‘Shit,’ Hendricks said. ‘Tel me.’
When Thorne had finished, Hendricks began tel ing him that these things usual y happened for good reasons, that it was better now than later on. Thorne stopped him. Told him he’d heard it al already from the woman who’d done the scan and that it hadn’t helped too much then, either.
Thorne saw Hendricks’ face and apologised. ‘I just didn’t know what to say to her, you know?’
‘Nothing much you
can
say.’
‘Need to give it time, I suppose,’ Thorne said.
‘Tel her to cal me whenever she likes,’ Hendricks said. ‘You know, if she wants to talk about it.’
Thorne nodded. ‘She wil .’
‘You, too.’ He waited until Thorne looked over. ‘Al right?’
They sat in silence for a minute. There was stil plenty of activity at the front of the house - vehicles coming and going every few minutes. Half a dozen spectators were crowded on the opposite side of the road, despite the best efforts of the uniforms to keep them away.
Thorne let out an empty laugh and smacked his hand against the steering wheel. ‘I told Lou I was going to get rid of this,’ he said.
‘Your precious Beemer?’ Hendricks said. ‘Bloody hel , that’s a major concession.’
Thorne’s 1971, ‘Pulsar’-yel ow BMW had been a cause of much amusement to many of his col eagues for a long time. Thorne cal ed it ‘vintage’. Dave Hol and said that was just a euphemism for ‘knackered old rust-bucket’.
‘Promised I’d get something a bit more practical,’ Thorne said. He tugged at the col ar of his jacket. ‘A family car, you know?’
Hendricks smiled. ‘You should
still
get rid of it,’ he said.
‘We’l see.’
Hendricks pointed to the front door, to the metal trol ey that was emerging through it, being lifted down the step. ‘Here we go . . .’
They got out of the car and walked slowly across to the rear of the mortuary van. Hendricks talked quietly to one of the mortuary assistants, ran through arrangements for the fol owing morning. Thorne watched as the trol ey was raised on its concertina legs and the black body-bag was eased slowly into the vehicle.
Emily Walker.
Thorne glanced towards the onlookers: a teenager in a basebal cap shuffling his feet; an old woman, open-mouthed.
Not viable
.
THREE
Louise cal ed from a payphone in the Whittington at a little after 8 a.m., just as Thorne was on his way out of the door. He felt slightly guilty at having slept so wel , and did not need to ask how her night had been.
She sounded more angry than upset. ‘They haven’t done it yet.’
‘What?’
Thorne dropped his bag then marched back into the sitting room, like he was searching for something to kick.
‘There was some cock-up the first time it was scheduled, then they thought it would be late last night, so they told me there was no point in me going home.’
‘So when?’
‘Any time now.’ There was some shouting near by. She lowered her voice. ‘I just want it done.’
‘I know,’ Thorne said.
‘I’m bloody starving, apart from anything else.’
‘Wel , I can tel you where I’m off to this morning, if you like,’ Thorne said. ‘That should kil your appetite for a while.’
‘Sorry, I meant to ask,’ Louise said. ‘Was it a bad one?’
Thorne told her al about Emily Walker. As a detective inspector with the Kidnap Investigation Unit, Louise Porter was pretty much unshockable. Sometimes, she and Thorne talked about violent death and the threat of it as easily as other couples talked about bad days at the office. But there were some aspects of the Job that neither wanted to bring home, and while there was often black comedy to be shared in the grisliest of stories, they tended to spare each other the truly grim details.
Thorne did not hold back on this occasion.
When he had finished, Louise said, ‘I know what you’re doing, and there’s real y no need.’
‘No need for what?’ Thorne asked.
‘To remind me there’s people worse off than I am.’
Two hours later, as unobtrusively as possible, Thorne reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and checked to make sure that it was switched to
SILENT
.
‘I think we’re ready.’
There were times when you real y didn’t want a mobile going off.
The mortuary assistant drew back the sheet and invited Emily Walker’s husband to step forward.
‘Are you able to identify the body as that of your wife, Emily Anne Walker?’
The man nodded once and turned away.
‘Can you say it, please?’
‘Yes. That’s my wife.’
‘Thank you.’
