The Dying Hours (28 page)

Thorne was away from the station just after five thirty and his radio stayed on the passenger seat next to him, spitting its staccato bursts of chatter and hiss as he negotiated rain and rush-hour traffic on his way to Deptford. He switched between the different Borough frequencies every few minutes, listened to voices he had begun to recognise. He had become used to the near-constant burble of these broadcasts from across the city. It had started to feel like a lifeline.

He was listening carefully for those same two words as usual.

Chances were, of course, that if and when they came, they would have nothing to do with what Terry Mercer was doing. There were plenty of ways to die in London and, like Thorne had told Hendricks, Mercer might be long gone by now. Still the possibility remained that as far as the process of tying up loose ends went, getting rid of George Jeffers had only been the beginning.

That morning, Thorne had left a phone message for Frank Anderson.

He told him that Jeffers was dead. Told him that though he had singularly failed to keep his head down in the toilets a few nights earlier, it might be a very good idea to do so now.

‘Why don’t you get gone and stay that way?’ Thorne had said. ‘Do everyone a favour.’

If Mercer
had
begun to work his way through a new list, it might well include those who had provided somewhere to stay while he was crossing out the names on the last one. If Frank Anderson was in danger, then the man Thorne was on his way to see was probably not safe either. A good many
ifs
, but it was certainly what Thorne was planning to tell him.

He glanced at the note stuck to the dashboard; a postcode scribbled down from the text Quinlan had sent just before the end of his shift.

A name and an address.

Hope this is what you’re looking for. Let me know if you need anything else. JQx
 

The house was on a quiet road two turnings off Deptford High Street. It was a mid-sized semi; unassuming enough, but ideally situated within easy reach of station, park and primary school, as well as being close to half a dozen top-notch locations for the buying and selling of cocaine and heroin.

Thorne doubted that Dean Leonard had specified those requirements when he’d first spoken to the estate agent.

He parked a few houses along and walked back. There were no cars parked on the large drive and no sign of life inside, but he rang the bell anyway. He looked up and noticed the security camera above the door, the red light winking.

He jogged back to the BMW to wait.

He turned the radio down a little and listened to the six o’clock news, followed by a comedy programme that was only marginally funnier. He listened to the rain on the roof and to a bluegrass compilation which lifted his mood a little. Then, as it began to get dark, he drove back to the High Street and bought himself chicken and chips, which he ate in the car.

Some time later, he called Helen and told her that he could not say exactly what time he would be getting back. Not for a while, anyway. When she asked why, he told her that he was waiting for a drug dealer to get home and she didn’t ask any more.

He hadn’t lied, which he told himself was the important thing.

It was nearly five hours since Thorne had arrived when a white Range Rover Evoque with a personalised number plate passed him, slowed and indicated to pull into the drive. There was a woman driving and a child was in the passenger seat. The rear windows were tinted.

He waited ten minutes more, then walked quickly back through the rain to the house. A security light came on as he approached the front door and he had to ring twice before it was answered.

‘Is Dean in?’ Thorne had his warrant card at the ready.

The woman was in her early thirties and glamorous; the sort Thorne guessed would change and put on full make-up to visit the supermarket. Her eyes dropped for a second to the warrant card. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He isn’t.’

‘You’d be Mrs Leonard, would you?’

She nodded. She had only opened the door six inches or so and seemed content to glare at him from around it.

Thorne said, ‘Well, hopefully you’ll be able to help me. Shouldn’t take too long.’ He smiled, thinking that actually he might have better luck with the wife anyway. ‘I was wondering if you’d had any houseguests lately?’

‘Any what?’

‘People to stay. In your house.’

She shrugged. ‘Had my in-laws here a couple of weeks ago.’

Thorne became aware of the child who might have been the one he had seen in the front seat of the car pushing at his mother, desperate to see who she was talking to. ‘Nobody else, then? Nobody Dean might have known?’

‘I said, didn’t I?’

‘Might only have been for a night or two.’

‘It’s my house, so I think I’d know.’

The child’s head suddenly appeared, waist high to his mother as he shoved himself into the gap. She tried to push him back.

‘Does he mean the old man?’ the boy said.

Thorne looked straight at the woman. ‘Yes, I mean the old man.’

