end to carry on where he had left off. Thorne stared at the figure in the black fleece, with shaved head and a startling col ection of facial piercings. Phil Hendricks was not everybody's idea of a pathologist, but he was the best Thorne had ever worked with. Thorne raised an eyebrow. Was there yet another earring since he'd last seen him? Hendricks was fond of commemorating each new boyfriend with a ring, stud or spike. Thorne sincerely hoped that he would settle down soon, before he was completely unable to lift his head up.

Dr Phil Hendricks was the civilian member of the team. He was there at the beginning, obviously, as the discovery of a body was almost certainly what galvanised the team in the first place. The body that would yield to the knife; the story behind its journey to a cold steel slab whispered in secrets, revealed by its dead flesh and petrified organs. These were the pathologist's areas of expertise.

Though he and Hendricks were good friends, from this point on, in the context of the investigation, Thorne would be happy if he did not see him again.

'Based on when we know she got on a train from Birmingham, we think she was kil ed somewhere between seven and ten p.m. on the twenty-seventh. She'd been dead for something like forty-eight hours when she was found.'

The flat Mancunian accent conveyed with a simple precision the tawdry and banal reality of genuine horror. Thorne could see the unspeakable thought in the faces of those around the table.

What were those two days like for little Charlie Garner?

'There were no signs of sexual abuse and no indication that she put up any significant struggle. The obvious conclusion is that the kil er threatened the child.' Hendricks stopped, took a breath. 'He strangled

Carol Garner with his bare hands.'

'fucker...'

Thorne glanced to his left. Detective Sergeant Sarah McEvoy stared down at the file in front of her. Thorne waited, but for the moment it seemed that she'd said everything that was on her mind. Of al of them, she was the officer who Thorne had known for the shortest time. And he stil didn't know her at al . Tough, no question, and more than capable. But there was something about her that made Thorne a little wary. There was something hidden.

The voice of DC Dave Hol and focused Thorne's thoughts again. 'Do we think he targeted her because of the child?'

Thorne nodded. 'It was her weakness. Yes, I think he probably did...'

Brigstocke interrupted. 'But it isn't real y significant.'

'Not real y significant?' Hol and sounded thoroughly confused and looked across at his boss.

Thorne shrugged and threw him a look back. Wait and see Dave... It was just over a year since Thorne had first begun working with Dave Hol and and he was at last starting to look like a grown-up. His hair was stil far too blond and floppy, but the features it framed seemed set a little harder these days. Thorne knew that this was not so much to do with age as experience. Wear and tear. The most wholesome and guileless of faces was bound to cloud a little when confronted with some of the things the job threw up.

The change had begun during their first case together. Three months in which Thorne had lost friends and made enemies, while Dave Hol and grew closer to him, watching and absorbing and becoming someone else. Three months that had ended with the slash of a scalpel in a blood-drenched attic in south London.

Hol and had learned and unlearned a great deal, and Thorne had watched it happen, proud yet saddened. It was an argument that he had with himself on a regular basis. Were they mutual y exclusive - the good copper and the good person?

Learning a degree of desensitisation was al very wel but there would be a price to pay. He remembered a warning poster he had seen in a dentist's waiting room: the graphic image of a lip bitten clean off by a patient 'testing' the local anaesthetic. You could bite and bite and not feel a thing, but it was only a matter of time until the anaesthetic wore off and then the pain would certainly begin.

The numbness would wear off too, for those col eagues who Thorne watched getting through their days inside their own brand of armour. Whether manufactured in their heads or from a bottle, it would surely wear off one day and then the agony would be unbearable. This was not Tom Thorne's way, and despite the bravado and bul shit that he'd learned, he instinctively knew that it wasn't Hol and's either.

The good copper and the good person. Probably not mutual y exclusive, just fucking difficult to reconcile. Like one of those things in physics that is theoretical y possible but that nobody has ever seen.

A silence had settled briefly across what was laughably described as the conference room. It was actual y little more than a slightly bigger office, with a jug of coffee and a few more uncomfortable plastic chairs than normal. Thorne considered what he knew about the man who had kil ed Carol Garner. A man who liked, who needed to be in control. A coward.

Perhaps not commanding physical y ... Christ, he was starting to sound like one of those forensic psychiatrists he thought were so overpaid. What he did know of course, was that this kil er was far from ordinary. Extraordinary, and with a greater potential, than Hol and or McEvoy yet understood.

Then of course there was the why. Always the why. And, as always, Tom Thorne didn't give a flying fuck about it. He would confront it if it presented itself. He would grab it with both hands if he could catch the kil er with it. But he didn't care. At least, not about whether the man he was after had ever been given a bicycle as a child...

