'Exactly what happened between you leaving the nightclub and getting home is guesswork, really, but it doesn't matter. You can tell us about where you met the man with the champagne when you get off this ventilator and get a bit better, but we know that he came into your house, and that the drug in the champagne would have been taking effect, and that there'd have been nothing you could do when he… put his hands on you.'
There was a loud crash from the corridor outside. He saw Alison react. A momentary tension in the skin around the eyes. Sounds were obviously so important. He just needed to get to it now. Stop pissing about. He'd told parents how their children had died. Why should this be so difficult?
'Anyway, Alison, here's the thing. You didn't survive. I mean.., yes, of course you did, but that was actually what he wanted.'
He patted the edge of the bed, cast an eye towards the machines, the monitors, the tubes, and back to Alison's face.
'This… is what he wanted, what he was trying to achieve.
'It sounds mad, I know it does, and that's because it is. He wasn't trying to kill you. He might easily have killed you because what he did to you is actually incredibly difficult. He's tried before and since, and not been successful… and other women have died. So…'
So what? Thorne wondered whether he should ever have started this. What should he tell her now? How lucky she'd been?
'That's it. I won't tell you that you were fortunate not to die. That's really something only you can.., have feelings about. But you were strong enough.., not to die, so I'm sure you're strong enough to get yourself out of here.
'I have no idea why he did this, Alison. I wish I could tell you I did. I could make something up, but the truth is I haven't got a bloody clue.
'I can tell you one thing, though, and I suppose that's why I've come if I'm honest. He's going to tell me why he did it very soon. I want you to know that. Very soon. He's going to look me in the eye and tell me.'
He took her hand. Squeezed.
'Then I'm going to put the fucker in prison for the rest of his life.'
Really? I see. Well, thanks for popping by and dropping that little snippet into the conversation.
He did this to me deliberately. Wants me like this. Wired up, fucked up.
Right…
It's hard to take news any other way than calmly when you're like this. My reactions always tend to look a bit similar. On the outside anyway. I might seem a bit placid. Anybody looking at me would be thinking, Ooh, didn't she take it well?
Inside's another matter.
Raging. Understanding what it means when your blood boils, because I can feel it bubbling. I can feel it moving through my veins like lava. Because I know now. I know for certain. I'd sort of worked it out anyway.
I've been thinking it had to be something like that.
Something fucking twisted.
I've had a lot of time to think about it and you don't have to be a genius to work out that something strange was going on. There wasn't a mark on me.
There was nothing sexual. Anne told me.
I thought early on that maybe he was trying to break my neck but there wasn't even a bruise. I reckon it's really quite easy to kill somebody if you want to and I've been wondering why he didn't want to.
Trying to work out what he did want.
So I'm the one he got right? I'm a living and almost breathing testament to this bloke's.., skill?
While other women died.
Hearing the blood sizzle and hiss through the arteries. Steam coming off my skin.
Thorne sounded pretty confident about getting him. Something in his voice made me think that whoever did this is going to be sorry when Thorne gets hold of him. Said he was going to make him tell him why he'd done it. I'm not sure that knowing why's going to make me feel better, really. Getting him will, though. Thorne said he didn't know how much I could remember. Neither do I.
But if it's going to help catch this bastard, I'm going to fucking well find out.
EIGHTEEN
12 February 1999. His mother died.
3 September 1994. Jan left him for the first time. 18 June 1985. Calvert…
As Thorne drove towards Camden this Tuesday lunchtime, he had no idea that the following day, 2 October 2000, would be another date to add to the list. Perhaps the most significant day of them all. Days that he would choose to forget, but that he would have little choice about remembering.
Days that formed him. Long, long days. Painful days. Days that had taught him something about who he'd been up to that point, and dictated who he was going to be from that point on.
What he was going to be.
This day, the eve of it all, had not begun well and would only get worse. The ring had arrived from Edinburgh the night before and had gone straight to the forensic-science laboratory in Lambeth. Thorne was on the phone to Edgware Road first thing wanting an update on progress. There had been none, and was unlikely to be before the following day. All he'd received for his trouble had been another earful from Keable, who was getting very nervous. Jeremy Bishop had rung, demanding to know what was going on. James Bishop had done likewise. As yet, with Rebecca Bishop remaining silent, it looked as though Thorne and Holland had got away with the trip to Bristol. Thorne smiled to himself now, as he steered the car through Regent's Park, past the unfeasibly grand houses of diplomats and oil billionaires. He smiled at his cockiness with Keable, his bluff-calling, his fuck-you attitude with Tughan.
He knew that he was on safe ground. All of it, the calls, the carpet fibres, the visits to Bishop's house, would be forgotten as soon as Thorne had got what he was after. As soon as he'd proved that Jeremy Bishop was a multiple killer.
Then Keable would be too busy accepting the congratulations of the commander (who'd be smiling for the press and getting patted on the back by a thoroughly delighted commissioner) to worry about a few late-night phone calls. A slap on the wrist, perhaps. A word about procedure, probably. A warning about his methods at the very worst. As long as the vital evidence was collected cleanly, Thorne knew that he would get a conviction. He knew that the evidence was there. In Jeremy Bishop's house in Battersea. He just needed the warrant.
Thorne had passed a wry dull morning in what a football manager (the one at Spurs was still clinging on to his job) would call a free role. In practice, this meant answering the phone a lot, handing bits of paper to Nick Tughan, and resisting the temptation to drive down to the forensics lab and oversee the examination of Bishop's wedding ring himself. Being part of this ponderous machine again was hugely frustrating, but he was happy to do whatever was necessary. And it wasn't going to be for long.
In Camden, Thorne parked the car beneath the enormous Sainsbury's next to the canal. There was no charge for customers and buying a few cans of own-brand lager was a fair exchange for free parking in the middle of the day.
He walked up past the old TV-am building where a crowd of youngsters was gawping at the recording of a show for MTV inside a tiny glass-fronted studio in the car park. He stopped and watched for a few minutes. T, he presenters, a girl and a boy, were young and good-looking, and for a second he thought they might be the young couple he'd seen in Waterlow Park a few days before. Ignoring the strange looks from the teenagers around him, he watched them for a while, jigging and posturing in dumb show behind the glass. Then he ambled away, supposing that he probably knew more about the music they were introducing than they did and headed towards Parkway where he was meeting Hendricks.
The cafe was cheap and miserable, which Thorne far preferred to expensive and cheerful. It was a place where, over a number of years, the two of them had talked about work and football, while indulging their shared passion for fry-ups and stodgy puddings.