The man was already at the door of the viewing suite, waiting to be let out. It was customary, after the formal identification, to invite the next of kin - should they so wish - to stay with their loved one for a while, but Thorne could see that there was little point on this occasion. Suffocation could do as much damage to a face as a blunt instrument. He couldn’t blame George Walker for preferring to remember his wife as she had been when she was alive. Presuming, of course, that he wasn’t the one responsible for her death.
Thorne watched Walker being led down the corridor by two uniformed officers - a man and a woman. He saw the slump of the man’s shoulders, the arm of the female officer sliding around them, and remembered something Hol and had said the day before: ‘
I’ve got no bloody idea what’s happening inside their heads
. . .’
As if on cue, Dave Hol and came strol ing around the corner, looking surprisingly perky for someone about to attend a post-mortem. He joined Thorne just as Walker was turning on to the staircase and heading slowly up towards the street.
‘I know you said you wanted him in later for a chat,’ Hol and said. ‘But I reckon we can leave it a while.’
‘Oh, you do?’
‘He’s stil al over the shop, and we should real y let him have a bit of time with his family.’
It was at such moments that Thorne wished he had to ability to raise one eyebrow, like Roger Moore. He had to settle for sarcasm. ‘I’m listening,
Sergeant
.’
Hol and smiled. ‘We got a result with the curtain-twitchers.’
‘Let’s have it.’
‘Old bloke across the road claims he saw someone coming out of there an hour or so before Emily’s husband got home.’
‘And he’s sure it
wasn’t
Emily’s husband.’
‘Positive. He knows George Walker by sight. The bloke he saw had a much narrower build, he says. Different colour hair, too.’
‘You got him knocking us up an E-fit?’
Hol and nodded. ‘Gets the husband off the hook, you ask me.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Thorne said. ‘But it’s a fair point. We’l have him in tomorrow.’
A door opened halfway along the corridor and a familiar-looking, shaved head appeared around it. ‘In your own time,’ Hendricks said.
Thorne nodded and loosened the tie he’d put on for the identification.
Hol and wasn’t looking quite so chirpy as they walked towards the open door.
Other places had different arrangements, but at Finchley Coroner’s Mortuary a narrow corridor ran between the Viewing Suite and the Post-Mortem Room, so the bodies could be moved quickly and privately from one to the other. From soft furnishings and a comforting colour scheme to a white-tiled room with stainless-steel units where comfort of any description was in short supply.
However much its occupants could have done with some.
Hendricks and Hol and caught up a little, having been too busy for chit-chat the night before. Hendricks asked after Hol and’s daughter, Chloe, about whom he seemed to know more than Thorne did. Thorne found this rather depressing. He hadn’t exactly been holding his breath when it came to Hol and and his girlfriend choosing a god-father, but there had been a time when he’d sent presents and cards on birthdays and at Christmas.
Thorne listened to the pair of them rattling on - Hol and tel ing Hendricks how big his daughter was getting, stil only pushing four, and Hendricks saying what a fantastic age that was, while he moved the scissors and skul -key to within easy reach - and it niggled him. He was stil trying to remember the date of the girl’s birthday when Hendricks began removing Emily Walker’s clothing.
Middle of September?
While Hendricks worked, he related his findings into the microphone hanging above his head. Hol and made notes. This précis would be al the investigation had to go on until the ful report arrived, but often it would be more than enough for the likes of Tom Thorne, until and if the likes of Phil Hendricks were given their chance to go through the details in court.
The science and the Latin . . .
‘Major laceration to back of head, but no fracture to the skul or sign of significant brain injury.’
When Thorne was not being cal ed upon to concentrate, when it was just about observing medical procedures he’d seen far too many times before, he did his best to zone out. To block out the noise. He’d long since got used to the smel - meaty and sickly sweet - but the sounds always unnerved him.
‘Damage to thyroid and cricoid cartilages . . . Major petechial haemorrhaging . . . Bloody froth caked around victim’s mouth.’
So, Thorne sang in his head. Hank Wil iams, Johnny Cash, Wil ie Nelson, whatever came to him. Just a chorus or two to take the edge off the bone-saw’s whine and the solid snap of the rib-cutters. The gurgle in the windpipe and the sucking as the heart and lungs were removed from the chest as one single, dripping unit.
