Lifeless - 5 (44 page)

Palmer swal owed hard. He brought his left hand up to steady the gun.

'Yes, of course it was.' Cookson smiled. 'Was is right, isn't it, Martin? You've lost it already. You want to kil me, but whatever made you brave enough to actual y try has vanished, hasn't it? Run out of you like watery shit. Now you're just scared again...'

Thorne looked at McEvoy. She was getting harder to make out clearly. The clouds were lower now, and blacker. The light was dirty, diffuse. The whole scene seemed lit by a thousand dusty, forty-watt lightbulbs.

He had to make a move. 'I need to get to my officer,' he said. Palmer didn't appear to be listening. Thorne took a step forwards, and in a second the gun was level ed at him.

'No.t' Palmer shouted.

Thorne was genuinely surprised. 'What are you playing at, Martin?' Palmer said nothing. He looked lost. Lost, confused, and with a gun pointing at Thorne's bel y.

Thorne tried to keep his voice low and even. 'There are armed officers watching us right now. They're slightly better at this than you are.

Do you understand, Martin?'

Palmer nodded slowly.

Thorne knew damn wel that there was nobody watching them - not yet. If the Armed Response team had been there, then Palmer would not be standing and pointing a gun. He would almost certainly be dead by now.

'Throw the gun away and let me get across to my sergeant. Martin... ?'

A light came on to Thorne's right. His eyes fli,ked across and he saw that there were children at the windows of the gymnasium, watching.

The sleet started to get a little heavier.

'Martin?' Thorne said.

Cookson shrugged. 'It's a toughy, Mart...'

Thorne's head whipped round and he spat gobbets of spittle and hatred into Cookson's face. 'Shut your fucking stupid cunt's mouth. I wil kil you, is that clear? I'm not afraid, certainly not of you. I don't care what happens. He can shoot the pair of us, I don't give a fuck. But if I hear so much as a breath coming out of you before this is finished, a single poisonous whisper, I'l rip your face off with my bare hands. I'l take it clean off, Nicklin. I'l make you another nice, new identity...'

Cookson's face was blank. He was very stil . Thorne thought he'd shaken him, but he couldn't be sure whether the stil ness was that of the prey that seeks to protect itself, or the predator that is-conserving its energy, preparing to strike.

Palmer spoke and the thought was gone.

'I'm sorry about your officer.' His voice was lower than usual,

certainly calmer than it had been a few minutes before. 'I need to tel you something,' he said. 'I got the gun from a man in a pub. The first gun I mean.' He pointed with the gun to Cookson. 'He knows, he can tel you. It's a pub in Kilburn, I'm sure you could find it...'

Thorne stared at him. What the hel was he on about? 'We don't have to do this now, Martin...'

'I got this gun from the same man. I fol owed him from the pub. He's got a lock-up garage in Neasden, near the railway works, just across from the tube station.'

Thorne was confused, but his mind raced, made connections. Neasden, four or five stops from where they were on the tube. Fifteen minutes, no more. Palmer, easily able to get here quicker than he had. 'Martin, this isn't important...'

'Please, you have to listen. I took the gun, and there was a great deal of cash...'

Cookson snorted. 'He'l fucking kil you.'

'He's dead.' Cookson's eyes widened. Palmer's looked like they were ready to bulge out of his head as he craned his neck towards Thorne. 'He was a bad man, though, so maybe I did a good thing. I had no choice anyway.' He glanced at the gun in his hand. 'I needed.., this. I needed somewhere to stay for a while. I stayed in the garage. With the body. It was starting to real y smel in there...'

Palmer blinked slowly, his eyes closing almost, but not for quite long enough for Thorne to think about lunging...

'We can sort al this out later, Martin. There'l be loads of time. Just

get rid of the gun. You must get rid of it...'

Palmer lowered his arm.

'That's good, Martin, but you have to drop it. Let it go.'

Palmer shook his head. Thorne sensed movement away to his right, and turned his head to see the children in the gym being led away from the windows. One by one the faces disappeared.

