He wanted him to fall hard.
There would be pressure, of course, from those who would want to treat his illness, to care for him. There were always those. There were always plenty for whom violent death was a hobby, or a study option or a gravy train. The lunatics who would write to him inside with requests for advice, or signed pictures, or offers of marriage. The campaigners. The writers of books – bestsellers before the bodies had started to decompose. The makers of films. The old women with pastel hair hammering on the side of the van, spitting…
And the policemen who remembered the smell of the blood.
Was that your first time?
Thorne carried the coffee into the living room, but stopped in the doorway the second he looked at Holland, who was sitting on the settee and staring at the wall opposite. It was not the faraway look of drunkenness, or tiredness, or boredom.
Thorne felt his heartbeat increase.
He hadn't asked why Holland had come here in the first place.
Holland turned to him. 'We were trying to get hold of you…'
Thorne remembered his phone, chucked into the back of his car. 'What's happened, Dave?'
Holland tried to shape an answer and now Thorne recognised the look. He'd seen it fifteen years before, in the bottom of glasses and in shop windows and in mirrors. The look of a young man who's seen far too much death. Holland spoke, his voice, his eyes, his expression dead.
'Michael and Eileen Doyle… Helen Doyle's mum and dad. The next-door neighbour noticed the smell.'
Apparently, the stroke affected only a very small part of my brain. In the brainstem.
The 'inferior pons' this particular bit's called, if you can believe that.
It's just unfortunate that it happens to be the bit that controls things. All the communications pass through it. If your brain's Paddington station, this bit's the signal box. Basically, the signals still get waved or switched on or whatever. When I want to wiggle a toe or sniff or speak, the instruction still goes out. This thing called a relay cell is supposed to make it happen: it fires the signal down the line to the next cell and then the next one. It's like a microscopic version of 'pass it on' all the way to my toe or my nose or wherever. Unfortunately, somewhere in the middle, some of the cells aren't playing the game properly and that's the end of that. In layman's terms, this is me. Bizarrely, though, as one part of my brain is fucked, it feels like other parts are compensating and changing. The bit that deals with sound. It feels like that bit's been upgraded. I can distinguish between sounds that are very similar. I can place a nurse by the squeak of her shoe and tell how far away things are. The sounds give me a picture in my head, like I'm turning into a bat.
And it's helping me to remember.
Those underwater sounds are getting clearer every day. Words are sharpening up. I can make out a lot of what we said to each other now, me and the man who put me in hospital. Fragments of a soundtrack.
A lot of it's me, of course, no real surprise there, waffling on about the party and the wedding and stuff. Christ, I sound very pissed. I can hear the champagne going down my throat and I can hear him laughing at my dismal, drunken jokes. I hear myself playing with the front-door keys. Inviting him inside to finish the drink. Slurred and stupid words. Words that are hardly worth remembering. The last words ever to come out of my mouth.
I'm still groping for the words that came out of his.
TWENTY
As Thorne drove towards the Edgware Road, he found himself fighting to stay awake. The noise of six empty beer cans, rattling around in the footwell, was helping, but it was still a struggle. It had been a long night, and a bleak one. Not even the spectacle of Holland on the phone that morning, squirming and looking pained as he tried sheepishly to explain to Sophie where he'd spent the night, had raised the spirits.
They'd talked long into the night. Holland told Thorne what had happened to Michael and Eileen Doyle. They'd done it with tablets. The police had been called to the house on Windsor Road by a neighbour. She'd presumed they'd gone away to stay with relatives after what had happened to Helen.
A PC found them in an upstairs bedroom. They were holding hands.
In spite of what Holland had already had to drink, Thorne dug out a few cans and they'd sat up talking about everything and nothing. Parents, partners, the job. As the drink met the tiredness head on, Holland had started to drift off, and Thorne began to ramble vaguely about the girls. About Christine and Susan and Madeleine. And Helen. He didn't say anything about their voices He didn't mention how strange he found it that he never heard the voice of Maggie Byrne.
Thorne wondered if Holland heard it. He never asked him.
The note lay beside him on the passenger seat, safely Wrapped up. He saw himself handing it over in exchange for a warrant. He heard himself reading Jeremy Bishop his rights. He pictured himself leading the good doctor away, down the front path, past his terracotta pots full of dead and dying flowers.
Then he arrived at work and it all fell apart.
'They couldn't get a thing. Sorry, Tom.'
Keable did look sorry. But not as sorry as Thorne. They'd been waiting for him, Keable and Tughan, to fuck him up the second he stepped out of the lift.
'A ring's a difficult enough thing to print anyway by all accounts. A small surface area. This one was just a mess Dozens of partials but nothing worth writing up. We even sent it over to the Yard. SO3 have got better equipment, but -'
'What about dead skin on the inside? Hairs from a finger?' Thorne was trying to sound reasonable. Tughan shook his head. 'The bloke I spoke to said it was a forensic nightmare. It's been up and down the country, for Christ's sake, handled by God knows how many people.'
Thorne slumped back against the lift doors and felt fury fighting a battle with tiredness for control of him.
'Did you at least check the hallmark? Check it and you'll find out that ring was made the same year Bishop got married.'
Keable nodded but Tughan was in no mood to humour Thorne. 'Listen, even if we do get something, the chain of evidence is nonexistent.'
The fury won the battle. 'And whose fault is that? This has been one huge fuck-up from start to finish. I should have had a warrant by now. I should be tearing that bastard's house apart. This case should be over by now over.'
Tughan moved back towards his desk. 'It was only ever a slim possibility, Tom. We knew that even if you didn't. What were you planning to do anyway? Slip it on to Bishop's finger like a fucking glass slipper?'
Thorne waited until Tughan's self-indulgent chuckle had finished. 'How are you planning to spend the money the newspaper paid you, Nick?'
The colour rose immediately to Tughan's hollow cheeks. Keable stared hard at him, then back to Thorne, deciding finally that accusations would be best left until another day. 'Listen, Tom,' Keable said, 'Nobody's more upset about this than me and I'm going to crack some heads, trust me.'
And now Thorne felt the tiredness come rushing at him. He could barely keep his head erect. He closed his eyes. He had no idea how long they'd been closed when Keable next spoke. 'We've got this latest note. It's a significant development.'
'Another press conference?'
'I think it would be a good idea, yes.'
Thorne called the lift back up. Raising his arm and bringing his finger to the button was a struggle. He had an idea now of the effort it took for Alison to blink. He wanted to go home. He had no intention of hanging around and answering phones. He needed to lie down and switch himself off.
One final question: 'Is Jeremy Bishop this investigation's prime suspect?'
Keable hesitated a fraction too long before replying, but Thorne didn't hear the answer anyway, thanks to the roaring in his ears.