Lifeless - 5 (39 page)

As Thorne moved towards him, the suspect tried to run but Hol and moved fast from his hands and knees, tackled him around the waist and drove him back across the room. McEvoy moved out of the way, and Hol and and the suspect crashed down onto the edge of the bed. Thorne and Maxwel were right behind them, and together they lifted the suspect clear off the floor and threw him across the bed into the wal on the other side.

Before the suspect had hit the carpet, Thorne was stepping round

the bed after him.

Up for it.

Ready to do some damage to that face.

The face not hidden by a balaclava, because the fucker hadn't been planning on leaving anybody alive to identify him. The bag over his arm - the bag that contained the knife and the tape, and Christ alone knew what else...

Thorne remembered the last time he'd been in a hotel room. He thought about the bodies in the bath and on the bed. Now he was ready to kick and punch and smash away a little frustration. Half a yard behind him, Maxwel and Hol and moved just as quickly, reading

the look on Thorne's face, ready to stop him.

They wouldn't have to.

Thorne saw something like amazement on the face of the man lying crumpled on the floor between the wal and the bed. In the tussle, his trousers had got pul ed down to the top, of his thighs, exposing grey

underpants. A livid scratch ran across his forehead. His hair, thick with gel, lay plastered to his scalp like the legs of fat black spiders. Beneath, a thin, bland face, the smal eyes wide, the mouth hanging open as he panted for breath. Thorne came around the bed at him, his fists clenched, his discoloured face a disaster area. Thorne could see the man on the floor wondering if his was going to end up the same way...

Thorne stopped dead. He stopped and stared down at the pig-shit thick piece of pond scum, who'd more or less handed himself over to them. The vicious moron who wasn't quite careful enough and who would grow old in prison thinking about it. A tick in a plus column, a feather in a commander's cap. A kil er caught for the same simple reasons that most of them got caught.

Blind luck and stupidity.

Sutcliffe, West, Nielsen, Shipman. Virtual y everybody on that list his father had asked for. Al of them tripped up by a piece of good fortune, or coincidence, or carelessness. Not just the big ones either: Kil er A and Rapist B too. Everyday maniacs on any street corner, and the majority of them a long way from the bright, refined psychopaths of popular fiction. Al kil ing for ordinary, dul reasons. Anger, envy, lust, greed. Malign individuals, yes, but also every bit as stupid as some of those that hunted them...

Thorne and the rest of them stumbling around, having good days and bad. Hot streaks and shitty patches. Fol owing procedure or not fol owing it, depending on who they were and how much they gave a fuck. Detectives hoping that this one wanted to get caught and failing that, praying for the sharp-eyed witness, the conscience-stricken relative, the dim-witted accomplice.

Needing al the help they could get.

Thorne knew it, of course. He knew it very wel , but once in a while it would slap him in the face. A moment, an image, would remind him. How lost he was. How much he was reliant on fortune and luck-ups.

Detective? They needed to invent a new name for it.

Thorne couldn't remember the last time he'd detected anything but the smel of bul shit or beer on a col eague's breath.

It was five seconds, no more, since he'd stepped out of his hiding place. Thorne felt an arm on his sleeve, heard something high-pitched and unpleasant. Came out of it...

The man on the floor was not looking at him, but past him, across the room at something else. The arm on his was pul ing him away not from the suspect, there had been no violence -

but towards something else, something that demanded his attention.

Thorne turned at the same time as he started to real y hear it. He turned, wincing, and looked in the same direction as everybody else in the room. They had their hands over their ears.

They stared at where Sarah McEvoy sat slumped against the wal near the door.

She was stil screaming.

TWENTY-FIVE

When she lifted her head up to look at him, Hol and could see that his shirt was sopping, with ShOt, and tears.

McEvoy had been crying for over an hour.

She'd kept it together until moments after they'd climbed into his car and driven away from the hotel. She'd been hysterical from there, al the way back to Wembley, and when he'd pul ed up outside her flat, she'd leaned across, crying so hard she was almost unable to speak, and demanded to be held.

