‘Sorry,’ he said, before he was halfway through the door. He stepped inside and watched her carrying the phone back to its cradle on top of a low pine chest. ‘Been talking to your boyfriend?’
‘No, yours,’ she said.
He was grinning as he took off his jacket. It was good to see; even if she knew, before she was close enough to smell it, that a couple of pints had helped.
TWENTY-THREE
There may have been more direct routes from Deptford back to his new place, but Marcus Brooks had fancied following the line of the river. It wouldn’t take him much more than an hour, hour and a half, and although it was cold, the sky looked clear enough. He’d walked up around the U-shape, the one off the EastEnders credits, with Docklands opposite; trying to stay as close as he could to the water, weaving his way around the dark, oily docks and wharves towards Wapping. The tower at Canary Wharf filled the sky ahead of him. The beacon on its roof was blinking away to his right, then eventually behind him as he moved on, where the river straightened at the Rotherhithe Tunnel.
He put one foot in front of the other time and again. Watching the river creep and sloosh alongside, and wanting nothing more than to drop where he was and curl up. Desperate for just a few hours’ sleep, but knowing it would be a waste of time to try.
Instead, he looked down and watched his shoes eat up the pavement. Hands in his pockets, humming any song that went with the rhythm of his footsteps. And he saw Angie’s face, and Robbie’s, as they must have been at the last minute; just before the car hit. Then he saw other faces, how they had been when they’d clapped eyes on the hammer. The plastic bag.
Tucker. Hodson. Cowans.
Their faces were as clear as anything now: frozen with their mouths open and eyes wide. But he hadn’t known all of them by sight; not at first, anyway.
Skinner, who’d called himself Jennings the last time they’d met, had been all-too familiar, of course; just older from a distance, and dead by the time Marcus had got close. Killed by somebody else before he’d had the chance.
And some of the bikers had been there at his trial; screaming and swearing at him from the balcony, until the judge had had them chucked out. They’d looked near enough the same when he’d come out of prison and tracked them down.
Ray Tucker had definitely been in court six years before, and Ricky Hodson. Although he hadn’t known their names back then. He wasn’t certain about Martin Cowans – they’d all had long hair and leathers and shit… but it didn’t matter either way. He’d been one of the gang – the leader, as far as he could work out – when Angie had been killed, and that was all that counted.
He had decided back in Long Lartin, when he and Nicklin were going over it, that everyone had to be treated the same. That they all had to share the responsibility equally. It would have been stupid to do it any other way; to say that the one who’d been driving the car had to die, or suffer before he died, while some of the others should just be crippled or whatever.
It was cleaner to blame them all.
He didn’t know this latest one from Adam, but he’d played his part, same as everyone else who’d fucked his life up. First time or second. Second wouldn’t have happened without the first, after all…
He didn’t know him, but now he’d had his first good look. Waited in the cold at the address he’d been given until he’d got back from work. He’d taken out the phone and grabbed his few seconds of video while the bloke was getting out of his car.
Done his bit for Nicklin.
He’d do his own bit tomorrow night.
It was busy coming around the big island at the end of Waterloo Bridge; cars and people. He stopped for a few seconds and watched figures moving north and south, leaning into the wind, lining up and chatting at bus stops on either side of the road, like fuck all mattered. He thought about where they might have been; knew there were cinemas and theatres under the bridge. Then he began to move his feet again; speeding up, because he couldn’t care less.
He walked around the back of Waterloo station and up past St Thomas’s Hospital. He’d spent a couple of hours in casualty there one Saturday, years back, when some idiot had nutted him outside a club. He remembered Angie having a right go when she caught up with him. Shouting at him, saying he probably asked for it. Kissing his stitches later on…
Just a few minutes away now; he’d do it in a little over an hour. Right above the river until the last possible moment, then cutting back and across four lanes of the Albert Embankment. Not running, not worrying about the lights and horns. Making the traffic slow down for him.
Imagining Angie’s face when she realised too late what was going to happen. And knowing she’d have been thinking about Robbie. That she would have done anything to save him.
Thinking about his boy; about what might have gone through Robbie’s mind at the end.
Hoping he had been in there, somewhere.
Louise had fallen asleep on the sofa, halfway through a documentary neither of them had been particularly interested in. Thorne had plugged in the headphones to Louise’s laptop and logged on; settled down to a few hands, playing as a glamorous blonde in a low-cut blouse. Fancying himself, in every sense.
An hour into it, he/she had been heads-up with PokerMom, a shifty-looking character in a cowboy hat. He had just raised sixty dollars when he saw the screen on his prepay come to life; watched the handset buzzing across the tabletop next to the computer. He had switched the phone to silent, so that any call or warning tone wouldn’t wake Louise up.
He scrolled down and looked at Brooks’ message.
Then he crept past Louise and took the phone with him into the bathroom, while, back at the virtual table, his bet was called and his kings and sixes lost out to three sevens.
were u at the flat?
It had been sent from another new number. Brooks was still using SIM cards once, then disposing of them. He could have no way of knowing that his messages were not being monitored; that Thorne was the only one seeing them and that no effort was being made to trace their source.
Thorne lowered the lid of the toilet seat. Sat down and typed into the reply screen.
Yes. Your letters are safe.
He waited. Watched as he was told that his message had been sent. And, more importantly, received.
His hands felt sticky, something between his fingers. His father’s wedding ring, which Thorne wore on his right hand, would not move smoothly when he tried to spin it. He got up and used the sink while he waited to see if Marcus Brooks had anything else to say; was drying his hands when he got his answer:
doesn’t matter
Thorne was trying to work out how to respond when another message arrived.
got another vid to send
When?
tomorrow
Thorne did not know what Brooks meant. Would he be sending the video the next day, or killing whoever was on it?
Alive or dead? Thorne waited.
tomorrow
He listened to water moving through the pipes. One of his old dressing-gowns was hanging on the back of the door, faded and pulled to pieces by the cat. He’d brought it over when Louise had treated him to a new one for his birthday. She had also taken a good deal of her stuff over to his place. His bathroom was starting to smell almost as nice as this one.
who killed skinner?
Thorne saw no reason to hesitate. Thinking it was ironic, as he typed, that he should be sharing his theory with the man everyone thought was guilty of the policeman’s murder.
Has to be the other copper.
It took a minute for Brooks to come back.
not really surprised
Who is he?
Thorne had got nothing useful from his hour and a half in the pub with Richard Rawlings. The DS had given a good performance, or at least that’s how it had seemed to Thorne. Maybe more so, thinking back…