Lifeless - 5 (33 page)

Palmer raised up his wrist, Hol and's moving with it, and scratched the side of his head with a thumbnail. 'I suppose it would be stupid to ask if anybody ever puts them straight. Tel s them the truth.'

'Very stupid. It gets a lot worse as wel . They'l have two reasons to hate you.'

'What... ?'

'Two reasons to smash your face into a sink. To push you down a couple of flights of stairs, or knock something up in the tool shop to stick into you while you're queuing up for your dinner. Don't get me wrong, these people have got a moral code, it's just not a normal one.' Thorne caught Palmer's eye in the mirror and held it. 'They hate men who hurt women, or pretend to hate them, doesn't much matter which, and if you're lucky, they might only piss in your tea. But if there's one thing they real y do despise even more than that, it's a grass. With you, they'l be getting two for the price of one.'

Slowly, in the mirror, a clear view of the Vectra emerged, as Palmer's head dropped and he slumped down in his seat. Pleased as he was with his little speech, Thorne couldn't help but feel like a grown man who's played games with a smal child and refused to let him win.

Ten minutes later, Thorne swung the car round and pul ed up at a

T-junction. The Vectra came alongside him, the four officers exchanging looks, both cars waiting for a gap in the traffic coming from his left. A thousand yards away on the other side of the road, across the expanse of reclaimed saltmarsh, lay the prison. The slouching concrete warehouse...

Cons R Us. Kingdom Of Kil ers.

The driver of the back-up car gave Thorne the thumbs up and accelerated away into the stream of traffic heading back towards the city. Thorne pul ed across the road and drove slowly towards the prison's main entrance, feeling the first twinges of a headache kicking in behind his eyes.

He looked at the clock on the dashboard as he rol ed up the drive towards the barrier. It was just after half past one. He began to think about where he was due to be in less than an hour.

The day was not going to get any better.

TWENTY

If someone told Thorne that he had a nice singing voice, chances are they'd be wearing black...

He did have a good voice, surprisingly high and light for someone who looked and spoke like he did, and usual y coming as a shock to anyone who heard it for the first time. As he sang, it struck him, as it usual y did on these occasions, that such events were actual y the only time that he ever real y sang, the only time most people sang properly: weddings, or more likely in his case, funerals.

They finished singing 'The Lord Is My Shepherd' more or less together, and sat down. As Brian Marsden, the headmaster, made his way to the lectern, Thorne looked at the people around him.

It was a large congregation. Sixty-five or seventy people maybe. The majority were friends and col eagues, several generations of teachers and ex-pupils, but a number of those who sat shuffling feet and orders of service were there in an official capacity.

There were more police than family.

Thorne and McEvoy were there, representing the key investigative team. Malcolm Jay, the DS from Harrow, was in church, and Derek Lickwood. Steve Norman was around somewhere, to liaise with any

unwelcome reporters who might try to grab a few words with grieving relatives.

While respects were being paid, the mourners were being closely watched in case the kil er himself decided to pop along and sprinkle soil on the coffin of his victim. He wouldn't be the first, but as always, Thorne thought it unlikely that he or anybody else would be able to spot him if he were to show up. He would hardly be the one dressed in bright colours or sniggering during the eulogy. He was unlikely to be looking shifty or coughing nervously when the vicar talked about the deceased being 'taken from us'. Nevertheless, it was a useful thing to do.

They would ask discreetly for a guest list and, even more discreetly, someone would be filming those guests as they filed out of the church.

Thorne craned his head round. There was a row of six or seven schoolboys in the rearmost pew. They were sixth-formers probably, sitting stiffly and wearing what in Whorne's day would have been cal ed 'lounge suits'. One of them caught his eye and smiled. Thorne inclined his head non-committal y and turned away. The teachers, at least fifteen or twenty of them, sat together on the left-hand side. Some were wearing gowns and mortar boards. Al of them watched the tal , white-haired man at the lectern. The headmaster's voice echoed round the church, as it did every morning round the main hal at King Edward's. Thorne looked at the sombre expression on Brian Marsden's thin face and guessed that he looked the same every day in assembly.

