The Dying Hours (27 page)

Hendricks changed out of his scrubs and walked back to the office he shared with three other pathologists at Hornsey mortuary. He made a quick call and spent a few minutes responding to emails. He put the kettle on for coffee. He looked up at the Arsenal Legends calendar above his desk, then checked his phone to see if there were any messages from the man he’d swapped numbers with in a bar the previous weekend.

He hadn’t fancied him that much anyway.

He tried to forget the face of the girl whose body he had just finished so carefully taking apart and crudely stitching up again. The blackened tattoo of track marks on arms, legs, belly,
tongue
. The small, shrivelled heart that had eventually become too diseased to beat.

Half an hour until the next one and a couple more before the end of the day.

‘You got a minute, Phil?’

Hendricks had been grateful for the knock on the door and surprised to find Dave Holland on the other side of it. He offered him coffee and Holland said he was fine, that he hadn’t got long. He dragged one of his colleagues’ chairs across and told Holland to make himself at home.

‘Everything OK?’

‘Well, I’m a bit all over the place to tell you the truth.’

‘What?’

‘Thorne.’

Hendricks laughed, but Holland seemed in no mood to see the funny side of anything.

‘I thought it was all over,’ he said. ‘The Mercer thing.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Hendricks said. ‘He’s alive… no, he’s dead… no, he’s alive again.’

Holland picked at a loose thread on his tie. ‘I mean once they find out who Mallen really is and they ID the body in the car, hopefully they’ll be able to get it sorted, but in the meantime…
he’s
still going to be chasing about like a one-man Murder Squad. Well, not one man, that’s the bloody point, isn’t it? One man and his stupid mates.’

‘Relax, Dave,’ Hendricks said. ‘I’ve been through all this with him and he’s done with it.’

Holland looked up. ‘You reckon?’

A trolley clattered past outside; two mortuary assistants chatting as they passed the door.

‘Why are you talking to me about this?’

Now, there was the thinnest of smiles. ‘If I tell Sophie any of it she’ll tear me a new one.’

‘Kitson?’

‘Yeah, well… she’s sort of in the same place I am.’

‘Which is where, exactly?’

‘I’ve still got twenty-five years ahead of me in this job,’ Holland said. ‘More, maybe. I’ve got a kid and I want to have another one and… I mean, it’s all right for
him
, isn’t it? What’s he got to lose?’ He glanced up at Hendricks’ calendar. ‘He’s like some star player who everybody thinks is washed up, and now he’s dreaming about coming off the bench and scoring the winner in the last minute.’

‘Spurs player though,’ Hendricks said. ‘Never Arsenal.’

‘I’m serious, Phil. There’s cases I’ve neglected because of this, the cases I’m being paid to work on. The ones I’m not going to get chucked off the force for working on.’

Hendricks sighed. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, mate. It’s really him you should be—’

‘I spoke to that bloke whose mother drowned herself, didn’t I?’ Holland waited for a nod of acknowledgement, began counting off on his fingers. ‘I found out who Terry Mercer was, went through the files, like he asked me. I looked through all the trial records, gave him his list of potential victims. I told him when there were new ones, names and addresses, I did
all
that. I traced Mercer’s car and checked the CCTV footage when he asked me to, but then he asked me to go into the ANPR system… into
another
system, and that just seemed like a step too far. Like we’d finally reached the point where he really didn’t give a monkey’s how much trouble anyone got themselves into for him.’ He shook his head. ‘I had to draw a line somewhere, you know? I mean… don’t you reckon?’

Hendricks stared at Holland, watched him sit back and close his eyes and swear under his breath. The jaw muscles were tensing beneath his skin. He looked wretched.

‘What have you done, Dave?’

Thorne’s first morning back on early shift was relatively uneventful.

The previous night’s drunk and disorderlies were released and the burglaries followed up. A supermarket trolley was removed from the front window of a shoe shop. The manager of Boots opened up to discover that every drug on the premises had been stolen in the early hours and a car that had escaped pursuit across half the borough was found burned out behind the leisure centre. A missing girl was located and both her parents arrested. A woman attacked after refusing to make her husband something to eat at midnight was off the critical list, while an RTA that had resulted in serious injury due to the actions of the coked-up teenage girl behind the wheel was now being treated as a manslaughter enquiry as the victim had died overnight.

Not
remotely
uneventful, Thorne thought, for any of those involved.

He spent an hour writing reports, then he and Christine Treasure took a car out.

As was usually the case on a routine patrol, if there were no incidents that required their attendance they called in at several of the other stations in the borough. Tea at one place or a sandwich mid-shift; five minutes for a fag and a catch-up with colleagues at another.

Catford, Sydenham, Brockley, Deptford.

