Excited as he was by developments, Thorne had been at something of a loss as to where he should go after talking to Rahim Jaffer, so he decided to get some lunch. To share it with someone he could at least usefully discuss things with. It would not be the first time he had eaten in a mortuary, enveloped by the sounds and smells of the dead and those who worked on them. Thorne figured there were probably fewer germs around than in the average greasy spoon.
Phil Hendricks shared the small office at Hornsey Mortuary with three other pathologists. In contrast to the state-of-the-art lab and post-mortem suite along the corridor, the room was tired and grimy. Hendricks’ desk was as cluttered as usual with olive-green arch files and folders, the only flashes of bright colour provided by the columns of curling pink Post-it notes around the computer screen and the obligatory ‘Arsenaclass="underline" Legends of the Seventies’ calendar pinned to the wall above.
This month: Liam Brady with his 1979 FA Cup Winner’s medal.
‘So the kid was gay,’ Hendricks said. ‘You’d more or less worked that out anyway and it’s still not much of a motive.’
‘No?’ Thorne held out the plastic bag containing the selection of sandwiches and snacks he’d picked up from Tesco on the way. Hendricks rummaged around, finally plumped for the ham and cheese and a bottle of apple juice. ‘That was the one I wanted,’ Thorne said.
Hendricks said, ‘Good,’ went back into the bag again and fished out a packet of crisps. ‘OK, so there’s always a few morons who enjoy taking their problems out on people with better fashion sense than them, but as a rule I don’t think gay-bashers tend to be quite so… imaginative.’
‘It’s definitely part of it though.’ Thorne took out his own sandwich, opened a bottle of water. ‘There’s sex involved somewhere.’
‘You’re obsessed, mate.’
‘ Me? ’
Hendricks had taken off his scrubs and was wearing jeans and a tight-fitting white T-shirt. Thorne took a quick inventory of the tattoos on display. There were none he could not recall seeing before, and as his friend usually celebrated each sexual conquest with a trip to the tattoo parlour, this probably meant that he wasn’t getting much action. It was always possible that there was a new tattoo somewhere Thorne couldn’t see it of course, but he doubted it. That would mean that Hendricks was getting his end away and keeping it to himself.
And he never kept it to himself.
‘You thought about blackmail?’ Hendricks asked.
‘All the time,’ Thorne said. ‘Give me a thousand pounds or I’ll go on Facebook and tell all your friends you’re shit in bed.’
Hendricks flashed a sarcastic grin, teeth full of ham and cheese.
‘Yeah, I’ve thought about it,’ Thorne said.
‘He sleeps with someone who’d rather it’s kept quiet, tries to squeeze them for money.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You might want to look at the Muslim angle again.’
‘Why?’
‘They hate poofs even more than people who kill themselves.’ Hendricks took another bite of his sandwich. ‘“When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes.” Muhammad said that, apparently.’ He chewed for a few seconds. ‘I’m clearly not sleeping with the right men.’
They said nothing for a minute or two. Sat and ate and listened to the noises of the mortuary. The distant clanging of freezer cabinets and the squeak of trolley wheels in the corridor outside.
‘This Rahim kid knows more than he’s telling me,’ Thorne said.
‘Sounds like you put the wind up him.’
‘I hope so.’ Thorne aimed his empty water bottle at the metal bin in the corner and missed. ‘I haven’t got time to do things any other way.’
‘How’s that copper in the newsagent’s doing?’
‘Pretty well, I think,’ Thorne said. ‘She’s tougher than they think she is.’ He gathered the plastic packaging and empty crisp packets and shoved them into the plastic bag. ‘It’s that poor sod who works in a bank I feel sorry for. God knows how he’s holding up.’
Thorne walked over and dropped the plastic bag into the bin. When he turned round, Hendricks was looking at him.
‘You spoken to Louise lately?’
Thorne shook his head. ‘You?’
He was not surprised when Hendricks nodded. He and Louise had grown extremely close in the two years she and Thorne were together and theirs was a relationship of gossip, whispers and in-jokes that had often made Thorne stupidly jealous. Had made him feel excluded. There were times when Thorne had resented his best friend coming between himself and Louise, and others, somewhat less comfortable to think about now, when he had felt as though Louise were the one doing the muscling in.
‘How’s she doing?’
‘She’s doing OK,’ Hendricks said. ‘I mean it’s not like you’re any great loss, is it?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘You should call her.’
‘Yeah, well she did accidentally manage to hang on to several of my Emmylou Harris albums.’
‘Seriously,’ Hendricks said.
Thorne nodded and lifted his leather jacket from the back of the chair. ‘Listen, about this drugs thing.’
‘I knew it,’ Hendricks said, mock-offended. ‘There was I thinking you’d just dropped in to have lunch.’
‘A working lunch,’ Thorne said.
‘I told you, I’d get on it.’
‘When, Phil?’
‘Look, I just need to find a few hours to get my nose into a couple of books,’ Hendricks said. He nodded towards the computer keyboard. ‘Spend some time on the internet.’
‘Soon as you can, eh?’
Hendricks pointed to the door, the post-mortem suite beyond. ‘Sorry, mate, I’ve been a bit bloody busy. RTA on the Seven Sisters Road yesterday. Multiple fatalities.’
‘They’re not going anywhere,’ Thorne said.
While Kitson brought him up to speed with the day’s developments, Russell Brigstocke – ever the keen amateur magician – sat with a deck of cards, practising fancy cuts and shuffles. He listened intently while Kitson talked him through the interview with Peter Allen, the movement of the cards between his fingers helping him to relax and calm down after the call he had received ten minutes earlier from Martin Dawes’ commanding officer.
‘I just thought we should “touch base” on this Amin Akhtar thing,’ the man had said. That one phrase alone had been enough to tell Brigstocke the kind of pompous tosser he was dealing with. ‘From the sound of it, your DI is doing his level best to discredit the original inquiry, which I think is a real shame. It’s not going to make him very popular and if he’s not careful it’s going to make my team look rather silly.’
‘I think you’ve already made a decent job of that yourselves.’
Now, Brigstocke’s opposite number knew what kind of man he was dealing with. ‘Let’s not make this about scoring points,’ he said.
‘Sorry, I must have got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘I’m thinking about the Murder Command London-wide. The Met in general, if it comes to that. Nobody’s going to come out of this well, certainly not once the media get hold of it.’
‘Oh, I think you might come out of it a bit worse than anybody else,’ Brigstocke said. ‘From the sound of it, your DI should start thinking about traffic duty.’
‘That’s not exactly helpful.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be.’
‘Look, if you’re not willing to listen, I’m perfectly happy to go over your head.’
‘Fill your boots,’ Brigstocke said. ‘In the meantime I’ll pass your concerns on to DI Thorne, but I think he’s got one or two more important things to worry about at the moment.’
‘OK, well I was hoping you might be reasonable, but-’
‘Really? I thought you were just touching base?’
‘I can see where this bolshy DI of yours gets his attitude from.’
‘Come back and talk to me when you’re a superintendent,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Actually, I’ll still tell you to piss off!’
Kitson had laughed when Brigstocke told her about the call. Said, ‘Tom would be very proud.’