‘Three of your Anthony Garveys?’
‘My morning so far.’
‘Got to be done.’
‘Oh, I know,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’m loving every vital y important minute of it. I’ve been eliminating people from my enquiries like there’s no tomorrow. Putting lines through their names
and
ticking them off, just to be on the safe side, you know? Eliminating al day long. I am . . . the
Eliminator
!’
Kitson sipped her drink. ‘Fine, but I didn’t hear you coming up with any bright ideas this morning.’
Thorne finished ripping up the beer-mat and nudged the pieces into a nice, neat pile. He had nothing much to say and even if he had, seeing Russel Brigstocke turn from the bar and wave at them, he would probably have kept it to himself. Using basic mime techniques, he and Kitson were able to transmit their desire for more drinks, and once Brigstocke had bought them, he joined them at the table.
‘Have you already ordered?’
Two nods.
Brigstocke took a long drink of sparkling water and sat back. ‘I just lost fifteen minutes of my lunch-hour thanks to Debbie Dozy-Bol ocks. ’
‘Stil being difficult?’ Kitson asked.
‘You know an FLO named Adam Strang?’
Thorne nodded, remembering the Scotsman from the Macken crime scene.
‘Wel , he spent most of this morning trying to talk sense into her, but she’s not having any of it. She’s just point-blank refusing to go anywhere. ’
‘How much has she been told?’
‘Not everything, obviously. Enough, though, or at least it should be.’
‘What are the other options?’ Kitson asked.
Brigstocke shook his head, like he was sick of thinking about it. ‘I’m reluctant to stick a car outside twenty-four hours a day just because she’s being stupid.’
‘Can we instal a panic button?’
‘Not enough,’ Thorne said. ‘I don’t think Emily Walker or Greg Macken would have had time to push one.’
‘So, what else can we do?’ Brigstocke asked. ‘Arrest her?’
Kitson flicked a bright red fingernail against the edge of her glass. ‘That shouldn’t take too long, looking at her record.’
A waitress arrived with the food: lamb casserole for Thorne and fish pie for Kitson. Brigstocke stared down unenthusiastical y at the bowl of pasta he was given, then pointed at Thorne’s plate.
‘I fancied that, but
somebody
had just ordered the last one.’
‘The quick and the dead,’ Thorne said.
They ate for a minute or so without talking, until Thorne said, ‘Why aren’t we involving the press with this?’
Brigstocke swal owed quickly. ‘I thought we went through this earlier on.’ He looked to Kitson for validation.
She nodded. ‘Keeping quiet about the serial thing.’
‘Right,’ Brigstocke said.
‘I’m not talking about that,’ Thorne said. ‘Why aren’t we getting photos of Dowd and the others in the papers, on the box, whatever?
We
can get something out of
them
for a change.’
This time Brigstocke took his time swal owing and answered quietly. ‘That’s . . . tricky.’ He looked around. Many of the team were eating at nearby tables.
Thorne pushed his plate aside and leaned closer to Brigstocke, just as one of the trainee detectives chose that moment to come over and spend five minutes pumping al his loose change into the fruit machine. There was nothing more said about the case until he had finished. Thorne made a comment about the machine being tight and watched the trainee walk away. Then turned back to Brigstocke.
‘Tricky, you said?’
‘I was talking to Jesmond,’ Brigstocke said.
Thorne winced theatrical y at the mention of the superintendent’s name. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Somebody has to. Anyway, there appears to be a strong feeling that using the press in the way you’re suggesting might not be a good idea.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it may alert the kil er to the fact that we’re on to him.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘They think it might be, if we want to catch him.’
‘So, we want to catch him more than we want to protect the people he’s trying to kil ?’
Brigstocke sighed. ‘Listen, I
know
.’
‘That’s mental,’ Thorne said. ‘He must already know we’re on to him. He left the bits of X-ray, for Christ’s sake. He wants us to put it al together.’
‘I’m just letting you know what I was told, al right?’
‘On top of which, I can’t see this bloke just packing his bags and buggering off because he sees a few photos in the paper.’
‘Point taken.’
‘I don’t think he’s the type to stop.’
‘Look, there’s no point getting arsy with me. I’m just tel ing you, there’s a . . . tension, between the different . . . priorities.’
‘Surely the first priority has to be protecting the potential victims?’ Kitson said.
