He had not told them that he was too afraid to fail.
He might not have dreaded their disappointment quite as much had he been telling them he was away to join the army. His father’s older brother had been a soldier, he seemed to remember, or in the air force maybe. Yes, that would definitely have gone down better. There would have been tears from his mother almost certainly, but perhaps a grudging wink from the old man later on.
Or would it have been the other way round?
The police, though?
There was no Dixon of Dock Green dignity about the job back then, as there might have been in the fifties or sixties. None of the Sweeney swagger. Thorne chose to join up just as the chickens started coming home to roost. Too many coppers on the take and rape victims treated like sluts.
Not a good time for that particular career move.
Thorne had stuck to his guns though, safe in the knowledge there was nothing they could do to stop him. He’d shouted back, his eighteen-year-old sulking skills more than a match for theirs, and bitten back the terror that first night as a cadet. Lying awake in the jockstrap-stinking dormitories that by some bizarre quirk of fate now housed his own office.
He had never really talked to them about the job either, had taken good care to avoid it. The gossip and the funny stuff, but nothing that had actually mattered.
Not Calvert.
Three dead girls, smothered in their beds by their own father. Matching ivory nightdresses splayed like angels’ wings and six tiny white feet.
Was that really the reason he and Jan had never had kids? Why he had felt so ambivalent about having a child with Louise? Some counsellor or other had said as much a few years before and Thorne had told her where to stick her Christmas-cracker theories. He had not quite been able to forget that knowing smile though, just before she’d looked back down at her notes.
His notes.
He was vaguely aware of footsteps approaching behind him. Heels…
Jan had a kid with somebody else now and Louise would probably end up doing the same, as soon as she found someone a little quicker than Thorne had been to admit he quite fancied the idea.
Lives moved on.
‘Tom… ’
Thorne turned, just as Sue Pascoe arrived with two cups of coffee. He could smell the cigarettes as he leaned forward and gratefully took the plastic cup she was proffering.
‘I need to wake up,’ he said.
They sat and drank their coffees in silence for a minute, then turned at the sound of Chivers’ voice from the other end of the hall. He was talking to a pair of uniformed officers. There was laughter, some back-slapping.
‘He wants the same thing as we do, you know,’ Thorne said.
Pascoe looked at him. ‘Let’s hope so.’
‘Just a different way of going about things.’
She blew on her coffee, her eyes still on Chivers.
‘I’m sure he’s good at what he does.’
‘He is,’ she said. ‘I asked around.’
‘There you go then.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re good at what you do, too.’
‘Did you ask around?’
‘I didn’t have to.’
Thorne nodded, tried not to smile too much.
‘But you still fuck up,’ she said, looking at him.
‘Sorry?’
‘Same as everyone else does. Right?’
Calvert had been the big one, no question. There’s always one that shapes you, that’s what his boss had said at the time. You don’t get a lot of say in the matter. Lucky or unlucky, result or disaster, all that. Why couldn’t it have been talking someone down off a bridge though? Or saving a playground full of kids from some headcase with a samurai sword?
Someone to catch and someone to save. Right up your street.
Louise knew him well enough. Knew which of them he would pick if he could only choose one.
‘Right?’ Pascoe asked again.
Thorne looked at her. Unable, unwilling, to speak.
‘Only problem is,’ she said, nodding towards the other end of the hall, ‘if he fucks up, so do I. So have I.’ She turned back to Thorne. ‘Chivers could shoot a hostage in the face, but in the end it would still be down to me. The hostage is mine to lose, do you see?’
Thorne sipped his coffee.
He could certainly see the intensity in Pascoe’s eyes, but he was not sure if her concern was based on anything other than professional pride. Was she thinking only about doing her job properly, about her record as a negotiator? Or had she genuinely come to care about the well-being of Stephen Mitchell and Helen Weeks? Of Javed Akhtar? Thorne supposed that it didn’t much matter, that it might be all those things, but still he did not know what to say to her.
When his mobile rang on the table, he grabbed at it.
‘DI Thorne?’
‘Speaking.’
‘It’s Wendy Markham.’
Thorne waited, unable to place the name.
‘I was running the DNA sample. The beer can in Hackney?’
‘God, sorry. Thanks for getting back to me.’ Thorne could feel a tingle of excitement. He sat up straight in his chair. He glanced across at Pascoe who raised her eyebrows.
‘Am I first?’
‘Yes,’ Thorne said. ‘You’re first.’
‘Good, because we’ve got you a nice cold hit. Jonathan Bridges, aged eighteen, record a mile long. He just served six months for robbing a junkie at knifepoint.’
‘Bridges?’ Thorne had seen the name written down somewhere. He struggled to remember. ‘Served six months where?’
There was a pause as Markham consulted her notes. ‘Barndale YOI.’
Even as Thorne had asked the question, it had come to him. The boy’s name on a list along with ten others. The patients on the hospital wing the night Amin Akhtar had died, the boys that Dawes had questioned eight weeks ago. He swallowed hard, remembering what Hendricks had said a couple of nights before, his suggestion that one of the other patients had been responsible for Amin’s death.
He was half right…
Thorne signalled to Pascoe, who quickly passed him a pen and a scrap of paper. He scribbled down the name.
‘Will that do you?’ Markham asked.
‘That’s fantastic, thanks.’
‘So, what about this wine then? Dinner… ’
‘Absolutely,’ Thorne said. ‘But I’ll need to get back to you. Merlot, right?’
‘Yes-’
‘I’ll call you.’ Thorne hung up and immediately began dialling.
‘Merlot?’ Pascoe said.
Thorne shook his head. Long story. When Holland answered, Thorne gave him the name of their prime suspect and told him to check with the Probation Service, the DSS, whoever the hell would be quickest with the most recent address for Jonathan Bridges. He told Holland to call straight back with any information, to ask Brigstocke to organise a support team on the hurry-up, and said that wherever Bridges turned out to be living, he would meet him there.
‘Got what you needed?’ Pascoe asked, when Thorne had hung up.
Thorne said, ‘Both of us, I reckon,’ and the two of them sat staring at the phone, willing it to ring.
FORTY-SEVEN
‘I’m sorry about before,’ Akhtar said. ‘When I got so worked up. I could see that it was upsetting you.’
‘It’s fine, I understand,’ Helen said.
‘No, it’s not fine.’ He was still sitting at the desk, but the tension had gone from his face. He moved his chair a little closer to her. ‘I seem to have lost control over the way I respond to things. Does that make any sense?’
Helen told him that it did.
‘I always used to think carefully about things first, you know? Whatever happened, good news or bad news, it would take a while to sink in and feel real, but these days everything is speeded up. Everything is more intense, much brighter, much darker. I’m absurdly happy or far more miserable. Very much angrier… ’
‘Your son went to prison,’ Helen said. ‘Then he died, was killed, so you’re not going to feel normal about anything.’