The Dying Hours (3 page)

There were perhaps thirty officers gathered in the briefing room for the 10.00 p.m. parade. Conversation died down quickly as the senior officers came in and took their seats. The start of the final night shift before a four-day break, and for Thorne it could not come quickly enough.

Friday nights, though, were usually the worst of all.

The PCs were sitting on plastic chairs that had small writing tables built into them, notebooks at the ready. The sergeants sat off to one side, save for one – the briefing officer – who worked at a computer in the corner, running the PowerPoint presentation that displayed on a large screen at the far end of the room. Ken ‘Two-Cats’ Pearson; balding with bad skin, harder than he looked and so-named after an occasion a few months earlier when he’d run over a cat in a patrol car. He’d dutifully driven back to check that the animal was dead and, on finding the poor creature still breathing by the side of the road, had put it out of its misery with his truncheon. Unfortunately, the moggy Pearson had run over was already dead, this one being another cat altogether who had been innocently napping in the sunshine.

Everyone had a nickname – except Thorne, as far as he was aware – but this one had generated more mileage than most.

Pearson got the nod from Thorne to begin the briefing and, within a few seconds, images of half a dozen individuals appeared on the screen. As usual, the miaowing began the moment Pearson opened his mouth to speak.

‘Hilarious,’ he said.

‘Only time he’s ever had pussy twice in one day,’ somebody shouted.

Thorne let the laughter die down a little before raising his hand to quiet everyone.

‘Right,’ Pearson said. ‘You all done?’

The sergeant ran through details of the various individuals that patrols should be keeping a lookout for. Dates of birth and number plates were read out, along with several addresses where domestic disturbances had been recently reported or drug dealing suspected.

Some officers jotted details down while others doodled. A few just stared at the photographs.

When Pearson had finished, it was Thorne’s turn, but there was little he wanted to add. He told his team to be particularly watchful around the town centre and main shopping parade. He knew they would be extra vigilant on a Friday night anyway – when the pubs would be more crowded than usual as wage packets were pissed away – but he had been warned by his opposite number on the late shift that there was trouble brewing between a Tamil outfit operating in the area and one of the local gangs based around the Kidbourne estate. It was a boy from this same gang, the TTFN crew, who Thorne had charged with assault the previous night after getting smacked in the face.

If such a gang was plying its trade in a leafier area of the city, where the hoodies came from John Lewis and the dealers had their car stereos tuned to Radio 4, the initials might have stood for Ta-Ta For Now. In Lewisham, they stood for something different.

Tell The Filth Nothing.

‘That’s about it,’ Thorne said. ‘Hope it’s Q---- out there.’

Not
quiet
. Nobody ever said that word for fear of tempting fate. A long-held superstition that could make an officer seriously unpopular if it was flouted.

Finally, Thorne nodded towards Sergeant Christine Treasure, who called for hush before announcing the pairings for the shift and allocating the rest times. She glanced over at Thorne. ‘Fancy coming out with me in the Fanny Magnet?’ There were groans, some whistles from the other officers. There was only one remotely flashy car waiting in the courtyard: a BMW used as the Area Car for high-speed pursuit. Treasure and Thorne were likely to end up in a clapped-out Ford Focus, but such was the sergeant’s sexuality and self-confidence that she firmly believed any car she was driving to be a Fanny Magnet.

Thorne walked across to Treasure as the briefing broke up. ‘Give me half an hour, OK? I’ve got a few things to get sorted here.’

Thorne closed the door of his office and took out his mobile.

Ten thirty on a Friday night, he wasn’t too concerned that he’d be getting Phil Hendricks out of bed. All being well, his friend’s night would barely even have started. A pub or two first, then a club; somewhere to drink and dance and pull. Getting away from the dead for a few hours by celebrating life the best way he knew how. Looking for the next sexual partner, whose conquest he would memorialise with a new tattoo. Secretly hoping – Thorne knew – that each tattoo would be the last he ever needed.

There was a good deal of background noise when Hendricks answered his phone. Raised voices, a song Thorne recognised. Shouting over the racket, Hendricks told Thorne he was in the Duke of Wellington in Hackney, that he would be heading into the West End later on. ‘It’s a nice pub,’ he said, ‘but the music’s awful. Why does everyone assume all gay men like Lady sodding Gaga?’

