Been made to look an idiot.
‘Are you going to catch this bloke?’
Dowd had asked, looking him in the eye, right where Thorne was standing. He turned to the female detective, who was standing behind them, talking quietly to one of her junior officers. ‘We need a description out there now,’ he said.
She stepped towards him. ‘It’s done.’
‘Every car in the area, right?’
‘Like I said—’
‘House-to-house as wel , nearest half a dozen streets.’ He glanced back into the room. ‘Bastard’l be covered in blood, so he can’t have got far without somebody seeing him.’
‘We think he took DS Spibey’s jacket,’ the woman said. ‘We can’t find it, anyway.’ She glanced back towards her col eague, looking for a little moral support before continuing.
‘There’s no sign of his car, either. I checked and Spibey definitely drove in, so . . .’
Thorne stared at her.
‘We have to assume our suspect’s taken it.’
‘What about a briefcase?’
It was the woman’s turn to stare.
‘Briefcase, bag, whatever,’ Thorne said. ‘Is Spibey’s stuff missing?’
‘I’ve not seen anything.’
‘Look. For. It.’
She turned and headed back down the stairs, but Thorne knew it was pointleess. He began shouting as he lurched forward and fol owed her. At anyone who would listen. At himself.
‘The kil er is almost certainly now in possession of sensitive case-notes and documents.’ His voice echoed as he got close to the lobby. ‘Details of surveil ance and protection operations. Names and numbers . . .’ He froze for a second and almost stumbled, used the momentum to take the remaining stairs two at a time.
Debbie Mitchel ’s name.
The address of Nina Col ins’ flat.
Coming out on to the street, he watched a patrol car pul up and saw two uniformed officers step out. He recognised their faces and felt a spasm in his gut. What had Nina Col ins cal ed them? Starsky and Hutch . . .
‘Why the hel aren’t you in Barnet?’
The older one leaned back against the car, peered past Thorne at the comings and goings. ‘We were told to leave and get over here.’
His col eague chipped in: ‘Yeah, he said it had al kicked off.’
‘Who did?’ Thorne asked.
‘Detective Sergeant Spibey.’
It felt like a punch, and Thorne was stil reeling from it as he ran towards the marked BMW that was moving slowly towards him, its driver searching for a parking space. Thorne furiously signal ed to the driver that he should turn the car around fast. He blinked to erase the picture in his head as he reached for his radio, shouting about blues and twos.
Debbie Mitchel ’s face peering through a plastic bag.
FORTY
The BMW raced through traffic in Camden and Kentish Town, then screamed north along the Archway Road. The thoughts were flying equal y frantical y around Thorne’s head as he braced himself against the dashboard, trying to keep his breathing under control and shouting obscenities at any vehicle that did not get out of their way quickly enough.
Obscenities meant, in truth, for the man who had run rings round him.
The body found in the canal must have been that of the real Andrew Dowd. It would be easy enough to get a DNA sample and make a positive ID. The conversation Thorne would soon be having with Dowd’s wife would be more difficult. He half expected the woman to sue them for incompetence.
It would be a difficult case to defend.
‘Hang on.’
Thorne gritted his teeth, trying to look unafraid as the car accelerated through a red light and swerved hard into a bus lane. He glanced across to see the speedometer’s needle touching seventy-five.
‘Ten minutes away, tops,’ the driver said.
He remembered what Hendricks had said about the victim being kil ed elsewhere, then dumped. It was a fair assumption that Walsh - or Garvey, as he now cal ed himself - had fol owed Dowd to Cumbria and kil ed him there, then travel ed back to London to dispose of the body before heading up to Kendal again and handing himself in to the local police.
As monsters went, this one was bril iant.
The trick had been in
not
trying to make himself look like Dowd, in so radical y changing the appearance of the man whose identity he had stolen. The shaved head had convinced everyone they were looking at a man who had been through a major breakdown and Garvey had used every ounce of knowledge he had gained about Andrew and Sarah Dowd’s private life to keep the wife out of the picture. Washing their cars. Watching and waiting for his chance, tucking away the information he would use when the time came. The troubled marriage gave him the perfect excuse once he’d ‘become’ Dowd to avoid any confrontation with the one person who would know he was not who he claimed to be.