At each station, Thorne contrived to find a few minutes alone with someone he could chat to about the local drug dealers. He took care to slip it casually into conversation; just wanting to know, while he remembered, which of them they might have had dealings with. He mentioned a name he’d heard in passing, just to see if it rang any bells.

Nobody at any of the stations knew anything about a drug dealer called Dean. Not one of the four different officers he talked to during a longer than normal stop-off at Deptford. A couple offered to ask around for him, but Thorne assured them it wasn’t important.

‘Might be something, probably bugger all,’ he said.

Driving back to Lewisham for lunch, Christine Treasure said, ‘How come you’ve got such a spring in your step today?’

‘News to me,’ Thorne said.

She grinned. ‘Saturday night leg-over was it?’

‘A gentleman never tells.’

As it happened, he and Helen had done nothing more energetic the previous evening than answer the door to the pizza delivery man and point the TV remote, and later on Alfie had been the one sweating and wriggling in bed. Thorne still had very fond and vivid memories of the night before that, though, despite the slapstick with his injured hand.

Treasure reached to poke him in the arm. ‘Come on then.’

‘Just enjoying my job,’ Thorne said.

Treasure grinned even more.

Walking out of the rain into the station a few minutes later, Thorne was approached by PC Nina Woodley. She handed Thorne a tatty-looking coloured envelope with his name scribbled on the front.

‘I ran into that kid, 2-Tone,’ she said. ‘The one that took a pop at you a couple of weeks back. He said to give you that.’

Thorne glanced at Treasure and saw that she was clearly every bit as desperate as Woodley to know what the envelope contained. He hadn’t said anything about making the bail order disappear and would tell her the same thing he’d told the custody sergeant if she ever asked. He wandered away towards his office, leaving Treasure and Woodley nattering, then opened the envelope and pulled out a scrap of paper torn from a spiral-bound notepad.

Dennison had clearly heard the good news from his solicitor.

The station canteen had long since ceased to be somewhere officers went to queue up for reheated shepherd’s pie and jam roly-poly. These days the shutters at the serving hatch were down more often than not and officers and civilian staff only went in to buy snacks or drinks from the vending machines. At mealtimes, they went in to watch the TV in the corner and eat the food they’d brought in from home or from one of the shops outside.

Thorne bought himself a burger in the shopping precinct, walked back to the station with it and found himself a table in the corner.

It was twenty minutes before the woman he was hoping to see walked in.

He watched her sit down and take a can of Diet Coke and a Tupperware container from a plastic bag. He waited until she’d peeled the lid off and dug a fork in once or twice before he wandered across and asked if he could join her.

She looked up, reddened. Said, ‘Yeah, course.’

Jenny Quinlan was a young trainee detective constable with CID. Thorne had spoken to her once or twice, before running into her at a crime scene in Forest Hill a few months earlier. What had appeared to be a domestic murder had become something rather more headline-worthy, when it emerged that the victim had been responsible for abducting and killing two teenage girls.

Something had bothered Thorne about that case at the time. Things that had refused to add up. He had kept his concerns to himself though; still only a week or two back in uniform and wary of rocking the boat.

He thought about what he’d spent the last few weeks doing. That early reticence had vanished quickly enough.

He asked Quinlan what she was eating. She showed him what was in her lunchbox and moaned about having to eat salad to keep her weight down. He told her she’d have no need to eat rabbit food if she came back to uniform, that nine hours a day lugging a stone of Met vest and belt kit around was the best diet he could think of. She laughed and said the problem was the 20 per cent discount police officers got from Nando’s and Domino’s Pizza.

‘Can’t resist cake or a bargain,’ she said. ‘That’s my trouble.’

They chatted for a few more minutes about nothing in particular. It was enough for Thorne to establish that she was still a trainee. Still eager to please.

‘So how are you finding it?’ he asked.

‘It’s good,’ she said. She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. In a grey skirt and a white blouse that was perhaps a little small for her, she was doing her best to look confident and on top of her game, but something suggested that she did a fair amount of bluffing.

Thorne puffed out his cheeks. ‘Not all the time.’

‘No. Not all the time.’ She took another forkful of salad. ‘Some of the people, the politics.’

‘You get past that,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s the other stuff. The stuff that makes you want to do the job in the first place. It’s having to give up thinking you can make a difference.’

‘Yeah.’ She put her fork down, reddening again. ‘Stupid, right?’

‘Not stupid, but you need to accept that you probably won’t.’ He shrugged. ‘The best you can do is help. Clean up. There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way. It’s a good enough reason to get up every day.’

‘So, how do you deal with it?’ Quinlan asked. ‘You just become immune?’