Thorne made no comment. Musically, she was not exactly his cup of tea either, but he wouldn’t kick her out of bed for Waylon Jennings.

‘I need a favour,’ he said.

Hendricks told him to hang on while he found somewhere quieter. The music got louder for a few seconds and Thorne heard Hendricks ask someone to get him another beer. Beer to kick things off, then shots later on at Heaven or G-A-Y, and maybe one or two other substances that Thorne preferred not to know about.

‘Right,’ Hendricks said, eventually. ‘Go on…’

‘Like I said, a favour.’

‘Come on, hurry up. I’m freezing my tits off out here.’

‘PMs on an elderly couple,’ Thorne said. ‘Lewisham hospital, I’m guessing. Probably done earlier today, maybe tomorrow if things are backed up. It would be great if you could get a quick look at the reports for me, let me know the headlines.’

‘These are homicides, are they?’

‘Can you or can’t you?’

‘Not being funny, mate, but couldn’t you do this yourself?’ Hendricks asked. ‘I mean they haven’t taken your warrant card away just yet, have they?’

‘Only a matter of time,’ Thorne said. He could easily have requested a copy of the PM reports on John and Margaret Cooper, but he knew that coming from an inspector outside CID, especially the one who had already signed the deaths off as suicide, such a request might well be a… talking point. As far as Thorne was concerned, the fewer people talking about him, about this, the better. ‘Look, I’m
asking
you.’

Hendricks let out a theatrical sigh. Said, ‘Yeah, all right. I’ll see what I can do.’

Thorne gave him the names. Told him to have a good night.

‘That’s one you owe me,’ Hendricks said. ‘Another one.’

There was a knock on the door and Christine Treasure marched in without waiting to be invited. Thorne watched as she dropped into the chair opposite him, tossed her cap on the desk and began casually rummaging around for reading material. She looked up and nodded, as though giving Thorne her blessing to finish his call.

Thorne nodded back, mouthed a sarcastic ‘Thank you.’

‘Listen, thanks, mate,’ Thorne said. His voice was a little lower than it had been before the sergeant had waltzed in. ‘Give me a shout when you’ve had a chance to look through the… you know.’ He glanced up, saw that Treasure appeared to be paying no attention to what he was saying. ‘The paperwork.’

When Thorne had finished the call, he got up and walked across to the grubby mini-fridge in the corner. He pulled out a carton of milk and sniffed it, then checked the kettle for water. ‘You want one?’

Treasure shook her head. ‘You all right?’

Kettle in hand, Thorne turned and looked at her. Treasure was the ‘bolshy’ sergeant whom Helen had mentioned that morning. Thorne knew the famously filthy temper was usually only unleashed upon those who deserved it and suspected that, beneath all the bluster, she was actually rather more delicate than she wanted to let on. She disguised this ‘sensitive’ side brilliantly, with language that would make Malcolm Tucker blush, genuine enthusiasm when it came to breaking wind, and being what Hendricks would have called a ‘full-on’ lesbian; never reticent when it came to letting anyone – fellow officers included – know who she would like to sleep with and exactly what she would do with them if she had the chance. While secretly being more than a little frightened of her, Thorne liked Treasure’s attitude. At twenty-seven she was a far better copper than many he knew with nearly thirty years on the job and, despite the fact that the patrol car could get a little… rank after an hour or two, she was always his first choice when it came to pairing up.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Why?’

Treasure’s bleached-blonde hair was cut very short at the sides. She ran fingers through the longer hair on top, teased it into spikes. ‘Heard you had a run-in with a couple of suits last night.’

‘God’s sake,’ Thorne said, quietly. Woodley or one of the others mouthing off. Not that he could really blame them. He had guessed that the locker room would be full of it. He put the kettle down and switched it on. ‘Just the usual handbags.’

‘That’s what they
do
,’ Treasure said. ‘You should know that better than anybody.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Come on, you saying you were any different when you were one of them?’

‘Yeah, I was,’ Thorne said. It was the question he had been asking himself on a regular basis since his transfer. Now that the highly polished black boot was on the other foot. He tried to make his answer as convincing as possible. ‘I
was
.’

Treasure shrugged. Whether or not she believed him, it clearly didn’t matter to her either way. ‘You need to get past it though, because it’s going to happen again. It’s going to happen a lot.’