McEvoy was shifting on the chair next to him. She had finished looking through her file and he could sense that she had something to say.

'What is it, Sarah?'

'This is horrible, no question.., and the stuff with the kid, it's very fucking nasty, but I stil can't quite see why it's us. As opposed to anybody else. I mean, how do we know she wasn't kil ed by someone she knew? There were no signs of forced entry, it might have been a boyfriend or an ex-boyfriend.., so, why us? Sir.'

Thorne looked towards Brigstocke who, with the timing of an expert, lobbed another sheaf of photographs into the middle of the table.

Hol and casual y reached out to take a photo. 'I was thinking the same thing. I don't understand what makes--' He stopped as he took in the image of the woman on her back, her mouth open, her eyes bulging and bloodied. The woman lying among the rubbish bags in a cold dark street. The woman who was not Carol Garner.

It was a dramatic gesture and meant to be. Brigstocke wanted his

team fired up. He wanted them shocked, motivated, passionate.

He certainly had their attention.

It was Thorne who explained exactly what they were up against. 'What makes this different, Hol and' - he looked at McEvoy - 'what makes it us, is that he did it again.'

Now, it was as if the previous silence had been a cacophony. Thorne could hear nothing but the distant echo of his own voice and the hiss of the adrenaline fizzing through his bloodstream. Brigstocke and Hendricks sat frozen, heads bowed. Hol and and McEvoy exchanged a horrified glance.

'It's the reason we know he fol owed Carol Garner from Euston station. Because as soon as he'd finished kil ing her, that same day, he went to King's Cross. He went to a different station, found another woman, and did it al over again.'

Karen, it happened again.

Please, let me tel you what happened. I couldn't bear it if you thought badly of me. I know that you can't possibly forgive or condone what I've done.., what I'm doing, but I know that you'l understand. I've always thought that if I had the chance to explain myself to you, confide in you, that you would be the one person who would truly understand. You always saw me for what I was. You always knew what I thought about you. I could see it in that shy smile.

You knew that you had a power over me, didn't you, but I was never angry with you because of it. Part of me enjoyed the teasing. I wanted to be the one you teased. It felt like I was needed anyway. It just made you more attractive to me, Karen . . .

Jesus, though. Jesus. I did it again. What I was told.

She was alone and frightened of nothing. I could tel by the way she was walking when I fol owed her out of the station. Not a cocky fearlessness, just a sort of trust. She saw the good in everyone, I could tel that. It was dark and she couldn't see how weak and vile I was. There was no fear in her eyes when I spoke to her.

She knew though, what was going to happen, when she saw the fear in mine.

As soon as she knew, she struggled, but she wasn't strong enough. She was less than half my size, Karen, and I just had to wait for her to fade a little. She was scratching and spitting and I couldn't look at her. And when it was over, I couldn't bear it that her face, which had been so open and warm like yours, now looked like something behind glass, or frozen for a long time inside a block of ice, and l was the one who had made it like that.

And I was hard, Karen. Down there. While I was doing it, and again afterwards, while I was hiding her. I stayed excited until the hissing in my head began to die down and the scratches on my hands started to hurt.

I was hard like I never am, even when I'm thinking about the past.

I don't want to embarrass you by talking like this, but if l can't be honest with you about these things then there's no point to anything. I never real y told you what I was thinking when I had the chance, so I'm not going to hide things now.

And I wil never lie to you, Karen, I promise you that.

Of course, you're not the only one who knows what I real y am but you're the only one who can see what's inside. I'm not making excuses, I know that I deserve nothing, but at the very least I'm being open about everything. Open and honest.

She was nothing to me, this woman from the station. She was nothing to me and I squeezed the life out of her.

I'm so very sorry, and I deserve what is surely coming.

I hate to ask a favour, Karen, but if you see her, the woman I kil ed, wil you tel her that for me?

1982

The kids cal ed it 'the Jungle Story'.

The victim was pinned to the tarmac with one boy holding down each arm and another sitting astride his chest. The fingers were the weapons - tapping, prodding, poking - jabbing out the rhythms of the story on the breastbone. The steps of each new animal marching through the jungle. The story was a very simple one; a straightforward excuse to inflict pain.

The wiry, black-haired boy leaned against the wal , his smal dark eyes taking in every detail. Watching as the torment began.

When it was just the monkeys, or whichever of the smal creatures the storytel er introduced early on, it was not real y much more than a tickle. The victim would writhe around, tel ing them to stop, to get off; the fear of what was to come worse than anything. Then would come the lions and tigers. Heavier steps, the fingers jabbing harder, tears beginning to prick in the corners of the eyes. Everything, of course, leading up to the seemingly endless herd of elephants tramping through the jungle, the fingers slamming into the chest, the pain excruciating.