‘Maybe they were being paid by another gang. Why bother paying someone to do it, when you’ve got a couple of tame coppers who can get it organised for you?’
Thorne nodded. ‘What if it was the Black Dogs they were working for?’
Holland considered it. ‘Someone in Tipper’s own gang wanted shot of him?’
‘Possibly,’ Thorne said. ‘Or these two coppers just wanted rid of him themselves. Maybe Tipper was getting greedy. Not paying them enough, threatening to expose them or whatever.’
The idea struck a chord with Holland, who turned to face Thorne. ‘The crime report said the place was completely trashed, and Brooks always said that the two coppers had told him to take “paperwork”. If they were on Tipper’s payroll, maybe there were records of bribes, or photos or something. Stuff they needed back.’ He nodded as though telling himself that he’d had worse ideas.
Thorne saw that it made good sense and said as much to Holland. He pushed the car on past Wormwood Scrubs, brooding on their left, then across the flyover at White City. He veered slightly, to avoid taking the wheels over something wet and flattened in the middle lane. A fox or a cat…
‘What if Skinner was still working for the Black Dogs?’ Holland said.
It was something Thorne had started to wonder himself. If Skinner and his partner had killed Tipper, they might have struck up a new and improved deal with his successor – Martin Cowans. If that was the case, had they known about the plan to exact a terrible revenge on Marcus Brooks? It had been hard to tell much from talking to Skinner because he’d been too busy lying about knowing Marcus Brooks at all.
All the same, Thorne had sensed when they had spoken that Skinner was scared. That Brooks’ name was one he hadn’t thought about in a long time.
When Thorne dropped Holland off, the DS mumbled something about what he’d said in the Burger King at lunchtime; about how he hadn’t meant it to sound so aggressive. Thorne mumbled something back about how it didn’t matter.
It was after three when Thorne arrived at the flat in Pimlico. Louise was dead to the world, but Thorne, despite the hour and the day he’d had, felt strangely wide awake. Louise’s laptop was sitting open on a desk in the corner of the sitting room. He toyed with logging on and playing some poker, but settled in the end for tea and some low-volume Hank Williams. He had brought a selection of CDs across a few weeks before. Williams, Cash and a couple of newer bands. Had lined them up on a separate shelf as a small, alphabetically arranged alternative to the David Gray and Diana Krall in Louise’s collection.
While Hank complained about a world he would never get out of alive, Thorne sat flicking through one of Louise’s magazines. He ran over their conversation in bed the night before. The nervous whispering. He thought about Kitson leaving the pub so that she could say goodnight to her kids, and Brigstocke trying to get three of them ready for school before work every morning, and decided that he was probably not cut out to be a father.
It had been Thorne’s mum who had done the shouting when he’d been a kid. Who’d thrown a hairbrush with painful accuracy when he’d grown too big to chase. As far as he could remember, his father had always been patient, and though he was turning into his old man in all sorts of ways he wasn’t grateful for, Thorne didn’t think he’d inherited the tolerance.
He saw young white boys with bum-fluff, in hoodies and bling, talking like rap stars and swearing at shop assistants. He saw pre-pubescent girls scowling in belly tops. He saw kids dropping litter, and barging onto buses, and talking on their phones in the cinema. And he felt like grabbing the nearest hairbrush.
Definitely not cut out for it…
When his prepay started to beep and buzz on the table, Thorne jumped up and rushed across to grab it before the noise woke Louise.
It was a text message from Marcus Brooks:
if u r awake, maybe u r as messed up as me. or maybe I’m just keeping u busy, in which case, sorry. just think about the overtime though.
Thorne clicked on REPLY. Typed in: I’m here.
Sent the message, and waited.
NINETEEN
Thorne knew that, as far as public perception went, it was all horribly simple. Certainly, for the victims of crime, and for the relatives of the dead, it was cut and dried. If police caught a killer they’d done a good job. If they didn’t, they’d fucked up. But few understood or appreciated the importance of luck.
Good and bad. Blind…
The bad luck you lived with, but the good you grabbed with both hands and tried to hold on to. It had played a major part in putting Sutcliffe away, and Shipman. And when beaming chief constables stood before the cameras and talked about a ‘job well done’, there was every chance they were inwardly thanking God, or whatever came closest, for a healthy portion of good fortune. Were praying for more of the same next time.
Following the discovery of Skinner’s body, the press office had released a story for inclusion in the late edition of Monday’s Standard. It had been deliberately low key: no mad, staring eyes or lurid ‘Cop-killer Sought’ headlines. Just a couple of columns on an inside page: a picture of Marcus Brooks; a few lines explaining that this man, whom police were looking for in connection with an ‘ongoing inquiry’, may well have changed his appearance since the photograph had been taken; the assertion, italicised, that he was considered to be dangerous and must not be approached.
The calls had trickled in over the next two days: names; sightings; at least two people claiming that they were Marcus Brooks. All reports were followed up, with particular attention paid to any sightings in the west London area, and overnight a call had come in that looked very much like a solid lead.
Something to be grabbed with both hands.
The caller worked as a night-shift security guard at the London Ark – the spectacular copper and glass office complex in the centre of Hammersmith. He’d reported that on two separate occasions, coming home from work at just before 6 a.m., he’d seen an individual who might have been the man he’d read about in the Standard article. The man had been going into a house opposite his own. They had even nodded to one another the second time their paths had crossed.
The security guard lived three streets away from one of the confirmed cell-sites.
The house he identified was divided into three flats, and while it was being watched, front and back, the landlord was traced and questioned at his home by Andy Stone and another officer. It quickly emerged that the man who may have been Marcus Brooks was the tenant of the one-bedroom flat on the top floor. He had moved into the flat two weeks before, giving the name Robert Georgiou, and had paid three months’ rent in advance, in cash. When questioned, the landlord told Stone that, yes, thinking about it, he had thought his new tenant was a little odd. ‘Quiet, you know? Intense.’ But the man had said something about being separated from his wife, so the landlord had put it down to that and left him alone.
‘We all need privacy sometimes,’ he had said to Stone.
Not to mention cash, Thorne had thought, when Stone had reported back to him.
They’d set up an observation post in a house opposite at 7 a.m., and watched the flat for four hours. An armed unit had been put on standby near by. Adjacent houses had been evacuated as quickly and discreetly as possible.
With no sign of movement, and reliable intelligence that the man had been seen entering the building just before 6 a.m., the assumption that the target was inside, and probably asleep, became official just before midday.
Brigstocke conferred with his commander, then gave the order to go in.