Thorne blinked. The last face pressed up against the window, eyes wide and ful of doubt, belonged to Charlie Garner...

There was other movement, indistinct and fleeting, somewhere above and to the right of him. Final y, Thorne knew that back-up had arrived. Positions were being taken up, targets identified, sights fixed.

A momentary glance told him that Cookson had seen it too.

'I don't want you to be afraid,' Palmer said suddenly.

Thorne looked away from the rooftop. As he brought his gaze back round to Palmer, he checked out Cookson, who was standing stock stil , arms by his sides, eyes narrowed.

Palmer's expression was bizarrely earnest. 'Real y. You don't have to be afraid.'

'Guns make me afraid, Martin. Throw it away.'

'You know fear has a taste, don't you? It's actual y the taste of your adrenal gland. That's what you can taste, that's the flavour of it...'

Thorne saw Palmer's fingers moving. He watched, afraid to breathe, as the finger moved away from the trigger.

Should he move now? Go for the gun... ?

'It's a very strange taste. Like chewing on a bit of tinfoil. That suggestion of metal in your mouth. It's actual y the chemical that's in adrenaline...'

Palmer slipped his finger out of the trigger guard. Rested it against the outside. Safe.

He needed to do it now. He wasn't sure he'd seen McEvoy move for a while...

'It's cal ed adrenochrome. Did you know that?'

Thorne shook his head. He didn't know the name, but he knew the taste very wel .

As Palmer screamed and raised his arm, Thorne saw what was happening. As Palmer level ed the gun at him, Th0rne saw exactly what he was trying to do.

He saw everything, far, far too late.

The bul et from the marksman's rifle had ripped through Palmer's throat before any of them had even heard the shot.

Palmer dropped to his knees with an odd slowness, but then pitched

forward fast on to his face. Thorne thought, or perhaps imagined, that he could hear nose, cheekbones and glasses shattering as the face hit the ground.

Thorne went down quickly, put his hands on the gun that was lying a foot or so away from Palmer's corpse. He looked across towards McEvoy, hoping...

'Congratulations on being alive, Thorne.' Cookson smiled, slowly raising his hands into the air. 'Being alive's the easy bit though, isn't it?'

From somewhere behind them, a distorted voice boomed through a loudspeaker. Cookson took a step towards it, his arms high and straight. 'It's feeling alive, that's the hard part...'

In one smooth movement, Thorne stood up and whipped his arm round hard, smashing the butt of the gun across Cookson's mouth. He could feel the lips burst. He saw the teeth shatter and split the gums an instant before the hand moved to stop the gush of blood.

Thorne heard the thump of feet behind him. He turned to see officers pouring in through the gate, and Dave Hol and sprinting across the playground towards Sarah McEvoy's body.

THIRTY

The pitch was frozen. A lot of mistimed tackles, flare-ups, sil y mistakes. Al the game needed was a dubious penalty and a sending-off, and Thorne would feel that this month's subscription to Sky had been justified.

He wondered whether his dad would be watching, shouting at the screen as if he were stil on the terraces. His dad who had taken him to his first Spurs game over thirty years before, back in the days of Martin Chivers and Alan Gilzean. Thorne wondered how much longer his old man would be able to watch, able to fol ow the game.

The cal had been typical of him. He'd dealt with the situation in a predictable way.

'Remember the joke I told you about the bloke who goes to the doctors?'

Thorne laughed. There had been plenty. 'Which one?'

'The doctor says to him, "Bad news I'm afraid. You've got cancer and Alzheimer's disease..."'

Thorne felt something tighten. 'Dad...'

'So the bloke looks at the doctor...' The voice on the phone, starting

to waver a little. 'He looks at the doctor and says, "wel , at least I haven't got cancer.'"

'What are you on about, Dad?'

There was a long pause before the old man repeated the punchline, said what he'd cal ed to say.

'At least I haven't got cancer, Tom:

Then Thorne had understood what it was his father did have.

The hiss of a ring-pul brought Thorne out of it, and he turned to look at Hendricks. He was stretched out as usual, shoes off, feet up on the sofa.

