The Dying Hours (13 page)

Thorne had seen the business card Kitson had described once before. Thin and flimsy, with a basic font and simple layout; one of those you could get printed up in batches of fifty from machines at railway stations.

FA Investigations
.

The year before, Thorne had become professionally involved with a young private investigator named Anna Carpenter. She had dropped out of university and gone to work for FA Investigations with high hopes of an exciting new career, only to find herself acting as bait in seedy honeytrap operations, when she wasn’t working as a glorified bookkeeper or fetching her boss’s booze.

Thorne, and the case they worked on together, had been her escape.

He had not wanted anything to do with her at first, had been forced into it for the sake of the investigation. By the end, they had become close; a new lease of life for Thorne every bit as much as it was for her. Though Anna’s boss was not directly at fault for the way things had turned out, Thorne had seen and heard enough of the man she had worked for to wish that he could have blamed Frank Anderson for what happened.

Blamed him and done something about it.

Now, at ten fifteen on a drizzly Thursday morning, while Helen and his chief inspector thought he was laid up in bed, Thorne stood on a pavement in Victoria, outside a narrow brown door with cracked glass, and dragged his thoughts back to the present. The five dead and the dog-eared card found in George Jeffers’ pocket.

He rang the bell.

Half a minute later, Frank Anderson answered the door. Perhaps he was having trouble finding a new ‘secretary’ on the pittance he was paying, or else he was not making enough money to afford anyone at all. Either way, it was good news.

‘What do
you
want?’ Anderson said. It had taken him a long few seconds to remember where he recognised Thorne from and he did not look very pleased when it finally came to him. Thorne enjoyed the man’s discomfort and confusion, the way he shrank back just a little in the doorway.

They had last seen one another at Anna Carpenter’s funeral.

‘Well, I certainly don’t want to stand about chatting on your fucking doorstep.’ Thorne had not meant to sound quite so aggressive. He was hoping for a degree of co-operation after all, but something about Anderson’s face – vulpine, florid – had triggered a momentary desire to knock the man on his bony arse rather than waste any time being polite.

He bit back the urge and glanced skywards, as if it was just the rain that was making him tetchy.

Anderson said, ‘Yeah, all right, calm down,’ and turned inside, inviting Thorne to follow him upstairs. The office was much as Thorne remembered it: a drab collection of chairs and filing cabinets in brown and gunmetal grey. A job lot acquired on the cheap when some fifties council building was upgraded.

‘You want some tea?’

Thorne said no, as politely as he could.

Anderson dropped into a swivel chair behind a scarred wooden desk. He was wearing a tired suit that near enough matched the decor, a striped tie hanging from an undone collar. He was probably early fifties, but drink had put ten years on him. He looked like the schoolteacher you might think twice about before letting him take a PE class.

‘I’m interested in one of your clients,’ Thorne said. ‘A man named George Jeffers.’ He waited. ‘He
was
one of your clients, right?’

Anderson’s hands were clasped together. He unclasped them then moved them back together. Admitting nothing, but making no denial. A tacit invitation for Thorne to carry on.

‘I believe that Jeffers asked you to trace a number of individuals for him, is that correct? A number of elderly individuals?’

Anderson thought for a few seconds. ‘Look, you know I can’t talk about my clients.’

‘I’m asking nicely.’

‘I’m saying no nicely.’

‘You really think I’d be here if it wasn’t important?’ Thorne said.

Anderson’s expression changed,
softened
. Perhaps as someone who spent his working life spying on unfaithful husbands or benefit cheats, he relished his input being important for a change. Or perhaps he decided that talking to Thorne about this was preferable to talking about the past. ‘OK, let’s say that George Jeffers was a client.’

‘Did you know that he’d just come out of prison?’

Anderson nodded. ‘He never said anything, but you can smell it on them, can’t you? He had that… pallor, whatever you call it. Like he was see-through.’

‘So you traced these people for him.’

‘Not unheard of, is it?’ Anderson shrugged. ‘You come out of prison after a long stretch, only natural you might want to get back together with a few people you’ve lost touch with.’

