Fiona grabbed a bucket crammed with sponges, sprays and bottles, nudging the Hoover towards the bedroom door with her foot. She knocked on the door and counted to five, thinking about eggs and bacon and bed. It was the same most mornings. By this time, by the end of this corridor, she would be thinking about home, a late breakfast and a few more gorgeous hours wrapped up in her duvet. Twenty minutes. She might get both rooms done before the end of her shift if she was lucky, though it would obviously depend on what sort of state they were in.
She reached down for the pass-key card hanging from a curly, plastic chain around her waist…
There was a tune going through her head. The song that had woken her on the clock-radio, a present from her Nan when the exams had finished. The song was very old fashioned, just a singer and a guitar, but the tune had stayed with her all morning. She eased the card into the lock and slid it out again. The light below the handle turned green. She pushed down and leaned against the door…
From the corner of her eye, she saw someone coming towards her along the corridor. It looked like one of the snotty old cows that ran housekeeping. She couldn't be sure' because the woman's face was all but hidden behind an enormous arrangement of lilies. Turning sideways, she eased open the door with her hip. The Hoover was kicked across the threshold, left to hold the door ajar while she turned back to the trolley to grab her other bits and pieces…
Two months later, Fiona would be offered her chance, her place on the drama course in Manchester, but she would not take it up. Not that September, at any rate. She would get her two Bs and a C but it would not mean a great deal to her. Two months later, her mother would remove the slip of paper from the envelope and read out the results and try to sound excited, but her daughter would still not be hearing very much. The scream that had torn through her body eight weeks earlier would still be echoing in her head and drowning out pretty much everything.
The sound of a scream and a picture of herself, of a young girl stepping through a doorway and turning. Faced with a peculiar kind of filth. Stains that she could never hope to remove with the bleaches and the waxes and the cloths which spill from a bucket, tumbling noisily to the bedroom floor.
It wasn't much past ten yet, but Thorne was already starting to wonder what the lunchtime special at the Royal Oak might be, when the middle-aged woman walked into his office.
'I'm looking for DC Holland,' she said.
She'd marched in without knocking, so Thorne wasn't keen from the kick-off, but he tried to be as nice as he could. The woman was short and dumpy, probably pushing sixty. She reminded him a bit of his Auntie Eileen, and he suddenly had a good idea who she was.
'Oh, right, are you Dave's…?'
The woman cut him off and, as she spoke, she dragged a chair from behind Kitson's desk, plonked it in front of Thorne's and sat self down.
'No, I'm not. I'm Carol Chamberlain. Ex-DCI Chamberlain from AMRU…'
Thorne reached for a pen and paper to take notes, thinking, Fucking Crinkey Squad, all I need. He leaned across the desk and proffered a hand. 'DI Thorne…'
Ignoring the hand, Carol Chamberlain opened her briefcase and began to rummage inside. 'Right. You'll do even better. I only asked for Holland' – she pulled out a battered green folder covered in yellow Post-It notes, held it up – 'because his was the name.., attached to this.'
Emphasising the last word, she dropped the folder down on to Thorne's desk.
Thorne glanced at the file and held up his hands. He tried his best to sound pleasant as he spoke. 'Listen, is there any chance we can do this another time? We're up to our elbows in a very big case and…'
'I know exactly what case you're up to your elbows in,' she said.
'Which is why we should really do it now.'
Thorne stared at her. There was a steel in this woman's voice that suggested it would not be worth his while to argue. With a sigh, he pulled the folder across the desk, began to leaf through it.
'Five weeks ago, DC Holland pulled the file on an unsolved murder from 1996.' Aside from the steel, her voice had the acquired refinement that often came with rank, however distant, but Thorne thought he detected the remnants of a Yorkshire accent beneath. 'The victim's name was Alan Franklin. He was killed in a car park. Strangled with washing line.'
'I remember,' Thorne said. He flicked a couple of pages over. It was one of the cases Holland had pulled off CRIMINT. 'There were a couple of these that we looked at and then dismissed. Nothing suggested that…'
Chamberlain nodded, dropped her eyes to the folder. 'This was handed to me as a cold case. My first cold case, as it happens…'
'I read about the initiative. It's a good idea.'
'I've been looking at the Franklin murder again…'
'Right…' Thorne stopped, noticing the faintest trace of enjoyment then, another tiny line around her mouth that cracked open for just half a second and was gone. It was enough to prompt a reaction in him, a flutter of something that began, as always, at the nape of his neck…
'Alan Franklin should have been known to us, to those who were investigating his murder back in '96. His name should have come up on a routine check…'
Thorne knew there was no need to ask why. He knew she was about to tell him. He watched, and listened, and felt the tingle grow and spread around his body.
'In May 1976, Franklin stood trial at Colchester Crown Court. He was accused of rape. Accused and acquitted.'
Thorne caught a breath, let it out again slowly. 'Jesus…'
Like a beam of light in the right direction… Later, when Thorne and the woman he'd thought was Dave Holland's mother knew and liked each other better, Carol Chamberlain would confess to him that this was one of those rare moments she'd missed more than anything. The seconds looking at Thorne, just before she revealed the most significant fact of all. When she'd had to fight very hard to stop herself grinning.
'Alan Franklin was accused of raping a woman named Jane Foley…'
PART THREE
The grunting seemed to be coming from somewhere very deep down. A noise of effort and of immense satisfaction. Rising up from his guts and exploding, carried on hot breath from between dirty, misshapen teeth. Beneath these animal sounds – dog-noise, monkey-noise, pig-noise – the counterpoint provided by the dull slapping of hot flesh against cold as he pushes himself harder, again and again.
Refusing to speed up. Giving no sign that it might soon be over. Taking his pleasure. Inflicting his pain.
How was this allowed to happen? Naivety and trust had proved to be perfect complements to frustration and hatred. It had happened in moment. How long ago was that? Fifteen minutes? Thirty?
There seems little point in struggling. It will be over eventually, it must be. No point in thinking about what happens afterwards. Probably a shy smile, maybe an apology and a cigarette and a speech about signals and crossed wires.
Fucker. Fucker. Fucker.
Until then…
Eyes that cannot bear to stay open, shut tight and a new picture presents itself Small at first, and far away. Posed, waiting in a distant circle of light at the end of a tunnel.
Now it is the grunting and the slapping that begin to recede into the distance as the picture gets closer, rushing up the tunnel, sucking up the darkness until it is fully formed and clearer than it has ever been.
Clearer even than it ever really was. The colours more vivid: the red wetness against the white shirt; the cobalt-blue of the rope's coils around the neck like an exotic snake at his throat. The sounds and smells of the body and the rope, deafening and pungent. Creaking and fecal. The feeling: the unique horror of seeing it. Seeing the indescribable pain in 'those eyes at being seen.