Ray Price today: ‘My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You’.
‘No indication of pregnancy . . . No signs of recent termination . . . Death due to manual asphyxia.’
There’s people worse off than I am.
Towards the end, with organs weighed and fluids col ected, Thorne asked about time of death. When it came to finding a prime suspect, it often turned out to be the most important factor.
‘Late afternoon,’ Hendricks said. ‘Best I can do.’
‘Before five?’ Hol and asked.
‘Between three and four probably, but I’m not swearing to it right now.’
‘That fits.’ Hol and scribbled something down. ‘Husband claims to have arrived home a little after five o’clock.’
‘He out of the picture, then?’
‘
Nobody’s
out of the picture,’ Thorne said.
‘OK.’
Thorne saw the expression on Hendricks’ face, and on Hol and’s as he looked up from his notebook. ‘Sorry . . .’
He’d been looking at the stainless-steel dishes that now contained Emily Walker’s major organs and thinking that she’d final y shifted those few extra pounds she’d been so worried about. His eyes had come to rest on her feet, bloated and pale; on the red nail varnish and the star above her ankle. When he’d spoken, he’d snapped without meaning to, the words sounding snide and spiky.
Hol and looked at Hendricks, stage-whispered conspiratorial y: ‘Wrong side of the bed.’
Thorne could feel himself growing edgier by the minute. He told himself to calm down, but it didn’t work, and walking out with Hol and ten minutes later, he found it hard to control his breathing and the flush of it in his face. Sometimes, he felt fired-up coming out of a post-mortem, confused or just depressed more often than not, but he could not remember the last time he’d felt quite so bloody angry.
He had been turning his phone back on before he was out of the post-mortem room and by the time he emerged through the mortuary’s main entrance on to Avondale Road, he could see that he had three missed cal s from Louise. He told Hol and he’d catch him up.
It was the voice she used when she’d been crying. ‘They’ve stil not done it.’
‘Christ, you’re kidding!’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.
He turned away, looking across the North Circular and avoiding the stares from a couple at the bus-stop who had heard him shout. ‘What did they say to you?’
‘I can’t find anyone who can tel me what’s going on.’
‘I’l be there in fifteen minutes,’ Thorne said.
She burst into tears as soon as she caught sight of him, pushing through the doors at the far end of the ward. He shushed her gently, drew the curtains around the bed and sat down to hold her.
‘I just want it . . . out of me,’ she said. ‘Do you understand?’
‘I know.’
They heard the voice of the woman in the bed opposite coming from the other side of the curtain. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘It’s fine,’ Thorne said.
‘Do you want me to get someone?’
Thorne leaned closer to Louise. ‘
I’m
going to get someone.’
He prowled the corridors for five minutes until he found a doctor on the next floor up and told him that something needed to be done. After shouting for a minute or so then refusing to budge while the doctor made a couple of cal s, Thorne was back at Louise’s bedside with a soft-spoken, Scottish nurse. She made al the right noises, then admitted there was nothing she could do.
‘Not good enough,’ Thorne said.
‘I’m sorry, but this is standard practice.’
‘What is?’
‘Your partner’s just been unlucky, I’m afraid.’ The nurse was flicking through the paperwork she’d brought with her. She waved it in Thorne’s direction. ‘Each time the procedure has been scheduled, another case has taken priority at the last minute. Just unlucky . . .’
‘She was promised it would be done last night,’ Thorne said. ‘Then first thing this morning.’
Louise lay back on the pil ow with her eyes closed. She looked exhausted. ‘Two hours ago they said I was next in.’
‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ Thorne said.
The nurse consulted her paperwork again, nodding when she found an explanation. ‘Yes, wel , we had someone come in with a badly broken arm, I’m afraid, so—’
‘A broken
arm
?’
The nurse looked at Thorne as though he were simple. ‘He was in a considerable amount of pain.’
Thorne returned the look, then pointed at Louise. ‘You think she’s
enjoying
herself?’
Alex was stuffing a last piece of toast into her mouth when Greg came into the kitchen. He nodded, stil tucking in his shirt. She grunted, waved, and went back to the story she’d been reading in the
Guardian
.