Thorne turned back to the fridge and picked up a stained teaspoon.

‘Come on though, isn’t this better?’

‘
Better
?’ Thorne spooned instant coffee into his mug. Stood over the kettle as it began to grumble.

‘Were you really any happier before?’ Treasure asked. ‘Sitting watching CCTV footage for hours on end? Talking to the wankers at mobile phone companies? I mean, that’s what most of the suits do all day, isn’t it?’ She picked up her cap, spun it round a finger. ‘We’re getting something different every ten minutes. We’re getting a bit of variety. God knows what we’ll run into tonight, could be anything, and that’s what makes it so bloody exciting. I’m actually buzzing on the way to work, d’you know that? Seriously, I can’t bloody wait. It’s like when you know you’re going to get your end away.’

Thorne poured hot water into his mug then turned around to look at her.

‘You really prefer poncing around in a suit? Doing endless paperwork and getting screwed over by the CPS?’

‘It’s not always like that,’ Thorne said.

Blinking away a gallery of killers and their victims.
 

A girl in a coma, a man running towards a bridge, a brother and sister laughing as they take something out of a bag.
 

The faces he still woke seeing sometimes
.

‘You want to swan about, being a dick like those two last night?’ It was clear from Thorne’s silence, the look on his face, that this was not something he really wanted to talk about, so Treasure shrugged and changed the subject. She pointed to her eye, then to his. Said, ‘That’s looking good.’

Thorne said, ‘Yeah, not bad,’ and touched his finger to the bruise below his eye that had swelled up and turned purple while he’d slept. An almost perfect half-moon.

‘It’s quite sexy, actually.’

‘You on the turn, Christine?’

‘You wish,’ Treasure said. She jumped up and fixed her cap on. ‘Come on. Let’s get among them, shall we?’

Thorne raised his mug. ‘Hang on—’

‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘We’ll stop off at the BP, get some decent stuff.’ The petrol station was a regular port of call on the night shift as it gave out free Wild Bean coffee to police officers. A small reduction in the profits of British Petroleum in exchange for the presence of uniformed coppers on their forecourt every half an hour or so.

‘Yeah, all right.’ Thorne put his mug down and gathered up his cap and raincoat. The radio chatter had already begun to get interesting. A group of young Tamils gathering near St Saviour’s church. ‘Promise me you’ve not been eating sprouts today.’

‘You’re perfectly safe, sir,’ Treasure said. She waited for Thorne in the doorway and, as he walked past her, she put a hand on his sleeve. ‘That suicide last night. Those two idiots playing “whose cock’s the biggest?” You really need to let it go.’

As usual, there was half an hour’s paperwork to be done at the end of the shift. Thorne had to prepare the handover sheet, and add a line or two before signing off on reports of the more serious incidents. Thankfully, there had been fewer than might have been expected. A stabbing outside a club, a late-night grocer robbed at knifepoint, a fight in the Jolly Farmers between a group of less than jolly scaffolders, several of whom had taken scaff bars into the pub with them just in case. As a result of the heavy police presence in the town centre, the Tamil and TTFN boys had restricted themselves to no more than serious eyeballing and verbal abuse. Nastier stuff was coming, but mercifully it had not taken place on Thorne’s final night shift of the rotation.

As soon as he was done, Thorne changed out of his uniform and stuffed the bits he was taking home into a plastic bag. He took his leather jacket from his locker and put it on. In the courtyard, dropping the bag into the boot of his car, he exchanged a few words with one or two of the lads as they left. They all agreed how much they were looking forward to four days off.

Thorne said his goodbyes, but he was not going home just yet.

He walked back inside, past his office and straight on until he came out by the stairwell behind the station’s front desk. He hung his ID around his neck then climbed two flights to the second floor. He skirted the CID offices, interview rooms and forensic suites, and eventually found himself standing at the entrance to the bridge.

Lewisham station, reputedly the biggest in Europe, was composed of two entirely separate four-storey blocks linked by a covered walkway, thirty feet long and walled in glass. The block in which Thorne worked housed the Borough departments: CID and Uniform, Mounted Unit, Dogs. The other building was home to some of the more specialist squads: Firearms, Serious and Organised Crime and a Murder Investigation Team (MIT) that was the largest in south-east London.