Thorne nodded. Thinking: It wasn’t Jeffers who had lost touch with anyone, and there was nothing natural about what the man who wanted these people found was planning to do. ‘How did he pay you?’

‘Now you’re pushing it.’

‘Come on, I’m not going to tell the taxman. Cash?’

Anderson said nothing.

‘Scotch?’

Anderson scowled at him. ‘My business.’

‘I need a list of the people he asked you to find.’

Anderson leaned back in his chair, swivelled back and forth. ‘No chance.’

‘You’ve already admitted Jeffers was a client, so what’s the big deal?’

‘That’s as much as you’re going to get,’ Anderson said. ‘Besides which, I’ve admitted nothing of the sort. I start handing on the details of particular cases, all the ins and outs, I’m betraying my clients’ confidence and completely compromising the integrity of my business.’

It was a struggle not to laugh. ‘Right. They might throw you out of the Association of British Investigators. Still using their logo, I see.’

Instinctively, Anderson reached for the stack of notepaper Thorne was eyeing up. He gathered up the pile and thrust it into a drawer, then began straightening up other objects on his desk: a calendar, a mug filled with pens, a telephone attached by a cable to a digital recorder.

‘That’s naughty,’ Thorne said. ‘I wonder what would happen to the integrity of the business if your clients discovered that you’d never been a member of the ABI? That you were using that logo illegally.’

‘So, I forgot to send in the membership fee,’ Anderson said. ‘I can sort that in five minutes, so don’t think that’s any sort of threat.’

‘What about the fact that you spend half your time calling up your competitors, posing as a prospective client and arranging non-existent meetings?’

‘Firstly, it’s what everyone does and secondly… you’re starting to sound a bit desperate.’ He stood up. ‘Right, I think we’re about finished, aren’t we?’

‘I really need that list.’

‘Well, come back with a warrant and we can talk about it.’ Anderson must have sensed Thorne’s hesitation, seen something in his face. ‘Oh, I see.’ He sat down casually on the edge of the desk. ‘This one’s off the clock, is it?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘It bloody well does to me,’ Anderson said. ‘Even more reason for me to tell you to piss off. Like I
needed
another reason.’

Thorne looked at him. If he was struggling to control his desire to slam Anderson’s smug face hard on to his desk, then Anderson was fighting a similar – if rather more foolish – urge to do much the same to him. A year before, in this very office, Thorne had made Frank Anderson look like an idiot, and clearly that still rankled. Thorne looked, making no effort to hide what he was thinking, but saying nothing, because he had nothing else to say.

‘So?’ Anderson smiled. ‘Piss off.’

Ten minutes later, Frank Anderson was enjoying his second whisky of the day, thinking that although there weren’t too many things that could brighten his life up at the moment, sending that prick Thorne away with his tail between his legs was definitely one of them.

He raised his glass in a toast to his own brilliance; muttered, ‘One each, I reckon.’

Anderson’s interest in the whole George Jeffers thing had been sufficiently piqued by Thorne’s visit, by his obvious desperation for the details, that he spent the next few minutes trying to figure out what might be in it for him. Was there any way he could make some money out of it? Were there any angles he could exploit to his own advantage? Bar actually selling the information to Thorne he couldn’t think of any offhand, but he was still wrestling with the conundrum when the phone went.

A new client. The day was looking better and better.

The man suspected that his wife was having an affair with a work colleague. A stylist at the hairdressing salon where she worked, who had conned everyone into thinking he was gay, when that was obviously just a cover story. Anderson had heard similar stories a thousand times and he listened patiently, before making the man fully aware of his rates, including the charges for the conversation they were now having.

‘I just need proof,’ the man said. ‘Proof of what she’s doing to me and to our kids.’

‘I’ll get you proof one way or the other,’ Anderson said.

‘If we get divorced, she’ll try and turn me over. I mean, that’s what always happens, isn’t it? But if I can prove that she was the one playing away, it might not be so bad. I might even get a chance to keep my kids.’

‘Sounds like money well spent then,’ Anderson said.

He told the man that he would need to come into the office to make formal arrangements and they agreed a time the following week. The man thanked him, said he was a lot less worried about things now he’d spoken to a professional.

