He zipped up his leather jacket as he crossed the road. Anyone watching from that bay window would have a clear view and Thorne wanted to hide the Met Police logo on his stab-vest. He walked slowly, aware that there might be eyes on him other than those of his fellow officers, conscious of the fact that he did not look a lot like the average delivery man and bugger all like a Jehovah’s Witness.
A strip of paper beneath the top bell said Dawson. There was no name beneath the bottom one. Thorne rang it.
Waited.
If he had thought there might be anyone besides Bridges inside the property, Thorne would have made an effort to acquire the phone number. It was common practice to call the suspect inside and suggest that they come out of their own volition to avoid the possibility of other family members getting hurt. There was nothing to suggest that Bridges had so much as a girlfriend.
Thorne did not care a great deal about Bridges getting hurt.
He gave it another few seconds then took out his radio. ‘Not a sound, Yvonne,’ he said.
‘Like I said, he might be out of it.’
‘Makes our job even easier then, doesn’t it.’
‘I’m still not thrilled about this, Tom.’
‘It’s on my head,’ Thorne said. ‘Put the door in… ’
A few seconds later, the doors of the BMW and the Galaxy opened simultaneously and half a dozen officers began running across the road. Two others moved quickly to the boot of the Galaxy then followed their colleagues carrying a metal battering ram.
A little less polite than Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Thorne stepped to one side as they crashed first through the outer door and then through the door to the downstairs flat. Thorne was only a few steps behind them, but it was not a large flat and by the time he had heard the first officer shout, ‘Room clear,’ it had become obvious that the man he was looking for was not at home. He started to take off his vest.
‘Bedroom clear,’ Holland shouted.
It would have been nice of course, but Thorne had known that Bridges was unlikely to be sitting there waiting for them. He had made a decent attempt to clean up after killing Peter Allen, and whoever had employed him to do it would almost certainly want to do the same thing themselves. They would want Bridges well out of the way.
It had already crossed Thorne’s mind that this might mean permanently. Sitting outside in the car, he had been forced to consider the possibility that there might be nothing but another body waiting for them. Another brick wall.
Back to waiting…
As he stood in the middle of the living room, he saw that someone had been living at the property until very recently. There were several empty pizza boxes by the side of the sofa, a TV listings magazine from the previous week, a pub-sized ashtray overflowing with butts. As the team filed one by one into the room, including those who had been ready at the back of the house, Thorne stared at the beer cans lined up on the mantelpiece, the labels all facing the same way. He remembered the neatness, the obsessive order of Antoine Daniels’ cell at Barndale.
‘What now?’ Holland asked.
‘Turn the place over,’ Thorne said. ‘We’re looking for bank statements, bills, mobile phone records, anything.’
Holland didn’t move. ‘We need a warrant, sir.’
‘Again, Dave, point taken.’
‘Get a bloody grip, Tom,’ Kitson said. ‘He’s right, you know that. Without a warrant, anything we find is almost certain to get thrown out and all you’ll be left with is the shit you’re going to be up to your neck in. Is it really worth it?’
Thorne swore and kicked out at one of the discarded pizza boxes. He had requested the warrant as soon as he’d been given the address for Bridges, and though he did not need one to enter the premises, he was not permitted to search for evidence until it arrived having been signed by a magistrate. He watched as a couple of the detectives dropped happily on to the sofa. There would be time for a smoke now, time to read the paper. They might even be able to nip out for a bit of lunch.
‘We’re thinking about you,’ Kitson said.
Thorne looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly three o’clock,’ he said. ‘We should have this warrant here any time, I reckon, half past at the latest, all right?’ He told Samir Karim to chase it up, then when Karim had stepped out, he said, ‘But aside from the people in this room, who’s to say what time we actually started searching? We do it now, but anybody asks, we waited until we had the warrant. Fair enough?’
Thorne studied the faces of the officers in the room. There were a few sideways glances, some awkward shifting from foot to foot. Holland kept his head down.
‘Listen, you all know about this business in Tulse Hill,’ Thorne said. ‘You know that one of the hostages is a police officer.’ There were nods. ‘Well, what we’re doing here might help to get her out, OK? I’m just asking you to trust me on that and do what I’m asking, because I’ll carry the can, and the fact is we really haven’t got time to sit on our arses waiting for a poxy warrant.’ He paused. ‘ She hasn’t got time.’ He looked around again. ‘Anyone unhappy with that?’
If anyone was, they kept it to themselves.
‘Right, let’s crack on.’
Thorne and Kitson took the bedroom, and as Thorne dug through drawers and reached carefully into the back of the flimsy wardrobe, he thought about what he had said to Holland. He felt bad for snapping at him.
We’re thinking about you.
He looked over his shoulder at Kitson, who was searching through the small cupboard beside the bed.
She shook her head. Nothing.
Thorne knew he was further out on a limb than he had been in a long time, but he could only hope, if his actions succeeded in getting Helen Weeks released, that the powers-that-be might overlook them. He was probably kidding himself, he knew that, with more than enough black marks against him already. The DPS had a file an inch thick with his name on, and the Rubberheelers wouldn’t need much of an excuse to come for him.
But what choice did he have?
More choice than Helen Weeks, that was for sure.
From the wardrobe, he pulled out a stash of magazines. Sexy Matures, Fit amp; Fifty. Underneath, a few tattered leaflets for the Scottish Defence League, a far right rent-a-mob who protested against the spread of Islamism at every opportunity and always seemed up for a good scrap. Thorne glanced at the misspelled ranting and wondered if money had been the only motive for the part Bridges had played in Amin Akhtar’s killing. It was something to bear in mind. It was not as if Amin had been one of Imam Shakir’s brigade, or even been particularly religious as far as Thorne could tell, but to the likes of Johnno Bridges and his SDL mates, such minor details had probably not been important.
Paki meant towelhead meant terrorist.
Pornography – political and otherwise – aside, there was little else to get excited about. There was certainly nothing that could be described as ‘evidence’ and the search of the property could only be deemed successful if they had been looking for dirty underwear and used needles. Thorne asked a couple of the support officers if they would mind hanging back to take delivery of the warrant when it arrived. He let the rest go.
‘Doesn’t look like Johnno was one for keeping much in the way of records,’ Kitson said.
Thorne led Kitson and Holland into the kitchen. It smelled of something that had burned recently and there was an inch of dirty grease in the bottom of a chip-pan. Thorne leaned back against the oven.
‘What do I do now?’ he asked.
‘We put a watch on all the stations,’ Kitson said. ‘An all-ports alert.’
Thorne knew it made sense, but guessed that they were probably twelve hours too late. Bridges would almost certainly be back in Scotland by now, or France or Finland or fuck-knows-where.
Holland nodded. ‘And if we can’t get him, we get the information from somewhere else. Mobile phone provider, bank if he had one.’