'Cheer me up,' Thorne said. 'Tell me the Desk of Doom has got him, gouged a big hole in his leg. Better yet, taken one of his bollocks off.'
'Sorry, no luck. You padded it with all that paper anyway.' Thorne grunted. He'd completely forgotten doing it. 'What was all that about?'
Holland asked. 'I could hear it from next door) Thorne got up and walked across to join Holland in the doorway.
'Your guess is as good as mine. Something got up hi; arse though.'
'Well, whatever it is, it looks like it's gone now…'
The two of them watched as Norman stood talking to Sarah McEvoy. He was smiling, gesturing with his hands. She smiled back, leaned towards him, briefly placed a hand on his arm. Her eyes darted towards Thorne and Holland. Half a second later, they were looking at the floor in front of her.
Holland moved into the office. Thorne followed him.
'Oh, listen, I'm sorry about the other morning on the phone,'
Holland said. 'You asked about McEvoy, how she was doing, or something, and I was a bit stroppy. Didn't get much sleep…'
Thorne had been wondering if Holland would say anything. His reaction had been so out of character. He shrugged. 'I don't know what you're on about.'
Holland breathed in, let it out. Like he'd got something out of the way. 'Norman got it in for you then?'
'Looks that way,' Thorne said. Buggered if I know why though. Worst thing about it is, I can't really argue with him. Most of what he was saying was spot on.'
Holland opened his mouth to argue but Thorne cut him off. 'He's a little tosser, don't get me wrong, but he knows what he's talking about.'
'No need to make it personal though, is there?'
Thorne sat down. 'He's a small man, you know? All got big chips on their shoulders.' Holland looked at him, eyebrows raised, a grin threatening to appear. Thorne's face crinkled, sarcastically, in return. 'He's smaller than me, OK? I'm average…'
Holland held up his hands. 'I'm not arguing. What about chips though?'
Thorne thought for a second, then smiled, like he'd suddenly remembered an old friend.
The? More than Harry Ramsden, Dave.'
Holland laughed loudly, and at that moment, Thorne would have been happy, Jesus, he would have been deliriously happy, to just close his eyes and listen to the sound of it all day. He would have been delighted to shut the door and do fuck all of any use to anybody and just sit and wait for the darkness outside the window. To let the night come and grow thick around him. To sit in his office and drink tea and talk to Holland about nothing: about Sophie, his girlfriend and his last holiday, and Tottenham's pointless push for a place in Europe, and what films he'd seen lately and how bloody awful they both thought public transport was…
Whatever.
But he knew that every few seconds, his voice, even as he spoke, would grow quiet to his ears, as if the Mute/Fade button on his brain's remote control were being fingered, and a new sound would take its place. A sound that he had to invent. One that could only exist in his imagination. A sound that very few people, very few people living, could ever have heard. The dull, wet smack of a bat striking a skull. Over and over again. I got Ken Bowles killed. The phone rang. Thorne reached for it absently, picked it up without looking, said nothing.
After a moment or two, a voice. Tight, impatient, a faint Midlands accent.
'Is this Thorne?'
'Yes…'
'This is Vic Perks. You've been trying to get hold of me.'
'Have I?'
Perks sighed. 'Well somebody there has. Ex-DCI Vic Perks. I was in charge of the Karen McMahon investigation in 1985: Thorne grabbed a notepad and began to write… As he jotted down details, as he and Perks made arrangements, an image began to form at the back of Thorne's mind. There one second and gone the next. Then back again, like the picture glimpsed in a cloud formation or an odd arrangement of shadows. He saw a stranger leaning down and reaching out a hand to pull him up – to drag him from the cold, dark water at the very moment he was about to go under.
EIGHTEEN
They met in a pub called The Mariners' Arms on the Isle of Dogs. It was a basic kind of place. Thick nylon carpets, a dart board, beer. Wednesday lunchtime, and aside from Thorne and Perks, there were only two people in there: the barman – a student by the look of things with dyed blond hair and bad skin – who stared intently at the small television above the bar; and a wizened old man in a battered brown trilby who sat in the corner with a newspaper, half a Guinness and a fierce-looking Alsatian at his feet.
While they worked their way through their beers and waited for two cheese rolls to appear – there must have been somebody else there, in the kitchen, because the rolls materialised eventually – they talked about their respective journeys. The pub had been Perks's idea. He hadn't wanted to travel too far from the small flat in Epping to which he and his wife had retired. When the older man mentioned where he lived, Thorne had glanced up from his pint, only for a second, but Perks still knew what he was thinking. That part of the world did have something of a reputation.
'That's right. Retired to the same place where most of the villains I spent all those years chasing ended up. I see one or two of them now and again. Buying the paper or down the garden centre. We say hello…'
Thorne had been right about the Midlands accent: Birmingham was his best bet, or Coventry maybe. Perks was a tall man. His face was thin and deeply lined, but Thorne guessed that laughter was probably just as responsible as worry. He was in his early sixties, with his grey hair cut short and a neatly trimmed moustache, a collar and tie beneath the padded car coat.
Perks finished his last mouthful of cheese roll, wiped the crumbs from around his mouth with a wax-paper serviette and looked Thorne in the eye.
'You haven't found her. You haven't found Karen, else you'd have said by now.'
Thorne was still eating. He swallowed quickly. 'No. But I intend to.'
Perks stood up, scanned the room for the entrance to the toilet. He looked down at Thorne before making a move.
'So did I…'
Later, they walked east, along the river. The fine rain was annoying more than anything – not enough to warrant an umbrella, but enough to necessitate screwing up the eyes and hunching the shoulders. The Thames was wide here. They walked within feet of cheaply built sixties' council housing, drab and depressing. On the other side of the river, at the top of the hill was Greenwich Observatory, the Royal Naval College and the Cutty Sark.
They walked slowly; Thorne moving a little slower than he might normally have done. The river belched and slid and slurped beneath them, oily and gunmetal grey. Ahead and across from them, the bizarre monstrosity that was the Millennium Dome rose up through the drizzle, rusting and ridiculous. A million and more a week, so they reckoned, just for it to sit empty.
'That's a decent hospital every couple of months,' Perks said. 'A school every few weeks.'
'Did you think she was alive?' Thorne asked. 'When you were looking for her?'
Perks turned his face away towards the river, towards the wind. When he finally spoke, Thorne had to strain to hear the words. 'For a week, perhaps a fortnight, we hoped. I probably thought so longer than anyone else. That was my job I suppose.'
Thorne went another step or two before he realised that Perks had stopped. He turned and walked back towards him. 'There were sightings weren't there?'
'Several. Always plenty of sightings though. People are well meaning or else they're being plain malicious. Hard to tell at the time. One though in particular…'
'Carlisle?'
Perks nodded, wiped rain from his face with the back of a brown leather glove. 'A few miles outside actually. Three days after she went missing. That one was hard to ignore. The clothes were spot on – we never released everything but the description was perfect. Hair, clothes, the car. That one felt right.' Perks said something else but it was lost as a screaming gull passed just overhead, its cry mingling with the clatter of a nearby helicopter. Thorne looked up and saw a bulky, tomato-red chopper swooping down towards City Airport. Perks moved past him. Thorne followed, but kept an eye on the helicopter, unable to explain the sudden, morbid thought, but not wanting to miss a moment should it burst into flame and plunge into the river.