‘Glad I can help,’ Anderson said.

When the call had ended, Anderson sat back in his chair and raised his glass a second time. ‘Professional,’ he whispered, before draining it. He was still clutching the glass containing his third whisky of the day when he went down to answer the door a few minutes later.

Tom Thorne, looking rather more cocky than when he’d left.

‘It’s always the stupid laws that prove to be the handiest,’ Thorne said. ‘The really boring ones.’

‘What?’

But Thorne was already pushing past him on his way up the stairs, talking as he went while Anderson trotted after him. ‘I mean they got Al Capone for tax evasion in the end, didn’t they? And they only caught the Yorkshire Ripper because there was an irregularity with his tax disc. This one, though… this one’s my absolute favourite from now on.’

Anderson shouted, ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’ as Thorne marched into his office and around his desk. He could only stand and stare as Thorne reached for the digital voice recorder and pressed
PLAY
.

‘
I just need proof
,’ the tinny voice said. ‘
Proof of what she’s doing to me and to our kids
…’

Anderson’s shoulders slumped when he saw the expression on Thorne’s face and realised.

‘Not bad,’ Thorne said, ‘even if I say so myself. I just poshed my voice up a bit… reckon I sound like Hugh Grant. I think the stuff about the kids was a nice touch, don’t you? And you sounded ever so sympathetic.’

‘You’re an arsehole,’ Anderson said.

‘I might well be, but because you failed to inform me that our conversation was being recorded, you’re the arsehole who’s in breach of the Telecommunications Act of 2003.’ Thorne sat down in Anderson’s chair, opened a drawer and took out a sheet of the headed notepaper he had seen Anderson put away earlier. He waved it towards him. ‘So, do I arrest you now, or do you save us both a lot of trouble by writing those names down for me?’

‘Arsehole,’ Anderson said again.

‘I mean, I don’t think we’re talking about prison or anything, but it’s probably a hefty fine and it’s not going to look good on the CV, is it?’

Anderson stepped forward and snatched the paper, muttering curses as he leaned across to take a pen from the mug on his desk. He nodded towards the computer, the muscles flexing in his jaw. ‘I’ll need to…’

‘Oh, of course.’ Thorne vacated the chair and watched Anderson come around and call up the file he needed, stabbing furiously at the keys of the grimy PC. He picked up the half-empty bottle of Bell’s from the top of the filing cabinet. ‘Times must be hard,’ he said. ‘I had you down as a single malt man.’

‘Here.’

Thorne felt more pumped up than he had in a long time as he took the piece of paper Anderson was brandishing and looked down at the names.

‘So, we finished then?’

But Thorne wasn’t listening. However ingenious he had been, however big a fool he had made of Frank Anderson, he could feel the rush evaporate, the ticking in his blood slow to a dull, monotonous throb.

He was the arsehole, after all.

Four names he recognised, four names he already knew.

He had wasted his time.

‘I reckon I could get used to this,’ Hendricks said.

Holland looked at him. ‘What?’

‘Working from here.’ Hendricks looked around. ‘I mean, in terms of my own speciality, yes, it’s definitely a bit limited. There’s probably a freezer in the back somewhere and I could always improvise as far as a slab goes, but otherwise the facilities do leave something to be desired. That said though, you can’t argue with fancy Italian lager on tap and all the crisps and nuts you can eat.’ He turned, nodded across to where Thorne was waiting to be served at the bar. ‘Mind you, bearing in mind that we’re doing this out of the goodness of our hearts, I do think he should be buying all the drinks.’

‘That why you’re doing this then?’ Holland asked. ‘The “goodness of your heart”.’

‘Something like that. Someone needs to keep an eye on him.’

‘Not sure why I’m doing it.’ Holland loosened his tie. ‘Buggered if I can see the funny side, though.’

‘I spent all afternoon cutting up a thirteen-year-old boy,’ Hendricks said, quietly. ‘So pretty much everything else has got a funny side.’

When Thorne arrived back at the table and laid the drinks down, Hendricks said, ‘Here we are again then,’ and began whistling a recognisable refrain.