The family sat on the front row. The teenage nephew and niece. The sister in her forties. The father...

Thorne looked at the old man and saw the shadow of Charlie Garner's grandfather. Thirty years older perhaps, and a sight more frail, but with the same haunted expression. Like he'd been hol owed out and there was nothing of substance to hold the bones in place any more.

The congregation was rising to sing again, the organist playing the opening bars of 'Abide With Me' badly. As Thorne stood, he caught the eye of the headmaster who had just returned to his place, his tribute to

Ken Bowles paid. Thorne opened his mouth to sing and realised that he hadn't heard a word of what had been said.

Later, outside the church, people watched the coffin being loaded into the back of the hearse. With McEvoy away somewhere reapplying make-up, Thorne was joined by Malcolm Jay and Derek Lickwood. They both lit cigarettes hungrily and the three of them stood around, not knowing what to do with their hands and trying not to look too much like police officers.

'Inspector Thorne... ?'

Thorne turned at the familiar voice and found himself face to face with a smiling Andrew Cookson, the teacher who'd shown him around the school. The teacher who, two weeks earlier, Thorne had mistakenly assumed to have been the body they had today come to bury. 'Here mob-handed then?' Cookson said, laughing.

Thorne nodded and turned to his col eagues. They had obviously

not been doing a great job of blending in. 'DS Jay, DCI Lickwood...' 'Andrew Cookson. I worked with Ken.'

While handshakes were exchanged, Thorne looked at the man who was hovering at Cookson's shoulder. His head was completely bald and spotted with brown patches. He leaned on a walking stick and stared at something in the distance, his lower jaw moving constantly, as if he were chewing something everlasting.

He turned his head suddenly, looked at Thorne. 'Thank you for coming.'

'I'm sorry about your son,' Thorne said.

Cookson stepped back and took the old man by the elbow. 'This is Leslie Bowles, Ken's father.'

Thorne saw Jay and Lickwood exchange an uneasy glance. Before

they had a chance to mumble an awkward response, the old man spoke. 'Very kind of Andrew here, to look after me... 'Don't be sil y,' Cookson said. 'Doesn't know me from Adam.' 'I knew Ken...'

'Not as wel as some.'

Cookson shrugged and shook his head. Bowles took a slight step towards Thorne and the others. 'It's supposed to stop isn't it?' he said. 'Everybody says it switches around when you get old and they have to look after you. The parent becomes the child...' He sounded wel educated. The voice was surprisingly strong and deep. Thorne knew that the old man was a lot tougher than he looked. 'It's nonsense though, it real y is. Even when they're cooking for you and getting your shopping in, you know? Even when they're doing up the buttons on your pyjamas and pretending to listen to your stupid stories, even ...' His eyes twinkled and he lowered his voice conspiratorial y. '... Even when they're wiping your arse, you're stil the father--'

His voice faltered suddenly. He swal owed, took a breath and continued, the sentences now shorter, the words spoken between gulps of air. 'It never stops, never. You're stil the father and he's stil the son. Stil the son...' He turned his head away from them. His jaw began its chewing movement again.

'Dad. They're ready...' Leslie Bowles's daughter appeared behind him. Thorne watched them move slowly away towards the line of cars, and saw McEvoy pass them on the narrow gravel path, walking towards him.

'He's amazing,' Cookson said, looking towards the old man. 'He must be pushing ninety.'

McEvoy arrived. She nodded to Lickwood and Jay, stepped in close to Thorne. 'Lippy re-applied. Al 's right with the world. What's happening?'

Thorne caught a look from Cookson and made the introduction. 'Andrew Cookson, he teaches at King Edward's. This is Detective Sergeant McEvoy...'

McEvoy and Cookson shook hands. 'I was wrong,' Cookson said. 'You don't al look alike.'

'Oh, you've noticed that, then?' McEvoy said, smiling sarcastical y. 'And you're a teacher, are you?'

The cars were rol ing sedately away from the church. The mourners began to drift after them, putting up umbrel as as a light rain began to fal . Thorne was pleased. He was stil damp anyway from tramping about on the railway embankment and his feet were freezing, but he thought that, al things considered, it should rain at a man's funeral. There should be flurries of black umbrel as and rain hammering down on to the lid of the coffin, and a mysterious woman who nobody can identify, weeping.., and a dirty great shitload of alcohol.