'You said something interesting once,' Thorne said.

'Only once?'

'You said you thought the smel of formaldehyde put people off.

You don't reckon your feet might have anything to do with it?'

'Piss off,' Hendricks said.

Things were pretty much back to normal.

Nearly a month since Thorne had walked away from the playground at King Edward's. Watching the stretchers sliding into ambulances. The arms of teachers wrapped around crying children. The look on Dave Hol and's face...

Nearly a month since he'd walked back up that long drive, wondering idly what might have happened to his car.

How long it would take to scrub blood off asphalt...

Palmer had known exactly what he was doing, when he'd pointed that gun. Thorne should have seen it coming earlier - when Palmer had been so keen to tel him where the gun had come from. A last attempt at a good gesture, before the most desperate one of al .

Was suicide, which is what it was, the act of a coward or a brave man? Thorne thought, in the end, that Palmer had done what he did, not out of self-disgust, but simply because he knew, emotional y at least, that he would never survive prison.

The school's former Head of English, on the other hand, was made of sterner stuff. Of far stranger stuff.

Andrew Cookson would do very nicely. While the true-crime cash ins were being scribbled, he would carve out a niche for himself in Belmarsh or Broadmoor. Number one nutter in the nick. Fear was al important in prison. In a place where getting through a day unscathed was hard enough, robbers and rapists would probably scare just as easily as Martin Palmer had done.

Palmer, scared stiff al his life, whose one act of anything like bravery had gone so tragical y wrong.

The words of the speech, the platitudes that had rattled around in his head that day, were close enough to those that were needed. To those that were eventual y used.

'Al of those who worked with her, of whatever rank, wil miss her dedication and good humour . . .'

The faces of Lionel and Rebecca McEvoy had joined those of Robert and Mary Enright, Rosemary Vincent and Leslie Bowles. The flaking portraits of those that had lived to bury their children. Leslie Bowles had put it simplest, and best. It never stops. Never.

'By the way,' Hendricks said. 'If Brendan rings, I'm not here...' Thorne turned and stared at the scruffy article sprawled on the sofa, at the open and expectant face of the man who had performed the post-mortem on Sarah McEvoy.

Who afterwards had somehow managed to misplace the toxicology report.

'Oi... I'm not here. If he rings. Is that OK?'

'I see another piercing coming,' Thorne said. 'What's happened now?'

Hendricks swung his feet on to the floor and sat up. 'You remember when I thought he was freaked out by the job, yeah? Wel , it turns out he actual y quite likes it.'

'So?'

'So, now I'm the one that's a bit freaked out...'

'You're never happy.'

TheI What about you?'

Thorne stood and strol ed towards the kitchen to get a couple more beers. 'I'm fine.'

Hendricks leaned back grinning, his hands behind his head. 'Yeah, wel , so you should be. Fantastic mate like me, beer, Spurs one-nil up away from home. It doesn't get much better than this real y, does it?'

With his back to him, Hendricks had no way of knowing if Thorne was smiling as he spoke.

'Christ, I sincerely hope so...'

Dear Inspector Thorne,

I know it's tsken a while to drop you a lin there's a lot going on and that it's bee arrest.

We were very sorry to hear about Dete have been about the same age as Carol. i her family.

Charlie is real y starting to do wel now.

and is sleeping a lot better. The child psy( My wife thought you'd like to know.

The real reason I was writing, was to sap set you sent Charlie at Christmas. It was but we didn't tel him that the present ca remembers you anyway and we thought i it was from us. I'm sure you understand.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Enright

23, Dyer Close

Kings Heath

Birmingham

B14 3EX

West Midlands

28 February, 2002

.e, but I'm sure you appreciate that n quite difficult for us since the

ctive Sergeant McEvoy. She must Please pass on our condolences to

He's settled in very wel at school hologist is very pleased with him.

a belated 'thank you' for the tool thoughtful. I hope you don't mind, me from you. We're not sure if he t best, considering, to just tel him t