‘Wrong movie,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
.’

Hendricks reached for his drink. Said, ‘I’m well aware of that.’

‘Yvonne told me to say sorry she couldn’t make it,’ Holland said.

‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said. ‘She texted me.’

‘She’s got a lot on with the kids, you know? But she’s still… on board.’

Thorne nodded, said, ‘Right then,’ and laid down the list he had extracted from Frank Anderson. He had already explained to the others that it contained only the names of the victims they had already identified. ‘Fiona Daniels, Brian Gibbs, John Cooper, Alan Herbert.’ He counted them off on his fingers. ‘Margaret Cooper killed just because she was there and he couldn’t leave her alive. Four people Mercer had a grudge against, so he gets George Jeffers to find them. Jeffers uses Frank Anderson to do it for him and all the information Mercer needs is waiting for him when he gets out.’

‘Tidy,’ Hendricks said.

Thorne stabbed at the scrap of paper, now damp with beer from the bottom of glasses. ‘So, where the hell does this leave us?’

‘Maybe it’s finished,’ Hendricks said. He swirled the beer around in his glass. ‘Maybe this
was
Mercer’s list and he’s crossed them all off and now he’s done.’

Thorne shook his head.

‘Maybe he’s looking forward to a nice cosy retirement. Putting his feet up in Eastbourne or somewhere and watching
Antiques Roadshow
. Doing a spot of gardening or whatever.’

‘He’s not done,’ Thorne said.

‘You
want
there to be some more?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Thorne snapped.

Hendricks looked at Holland.

Thorne held a hand up. Sorry. ‘Just one more name on that list and we might have at least had a chance. We might have known who he was going after and got there before he did.’

‘But there’s no way of knowing what order he was doing it in, is there?’ Holland said. ‘I can’t see how it would really have helped.’ He sat back and folded his arms. ‘I mean, I hope Phil’s right, I hope there aren’t any more.’

‘So do I, obviously,’ Thorne said. ‘But look at Alan Herbert. If Mercer’s going to all this trouble to murder the poor sod who just happened to be standing next to him in the dock, you’ve got to believe there are going to be others. Jury members, officers of the court… somebody who looked at him the wrong way, whoever. This has been festering for thirty years, for God’s sake.’ He raised his glass, then stopped and stared down into it as if something that should not be there was floating in his beer. ‘Who knows who else he’s nursing grudges against?’

‘So why aren’t they on this list then?’ Hendricks asked.

They sat and drank for a minute or two. The place was busier than the last time they were here and they had been having to lean closer to one another to make themselves heard, while still keeping their conversation private. There were a couple of Grafton regulars at the next table with no such concerns, arguing loudly about the new striker West Ham had bought. For a few moments, Thorne wished that he could join them; arguing the toss and getting fiercely worked up about something that would not keep him awake at night. Then he glanced down at the damp scrap of paper on the table and remembered the famous Bill Shankly quote about football being more important than life and death.

Shankly was a great manager, but he was talking out of his arse.

‘There is another possibility,’ Holland said. ‘There could be others that Mercer didn’t need to trace, because he’d already done it from inside.’

‘He had no visitors, remember.’

‘Phone calls then, letters. Easy enough, I would have thought.’

‘I’ll check with Caroline Dunn,’ Thorne said.

‘He’ll have had access to a computer too,’ Hendricks said. He rubbed a palm across his closely shaved scalp. ‘And a bloody long time to figure out the best way to use it.’

Holland said, ‘That might explain why there’s no police officers on the list. No lawyers.’

Thorne nodded, getting it.

‘Almost anyone with any sort of professional profile has some kind of internet presence, if you look hard enough.’ Holland looked at Hendricks. ‘Right? The world and his wife has a sodding blog.’

‘Thinking I might start one myself,’ Hendricks said. ‘
Gab from the Slab
. Sounds all right, doesn’t it?’

‘Maybe the names on Anderson’s list were the only people he
hadn’t
been able to trace.’

‘Christ.’ Thorne downed what was left of his pint. ‘So, what do we do?’