The woman peered over Thorne’s shoulder, as though desperate to see her husband turning into the drive or perhaps afraid of exactly that. She said, ‘I don’t have to talk to you,’ and tried to close the door.

Thorne’s foot stopped it.

‘What’s your game?’

‘Sorry,’ Thorne said. ‘Big feet.’

‘Really?’ She narrowed her eyes as she opened the door further and stood square on to him. She was clearly happy enough to scrap, well used to dealing with the likes of Thorne. ‘Well that doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means.’

The boy moved close to her, sensing the conflict.

‘If this old man’s who I think he is,’ Thorne said, ‘he’s killed seven people since he came out of prison and now he’s started getting rid of the people who helped him out while he was doing it. People who did him favours. We found the first one the other night.’

Thorne stood on the doorstep getting wet and watched the woman’s face tighten and pale a little beneath the pancake.

‘He gave me some sweets,’ the boy said.

‘Did he?’ Thorne said. ‘That’s nice.’

‘I need to call Dean.’ The woman looked towards the road again. Her voice was a lot quieter once she’d caught her breath. ‘Warn him.’

‘Makes sense,’ Thorne said. ‘Now, have you got any idea where he went after he left you?’

‘No.’

‘He never said anything?’

‘I hardly saw him.’

‘You never heard him on the phone, anything like that?’

‘He stayed in his room.’

‘In
my
room,’ the boy said.

The woman said, ‘All right, darling,’ and tried to push her son back into the house. He took a step back and then came forward again.

‘I saw him using our phone.’

‘
What?
’

‘Did you?’ Thorne said.

‘He used our phone?’ The woman was glaring at her son. ‘When?’

‘Dad was out and you were in the garden,’ the boy said. ‘I saw him from the top of the stairs.’

Thorne leaned down towards the boy. ‘Did you hear what he said?’

The boy shook his head. Said, ‘He’s got a very quiet voice.’ His own voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Very quiet…’

Thorne stood up again and stared at the boy’s mother. She was running a hand through her hair, the other curled tight around the edge of the door, fingernails whitening. ‘You know it’s easy enough to get your phone records, don’t you?’ He smiled. ‘Yeah, of course you do. Thing is though, it’s stupidly time-consuming, filling in all the forms, getting them signed off… even getting the money agreed, because the phone companies make us pay for all that stuff now. Takes bloody ages and the simple fact is, the sooner we find this man, the quicker Dean will be really safe.’

The woman thought for ten, fifteen seconds, looked towards the road again. She said, ‘I think I’ve got a phone bill.’

The car still smelled of chips, so Thorne opened the window as soon as he got back in. Soaking, he took out his phone and stared at it, waiting for his heart rate to settle just a little before he made the calls. He knew that Dean Leonard’s wife would have been on the phone to her old man before the security light on her drive had gone out and, sitting there, he half expected to hear the squeal of tyres and see the flashy car that Mercer had mentioned to Keith Fryer come tearing around the corner.

A big Lexus maybe, or a Porsche Cayenne. A Hummer if the bloke was a
complete
knob.

DEAN0 100
 

He pushed the water out of his hair and looked at the two numbers he had copied from the phone bill the Leonards had received only a week before. The two mobile numbers that the wife had not recognised.

He wound the window back up.

Were these the numbers of people Mercer had stayed with later on, or gone to for help in some other way? Were they now taking up space on a new list of potential victims?

He called the first number, his own withheld, listened to it ring.

‘Hello…’

‘I was given this number by Terry Mercer,’ Thorne said.

‘Terry
who
?’

There was genuine confusion in the voice. Pub sounds in the background. Thorne just said, ‘Wrong number,’ and hung up.

He dialled the second number.

‘Yeah?’

‘I was given this number by Terry Mercer.’

A pause, just a small one. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘Really?’

The line went dead.

Thorne imagined the man who had just hung up on him staring at his handset, alarmed and unsure what to do. Or perhaps he knew exactly what to do and was already stabbing at the keys as he tried to call Terry Mercer himself. Thorne sat with the BMW’s windows steaming up, struggling with what his own next move would be. Obvious enough, were this in any way legitimate, but as things stood…

The story he had told Dean Leonard’s wife about phone records was true up to a point, but when it came to circumnavigating the system, there were always ways and means. If it was important enough, a trace or even a tap on any number could be authorised, but ‘sneaky-beaky’ stuff meant going higher up. Ordinarily, his first port of call would be Chief Superintendent Trevor Jesmond and that was clearly out of the question. He thought about his old DCI, Russell Brigstocke, which might be possible, but having seen the strain it had put on Dave Holland, he was wary of bringing anyone else into the loop.