As a confidence trick, it was the equivalent of a shoplifter pushing a double bed out through the doors of a department store.
With two people on his list that Anthony Garvey could not track down, he had let the police do the work for him. He had smuggled himself inside the investigation. Fowler had been there on a plate, holed up in the room next door. A sitting duck. It was one policeman’s weakness for gambling, the ease with which he had abandoned procedure that had provided Garvey with the opportunity he had been waiting for, the information he needed.
Had led him to the last victim on his list.
Despite the speed, the noise, the adrenaline fizzing through him, Thorne stil tensed when his phone rang. As the car tore down into Finchley, he spent half a minute shouting above the siren to Dave Hol and, asking him to check the ETAs of the other units he had ordered to Nina Col ins’ flat, hoping that they might get there quicker than he could.
‘We’l get him,’ Hol and said.
The siren screamed again before Thorne could think of anything to say, so he just hung up. He was tucking the phone back into his pocket when he had the idea.
Garvey had taken Spibey’s jacket and briefcase, his paperwork, the ID he had used when talking to the officers outside Col ins’ flat. So, why not . . . ?
He pul ed his phone out again, searched through the memory and dial ed the number he had cal ed first thing that morning, the last time he had spoken to Brian Spibey.
The mobile rang three times, four, then it was answered.
‘You took your time, Mr Thorne.’
Thorne needed a moment to catch his breath. The casual tone, the lightness in the man’s voice, sent a shiver through his chest and shoulders. ‘Is she alive?’
‘You might need to be a little more specific.’
‘Look, I know what this is al about, Simon, and we need to talk about it.’
‘My name’s Anthony.’
‘Sorry . . . Anthony. We need to talk about what happened to your father. I think we can get the case looked at again.’ It was nonsense, but Thorne could think of no other way to reach the man. He winced at Garvey’s reaction, the playful mockery in his voice, which made it clear that he thought it was nonsense, too.
‘
Really?
You’d do that for me? After al these bodies?’
Thorne’s mouth went dry.
These
bodies, not
those
. Was Garvey looking down at the body of Debbie Mitchel even as they were talking?
‘Are you stil there?’
‘I’m stil here,’ Thorne said.
‘I suppose you’re tracing this.’
‘No.’
‘Using cel -site location or whatever.’
‘No, real y.’ There would not have been time, and there was no point when Thorne knew precisely where Garvey was.
‘It’s a lot more high-tech these days than when they were blundering around trying to catch my father.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Not that you haven’t been doing a fair bit of blundering yourself.’
‘I can’t argue with that,’ Thorne said. ‘But you’ve been pretty clever.’
‘Right. The “we can talk about this” approach didn’t work, so now you’re trying to flatter me.’ Garvey sighed. ‘You’re very predictable.’
‘I’m just trying to save a woman’s life.’
‘You know, it’s awful y noisy where you are,’ Garvey said. ‘Wailing sirens and what have you.’
‘Tel me if Debbie’s alive—’
‘I’ve got enough of a headache as it is.’
‘Just get out of there,’ Thorne said. ‘If she’s stil alive, just run. OK? I don’t care.’
‘Makes me think I should get a move on.’
‘Anthony—’
The line went dead.
Thorne turned to look at the driver, who had not taken his eyes off the road for a moment. At the speed they were travel ing, Thorne was more than grateful, but he knew that the man had been listening.
‘Five minutes,’ the driver said.
Thorne could only close his eyes and clench his fists, and hope that Debbie Mitchel had that long.
FORTY-ONE
She took another step towards the kitchen, one eye on the doorway that led out into the hal , where the man was stil on the phone.
‘I need to take this,’ he’d said, looking down at the phone’s smal screen and smiling before answering. ‘You took your time, Mr Thorne.’ He’d taken a step or two towards the door then, looking at her and shaking his head as if to say, ‘What a pain in the arse. Just give me a minute.’
Debbie had nodded her understanding and signal ed to him that she’d make some tea, biting her lip and trying not to let her face give anything away until he stepped out into the hal and lowered his voice.
You took your time, Mr Thorne
. . .