‘Tel that to Debbie Mitchel .’ Brigstocke turned to Thorne. ‘In fact, you can tel the superintendent, seeing as you feel so strongly about it. They’re talking about putting a critical incident panel together.’
‘I’d rather stick needles in my eyes,’ Thorne said. He had sat on such a panel a couple of times before, struggling to look interested while diplomats in uniform droned on about media strategy, and had sworn that he would never do so again.
‘Right, in which case you should get off your high horse and stop giving me grief.’ Brigstocke took one last mouthful of pasta and pushed back his chair. ‘Fair enough?’
Neither Thorne nor Kitson ate too much more after Brigstocke had left and let the waitress take away the plates the next time she was passing.
‘High horse?’
‘High-ish,’ Kitson said.
‘Come on, I’m right though, aren’t I?’
‘I don’t think he disagrees with you, but there’s not a great deal he can do about it. Rock and a hard place, al that.’
There was stil fifteen minutes before either of them was due back at Becke House. Thorne drained his glass. ‘So, do you real y fancy spending the rest of the afternoon ringing up people you know haven’t kil ed anyone and asking them if they’ve kil ed anyone?’
‘You final y had a bright idea?’
‘What you said about arresting Debbie Mitchel .’
‘I was only half joking.’
‘Let’s take a drive over there. You never know, if we push it, we might get her to assault one of us.’
Kitson took a compact from her handbag and reapplied her lipstick. ‘I’l toss you for it in the car,’ she said.
SIXTEEN
Totteridge was a leafy north London suburb with a bona fide vil age at its heart, where men who owned or played for footbal clubs lived with their suspiciously expressionless wives. A few minutes away towards Barnet, however, you would find yourself in a noticeably less wel -heeled area just shy of the Great North Road, where most of the footbal ers were the sort who kicked lumps out of one another on Sunday mornings, smoking in the centre circle at half time and heading straight for a fry-up at the final whistle.
Debbie Mitchel lived on the top floor of a three-storey block on the Dol is Park Estate, a sprawl of sixties and seventies mixed-tenure housing in the shadow of Barnet FC’s ground.
From the window of the smal , smoke-fil ed living room, Thorne could just make out the floodlights of Underhil , the corner of the stadium’s main stand.
‘It must get pretty busy on match days,’ Kitson said.
‘Hang on a minute, this is Barnet we’re talking about,’ Thorne said. ‘They’d probably think the four of us was a pretty decent crowd.’
Only Kitson smiled as Thorne turned back to the window. Looking the other way, he could see the main road, the green belt rol ing away beyond a petrol station and an enormous branch of Carpet Express.
‘
Vision
Express I can just about understand,’ he said, pointing. ‘Even
Shoe
Express, at a push. You know, you lose a shoe, you’re late for a party, whatever. But who could possibly need a carpet . . .
really fast
?’
‘What’s he on about?’
‘I mean, in how much of a hurry does someone have to be?’
One of the two women sitting close together on the sofa nodded towards Thorne, then turned to address Kitson who was perched on the edge of a dining chair near the door. ‘I get it,’
she said. ‘They’ve not got anywhere with the sensitive ones, or the ones who marched in here shouting the odds, so now they’ve sent the copper who thinks he’s a bloody comedian.’
Nina Col ins was a good few years older than Debbie Mitchel , early forties, probably, and she had done most of the talking since Thorne and Kitson had arrived. She had opened the door, told them she was a friend of Debbie, her
best
friend, and that Debbie was inside, trying to get some rest and keep Jason calm. That she was frazzled, and who the hel wouldn’t be, with coppers ringing up every ten minutes tel ing her she had to get out of her home?
‘I suppose you’ve come to have another bash,’ she’d said, blowing cigarette smoke at them, before turning and walking back inside.
In the living room, Thorne turned from the window again and shrugged. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘quite a few people tel me I’m pretty funny.’
Col ins stubbed out her cigarette. ‘They’re wrong,’ she said.
Thorne dragged a footstool across and sat down on it in front of the television. He looked at the two women. Col ins was short and large-breasted, with black hair tousled into spikes, red at the tips when it caught the light. She wore a tight, striped rugby shirt that showed off her chest and there was a softness in her face, at odds with the body language and the brittle, Benson & Hedges voice. (Later, when there were new cases to worry about, Thorne would confess to Kitson, after a couple of pints, that he’d secretly quite fancied Nina Col ins.)
