Thorne considered, for a second or two, the uncomplicated life of the wooden top. Domestics. D and D. Traffic. He wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy.
'None of the things that you and your father are accusing me of is against the law, James.'
'Don't hide behind the law, that's pathetic. Especially when you've got no respect for it.'
'I respect the important bits of it.'
'You're not a copper, Thorne, you're a stalker.'
Thorne took a napkin and slowly wiped the sugar from around his mouth. 'I'm just doing my job, James.'
Bishop was agitated. Had been since he'd walked in. Chewing his nails one second, drumming his fingers on the table the next. One part of his body always moving or twitching. Feet kicking, arms stretching. He was jittery. Thorne wondered if he had a drug problem. He didn't find it hard to believe. If he did it was almost certainly funded by his father. Maybe the doctor prescribed something…
Another very good reason for wanting to protect him.
'Your sister thinks that you only pretend to be close to your father so that you can keep sponging off him.'
'She's a silly cunt.' Spitting the words out. Thorne was shocked, but did his best not to show it.
'You do fairly well out of him, though?'
'Look, he gave me a car and he helped with the deposit on my flat, all right?' Thorne shrugged. 'This is nothing to do with money. He's upset and that makes me upset, it's as simple as that. He's my father.'
'So he's not capable of… wickedness?' Thorne had no idea why he'd used that particular word. While he was wondering where it had come from, James Bishop was staring at him as if he'd just dropped down to earth from another planet.
'He's my father.
'So you protect him at all costs?'
'Against the likes of you, yeah.., using the law to act out a vendetta because he happens to have treated some woman who got attacked by the man you're after and because you're shagging somebody he once had a thing with. I'll protect him against that.'
'It's my job to get at the truth, and if that upsets people sometimes, then that's tough.'
Bishop scoffed. 'Christ, you really think you're a hard man, don't you? Part misunderstood copper and part vigilante. I'd call you a dinosaur but they had bigger brains…' He stood up and turned to go.
Thorne stopped him. 'So what sort of copper would you be, James? What do you think it should be about?'
Bishop turned and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket. He sniffed, pursing lips that were the same as his father's. Thorne could see the small boy hiding just beneath the arrogant posturing. 'What about justice?'
Bishop sneered. 'I had the stupid idea that was fairly fucking important.'
Thorne pictured a young girl, in a bed with a pale pink quilt, trapped inside a body growing frail and flabby from lack of use. He pictured a face, the features partly shadowed, staring down at him from the second floor of a large house. Now he stared back, hard, at those same perfect features, set in the younger face of the man to whom they'd been passed on. 'Oh, it is, James. Very important…'
Thorne followed him to the door. 'Can I drop you anywhere?'
Bishop shook his head and stared out of the doorway at the huge stream of people still flowing round Piccadilly Circus in the early hours of a cold October morning. Without a word he stepped into it, and was immediately gone.
Thorne stood for a few seconds, watching the red Puffa jacket disappearing into the distance, before turning and heading in the opposite direction to pick up his car. Thorne stopped when he saw the shape in the doorway. He froze when it began to move.
He breathed out, relieved, when the shape revealed itself to be the somewhat wobbly figure of Dave Holland. Thorne's first thought was that he'd been hurt. 'Jesus, Dave…' He moved quickly, reaching to gather up the DC by the arms, and then he smelt the booze.
Holland stood up. Not paralytic, but well on the way.
'Sir… been sitting waiting for you. You've been ages…'
Thorne had given up the whisky a long time ago, at the same time as the fags, but it was still a smell he'd recognise anywhere. Instinctively he reeled from it, just needing a second or two. It was a smell that could overpower him. Pungent and pathetic. The smell of need. The smell of misery. The smell of alone.
Francis John Calvert. Whisky, piss and gunpowder. And freshly washed nightdresses.
The smell of death in a council flat on a Monday morning. Holland stood, leaning against the wall, breathing too loudly. Thorne reached into the pocket of his leather jacket for his keys. 'Come on, Dave, let's get inside and I'll make some coffee. How did you get here anyway?'
'Taxi. Left the car…'
There was really no point in asking where Holland had left his car. They could sort it out later. The key turned in the lock. Thorne nudged open the front door with his foot, instinctively turning the bunch of keys in his hand, feeling for the second key that would open the door to his flat. There was a white envelope lying on the doormat in the communal hallway.
Thorne looked at it and thought: There's another note from the killer.
Not 'What's that?' or 'That's odd' or even 'I wonder if…?'. He knew what it was immediately and said as much. Holland sobered up straight away.
Thorne knew that neither the envelope nor the note inside it would trouble a forensic scientist greatly. They would be clean – not a print, not a fibre, not a stray hair. But he still took the necessary precautions. Holland held down the envelope with fingers wrapped in kitchen towel while Thorne used two knives to improvise as tongs and remove the piece of paper.
The envelope had not been sealed. Thorne would probably have steamed it open anyway, but the killer had left nothing to chance. He'd wanted his note read straight away. By Thorne.
He used the knives to flatten the paper out. The note was neatly typed like the others. Thorne knew it was only a matter of time before the typewriter it had been written on was being wrapped up, labeled and loaded into the back of a Forensic Science Services van.
This would be Jeremy Bishop's last note.
TOM, I HAD CONSIDERED SOMETHING DIFFERENT, AN EMAIL PERHAPS, BUT I'M GUESSING THAT YOU'RE SOMETHING OF A LUDDITE AS FAR AS ALL THAT'S CONCERNED. SO, INK AND PARCHMENT IT IS. CONGRATULATIONS ON THE TV PERFORMANCE BY THE WAY, VERY INTENSE. DID YOU MEAN WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT IT ALL BEING OVER SOON, OR WAS THAT JUST HOT AIR FOR THE CAMERAS? THERE'S NOTHING LIKE CONFIDENCE, IS THERE? OR ARE YOU JUST TRYING TO MAKE ME JITTERY IN THE HOPE THAT I'LL MAKE A MISTAKE ONE QUESTION…WHAT I WAS WONDERING IS, WHAT WAS IT LIKE FINDING HER? BEING THE FIRST ONE THERE? WAS THAT YOUR FIRST TIME, TOM. YOU GET USED TO BLOOD, DON'T YOU? ANYWAY, IF YOU'RE RIGHT, I SUPPOSE I'LL SEE YOU VERY SOON. REGARDS…
Holland slumped on to the settee. Thorne read the note a second time. And a third. The arrogance was breathtaking.
There seemed no great point to it. There was no revelation or announcement. It was all on display.
He went into the kitchen, flicked on the kettle and swilled out a couple of coffee-cups. Why did Bishop feel the need to do this? Why was he baiting him about Maggie Byrne, when Thorne had so clearly risen to the bait a long time ago?
He spooned in the instant coffee.
There was something skewed about the tone of the note that Thorne couldn't put his finger on. Something almost forced. Maybe the killer was starting to lose the control he had over everything. Maybe his latest failure had tipped him over the edge. Or maybe he was starting to work towards the insanity plea he would obviously try to cop when the time came.
And the time was most certainly coming.
He stirred the drinks. There was nothing artificial about the madness. Nobody sane could do as this man had done, but still Thorne would fight tooth and nail to prevent it cushioning his fall.