Thorne nodded, blew on to his tea. ‘They didn’t stop in here, then?’
Kitson looked up. ‘I’m clean as a whistle, mate,’ she said.
‘Goes without saying.’
‘There was that wanker from Vice I punched in the knackers when he grabbed my arse at Andy Stone’s birthday party, but I don’t think he’ll have told anybody…’
Thorne laughed and, looking across at Kitson frowning over her keyboard, decided that she was looking pretty good. A couple of years before, her life – private and professional – had almost fallen apart after an affair with a senior officer. These days, although the Job still mattered, she seemed to care about the career much less, and to Thorne’s eye, it suited her. She’d traded in the harsh lines of the designer business suits for outfits that were a little softer. The blunt bob had become shaggy, and the face it framed belonged to someone who knew she didn’t need to try so hard.
There had never been a hint of anything between himself and Yvonne Kitson, but Thorne had guiltily entertained an impure thought or two when the occasion demanded it. He would never mention this to Louise, of course. Or to anyone else he worked with, come to that.
‘Heard you had fun with Stuart Nicklin this morning,’ Kitson said suddenly.
‘“Fun” is probably too strong a word.’
‘Did the trick, though. Things are really moving on this.’ She nodded towards his desk. ‘We’ve got the cell-site details on the second message and the PM report came in while you were away. Both in your in-tray.’
‘Oh.’ Thorne reached across for the files.
‘You don’t seem overly chuffed about it.’
‘I’m ecstatic, you know me.’ He began turning pages. ‘But I always think it’s slightly weird when a killer isn’t trying awfully hard not to get caught. You know?’
‘I wouldn’t mind a few more like that,’ Kitson said.
Thorne saw that the second call had been made via a cell-site within half a mile of the Abbey Hospital. Brooks had almost certainly sent the message as soon as he’d taken the picture; within minutes of killing Ricky Hodson. He glanced through the post-mortem report, not surprised to see that Hodson had died as a result of suffocation. They had, after all, found the murder weapon lying next to the bed, the inside of the plastic bag still slick with the victim’s hot breath and spittle. Armed as he now was with an accurate time of death, Thorne was keen to see what the pathologist’s estimate had been. He flicked forward to it and decided he would take great delight in telling Phil Hendricks he’d been half an hour out.
‘Where are we on Sedat?’
‘I’m getting pissed about, to be honest,’ Kitson said. ‘First they prioritise your case, so mine goes on the back burner. Then, as soon as this Turkish councillor or whoever he is starts moaning on the local news, they expect me to jump. I don’t know whether I’m coming or fucking going.’
‘Like a fart in a colander,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s what my old man used to say.’ Kitson chuckled. ‘It’ll sort itself out, Yvonne.’
‘We did get a call.’ She stood and moved around her desk, picking at a stray thread on the sleeve of her jacket. ‘Some woman rang the Incident Room. Went on about knowing who’d killed Deniz, like she really knew him. She got hysterical in the end and hung up. Scared or upset, I’m not sure which. Both, maybe.’
‘Genuine, you reckon?’
‘I don’t know. Yeah, I think so.’
‘Maybe she’ll call back.’
‘Maybe I’ll get bumped off it again if your bloke decides to do any more bikers in…’
Karim’s face appeared at the window in the door and Thorne waved him inside. ‘No details,’ he said. ‘Just Regulation Nines is all I know.’
‘More than one?’ Thorne said.
Karim nodded slowly.
A Regulation Nine notice was the initial paperwork issued to any officer under investigation. It outlined the details of the allegation and notified the subject that paperwork was being seized and that he or she had the right to reply. For anybody served one, a Reg Nine signalled the start of proceedings, however trivial or otherwise the complaint against them had been.
It was their first sniff of the shit they were in.
‘Who else?’ Kitson asked.
Karim looked towards Thorne. ‘Well it’s usually him, so fucked if I know…’
Thorne started slightly at the noise: his phone’s message tone sounding from inside his jacket. He reached for it, leaving Kitson and Karim to turn away and carry on their conversation.
The message display itself was blank, as usual.
He scrolled down to look at what was attached.
After a few moments, he became aware that Kitson and Karim were saying nothing. That they were watching, stock-still, as he stared at the movement on the screen. As soon as it had finished he looked up, answering their unspoken question with a small nod, before pushing himself away from the desk.
Heading out of the door…
The canteen was on the same floor, on the opposite side of the building to the offices. Thorne could smell it within thirty seconds, was bearing down on Russell Brigstocke’s table a minute later.
If Brigstocke looked less than delighted to see him, one glance at what Thorne was holding, at the expression on his face as he marched across the linoleum, changed his outlook instantly.
‘Fuck…’
Thorne dropped in next to him, slid the phone across and pressed the button. ‘This one’s alive,’ he said. ‘At least he was.’
Brigstocke watched the fifteen-second clip, barely breathing. When it was finished he said, ‘Play it again.’ And after watching a second time: ‘It’s another one we won’t need to send to Newlands Park.’
Thorne took a second. ‘I’m not with you.’
‘I know who this is,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Because I worked with him.’ One hand reached for his tea, and with the other he pushed the phone back along the table, looking suddenly pale and tired. ‘He’s a copper.’
TEN
Detective Inspector Paul Skinner stared down at the screen and chewed slowly on his top lip as he watched himself: walking along the street; stopping briefly to stare into a shop window; turning at one point and looking directly towards the camera. When the short video clip finished, frozen on a blurry shot of himself and a female passer-by, Skinner sucked his teeth and handed the phone back to Thorne.
‘Fucking weird, that is.’
Skinner, Thorne and Holland were standing in the large, dimly lit kitchen of a Victorian semi-detached house in Stoke Newington. It was a lively enough location: Clissold Park on the doorstep; a busy market on Church Street at the weekends. Once popular with dissenters and radicals, this area of north London retained a multi-ethnic, Bohemian feel, in the village at least; easygoing, peaceful. But Skinner’s house was no more than a few streets from where, in 1967, Reggie Kray had murdered Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie, skewering him repeatedly with a carving knife. And not a million miles away from where, nearly forty years later, someone had done much the same thing to Deniz Sedat.
Skinner’s wife put her head around the door; asked again if Thorne or Holland would like anything to drink. Skinner said no on their behalf and sat back down at an orangey pine table.
He pointed to Thorne’s mobile phone. ‘That was yesterday.’
‘When?’ Holland said.
‘I’d nipped out to get a sandwich, same as usual. Half twelve, quarter to one, something like that.’ He pointed again. ‘That’s a hundred yards from my nick…’
Skinner was based at Albany Street station in Camden, on a borough public protection unit. It was a nice cushy number, the sort of job that most coppers would kill to get, towards the end of their thirty years in. Checking to see that the occasional sex offender was where they should be was about as stressful as it got. Meetings and beanbag sessions, as much tea and biscuits as you could handle, and no likelihood of anything eating into your weekends. Plenty of free time to garden or golf. Or to see how much beer you could get down your neck, which seemed to be the way Paul Skinner preferred to pass his Saturday mornings.