They hadn't moved since.

At the hotel, the two of them plus Thorne had moved downstairs once Jason Alderton had been taken away. They'd gone silently down in the lift and moved to a sofa and chairs in the deserted reception area. Thorne had found somebody, ordered coffee and then looked at them, demanding answers. Hol and had been gobsmacked at how quickly McEvoy had recovered her poise, how easily she was .able to look Thorne in the eye and lie to him. She told him that her mother was il , that she was finding it hard to cope. She laughed and said that the business up in the hotel room was probably just down to her subconscious

getting a lot of pent-up shit out of her system. Just a one-off thing. A bit of a wobbler, sir...

Thorne had fucking believed her. Talked about her taking a bit of time off. Asked a bit more about her mother.

Or maybe he hadn't believed her. Hol and had looked in the rearview mirror as they'd pul ed out of the hotel car park and seen Thorne standing there, watching them leave. It struck him then, watching Thorne standing with his hands in his pockets, that look on his face... . perhaps he was just leaving it al for another day.

Hol and tried to shift his position a little. McEvoy was al but on top of him, her weight making him uncomfortable, but every time he tried to move, she began wailing again. It had started and stopped half a dozen times since they had arrived at her flat, unbearably loud; the noise dredged up from somewhere deep down in her guts. An emotion so raw and unformed, that it screamed when it met the fresh air. Each time, the sobbing seemed to tear through her whole body, and through his, for long minutes at a time until it final y settled down.

With the engine off, the clock on the dashboard wasn't lit, but it must have been wel after midnight. A man walking his dog.looked into the car and quickly looked away again. Hol and didn't know if he

understood what he was seeing.

'Sarah...'

She moaned and raised her head. She looked like she'd been dunked in paint-stripper. When Hol and opened his mouth, she pushed her tongue into it and he felt the stirring in his groin. It took a major effort to pul away from the kiss.

'Sarah, let's get you inside.' 'No...'

She squeezed his neck so hard that he had to fight not to cry out. He reached up and wedged a hand between her fingers and his skin. 'You need to stop this. You need to get to bed and go to sleep.'

Her voice was hoarse and punctuated, by desperate, absurd intakes

of breath. 'Was it nice.., to be proved right? To see me... fuck up at work... ?'

'Don't be stupid.'

'In front.., of everybody...'

'What you said to Thorne was.., good enough.'

'If he believed me...'

Hol and realised that he'd been stroking her hair for a while. 'Listen, what you said about me being proved right. I don't give a toss about that, but maybe it's enough of a warning for you to want to do something about it...'

She burrowed her head deeper into his shoulder. She might have

been nodding, but he couldn't be sure.

'Sarah?'

She whimpered. It sounded like there might be another attack of hysterics on the way. His hand stopped stroking her hair, grabbed a handful of it. 'This might be the last chance you get, you know?'

She raised her head and stared at him, with something strange in her bloodshot eyes which he couldn't come close to reading. She looked up at him for maybe fifteen seconds.

Chal enging... apologising.., accepting.., saying something without words; something he would spend a long time afterwards trying to interpret.

Then, in the early hours of the morning, with the first few drops of rain crashing onto the windscreen, he could say very little which didn't sound pat and pointless. 'I'l be here to help you, if you try and change things...'

He pul ed her head gently back down on to his shoulder, and the two of them sat there, holding on to each other for al the wrong reasons.

McEvoy needing to go through this but wanting him to go. Wanting to get inside, on her own, and turn on her computer.

Hol and shushing her like a child. Changing his position ever so slightly, moving his arm just a little to get a look at his watch.

Mary from Rickmansworth: 'He should never be let out. What about the life sentence the parents have been given? What about the parents of that little girl?'

Alan from Leicester: 'It isn't about vengeance, Bob, it's about justice. It's just too soon.'

A child jailed for the murder of a little girl now a grown man eligible for parole. The debate had raged eight months before, over the parole for the boys that kil ed Jamie Bulger. It was raging again. The phone-lines, as Bob kept reminding everybody, were red-hot...

