She stopped, and they both pretended that they weren't listening to the heavy footsteps from the floor above, the door closing louder than it should have.
'Tell me about the case,' he said.
Anna nodded. 'You sure? I mean, it might only be interesting to me.'
'That's good enough,' he said. Then he leaned across the table to pour another helping of cereal into his daughter's bowl.
Andy Boyle was one of those drinkers who said less the more he had to drink. He still talked happily enough, but he tended to repeat himself, and the silences grew longer between his increasingly slurred and rambling pronouncements.
'You need to appreciate what you've got, is all I'm saying, because one minute everything in the garden's rosy, and the next you're buggered. You're bowling along, happy as Larry, you go to a doctor because you find a lump or whatever, and everything goes to hell. So, be bloody careful.'
'I will be.'
'All I'm saying…'
Thorne listened, made the appropriate noises, and glanced at his watch whenever Boyle looked away or closed his eyes for a few seconds. Finally, at around quarter-past nine, he asked where the train timetable was, and for the number of a local taxi company. Boyle directed him to a drawer in the hall table, then to a bowl in the kitchen. As Thorne squinted at the stupidly small font on the timetable, Boyle reached down to the side of his chair for another can, one of several he had brought back from his last trip to the fridge.
'You're kidding me.'
'What?'
'Do you know how long this last bloody train takes to get to London?' Thorne had looked twice, just to confirm that the 22.10 from Wakefield took nearly nine hours to reach St Pancras, with one change at Sheffield, then a four-and-a-half-hour wait for a connection at Derby.
'I know, it's ridiculous,' Boyle said.
'I could walk home in that time.'
'But have a look, mate… you can get one back at quarter to six in the morning, or even earlier if you can be arsed getting up. You'll be back at your desk by half eight. Problem solved.'
Thorne swore at the East Coast Mainline, Richard Branson and anyone else who seemed deserving of it for a minute or two. Then he picked up one of Boyle's cans and went into the hall to phone Louise.
'Sounds like he wanted you to stay the night all along,' Louise said, when Thorne had told her about the trains. 'Maybe he's going to murder you in your bed.'
'He might have even stranger plans…'
'Could have been Rohypnol in that stew.'
'How was your day?'
'Well, since you ask, it started with me stepping in cat sick and went downhill from there.'
'Oh, God.' Thorne had fed Elvis just before he'd left that morning, a good half-hour before Louise was due to get up. 'Sorry.'
'It's not your fault.'
'So, what happened at work?'
'Just dealing with this bitch of a DS who's been drafted in.' Now, the frustrations of her day were there in her voice. 'Spreading poison around, usual stuff.'
'What kind of poison?'
'It doesn't matter. Don't worry, I'll sort her out.'
Thorne grunted. He knew that she would. 'So…'
'Sounds like you've had a useful day, though.'
'I suppose so.' Thorne took another step away from the living-room door. 'Even if the last few hours have been closer to care in the community. '
'Your good deed for the year,' Louise said.
'I suppose I'll see you tomorrow night, then.'
'Actually, I was thinking I might go back to my place tomorrow. I've got a few things to do.'
'Oh, OK. I just thought it would be nice to…'
'You can come over to mine, you know.'
Suddenly the conversation felt stilted and odd; especially as they had made such simple arrangements a hundred times before.
'I'll do that, then,' Thorne said.
'Provided you make it through the night, of course…'
By the time Thorne went back into the living room, Boyle was asleep in his chair. Thorne shook him gently awake and suggested that he might want to get to bed, but Boyle insisted he was more than happy where he was. He scrabbled around blindly for the remote control and turned on the television. He opened his eyes wide and reached down towards his severely depleted lager stash.
'Right you are,' he said. 'So, where are we?'
Thorne called the taxi company and booked a cab for five-fifteen the following morning. He told the controller he knew it was stupidly early, and to make sure the car was on time. He picked up a few empties and carried them through to the kitchen, got a glass of water then said goodnight.
He could hear Andy Boyle quietly talking to himself as he walked upstairs in search of the spare bedroom.
TWENTY-TWO
Jeremy Grover lay on his bunk and listened.
There was always plenty of chat echoing around the wing in the hour after lock-down: earlier conversations continued and news shared; filthy jokes and songs bawled from behind cell doors that spread along the landing; rumours, curses and threats.
He listened out for Howard Cook's name.
A couple of the black lads had been talking about Cook while dinner was being dished up, pissing themselves in a corner and grinning happily across at the screws who were on duty. Grover heard them, caught the name and wandered across. They told him this was big news and funny as fuck. One of them said something about Cook's retirement being permanent, but a fat, ugly screw named Harris came over and broke up the conversation before Grover could find out any details.
Harris was a mate of Cook's and, from the look on the bastard's face, he had heard something, too.
Grover had gone right off his dinner, wandered back to the landing and crawled into his bunk. Happy to be on his own until lock-up and needing time to think. Hoping the flutter in his guts would settle. He had dug out the mobile from its hiding place and sent a text message to the usual number, making it clear that he needed to talk. Needed to be told.
Now the phone lay tucked inside the pillow case beneath his head; the same phone, ironically enough, that Howard Cook had given to him.
That was when Grover had found out Cook was iffy. That, when it came down to it, they were on the same team. It had come as a major surprise. If he'd been asked to guess, Grover would have marked down plenty of others, that fat sod Harris included, as a bent screw long before he would have picked out Howard Cook. He supposed it was the same as with the cons themselves. Often those who looked like full-on nutters wouldn't say boo to a goose, while the ones who sat good as gold in the library all day, would tear your head off if you took the piss out of the book they were reading.
Still, it had been a shocker definitely, finding out a jobsworth like Cook was on the take.
He remembered how it had been in that cell, the evening he'd done Monahan. Cook standing there in the doorway, clearing his throat like he was struggling to breathe and holding out his hand. 'Give it to me,' he'd said and Grover had handed over the sharpened toothbrush; wiped the blood off against his trousers first so Cook wouldn't get it on his uniform. For a second they'd just stared at each other and Grover could still remember how utterly terrified the screw had looked. His face was the colour of porridge, and at first he couldn't even get the toothbrush put away properly. Couldn't find his pocket because his hand was shaking so much.
From what Grover was hearing now, it seemed that Cook had been right to be afraid.
'The twat is dead, with tyre-tracks on his head,
Howard Coo-ook, Howard Coo-ook…'
The song rolled along the landing like a football chant. Aggression and exuberance in equal measure.
When he felt the vibration beneath his cheek, Grover started, then reached quickly to retrieve the phone. He slid off his bunk and stood flat against the wall to the side of the door.