‘How’s he funding all this?’ Hendricks asked, after they had all taken a drink. ‘I’m not sure the old age pension covers it.’

‘I was thinking about that,’ Thorne said. ‘Did they recover everything that was taken in the original robbery?’

Holland said he didn’t know, that he’d try and find out.

‘Even if they did, you can bet he had something stashed away. Long-term villains like Mercer have always got a nest egg.’

‘So, we’re not going to find him through credit cards, anything like that.’

‘No chance.’

‘What about DVLA? How’s he getting around?’

‘Worth thinking about,’ Thorne said. ‘We could try and get a look at CCTV at all the locations where the victims were found. See if any vehicle comes up more than once.’

‘Not sure how the hell I’m supposed to get the authority for that,’ Holland said. ‘There’s a shedload of forms to fill in. Well, you know.’ He thought about it for a few seconds, the other two staring at him. ‘I’ll have a word with Yvonne,’ he said. ‘See if she’s got any bright ideas.’

‘Any ideas at all would be good,’ Thorne said. After the disappointment of his meeting with Frank Anderson, he had been hoping that getting together with Holland and Hendricks might at least help point the investigation in the right direction. So far, it felt as though the brick wall they were in danger of running into was just going up three times faster.

‘It might help if we talked about the big question,’ Holland said.

‘Which one?’ Hendricks leaned forward and stared, mock-serious. ‘Is life ultimately meaningless? Does God exist? Chocolate HobNobs or plain? They’re all equally tricky.’

‘Ignore him,’ Thorne said.

‘There’s never any sign of force,’ Holland said. ‘No defence wounds, nothing, so how’s he doing it?’ He looked at Hendricks, who was no longer seeing the funny side, and then at Thorne. ‘How the hell is he making these people kill themselves?’

Holland left before the other two and, after a quick half for the road and fifteen minutes spent arguing about whether Liam Brady had been a better midfielder than Paul Gascoigne, Thorne and Hendricks wandered out into the car park. Thorne grimaced into the drizzle as he rooted in his pockets for car keys.

‘You’re over the limit,’ Hendricks said.

‘Hardly.’

‘Why don’t you leave the car here and stay at your place?’

‘Can’t,’ Thorne said. ‘I need to get back to Helen’s. I’m in enough trouble as it is because she knows I’ve not been ill in bed all day.’ He held out his mobile phone. ‘Four missed calls.’

‘So, just tell her you were meeting me and Dave. She knows it’s important, so what’s the big deal?’

Thorne took half a step away and grunted something non-committal.

‘You
have
told her what you’re doing, haven’t you?’ Hendricks said. The look on Thorne’s face was answer enough. ‘Oh, bloody hell.’

‘What?’

Hendricks shook his head and raised his arms, exasperated, then began waving to flag down a black cab that was heading towards Chalk Farm Road. The cab slowed, did a U-turn and pulled over. Hendricks ushered Thorne towards it. ‘Here…’

Thorne yanked open the cab door. Said, ‘Tulse Hill.’

‘No, sorry, mate.’ the driver said, without turning round.

‘What?’

‘Not going south of the river this time of night.’ He began to ease away, the door still open.

‘You’ve got to.’ Holding on to the taxi’s door, Thorne stepped into the road. ‘It’s the law.’

‘Yeah, and it’s my cab.’

‘You’ve got to take me.’ Thorne’s voice was raised. ‘I’m a police officer.’ He thrust his hand inside his jacket, one pocket then another, scrabbling for his wallet.

Hendricks moved in front of him, said, ‘Leave it,’ and slammed the door. The cab pulled quickly away from the kerb.

‘Twat!’ Thorne shouted after it. He aimed a kick at a plastic bottle in the gutter. ‘
Fucking
south London.’ He dug for his car keys a second time and turned to look for his friend.

Hendricks had already begun walking towards the main road, but stopped after a few yards to turn and shout back. ‘You need to tell her, you stupid sod.’

Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t really eaten properly that day, that he’d put away three and a half pints of Guinness on top of two bags of crisps and a dodgy-looking Scotch egg, but suddenly Thorne felt every bit as sick as he’d been pretending to be.