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.