She was starting to wonder if Harika Kemal was still there when the girl said quietly, ‘Cousin.’
‘What?’
‘We’ve got a cousin who lives in Bristol.’
He was halfway back to Kentish Town when the clock on the dashboard moved round to two o’clock; cutting through King’s Cross to escape the hell of Sunday traffic in Camden. He parked up as soon as he had the chance and made the call.
‘You must have influential friends in here,’ Nicklin said.
‘Not really. Just a lot of people who like you about as much as I do.’
‘Well, be quick, will you? I don’t want to miss the EastEnders omnibus.’
‘This won’t take long.’
Nicklin knew, of course, that it was unorthodox for inmates to receive private phone calls, even from police officers. Thorne had spent fifteen minutes earlier in the day on the phone to Long Lartin, crawling as far up the arse of the police liaison officer as he could manage. Eventually, the man had agreed to find a nice quiet office and bring the prisoner down at a prearranged time.
‘Sorry about your friend,’ Nicklin said.
Thorne had already decided not to tell Nicklin that his scheme had come to nothing; that Hendricks was alive and well. He’d find out eventually. For now, even though Brooks had agreed to leave Hendricks alone, Thorne thought it best to take no chances, to let Nicklin think he was raging and grief-stricken. Nicklin was every bit as stubborn, as persistent, as Thorne himself.
The rage was certainly genuine enough. ‘You will be,’ he said.
Thorne had been struck immediately by how different the attack on Hendricks had been from the others Brooks had perpetrated. He knew that the information had been passed on to him, and had quickly recognised the fingerprints all over it. Knowing something of Stuart Nicklin’s past, he guessed who had done the planning; imagined that Nicklin had used contacts from a previous life to find the boy who had picked up Hendricks in the club.
‘You wouldn’t be calling if you had a single piece of evidence.’ Nicklin’s tone was that of a man who felt himself to be bullet-proof whatever happened, certainly as far as the law was concerned. Two life sentences were much the same as one, after all. ‘Still, whatever you think is best. I’d quite enjoy another few weeks in court.’
‘There are better ways,’ Thorne said. ‘Cheaper ways.’ He could hear the smile.
‘Your friend will have gone out with a bang at any rate.’
‘How would you like to go out?’
‘This the “long arm of the law” routine, is it?’
‘If you like.’
‘So, what’s at the end of it, then?’ Nicklin asked. ‘An iron bar? A sharpened spoon?’
‘I warned you. When we were sitting in the Seg Unit.’
‘Careful what you say, Tom. You should know that all my phone calls are routinely monitored. This is probably being recorded.’
‘I’m getting used to it,’ Thorne said. ‘I really don’t give a fuck.’
THIRTY-ONE
It might well have been a good film; Thorne had no idea. After nearly two hours he couldn’t even have told anyone what it was about. George Clooney, some stolen money, a decent sex scene halfway through with that fit woman who used to be in CSI.
He guessed that Louise wouldn’t have been able to do much better. The pair of them sitting and thinking about other things; getting on with it, like everything was going to be fine. Trying to put the previous twenty-four hours behind them, when time together felt like something they were wading through.
‘I thought it was pretty good,’ Louise said, as they pushed through the doors on to Camden Parkway. They’d chosen an early showing. It wasn’t quite nine o’clock.
Thorne shrugged. ‘I couldn’t really follow it.’
They decided to walk back to Thorne’s place in Kentish Town. It was a cold, clear evening, and they were both bundled up in scarves and heavy coats.
As the High Street turned into Chalk Farm Road, they just avoided colliding with a group of women coming out of a restaurant. Thorne moved to step around, but one of the women reached for his arm.
‘Tom…’
Thorne stared at his ex-wife.
Jan had called when his father had died, but they hadn’t seen each other in eight or nine years. It wasn’t that she’d changed that much – less than he had, almost certainly – but that he simply hadn’t expected to see her here. It didn’t make sense.
He said her name as he reached for Louise’s hand.
‘I was just having a meal with a couple of mates,’ Jan said. She looked around to the two other women, who were walking slowly away towards Camden Tube station. She turned back, reddened as she saw Thorne staring at her belly; the bump clearly visible, even through an overcoat. ‘I was going to call you, matter of fact…’
She’d changed rather more than Thorne had first thought.
Thorne was aware that he was nodding like an idiot, so stopped and tried to smile. ‘Right. Bloody hell.’
‘Don’t know what the hell I’m doing, to be honest. My time of life.’
It took Thorne a second or two to work out how old she was. Forty. No, forty-one. He was nodding again. ‘Is it…?’
She tucked a pale pashmina into the collar of her coat. ‘Patrick’s.’ She faked a laugh, as though Thorne had been joking. ‘Of course it is.’
‘Great.’ The teacher she’d buggered off with.
‘He’s at home, getting stuck into essays.’
Thorne wondered why she’d felt the need to explain where her boyfriend was. If he was still her boyfriend; maybe she’d married him. He pictured a scrawny, ginger-ish article; pigeon-chested with curly hair and bum-fluff. Remembered him flying out of bed like a scalded cat when Thorne had caught the pair of them at it one afternoon.
For the third or fourth time, Jan’s eyes flicked across to Louise; the glance as fleeting as the smile that went with it.
‘Sorry, this is Louise,’ Thorne said. ‘Jan…’
Louise leaned in to shake hands. ‘So, when’s it due?’
‘Six weeks.’ She took a step forward. ‘Can’t bloody wait. Look at the size of me already. I’ll be waddling around right through Christmas.’
‘Better then than summer though, I suppose.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Be a nice way to start the new year,’ Louise said.
The three of them took a few steps towards the kerb as another group came out of the restaurant.
Jan turned back to Thorne. ‘So, you well?’
‘Yeah, I’m good.’
‘Still in the same place?’
‘We were just… heading back.’ Thorne looked at Louise, who nodded to confirm the simple fact.
Jan looked past them to her friends, who had now stopped a hundred yards away and were looking at something in a shop window.
‘You said you were going to call,’ Thorne said. He nodded towards Jan’s stomach. ‘Was that to tell me, you know…?’
‘Well… just to catch up, really. So, this has been good, actually.’
‘OK.’
Just as the pause was becoming horribly awkward, Louise leaned against Thorne and said, ‘I’m cold.’ She smiled at Jan. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to be standing around.’
Then it was just a few noises of goodbye, and Jan saying once again how good it had been that they’d run into each other. How weird, and what a small world it was. She kissed Thorne on the cheek, did the same to Louise and walked away to join her friends.
Thorne and Louise carried on up Chalk Farm Road and cut beneath the railway line towards Kentish Town. They walked quickly, not saying a great deal, with such conversation as there was initiated by Louise. She told Thorne that his ex-wife hadn’t looked the way she’d imagined. That Jan looked well and had seemed friendly enough. Thorne did little but grunt his agreement; tried to think of something to say about the movie.