In the three months Thorne had worked as a uniformed inspector at Lewisham station, he had never crossed the bridge.

He hesitated for a second or two, then began to walk across. He kept his head down as people passed him in both directions, angry with himself for feeling jittery, as though he were back at school and creeping nervously towards the headmaster’s office. He felt a little better by the time he reached the other side. When he remembered that Treasure called it the ‘Wanker’s Walkway’.

The smell was different in this block. Or perhaps it was just the absence of those distinctive smells he had become accustomed to in recent months; in the locker room and the custody area. There was carpet rather than painted cement or peeling floor tiles and there was a good deal of polished, blond wood. There was space.

Thorne pushed at the door to the MIT major incident room, but it would not open. He stepped back and noticed the entry panel; its ten shiny, numbered buttons. He tensed and swore under his breath. There was nowhere in his own building to which he could not gain entry by swiping his ID, but it was clear that access to the hallowed territory of the Murder Investigation Team was only granted to the privileged few who knew the code.

Privileged did not always mean bright, however. Thorne pressed 1-2-3-4 and pushed again. This time he swore loudly enough to turn the heads of two women chatting further along the corridor.

He knocked on the door.

Through the small window in the door, he watched the man at the desk only a few feet away look up, stare blankly at him for a few seconds, then turn back to his computer. A woman on the phone at an adjacent desk spared him no more than a glance.

He knocked again, a good deal harder, and leaned closer to the glass to make sure that anyone who could be bothered got a good look at his expression. Finally, the man at the computer dragged his backside out of his chair. He walked across to the door as though furious at the absence of a butler to do it for him.

‘I want to speak to the DCI,’ Thorne said. He lifted up his ID, held it nice and close.

The officer studied it for a lot longer than was necessary. He said, ‘What do you want him for?’

Was there a hint of a smirk?

‘What’s your name?’ Thorne asked.

The officer told him and though Thorne had forgotten the name almost as soon as he’d heard it, he’d got all the information he needed. He knew the man’s rank. Thorne took a second, then walked slowly across until his face was no more than six inches away from the detective sergeant’s. He smiled and whispered, ‘“What do you want him for…
sir
?”’

‘Sorry?’

‘You heard,’ Thorne said. ‘Now, I couldn’t give a toss about your flashy suit, because even though I don’t wear one of those any more I’ve still got a nice white shirt with two shiny pips on the shoulder. Now, last time I checked, an inspector was still one notch above a sergeant. Don’t tell me that’s changed as well, since my day.’

‘No,’ the sergeant said, confused.

Thorne waited.

‘No, sir.’

The man was clearly not intimidated, the word spoken with as little colour as possible, imbued with the same level of respect he might have for a pimp or a paedophile. Thorne recognised the tone. It was one he’d used often enough himself; carpeted by some bumptious chief superintendent or desperate to twist the arm of an over-cautious DCI. But he was not going to accept it from a tosser like this. Not now; not simply because the tosser was the ’tec and Thorne was the one with the uniform in his locker.

The Woody
.

‘Well, I’m glad we’ve got that sorted,
Sergeant
,’ Thorne said. ‘Cleared the air a bit. Now piss off and fetch your guv’nor, there’s a good lad.’

It was not yet eight o’clock in the morning, but the place was already buzzing. Fifteen, twenty officers moving quickly between desks, conferring with colleagues or working alone at screens and on phones. Thorne watched and listened; the noises, the
focus
of it all, painfully familiar to him. He turned and studied the whiteboard that ran the length of one wall: the photographs of suspects, witnesses, victims. The all-important names and dates scribbled in felt pen: closed cases in red, open in green. Thorne had spent so many years in rooms like this, tapping into the same kind of energy, feeding off it. Standing where he was now, as it hummed and crackled around him, he was dry-mouthed suddenly and disoriented. He was slightly dizzy.

He felt like a man on the wagon, with a beer in his hand.

After a couple of minutes, a man appeared at the far end of the room and waved Thorne across. He greeted Thorne by name and introduced himself as Detective Chief Inspector Neil Hackett. Thorne followed him into a large and tidy office, took the chair that was offered and glanced out across Lewisham High Street.