It wasn’t what he’d said that was making her insides churn and slop, though she knew that was no way for a detective to talk to his col eague. It was what she’d seen as he’d raised himself up from her side a minute or two earlier. The sudden flash of red where his jacket had fal en open, the slash and spatter of it.
The bloodstain on his shirt.
She could hear him muttering now, a laugh in his voice as she stood on the threshold to the kitchen and beckoned Jason to her. He was stil engrossed in his colouring book.
She hissed his name. Got no response.
She cal ed him again, raising her voice a little. When Jason turned his head towards her, she looked to the sitting-room door to make sure she had not been overheard.
She counted to three and took a deep breath, fighting back tears and a desperate need to urinate. ‘Come with Mummy, Jason . . .’
He nodded at her.
‘Please, chicken.’
Jason got up slowly, then, for an agonisingly long few seconds, stood staring at the wal , as though he’d forgotten what he was meant to be doing. Debbie held out her hand and waved. She clicked her tongue and made ‘puff-puff’ noises until, with a spin and a smile, her son was bounding across the carpet towards her.
She almost dragged him into the kitchen and quietly pushed the door closed. She could see straight away that he was agitated, picking up on her terror. But there was no time to calm him.
She eased up the volume on the radio, then bent down to whisper in Jason’s ear.
‘Let’s go blow at the trains,’ she said.
He beamed and grabbed at her, squeezed away the trembling in her free hand, while the other gently pushed down on the handle of the back door.
FORTY-TWO
Brigstocke had cal ed no more than a minute or so after Thorne had finished talking to Garvey. The DCI had arrived at Nina Col ins’ flat with a team of detectives from Barnet station and a unit from CO19 that had been stood down from the scene in Euston and had left before Thorne had.
‘How far away are you?’
‘Minutes.’
‘What do you think, Tom?’
Though nominal y his senior officer, Brigstocke sounded keen to get Thorne’s feedback. Thorne was both gratified and appal ed by the courtesy, if that’s what it was.
‘I think you should go in,’ he said.
‘Shouldn’t we hang back a bit?’ Brigstocke asked. ‘Assess things, I mean? He could wel be armed.’
‘There’s no reason to think he’s got anything,’ Thorne said. ‘But it doesn’t matter either way. He’l just use whatever he can find. He used a mug-tree back there, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Right.’
‘Put the fucking door in, Russel . Don’t give him the chance.’
So, for the second time in less than an hour, Thorne arrived at a crime scene and could do no more than search the faces of those who had beaten him to it for some clue as to how things stood.
If he was too late to change anything.
This time, pul ing up hard outside Nina Col ins’ flat, the prevalent expression was one of bemusement and Thorne felt relief wash over him as he sprinted up the path to be met at the door by Russel Brigstocke.
‘Nobody here,’ Brigstocke said.
The relief was short-lived. Had Garvey taken her? ‘Any signs of—?’
‘No blood. Nothing to indicate a struggle.’
‘That’s got to be good,’ Thorne said. ‘Do you think?’
Before Brigstocke could answer, there was a shout from the back of the house. A few seconds later, a plain-clothes officer wearing a stab vest came running down the hal .
‘You might want to take a look at the garden.’
While the officer was tel ing Brigstocke what he had found, Thorne moved quickly into the house and out through the open kitchen door. He saw it immediately. A white plastic garden chair had been taken from the end of a matching table on the patio and placed against the fence at the far end of the smal garden. There were muddy footprints on the seat. Thorne bent down to take a closer look.
Three different sets.
Wary of destroying evidence, Thorne ran to grab another chair, climbed up and peered over the fence. He could see nothing but an area of scrubland backing on to a row of garages, the ground littered with shards of glass and twisted scraps of metal, an old mattress, the remains of several fires. In the far corner, a dilapidated cross-hatch fence curled around a corner and out of sight.
He jumped back down and tried to think, then reached for his phone.
When she eventual y answered, Nina Col ins sounded as though she was very busy, but she was stil happy enough to let Thorne know what she thought of him.
He cut her off fast, while trying to keep his voice calm. He did not want to scare her, but he needed information quickly. ‘Debbie’s gone,’ he said.