‘You… get used to it, which isn’t the same thing. Not completely, though, and you shouldn’t.’ Thorne looked across at some of the men and women at other tables. Talking, laughing; others that needed time alone for one reason or another. ‘The day you stop feeling disgusted or angry or afraid, the day when you stop feeling like you want to hurt somebody, or hold them. That’s the day you need to be honest with yourself and admit that you’re probably in the wrong job.’ He smiled. ‘Probably…’

Quinlan nodded, thinking about it. She ate another mouthful, pulled a face and took a sip from her can. ‘So, how are
you
finding it?’ She looked at him. ‘You were a DI with the Murder Squad, weren’t you?’

Of course, she knew, and Thorne was counting on the fact; counting on the kudos it might give him in the eyes of an ambitious trainee.

‘Yes, I
was
…’ He could see that she was waiting for him to explain why he was sitting there in uniform. Instead he lowered his voice and leaned closer. Said, ‘I was wondering if you might be able to help me with something.’

She looked pleased, though not particularly surprised. He had finished his lunch by the time he’d come over after all, and he’d made it clear enough that he wasn’t flirting with her. Not obviously, at any rate.

She said, ‘Sure, if I can.’

Thorne told her that he was keen to talk to a particular drug dealer, but that he didn’t have enough information. He suggested that she might know someone who could let him have the details he needed. He said that he wanted it done quietly, that he needed to be sure about a few things before he took it higher up and that he’d heard she might be the right person to help.

‘Word gets about,’ he said.

She tried not to look too thrilled and thought about it while she pushed the contents of her Tupperware container around. Then she nodded. ‘I can think of a couple of people I might be able to talk to. There’s a lad on Drug Enforcement I’m pretty matey with.’

He thanked her, said, ‘No problem if you can’t.’

Thorne scribbled down his mobile number on a piece of paper Quinlan dug from her bag and the twinge of guilt at using her so blatantly was shunted aside by the sobering realisation that he was doing much the same as the man he was after. Mercer had called in favours or demanded them; for somewhere to stay, for help tracing his victims, for a car. Thorne wondered why so many people were doing favours for
him
. He couldn’t believe that any of them were afraid of him and he was damned sure it wasn’t respect. Was he just a… bully?

Thorne surreptitiously checked his watch. He wanted to go, but thought he should probably wait until Quinlan had finished eating. After a few more mouthfuls she pushed the container away.

‘I can’t eat any more of that,’ she said. She looked at the empty Styrofoam box in front of Thorne. ‘Might have to dash across to your burger place.’

Thorne patted his Met vest. ‘You can borrow this if you like.’

She pulled a face. ‘Not with this skirt.’

‘I don’t think it suits me either,’ Thorne said.

Mercer doesn’t mind the rain.

If he was to tell anyone that, they’d presume it was because it’s been so long since he was out in it. Felt the raindrops on his face, whatever. Same with snow, same with bloody sunshine come to that, but the fact is it’s just because it’s never really bothered him. Obviously there were things he missed when he was inside, but you can’t just come out and start devouring those experiences like a madman. The food, the booze, the women. Some do, of course, a few go well over the top, but they’re usually the ones who find themselves back behind bars before they’ve had a chance to sober up.

You need to ease back into it.

It
is
nice to be out and about though. It would hardly be natural if wide open spaces weren’t a bit more attractive to him than poky rooms, or if time on his own wasn’t more precious than being jammed up close to other people. No point being stupid, time inside does change a person.

For now, he’s happy enough walking and getting wet. He’s had things to do of course, which is probably another reason he hasn’t gone bonkers as far as all that other stuff goes. Arrangements to make, and there’s still a few bits and bobs that need attending to if he’s going to be around long enough to enjoy a bit of wine, women and song. Maybe even meet someone one day, who knows.

It had been worth a try, that business with the car and Jeffers. The thief takers are clearly a bit brighter than they were in his day, plus there’s all that new technology,
CSI
stuff, which is why he’s been so cautious about fingerprints and what have you up to now. Probably no need to be quite as careful any more though. He knows that if they’ve worked out who was dangling from that banister they’ll be looking for him by now.

Course, he knows there’s been at least one person on to him for a while.

A Woodentop, too, of all things. One with as much of a point to prove as he does, by the sounds of it. A man with a mission.

In the end, he’d decided against going into that church. Worked out that when it comes to the ‘big’ questions, worrying about it too much is only going to do your head in, and anyway, there were probably just as many answers in the bottom of a pint pot. He’ll find out what comes afterwards when it’s time.

For now, he’s still got a life to live.

Mercer walks down the hill and stops opposite a nice terraced house near the park. Even from here, he can hear the odd squeal of excitement coming from inside.

He puts his hood up and waits.

He doesn’t mind the rain, but it’s a pain in the arse trying to keep the camera dry.