The view across the DCI’s desk was not an awful lot prettier. Hackett was at least six-four, but his height was not enough to disguise the extra weight he was carrying and when he undid his jacket, the gut that spilled out threatened to burst the buttons on his expensive shirt.

‘Let me guess then, Tom.’ Hackett let out a sigh as he sat down and the chair did much the same. ‘This is in relation to your double suicide Thursday night.’

Thorne took a couple of seconds. Said, ‘Right.’ Clearly, the jungle drums were even louder, or just being beaten more furiously, than he’d suspected. He was certain now that he’d done the right thing in asking Phil Hendricks to look at the Coopers’ PM reports.

Hackett smiled, as though Thorne’s train of thought was blindingly obvious and he was paying him the courtesy of an explanation. ‘Paul Binns is a mate of mine.’

‘That’s nice for you,’ Thorne said.

‘He’s a good officer.’

‘I never said he wasn’t.’

‘Good. Besides, Paul isn’t one of mine, so no point coming crying to me with some sort of complaint.’

‘Nobody’s crying to anyone.’

‘Even better,’ Hackett said.

‘I just think that someone might want to take another look at it,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Someone like me?’

‘It can’t hurt, can it?’

Hackett sat back and reached to pat down sandy-coloured hair that was swept back from a widow’s peak. Fat-faced as he was, his head still appeared small by comparison with the rest of him. ‘I might be missing something here, but haven’t you already signed off on this?’

‘I didn’t have a lot of choice,’ Thorne said.

‘But you’re not happy.’

Thorne paused, wanting to choose his words carefully. ‘I didn’t get the impression that it was being taken seriously.’
That
I
was being taken seriously
.

‘This would be the insulin bottle without a label,’ Hackett said. ‘And the fact that the old lady took her teeth out.’

‘Sir,’ Thorne said. That, and something else. A part of the picture that did not make sense, but which stubbornly refused to dislodge itself from the silt in Thorne’s mind and bob to the surface. ‘Look, I know it sounds a bit… thin.’

‘Thin? It’s bloody anorexic.’ Hackett shook his head. ‘You do know that the old man was a retired doctor, don’t you? I mean, there’s your insulin mystery solved.’

‘No,’ Thorne said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

Hackett leaned forward. ‘Listen, if I’d been there, I would have done exactly the same as DI Binns and I wouldn’t have been nearly as reasonable about it. It’s not like we haven’t got enough genuine murders on the books right this minute.’

‘It didn’t feel right,’ Thorne said.

Hackett laughed. ‘Oh Christ, are you talking about a “hunch”?’

‘No, sir—’

‘I’ve heard all sorts about you, mate, but nobody ever said you were one of those idiots.’

‘I’m not,’ Thorne said. Simple, measured. The truth.

‘So what, then?’ Hackett had stopped laughing. His face darkened and he suddenly looked in the mood for a scrap. ‘What does “right” mean, exactly, Inspector? Right, like the shit you pulled a few months back? Right, like forcing a civilian into the middle of an armed siege?’

Thorne felt the blood move fast to his face. The case with Helen. When everything had fallen apart.

‘Oh, I know all about it,’ Hackett said. ‘I know that you messed up big time and that you cut one or two other corners that we won’t bother bringing up now, and that’s why you got bumped off the Murder Squad. It’s why you’re working downstairs on the other side of that bridge and hating every bloody minute of it.’ He leaned forward. ‘Tell me I’m wrong.’

‘I’m hating every minute of
this
,’ Thorne said.

Hackett smiled. ‘I know you’re hating it, because I know damn well that I’d hate it too. So, it strikes me you’ve only got two options.’

‘I’m guessing you’re going to tell me what they are.’

The DCI pointed a fat pink finger. ‘You’re the one taking up
my
time, remember. So, stop being a smartarse and listen. You can get out. Nice and simple… chuck it in and open a pub, get yourself a hobby, whatever. Or, you can suck it up and do your job. Your choice. If you decide to stay on, you can start by remembering that when somebody kills themselves it’s not
actually
a murder, OK? You can stop playing detective.’

Thorne stood up and said, ‘Thanks for your time.’

Walking out through the incident room, he returned the stare of the man who had opened the door, but Thorne looked away first.

He stopped halfway back across the bridge. He pressed his hands and then his head against the glass.

Two options.