Maybe he was just thinking about his own funeral...

'Come on,' Thorne said, and he and the others began to move towards where the cars were parked. It was three or four miles to the cemetery. Graveyard of course, never crematorium.

Always burial, in

case the body should ever need to be exhumed and looked at again. 'I mean what about afterwards? The actual searching. The digging: He remembered what he'd been doing that morning, thought about the dogs again. Barking, howling, pawing at the ground, sniffing out the stench of something long-dead below the Coke cans and the fag ends and the weeds.

The rain was real y starting to come down by the time they reached the cars. Thorne and McEvoy climbed into the Mondeo. He started the engine, remembered that he stil hadn't got the heater fixed, flicked on the squeaky wipers. He pul ed the car out on to the main road and

fol owed the line of bigger, blacker cars up ahead.

I got Ken Bowles kil ed.

And Thorne knew that he had- that he would always be sorry for it, that he would catch the man who had done the kil ing. He knew that standing at the graveside, he would feel his guilt, hot and heavy inside him, curling round his innards and settling down to sleep fitful y in his gut.

He also knew that as he watched the coffin going down into its grave, he would be thinking about Charlie Garner's mother Carol, in hers. About Katie Choi and Miriam Vincent in theirs.

As they lowered Ken Bowles down, he would be thinking about Karen McMahon, in a grave as yet unknown and never tended.

A grave a good deal shal ower.

He sat there shaking. Across the table from him, Caroline was crying, and in truth he wasn't far away from it himself...

She had cooked pasta. They'd been sitting and talking about their respective days, neither of which had been particularly easy, and suddenly, she'd brought up the subject of kids again.

It surfaced every few months, and for him, it was usual y just a question of making the right noises. He'd nod and smile, and point out how far she could stil go career-wise. He'd question whether now might be exactly the right time and squeeze her hand, and assure her that yes, of course he wanted children too, but that they needed to be sure. They needed to decide together...

Tonight he'd been unable to conjure up even that piss-easy piece of flannel.

His mind was racing, as it was every second of the day. There was so much to consider, so many avenues to explore. He was stil searching for the idea that would excite him, that would fire his imagination. He knew what he had to do, but he had yet to succeed in visualising it. The big idea. The concept that would replace the short-lived adventure with Palmer.

Caroline was talking about crOches and maternity leave...

It would involve creating a new scenario. A new backdrop to the act itself, which after al was the easy bit, the unsophisticated part. He had toyed with juicing up the kil ing. He'd visualised new and interesting ways of doing it, but it ended up like the script to an old Hammer movie, with Vincent Price knocking off people who'd upset him in the manner of Egyptian plagues or Shakespearean tragedies.

No, he needed to mould the context, to shape his environment in a way that would stimulate and spark, that would chal enge and charge him.

Above al , he needed to keep moving forward. Never stil and never back.

This was what should be occupying him, but there was anger in the way. He couldn't think creatively while that was clouding his thoughts, preventing any real focus.

He was furious that they were looking for Karen.

Caroline leaned across the table and took his hand. Would there be a better time than this? Their jobs were secure, there was enough money coming in. It wouldn't be plain sailing, of course not, there was bound to be a period of adjustment, but they could make it work...

He'd watched Thorne and Palmer down by the railway line. Thorne cajoling, suggesting, Palmer looking forlorn in his handcuffs. He'd watched them strol ing along the embankment like a pair of old poofs with a taste for S & M. What the fuck did Thorne think he was going to gain, even if he did find her?

Her family would help. Giving them stuff,, babysitting. They would stil be able to go out, have their own lives...

It was his past and he wouldn't have it messed with. He didn't want it altered. When, if, he wanted things discovered, he was the one who would lead them to discovery. He was the one that control ed things. It was about working together, supporting each other...

He needed to put the anger aside, in one part of his brain. Yes, that might do it. Let the other side concentrate on the future - on finding a new motor.