Thorne is all but frozen to the spot, not sure how he will ever be able to move. He is rigid with fear. He is going to piss in his trousers any second. Then he sees the most terrifying thing of all.
Calvert knows that he knows.
Thorne thinks his face is frozen, expressionless. Dead. Obviously he's wrong. He can see the change in Calvert's eyes as they meet his own. Just a slight flicker. The tiniest twitch…
And the smile that is beginning to die a little. Then it's over. The grip is released and Calvert is moving away through the lobby towards the main station doors. He stops for a second and turns, and now the smile is gone completely. The sergeant is wittering at him about this party but Thorne is watching Calvert walk out of the doors. The look he sees on his face is something like fear. Or perhaps hate.
And, somewhere in the distance, a sweet, high voice is still singing about imaginary angels.
He tells nobody. Not Duffy. None of his mates or fellow officers. What's he supposed to tell them? Certainly not Jan. Her mind's on other things, anyway. They're trying for a baby.
At home with her that weekend, he knows he's distant. On Saturday afternoon as they stroll around Chapel Market she asks if there's anything wrong. He says nothing..
On Sunday night she's keen to make love, but every time he shuts his eyes he sees Francis Calvert, one arm round the neck of the young boy he's kissing deeply, pulling at him, holding the soft mouth against his own. As he groans, and comes inside his young wife, he sees Calvert's other hand, strong and callused, reaching for the eight-inch serrated knife in his pocket.
While Jan sleeps soundly next to him, he lies awake all night. By morning he's convinced himself that he's being stupid and within an hour he's sitting in his car in a small street off Kilburn High Road. Watching Francis Calvert's flat.
Monday 18 June 1985.
He just needs to look at him again, that's all. Once he watches him step out of that front door he'll see him for what he really is. A nasty piece of pond life for sure, but that's about all. A slimy little shit who's probably been done for driving without insurance, almost certainly doesn't have a TV licence and maybe slaps his wife around. Not a killer.
One more look and Thorne will know he was being stupid. He'll know that what happened in that corridor was an aberration. What Jan likes to call a mind fuck. He's here in plenty of time. People in the street haven't started leaving for work yet. Calvert's white Astra van is parked outside his flat.
For the next hour he sits and watches them leave. He watches front doors open up and down the street, spitting out men and women with bags and briefcases. They climb into cars or hop on to bikes or stride away towards buses and tubes.
Calvert's door stays resolutely shut.
Thorne sits and stares at the dirty white van. Letters on the side: E J. CALVERT\ BUTCHER.
Butcher…
Stupid! He's being so stupid. He needs to start his car and get himself to work, and have a laugh with some of the other lads and maybe help to organise this leaving party and forget he ever met Francis John Calvert, and instead he finds himself walking across the street. He finds himself knocking on a dirty green front door. He finds himself starting to sweat when he gets no answer.
In the respectfully muted euphoria of the days to come, before the astonishing truth that Calvert had been interviewed on four separate occasions emerges, before the resignations, before the national scandal.., there will be words of praise for Detective Constable Thomas Thorne. A young officer using his initiative. Doing his job. Putting any thoughts for his own safety out of his mind. Out of his mind…
It is as if he is watching himself, like a nosy bystander. He has no idea why he tries the front door. Why he leans against it. Why he runs back to his car and takes a truncheon from the boot.
Calvert's wife looks surprised to see him. Her eyes are wide as he walks into her kitchen, breath held, heart thumping. She lies on the floor, her head against the dirty white door of the cupboard underneath the sink. The bruise around her neck is beginning to turn black. She still has a wooden spoon in her hand.
She was the first to die. She had to be. The children would tell him that much.
Denise Calvert. 32. Strangled.
Thorne moves through the flat like a deep-sea diver exploring a wreck. The silence is pounding in his ears. His movements feel slow and oddly graceful, and there are ghosts in the water all around him…
He finds them in the small bedroom at the back of the flat. They are laid out next to each other on the floor, between the bunk beds and the small, single mattress. He cannot take his eyes off the six tiny white feet. Unable to fill his lungs, he drops to his knees and crawls across the floor. He takes in what he is seeing but there is a blunt refusal to process the information correctly. Grabbing at a breath he lets out a scream. He screams at the dead girls. He pleads with them. Please… you'll be late for school He is actually begging them to save him.
With that breath he smells the shampoo in their hair. He smells the freshly washed nightdresses and the urine that has soaked them. He sees the stain on the mattress on the floor where he must have taken each of them. The girls have been laid out side by side, their arms across their chest in some grotesque approximation of peacefulness. But they did not die peacefully.
Lauren Calvert. 11. Samantha Calvert. 9. Anne Marie Calvert. 5. Suffocated.
Three little girls, who screamed and fought and kicked and ran to find their mummy and then screamed even louder – their mother already dead, the only state in which she will allow this horror to be visited upon her children then the man they love and trust closed the bedroom door, and they fluttered around in a panic, like moths trapped inside a light fitting. They crashed into walls, and clutched each other and when he grabbed one and pulled her down to the mattress on the floor, they bit and scratched and cried, and went somewhere far better with their tiny fingers clawing at the flesh of those strong, callused hands.
Thorne has to believe that. He cannot accept that they smiled at their daddy as he laid the pillow across their faces.
He will not accept that.
It might be thirty minutes later when he finds Calvert. He has no idea how long he's spent in that tiny box room trying to understand. Thinking about Jan. The child they are desperate for.
He pushes open the door to the living room and his senses are immediately bludgeoned. He smells whisky, so strong he almost chokes on it, and the pungent aroma of gunpowder, which until this moment he has only ever known on a firing range.
He sees the body on the floor in front of the hearth. The brain caked to the mirror above the tiled mantelpiece. Francis John Calvert. 3 7. Suicide by gunshot.
Thorne walks across the grimy mushroom-coloured carpet like a sleepwalker. Not looking down as his foot sends an empty" whisky bottle clattering into the skirting board. Not taking his eye off Calvert. The outstretched arm is still holding the gun. The underpants are brown with congealed blood. When had this happened? Last night or first thing this morning?
The hands are unmarked by small fingers.
Thorne stands above the body, his arms hanging heavy by his sides, his breathing deep and desperate. He leans forward, knowing what's going to happen, amazed considering that he's had no breakfast. The spasm, when it comes, moves swiftly from guts to chest and then throat, and he vomits, steaming, wet and bitter, across what's left of Francis Calvert's face.
'It wasn't your fault, Tom. I know it must have been horrible, but you can't think it happened because of you.'
Thorne lay on the settee and stared at his dull magnolia ceiling. Somewhere in the distance the siren of a fire engine or an ambulance was wailing desperately.