There were enough people he didn’t trust already.

He told himself he was being stupid even thinking about it, getting over-excited and ahead of himself. Now, it was down to him alone. He went into his phone’s settings to ensure that his own number would be displayed when the text was received.

Terry Mercer’s tying up a few loose ends. Think you might be one of them
.

He pressed
SEND
.

He did not really expect that the man he had just spoken to would call back, not immediately anyway. But it felt good to have done something. He would keep on thinking and he would find some way to track down the owner of that phone. But whatever happened, he knew that as far as Terry Mercer went, he was closer than he had ever been.

Maybe only one call away.

Thorne started the car, switched his radio on again and began driving back towards Tulse Hill.

He held his breath for a few seconds when he turned into the road and saw Dave Holland’s car parked outside the block. Copper or not, it was rarely good news to come home and find a police officer waiting at your front door. The frozen moment of dread was not helped by the somewhat forced smile when Holland climbed out of his car and began running through the rain towards Thorne’s. The wave that was just a little too cheery when their eyes met.

Holland yanked open the passenger door and got in, shook away the rain and released a noise somewhere between a moan and a sigh.

‘What’s up, Dave?’

‘Listen.’ Holland took a deep breath and stared forward. ‘I need to come clean about something.’ He took another one. ‘I messed up, OK?’

Thorne knew what was coming. Those nagging suspicions had been spot on. He nodded. He had no right to be angry, no right to judge. He had no right to shout or smash Holland’s face down into the dashboard.

He said, ‘Let’s hear it then.’

‘When you asked me to put Mercer’s car into the ANPR?’ Holland turned to look at Thorne and shrugged. ‘I didn’t do it.’

‘I thought not,’ Thorne said. He was relieved that Holland’s confession had not been the one he was expecting. The relief quickly gave way to guilt that he had expected it at all. ‘So many of those cameras around, we’d surely have got a few hits.’

‘Yeah, we would, and we might have caught him by now, and I feel shit about it. I fucked up.’ Holland smacked a fist against his leg. ‘I chickened out.’

‘Dave—’

‘So, I’ve been working on it today.’ Holland turned further round in his seat. ‘I thought I might be able to get some hits another way. You know, see if we might at least be able to find out where he’d
been
. I ran the registration number through every system we’ve got. Borough databases, MIT, Traffic, everything… CRIMINT, HOLMES, the lot.’

‘Dave, it’s OK.’

‘I got something,’ Holland said.

Thorne saw the excitement on Holland’s face and the spark passed between them. He lifted his hand to what he thought was a raindrop crawling down past the nape of his neck. He waited.

‘PC on a night shift out of your place, a couple of weeks ago. A routine sweep of dogging sites.’

Thorne nodded. He knew what that meant, having done it himself with Christine Treasure when they were bored. Something to do when there was nothing important happening. Half an hour spent putting the wind up a pervert or two.

‘There’s a car park behind the industrial estate in Addington,’ Holland said. ‘Well known for it apparently.’

‘I know it.’

‘So, this PC approaches two men in a red Vauxhall Astra…
our
Vauxhall Astra. Nothing to get excited about, so he has a word, sends the pair of them on their way. Does the sensible thing and makes a note of the registration numbers, the Astra
and
the other bloke’s car on the other side of the car park.’

‘What kind of car?’

Holland told Thorne the colour, make and model.

‘My first thought was it must have been Jeffers, right? Meeting up so Mercer could get addresses off him, photos or whatever. Then I remembered that Yvonne had found a Travelcard, when she was looking through the clothes Jeffers left at that flat, so maybe he didn’t even have a car.’ He looked at Thorne. ‘Long story short, I traced it and it’s… interesting.’

Thorne tried to swallow but it was tricky. ‘Interesting’ was not the word he would have chosen himself.

‘Guess who that car belongs to,’ Holland said. ‘Who was meeting up with Terry Mercer.’

But Thorne did not need telling. He had recognised the car as soon as Holland had described it.

It was one he had seen several times before.

Now, Thorne knew exactly where Neil Hackett had been getting his information.