‘I don’t want to mess you about.’
‘Don’t be silly, love. You know I always get too much in anyway.’
‘I can’t hear you very well, Eileen.’
‘Tom?’
‘Sorry… the signal’s terrible in here…’
‘Don’t worry, love. I’ll try you again next week-’
When Thorne put the phone away and looked up, Kitson was staring at him. She shook her head, and he couldn’t tell if she was shocked or impressed.
‘You are a frighteningly good liar,’ she said.
TWENTY-TWO
‘It’s better than digging a ditch.’
In his more lucid moments, Thorne’s father had been fond of trotting that old saw out, whenever Thorne had moaned about his particular lot being a far from happy one. There had been plenty of occasions when Thorne would have swapped places with any ditch-digger alive, but he knew what the old man had meant.
It was usually just a question of perspective.
On the Victoria Line rumbling south, Thorne had kept his head buried in the paper. He’d stared at the same page for twenty minutes, the story and the pictures becoming meaningless, and decided that he was better off than some. Even allowing for the situation he’d got himself into – ‘sticky’ or ‘career-threatening’ depending on his mood – he knew that life could be a damn sight worse.
And was for a great many people.
Russell Brigstocke, slowly collapsing beneath the weight of whatever he was keeping to himself; Harika Kemal, who was paying for giving it up; the families of Raymond Tucker, Ricky Hodson and Martin Cowans; Anne Skinner and her daughter…
And Marcus Brooks. Whether or not he spent it in a prison cell, Thorne guessed that the man responsible for most of the misery would probably suffer the most wretched Christmas of all.
It was a thin line, Thorne knew that; between counting your blessings and using the distress of others as a sticking plaster. But whichever side of the line he was on, he wasn’t alone in being altered. He knew that the things they saw and did every day affected how those he worked with behaved when they clocked off.
There were nights when Dave Holland got in and held his daughter that little bit tighter. When Phil Hendricks couldn’t get his hands clean enough. Hours when Louise had clung to Thorne, sweating and near to tears, after the only way she’d been able to get a traumatic day out of her system had been to come home and fuck his brains out. Drink, sex, jokes…
Coping mechanisms.
Thorne also knew very well that whatever you used to change the way you felt, it was only temporary. That you’d be back again the next day, moving through it and trying to keep clean; picking up dark bits on the soles of your shoes.
Digging in the shittiest ditch of all.
He stepped off the train smiling, thinking that, towards the end, his old man would not have bothered with homilies at all and would just have called him a moaning little fucker. He walked up and on to the street, checked his watch. It was a little after six-thirty, but in a city where the ‘rush hour’ was nearer three, the pavement was still thick with people hurrying to get home.
Thorne joined them.
There was someone he had to see first, just for a few minutes, but he would be keen to get back to Louise’s place as quickly as he could after that.
Part of him was hoping she’d had a traumatic day.
He’d arranged the meeting in an upmarket coffee bar behind Pimlico station. The sort of place with a loyal clientele of locals that clung on in one of the few streets in the city that didn’t have a Starbucks every twenty yards.
Thorne was a little taken aback to see Rawlings stand up when he walked in; almost as though they were on a date and he were trying to appear gentlemanly. Rawlings had an empty cup in front of him, so Thorne asked if he wanted another. Rawlings said he’d been hoping they might be going on to the pub opposite. Thorne told him he was pushed for time, and went to fetch his drink.
‘Why here?’ Rawlings asked when Thorne came back to the table.
Thorne spooned up the froth from his coffee. ‘You said anywhere that suited me.’
‘I just wondered. It’s not a problem.’
‘I’m stopping with a friend round the corner,’ Thorne said. Rawlings waited, but Thorne wasn’t about to say any more.
He was cagey enough when it came to discussing his private life with those he worked with every day. Kitson knew what was happening, more or less, and Holland, but Thorne wasn’t comfortable with the idea of too many people knowing his business. It was why he hated the thought of someone listening in on his phone conversations, whether he was talking dirty on chat lines or ordering pizza.
There were still gags and gossip, of course, however much he tried to keep a lid on it. Andy Stone had cut out a magazine article and put it on Thorne’s desk: a company that specialised in ‘unusual’ gifts and ‘once in a lifetime’ events was offering a service whereby women paid to be ‘kidnapped’. Anyone who fancied it, and was willing to cough up several hundred pounds, would be snatched from the street and bundled into a van. Their partner, who was tipped off as to their whereabouts, would then get to play the hero and rescue them. According to the company responsible, the excitement of this ‘uniquely thrilling’ scenario could reinvigorate the most mundane of love lives.
Stone had waited until he was sure Thorne had seen it. ‘Thought you might be interested. You and your missus, a bit of role-play, whatever.’
‘Why don’t you try playing the role of someone doing his job?’ Thorne had said.
He’d taken the article home that night and shown it to Louise. She hadn’t seen the funny side and was all for tracking down whoever ran the company and explaining exactly what kidnap was like. Giving them a uniquely thrilling experience of their own…
‘What’s so urgent?’ Thorne asked.
Rawlings was edgy. ‘I’ve got your mate Adrian Nunn on my fucking case.’
‘He’s not my mate.’
‘I saw you talking to him at Paul’s place, the night they found the body.’
‘I talked to a lot of people.’
‘Come on, I know he’s been cosying up to you. It’s how those fuckers work, isn’t it?’
‘Shit. I thought he really wanted to be my friend.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘What do you want?’
Rawlings waved to get a waitress’s attention, asked her for an ashtray. She told him there was no smoking and he shook his head as though the world had gone mad. ‘I want to make sure I know whose side you’re on,’ he said.
Thorne gave it a second. ‘I’m Spurs, you’re Millwall, I would have thought.’
Rawlings tensed and pointed a finger, angry at Thorne’s refusal to take him seriously. But then he softened, sat back, as though he’d realised that aggression wasn’t going to get him anywhere. ‘Come on, you know the game, same as I do. It’s us and them, always has been.’
‘It’s all about which is which though, right?’ Thorne said. ‘That’s the whole point.’
Rawlings grimaced; close enough to an acknowledgement. He looked around, glared at the waitress. ‘There’s hardly any fucker in here,’ he said. ‘Why can’t I smoke?’
‘What’s Nunn been saying?’
Rawlings pulled the face most coppers reserved for paedophiles. ‘He’s slick as fuck.’
‘Slicker.’
‘He’s giving it, “Is there anything you’d like to tell me, DS Rawlings?” Which you know as well as I do means, “We’ve got you by the knackers, so tell us what we already know and save us a lot of pissing about.”’
‘So, what do they know?’
‘Fuck all. He’s fishing. Whatever they think they’ve got is obviously not enough to do anything about, so he’s trying it on.’
‘Fine, so what’s your problem?’ Thorne asked.
‘He is. Nunn. I just want him to fuck off out of my face. I’ve got half a dozen jobs on the go, a twat of a guvnor who wants them sorted yesterday, and I’ve still got Paul’s widow calling me every half an hour in pieces. Fair enough? I really don’t need that smarmy strip of piss on top of everything else.’