He was driving much too fast along the Marylebone Road. The exertion of steering, of concentrating, was leaving him wringing with sweat, which dripped from him as he leaned forward, crippled with exhaustion. It took every last ounce of energy he had to tap out a rhythm on the wheel, as the music exploded from the speakers.
He turned up the volume as high as it would go. He winced. The cheap speakers distorted the sound, turning the treble into shattering glass and the bass into a collision. The music, if it could still be called that, was shaking the car apart, but he would have made it even louder if he could. He wanted to be bludgeoned by the noise. He wanted to be hypnotised.
He wanted to be anaesthetised…
He swerved into the inside lane, reached for his phone and pulled up just past Madame Tussaud's.
He flicked on the hazards turned down the music and hit the speed dial.
A long queue of tourists was standing in the rain, waiting to get in and gawp at the waxy doppelgangers of pop stars, politicians and sportsmen. And,. of course, mass murderers: the Chamber of Horrors was always the most popular attraction.
Anywhere.
The violent death gravy train…
She picked up.
'It's me… I'm sorry about yesterday.'
'OK…' Sounding unsure, hedging her bets.
'Look, Anne, everything's changed, fucked up to be honest, and I just wanted to tell you…' Your ex boyfriend's off the hook. '… the evidence I thought I had hasn't.., materialised, so just ignore what I said, all right?'
'What about Jeremy?'
'Can I see you later?'
'Is he still a suspect?'
This time it was Thorne's turn to hesitate too long before replying.
'Can you come over later?'
'Listen, Tom, I won't say I'm not pleased because I am. I'm sorry about yesterday too, though…'
In the background Thorne could hear a doctor being paged. He waited until it had finished. 'Anne…'
'I'll be over about five-ish. I'm on call tonight so I'll sneak away from here early. All right?'
It was very all right.
He'd legislated for some ineptitude. There had been a little give built into his thinking. But this was way beyond anything he'd imagined.
Fucking morons. Stupid fucking idiots.
It was stupid to expect any kind of equilibrium, he knew that, but this kind of unpredictability was so fucking annoying. He'd started to feel the depression take hold again the second he'd put the phone down, wrapping itself around him, like a dark, itchy blanket. Making him scratch. Making him smell.
He walked up and down in straight lines. Up one board and down the other. Moving slowly across the room in vertical lines. Up one, his bare feet cool against the bleached floorboards. Down the other, his toes caressing each knot and whorl of the beautifully smooth wood. Up and down, his fingers stroking the straight, puckered lines that ran across his stomach.
Up and down, his breathing slowing, the white walls soothing…
He could roll with the punches. He was adaptable, wasn't he? Champagne or IV. His place or theirs,. Hen nights or night buses. Whatever was necessary. This would not be the perfect way to end it but it would certainly do the trick. His plan, of course, the magic-island scenario, the beautiful by-product of his medical work, had involved a little suffering spread out over a very long time. A lot of suffering, quickly, might prove just as enjoyable. He picked up the phone to call her back. She'd be happy he'd called. She'd be thrilled with the invitation. Excited at the hint of what the evening might hold in store. Not as excited as he was, obviously, but then he knew just how good it was really going to be.
Time to get proactive.
Time to find a different way of hurting.
Anne managed to get away from Queen Square even earlier than she'd thought, but by the time she got to the flat, around four, Thorne had already spent the best part of six hours bouncing off the walls.
He'd tried going to bed but it was pointless. Every muscle screamed out for sleep but his brain wasn't listening. There was a force in him that was now directionless, an energy desperately seeking an outlet. Though his body felt as weary as it had ever felt, his mind was racing. It roared and rumbled and skidded and slipped from its track, then spun around and roared away again. He could confront Bishop with the ring.
Tell him that they'd found incriminating evidence. Plant the fucking evidence…
He could beat a confession out of him. Christ, it would be good to feel the bones in that face shatter beneath his pounding fists and not stop hitting until Bishop hovered somewhere between life and death and felt what it was like to be Alison Willetts…
' Whatever it takes, Tommy.'
'Helen, I'm so sorry about…'
'It's all right, Tommy. Just get him. You can still get him, can't you?'
Part of him imagined that Anne would come and kiss it all away, fuck it all away, and he would go to sleep and wake up cleansed.
And that was almost how it happened.
She bounded into his living room like a teenager, and the first smile of his day made his face ache. She told him to lie down and went to make them both tea. He'd told her once that he didn't want a mother. Right now he wasn't arguing.
She brought the drinks through to the living room. 'You sounded a bit manic when you called.'
He grunted. When she pulled away the cushion he was holding across his face, she was relieved to see that he was grinning.
'How do you feel?'
'Like I've taken uppers and downers, hundreds of them.'
She handed him his tea. 'Have you ever?'
Thorne shook his head. 'Booze and fags. Honest working-class drugs.'
'The most dangerous of them all.'
He sipped his tea, staring at the ceiling. 'What I need, I reckon, is about six weeks in one of those nice, cosy rooms you've got on ITU. Just drug me up and lay on some nice, sexy doctor to minister to my needs. Is the room next to Alison available? Do they have Sky? I'll pay, obviously…'
Anne laughed and lowered herself into the armchair.
'I'll let you know when we've got one free.'
'How is she? I didn't know she was back on the ventilator.'
Anne looked at him questioningly. 'I went in to see her the other day. You were in a meeting, I think.'
'I know. She seemed a little distracted afterwards…'
He ignored the implied question. 'Is she any better?'
Anne shook her head, and for the first time felt tired herself. 'She's always going to be prone to infections of this sort. Two steps forward…'
A dance with which Thorne was all too familiar. Anne raised an eyebrow. 'What did you say to Alison?'
Remembering the last time. The photograph he'd kept hidden.
Thorne laughed. A splutter of self-disgust. 'I went to let her know I was about to arrest Jeremy Bishop.'
The small-talk had lasted about as long as the tea. The silence that fell between them was in danger of becoming terminal when Anne spoke quietly, not looking at him: 'Why did you think it was him, Tom?'
Did? Past tense. Not for Thorne.
'It started with the drugs theft obviously. Then the connection to Alison and lack of an alibi for the other killings. The physical description, and the car…' He sighed heavily, pushing finger and thumb hard into his eyes and rubbing. 'It's all academic. I've got no evidence and no warrant to go and get any.'
'What did you think you'd find?'
'Typewriter maybe. The drugs probably. Unless he kept them at the hospital, which…'
Anne was suddenly on her feet, pacing around the room. 'You keep going on about these drugs but it just doesn't make any sense. Why the hell would he need to steal drugs in those quantities, Tom? Jeremy works with this stuff every day of his life. If he'd wanted to, he could have taken as much as he liked without anyone ever getting suspicious. He could pocket an ampoule, even a couple, every day for six months and nobody would ever notice. So why draw attention to himself by stealing a huge quantity all in one go? It's only when drugs go missing in those amounts that it's even registered. Jeremy would not have needed to do that, Tom.'