By teatime, the initial interviews had been completed. Heads were starting to hang. Though there were still a few things to check out, it was pretty clear, to Thorne at least, that Gribbin had got nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Douglas Remfry.
The phone rang just before eleven. The voice could have belonged to only one person.
'I think you might have had a bit of luck, Mr. Thorne.'
'I'm listening, Kodak.'
'Well, don't get too excited, because whatever happens we've got to wait a few days, but… it looks good. Remember me joking about doing your job for you?'
Thorne listened. It did sound very promising, but after the fiasco with Gribbin he found it difficult to get excited. It was hard to see any thing as more than just another straw to be clutched at. He went into the bedroom and lay down.
It was starting to get cooler.
Beneath him, the bracken felt sodden, and above, the sky was darkening.
3 AUGUST, 1976
'You smell. You smell like death. You fucking stink.. Her eyes showed nothing. Not hurt at the accusation, not denial, not pain at the weight of him pressed down on to her arms, his face inches from her own.
He pushed himself off her, moved down to the end of the bed to where the tray had been left untouched.
'I'm fucking sick of this.' he said. 'You want to starve yourself that's up to you, but don't make me cook the shit for you, all right?'
She raised herself up on the pillow, stared past him.
'What?' he said, shouted. 'What?"
He looked at her for a minute or more. Her face was, as always, blank enough for him to imagine it changing, to create the expression that he knew should be there as large as life. To picture the eyes dropping, the tightness around the lips, and the clenching of the jaw. To see Shane.
He grabbed the plate and hurled it against the wall above her head. She didn't flinch. She didn't blink.
He stopped in the doorway, turned and stared at her. Her eyes flat as glass. Beans running down the wall behind her.
'In court they tried to make out that if you had been raped it was like you were asking for it anyway. The dress, other things. They just meant the way you behaved, like you were flirting, coming on to him. They didn't know the half of it, did they? You did ask for it. I know what you did. You literally asked him for it. Took him, dragged him into that fucking stockroom and asked him. Told him what you wanted…'
As he closed the bedroom door behind him, he could hear her saying the word over and over again.
'If…if..if..'
She could not hear herself saying it. The sound of the screaming inside her head was all she'd been able to hear for a while.
EIGHT
Thorne turned right off the Charing Cross Road. Eleven o'clock in the morning or thereabouts and baking hot. He took off his jacket, threw it across his arm as he began walking up Old Compton Street. Soho was a difficult area to categorise at the best of times, which had probably been its trouble down the years. Was it bohemian or squalid? Characterful or seedy? Thorne knew that today it was all these things and probably the better for it, but it had been a struggle. Four decades on and the villains that had run Soho in the fifties and sixties had become trendy. Thanks to the new wave of British gangster films, Billy Hill, Jack Spot and their boys, with their sharp suits and slicked-back hair, were now officially iconic. For all their newfound sexiness, it was these men and those who followed in the seventies who had driven the resident population of the area away, who had silenced the noisy heart of it.
It was thanks mainly to the gay population that Soho's heart had begun to beat again. Now it was one of the few areas in the centre of the city with a real sense of community; a sense that the horrific bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub a few years earlier had only strengthened. Though Thorne had not felt totally comfortable on the few occasions Phil Hendricks had brought him down here drinking, he couldn't deny that there was a good atmosphere to the place. Thorne walked past Greek Street, Frith Street. The Prince Edward Theatre and the awning of Ronnie Scott's off to his right. Young men sat outside cafes, enjoying the hot weather, the chance to show off well-developed bodies. Soho was still a great place to eat and drink, but for every Bar Italia there was a Starbucks or a Costa Coffee; for every family-run deli, two branches of Pret A Manger… Thorne suddenly felt hungry and realised that he had a problem. He knew that he didn't have time to grab an early lunch, but he also knew that if he ate any later he would run the risk of spoiling dinner, and he was really looking forward to that…
'Well, we might as well,' Eve had said when he'd called. 'We've already had breakfast and lunch…'
On the corner of Dean Street was a shop selling fetish wear. Thorne stopped and looked at the garish window display. A dummy was clad in rubber. A spiked dog-collar around the neck and a gas mask obscuring the face. He thought about the photographs of Jane Foley; the reason he was here.
He looked at his watch. He was going to be late…
'Did you really look at this photo?' Bethell had asked on the phone.
'What?'
Bethell sounded cocky, pleased with himself 'Study it, you know…'
Thorne was not in the best of humours. 'I'm tired and I've had a shit day, so get on with it, will you…?'
'I mean really look at it, Mr. Thorne. In one of your labs or whatever.
Get it on to some state-of-the-art magnifying equipment, break it down into pixels…'
'This is the Met, Kodak. I haven't even got a fan in my fucking office…'
'I've got some good gear indoors. I use it for airbrushing, you know?
Stuck it on there and bingo!
'What…?"
'The picture's shot against a plain white backdrop, all right? Sheet on a roller, usual kind of thing. Now, there's a small mark bottom right-hand corner, looks like a smudge, remember?'
'No, I don't…'
Thorne turned right, then immediately left into Brewer Street. This, more than anywhere in Soho, was where you could see the sleazy and the sophisticated cheek by jowl. The peep show next door to the sushi bar. A place that offered shiatsu massage opposite premises delivering an altogether more intimate type of service.
A bored blonde in a cubicle beckoned him, inviting him into a show that promised a 'live double act'. Thorne wondered if there were any shows that offered dead ones.
'Come on in, love,' the woman said. Thorne smiled and shook his head. She looked like she didn't give a toss. Of course, the sex industry had always been just that, had always been about the money, but Thorne had known hookers who did a better job of disguising it. He'd only ever read about his favourite hooker of all time, but he would have liked to have met her. A legendary whore called Miss Corbett wh0'd worked these streets in the eighteenth century, and had surcharged her gentlemen an extra guinea for every inch that their 'maypole' fell below the nine inches she deemed satisfactory.
Two hundred and fifty years on and now it was the drugs squad, not vice, who worked these streets every night. The sniffer dogs did what they'd been trained to do but Thorne thought it was pretty much a waste of time and effort. A lot of hard work and resources to nail the odd casual user, the occasional tin-pot dealer if they had a bit of luck…
'You know you're always saying how you need a bit of luck sometimes?'