He remembered seeing Rawlings stroll into Skinner’s house thirty-six hours before, being greeted warmly by the wife. It had crossed Thorne’s nasty, suspicious mind for a moment or two then, that it wasn’t just Millwall FC that Rawlings and his friend had in common.
‘What happened yesterday morning?’ Thorne asked. ‘After we saw you.’
‘Come again?’
‘Did you stay long?’
Rawlings took a second, then smiled sadly. ‘Paul was all over the place, in a right old fucking state. Trying to persuade Annie to take the kids and piss off to her mum’s. She started kicking up a fuss and Paul was shouting the odds, so I thought I’d best make myself scarce. I couldn’t have been there more than half an hour, forty-five minutes, after you left. He said he’d bell me later, after the game. We’d usually talk about the match on the phone if we weren’t watching it together, you know? But he never did…’
Thorne nodded. He and his father had done the same thing until the Alzheimer’s had got too bad. Before social niceties had gone out of the window, and the old man had begun to swear almost as much as Richard Rawlings. ‘So did you go?’ Thorne asked. Rawlings blinked, not understanding. ‘The game?’
Rawlings shook his head. ‘Listened to it on the radio in the end. Bleeding Doncaster equalised in the last fucking minute…’
The crowd at the front had dispersed by the time the body was brought out just before ten-thirty. The area commander and the DCIs were a picture of solemn outrage, while Nunn and his DPS cronies pulled the right faces, even if they knew rather more about Paul Skinner than most people. Rawlings stood with his head bowed and his fists clenched. A couple of the boys in Met Police baseball caps took them off as the stretcher went past.
Once the mortuary van was on its way, Thorne took his final chance to speak to Hendricks, who immediately asked if he had called Louise yet. Thorne admitted that he hadn’t, neglecting to add that it would probably be better for both of them if they didn’t talk until the following day.
‘Shouldn’t go to bed on an argument,’ Hendricks said.
‘She could always call me…’
Brigstocke came quickly down the path towards them, a look on his face when he caught Thorne’s eye that said ‘private’. Thorne passed the message on to Hendricks, who was happy enough to leave them to it. He said that he’d phone mid-morning with the PM results, try to provide the team with a more accurate time of death.
‘He was dead by full time,’ Thorne said. ‘If that’s any help.’
Brigstocke watched Hendricks move away, then stepped closer to Thorne. ‘They’ve authorised live listening.’
It wasn’t a phrase Thorne had heard often, but he knew what it meant – that it was a serious step. ‘Who’s the subject?’ Brigstocke stared at him like it was a stupid question, and Thorne realised that it was, a second after he’d asked it. ‘Me. Right?’
Since the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, intelligence gathering had changed as radically as anything else. RIPA had laid down strict guidelines about such things as unlawful interception and monitoring of transmissions, with heavy penalties for those in breach of them. Thorne knew well enough that, when it was deemed necessary – when there was ‘imminent threat to life’, for example – such things went on. But the public, and indeed the majority of police officers, remained unaware of the covert technical support unit, on call to any branch of the Met, that installed the bugs and then listened in. The unit that gathered information which was totally inadmissible as evidence but would be given to those working on the case to use as they saw fit.
A unit, like a handful of others, that existed but didn’t exist.
Thorne wasn’t a suspect, and, crucially, would be giving his consent to such ‘intrusive surveillance’. But there were others whose privacy would be compromised, whose consent would never be sought, and Brigstocke was at pains to point out that the operation would therefore remain extremely sensitive. He told Thorne that so much as mentioning it to anyone outside the senior command structure could result in a prison sentence. ‘You OK with that?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’ The thought of prison was enough to give anyone pause for thought, but Thorne was as worried about how much his life, its details, its ordinariness, would become a mundane aspect of someone else’s day at work. He winced at the idea of sweaty coppers wearing headphones, pissing themselves as Louise called him a nutter.
It was only a small step up from someone going through your rubbish.
‘What are we talking about?’ he asked.
‘Home, office and mobile phones,’ Brigstocke said. ‘You still have that pay-as-you-go?’
‘Yeah, but I’ve only just bought it, haven’t I? There’s no way Nicklin could have given Brooks that number.’
Brigstocke nodded. ‘Well, that’s good. At least you’ll have some privacy. They’ll do email as well, obviously. And intercept the post.’
‘Can’t I open my own sodding post?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Thorne’s eyes widened with sarcasm. ‘I promise I’ll pass on anything from the murderer. Anything that isn’t a final demand or a pizza menu.’
‘It doesn’t work like that, Tom.’
Thorne sighed, shook his head. ‘Whatever.’
‘We need this sorted,’ Brigstocke said. He looked towards the phalanx of police officers, and beyond, at the house of the one that was on his way to the mortuary. ‘Things have got very bloody serious now…’
Later, Thorne would reflect on the perfection of the timing, and wonder if Marcus Brooks had been watching them at that moment. Staring down from the window of a nearby house.
The tone sounded from his jacket pocket just as Brigstocke was out of earshot. He thought the message might be from Louise. When he saw that it wasn’t, saw the unidentified number appear, he scrolled down quickly; wondered whose picture he would be looking at this time.
There was no photograph. Just a simple text message: He was dead when I got there.
Brooks. Telling Thorne the same thing he’d told Sharon Lilley all those years before.
Not hoping for anything, Thorne dialled the number from which the message had come. He tensed when it rang and almost shouted out loud when the call was answered.
‘Marcus…?’
There was just the faintest breath, and the sound of distant traffic for a few seconds before the connection was broken. As Thorne thrust the phone back into his pocket, he turned to look at the house and suddenly understood something.
He was dead when I got there.
Brooks hadn’t been describing the murder for which he’d been arrested in 2000. He’d meant this one. The message was about Skinner.
Looking back later, when arrests had been made and bodies buried, and regret had been fuelled by cheap lager, Thorne would be unable to put his finger on exactly why he did what he did next.
It was nothing specific…
Stupidity, instinct, a tendency towards self-destruction… because the fuckers weren’t going to let him open his own letters. Whatever the reason, Thorne watched Nunn, Rawlings, Brigstocke and the rest moving slowly towards their cars, and he was no longer sure he could trust anyone. The copper who, together with Paul Skinner, had set up Marcus Brooks for a murder he may well have committed himself had got away with so much for so long. He was obviously very accomplished when it came to covering his tracks.
Thorne at least had to consider the possibility that the man might be closer than he realised.
There were long stares at the roadside now; nods exchanged between the ranks. There were promises made and a deal of gung-ho back-slapping. These people shared this terrible loss equally and were bound together by a determination to nail whoever had murdered one of their own. A copper’s death seemed to count for so much, relatively. Seemed, on the surface at least, to mean more than that of a biker, or those of a young mother and her child. Was the suffering of Paul Skinner’s family really any worse than that of Ray Tucker’s or Ricky Hodson’s? Or of Marcus Brooks?