Susan from Bromley: 'That boy should be kept in prison for his own good. If he comes out, someone wil find him and kil him.'

That one was his favourite. Let's not talk about releasing our own demons back into society. Let's not say we want them locked away for the rest of their lives because it makes us a bit less guilty about not protecting our children. Let's pretend we're concerned for the safety of the murdering bastards. Priceless.

He weighed up the arguments, as he always did, and in the end, he was firmly with the majority on this contentious issue.

The man should never be set free. Kil ing kiddies was evil. Caroline had gone to bed nice and early, and he'd had .most of the evening to sit and think, and assure himself that he'd thought of everything.

He'd considered abandoning the whole thing when Palmer had escaped. He thought about trying to find him, starting their little partnership up again. He bore him no il wil for weakening the last time, for turning against him. That was the way it went with characters like Martin. The fear could be harnessed, but it was sometimes a bit unpredictable.

After due consideration, he'd decided to press on. Never stil and never back. Palmer was part of his past now, let him flounder and drown. His future was far more exciting. It did give him a laugh though, Palmer escaping the way he did. Thorne was so arrogant. Thorne, who never suffered fools. Now,he'd fucked up very badly.

Now, Thorne was the fool.

He poured himself another glass of wine. He wondered if McEvoy would luck up. It wouldn't be the end of the world if she did - he'd be covered - but it would be disappointing after the effort he'd put in so

far. On balance, he decided he had good reason to be optimistic. She was the perfect choice after al .

The first time he'd met her, he'd recognised something. He'd seen a need, and not just the obvious one. He'd spotted the drug dependency immediately, of course: he'd seen it many times when he was on the street. It was probably the coke that had first put the idea in his head, but he quickly found out that McEvoy's need ran far deeper.

So, al being wel , they would both get something out of it. He would know if he had made the right choice very soon, but if al did not go wel , he had already decided that he would kil her later anyway.

He leaned across to the radio and turned it up. Some idiot was wit tering on about how it would be impossible for this boy to hide who he used to be, even if he was released. They'd said the same things about Venables and Thompson. They'd have to become different people; they'd need to hide their past from everyone. They'd have to lie, for ever, to close friends and future spouses. It wasn't possible. Someone would find out, surely. How could you keep your past so secret?

He smiled at that. He knew it could be done.

Thorne pressed the Play button on the answering machine, and a day that had ended badly, got even shittier.

'Hel o... Tom, it's Eileen. Auntie Eileen, from Brighton... I hate these things. Listen, we need to have a chat about your dad. I've been in touch with him a fair bit, you know, since Christmas and, wel ... it's not good. You wouldn't real y remember, but your grandad was the same ... later on. Sometimes I think he forgets to eat anything. Anyway, I've been nagging him and he says he's going to see the GP. I think he'l probably get referred, you know, for proper tests, but

anyway, give us a cal and we can put our heads together. You should

tel him yourself as wel , make sure he keeps the appointment...' He hit the Stop button and went to put the kettle on.

He banged down the mug on the worktop. It had been a week since the row with his dad. He should have cal ed him back the next day, sorted it out. What was Eileen getting involved for anyway? She'd never been arsed before. Christ, they always came out of the woodwork when there was something to get worked up about. Busybodies like that loved a fucking crisis didn't they?

That KFC he'd picked up on the way home had been a mistake. He was starting to feel a little sick.

Proper tests? What did that mean... ?

He looked at his watch. It was far too late to cal his dad now. He tore at the milk carton roughly enough to spil milk everywhere. Fuck it, the tea would only keep him awake anyway.

Wasn't there supposed to be more caffeine in tea than coffee?

He stomped back into the living room and sat there in silence, cradling his phone.

Who was he kidding? If he slept at al it would be a miracle. The adrenaline that had rushed through his bloodstream in the hotel room earlier was stil around, looking for something to do. The feelings that had taken hold of him, knocked him around a little, as he'd looked down at Jason Alderton, had gone back to wherever it was they hid most of the time, but he was stil feeling bruised.