‘He’s got a point,’ the woman next to Col ins said. ‘It is a bloody stupid name. The carpets are seriously cheap, though, I’l give them that.’
Debbie Mitchel was tal er and skinnier than her friend. Her hair was long and dirty-blond, cut very straight on either side of a face that was drawn and blotchy, the foundation failing to hide an angry cluster of whiteheads around one nostril. She was barefoot, with her legs pul ed up beneath her and one arm trailing over the edge of the sofa, in almost permanent contact with the boy playing on the carpet at her side.
‘He seems happy,’ Kitson said.
Col ins turned as though she’d forgotten Kitson was there. ‘He
is
happy. He’s always happiest when he’s with his mum.’
‘Does he have any kind of . . . carer?’
‘Just me,’ Mitchel said. ‘There’s just us.’
Jason was tal for his age - eight, according to his mother’s file - and the pyjamas he was wearing looked a year or two too smal for him. He pushed a large plastic train - the sort a slightly younger child might ride around on - up and down in a straight line along the side of the sofa. It was obviously a game he played a lot. There were track marks worn into the brown carpet.
‘What about school?’ Thorne asked.
‘He goes to a special place three days a week,’ Mitchel said. ‘Up in Hatfield. I have to stay with him, though, because he screams the place down if I’m not there.’
Col ins held up two fingers. ‘
Twice
social services have taken Jason away from her and every time it’s been a nightmare for him.’ Mitchel shook her head, eyes down, as though she didn’t want her friend to continue, but Col ins raised her hand again, determined to have her say. ‘Supposed to be for his own good, being separated from his mum, and of course he bloody hates it.’ She reached across and squeezed Mitchel ’s hand. ‘Every time she’s cleaned herself up and sorted her life out, though, haven’t you, darling?’
‘We’re fine now,’ Mitchel said.
‘Three bloody buses and a train to get out to Hatfield,’ Col ins said. She shook her head, disgusted. ‘You’d think the council would lay on some sort of transport, wouldn’t you? But they’re too busy funding lesbian play centres and that sort of shit.’
‘We don’t mind,’ Mitchel said. ‘It’s always an adventure, providing the weather’s OK.’ She looked round at Kitson. ‘He doesn’t get bored like other kids, you know?’
‘Is it autism?’ Kitson asked.
Mitchel shrugged. ‘They don’t think so. I don’t think they know what it is, tel you the truth, and we’ve given up worrying about it. Whatever it is, nobody can do anything about it, so we just get on with things.’
Thorne watched as the boy pushed his train back and forth, his chin quivering as he made barely audible ‘chuffing’ noises. He had the same wide blue eyes as his mother, though his lips were ful er, redder. When he smiled, which for no reason that was obvious he did every minute or so, his front teeth slid down over his bottom lip and he moved them quickly from side to side. There was no way of knowing if Debbie Mitchel did the same thing, as Thorne had yet to see her smile.
‘How much does he understand?’ Thorne asked.
Nina Col ins was lighting up again. ‘Bloody hel , are you pair coppers or social workers?’
‘I just don’t want to upset him,’ Thorne said. ‘When we get started.’
Mitchel shook her head, like it was OK, but her hand drifted across to her son’s head, moved through his hair.
‘You going to tel us about this man again?’ Col ins said.
Thorne nodded. ‘What have they told you so far, the sensitive coppers and the shouty ones?’
Mitchel took a deep breath. ‘They talked about this weirdo who might want to hurt me because of what happened to my mum.’
Thorne nodded again. ‘Right, and they probably said stuff like, “We have reason to believe that you might be in danger.”’
‘Something like that.’
‘Wel , here’s the thing. There’s no
might
about it, OK? Not if you stay where you are.’
Kitson moved her chair forward. ‘You mustn’t underestimate the man we’re talking about here, Debbie.’
‘She’s had weirdos like this floating around al her life,’ Col ins said. ‘Wanting to know about what happened to her mum, getting some cheap thril out of it or something.’
‘This particular weirdo has already kil ed four people, Debbie,’ Thorne said. ‘Four people whose mothers died the same way yours did.’
Col ins’ hand was in her hair, pul ing at the spikes. ‘They never said
four
. . .’