TWENTY-THREE

  Thorne had been stared out by some seriously scary individuals in his time, but even though she appeared no more dangerous than the average sixth-former, sitting face to face with Rebecca Driver was definitely disconcerting. He stared back for as long as he could manage, remembering the look she’d given him the night before in the custody suite; the welcome in it. She hadn’t stopped staring at him from the moment he’d come into the interview room. Sitting up straight, a nod here and there, like she was saying hello. A half-smile, and her wide eyes fixed on his as he ran through the pre-match formalities for the tape.

  ‘I’m glad you feel able to carry on, Rebecca,’ he said.

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘The doctor said there was no reason why you shouldn’t.’

  ‘I told you I didn’t need to see a doctor.’ Still staring. ‘I just wanted a break, that’s all.’

  Calling the shots, that’s what Melita had said. Wanting to do things at her own pace, to set the schedule and perhaps even the agenda.

  ‘And thank you for agreeing to see Dr Perera.’

  ‘Oh, I’m seeing her, am I?’ Now, Driver turned to the woman sitting on Thorne’s left; her gaze equally keen, every bit as hungry. ‘I thought she’d come to see me.’

  ‘It’s just an expression,’ Melita said. ‘We’re seeing each other.’

  ‘Right. But not like you’re seeing him.’ She smiled and nodded at Thorne. She made a hole with a thumb and forefinger and slowly pushed the finger of her other hand back and forth through it. ‘Not like that.’

  Thorne felt like he’d been gut-punched. He glanced at Melita and fought the overwhelming urge to get involved. He had agreed to let her run things, to try not to get in the way, but now, more than anything, he wanted to know how the hell Driver could know about their relationship. He sucked in a breath and told himself that of course she didn’t, that she was simply being suggestive. Trying it on. She’ll do her best to provoke us, to get the upper hand, wasn’t that what Melita had said?

  He almost convinced himself.

  Melita ignored Driver’s comment and opened her notebook. ‘Like DI Thorne, I’m happy you agreed to this. I hope it will be useful.’

  ‘For you or me?’

  ‘Well, you know I’m working with the police,’ Melita said. ‘So I’m sure you can work that out.’

  ‘So, what? You’re telling me you’re not interested in me? Professionally or whatever.’

  ‘I’m very interested.’ Melita glanced down at her notes.

  ‘Why don’t I save you a bit of time?’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Melita said.

  ‘Great stuff.’ Driver leaned forward and cleared her throat. ‘Was I bullied at school? Yeah, a bit. Was I a bully at school? Yeah, that, too. Did I have a happy childhood? No, not especially.’ She was firing off the questions, then answering them like someone reading out football results. ‘Did Mummy and Daddy buy me a bicycle? Good question . . . yes, they did, but it was a rubbish second-hand one with no gears. Was I fiddled with as a kid? Yep, plenty of fiddling and diddling, thank you very much. Do I hear voices? Yeah, course I do, but doesn’t everyone? The voice telling me that working in a supermarket’s a bit shit, but what else am I going to do with three GCSEs. The voice that tells me to buy a particular pair of shoes, then another one telling me not to be daft because I can’t afford it. My voice, that’s what I’m saying. Mine.’ She sat back and sucked her teeth, pleased with herself. ‘So, the big question. Does any of that lot explain why I’m sitting here in this horrible tracksuit? Why that old bloke’s eyeballs were bagged up in the freezer behind my onion rings? You tell me.’

  Thorne stared at her; her gaze now fixed on the ceiling. Melita had been banging on about Driver’s wanting to run the show, but he wasn’t convinced the woman was quite as confident as the bullishness suggested. He remembered what Melita had said to him several days before, about the killer playing a part. The smile looked like something she was plastering on and he sensed that there was plenty bubbling up and ready to burst, just beneath the couldn’t-give-a-shit surface.

  Rage and shame. Guilt.

  ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you about something you were talking about earlier today,’ Melita said. ‘About influence.’

  ‘Oh.’ Driver sounded a little disappointed, but she shrugged and leaned forward. ‘Well, I can’t even say that I’m paying for our little therapy session, can I? So I suppose it’s up to you.’

  ‘Good.’ Melita nodded and went back to her notes. ‘This came up during the discussion about your books . . . about how something you’d read had influenced you? Someone you’d read about. Someone special, I think you said.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So, I’m presuming this isn’t anyone you’ve actually met.’

  ‘Sadly not.’

  ‘But aren’t we usually influenced by people we know?’

  ‘You can know someone without actually meeting them.’

  ‘By parents and friends?’

  ‘Maybe, If you’re lucky.’

  Melita leaned closer, lowered her voice a little. ‘I really want to understand what you’re trying to say, Rebecca. How can someone be influenced by a stranger?’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘I’m not talking about just liking someone or admiring them. Actually influenced, I mean, to do the sorts of things you’re accused of doing.’

  ‘By who they are, by what they say.’

  ‘What they say?’

  ‘Their ideas.’

  ‘Yes, but if I believe in peace, in not hurting anyone else, it’s not because John Lennon told me to.’

  Driver laughed. ‘What kind of loser wants to believe in that?’

  Thorne turned at a knock to see Chall’s head appearing round the door.

  ‘Sir . . . ? Sorry, but I need a minute.’

  Melita closed her notebook and Thorne bit back a swear word as he began the process of suspending the interview.

  ‘Shame.’ Driver shook her head. ‘I was quite enjoying myself.’

  While Driver was escorted back to her cell and Melita hung around by the door to the interview room, Thorne followed Chall to the far end of the corridor. He said, ‘This had better be good.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about good,’ Chall said.

  ‘Come on, Dipak—’

  ‘The lab came back with the results on the scalpel.’

  ‘Murder weapon?’

  Chall nodded. ‘DNA matches on Sumner, Reddy and Bristow. We’ve got every victim’s blood on there.’

  It was the news they had all been expecting, so Thorne couldn’t help wondering why Chall hadn’t just sent a text message or waited for a natural break in the interview. Why the DS didn’t seem quite as thrilled about it as he should have been. ‘Why do I think there’s a but coming?’

  Now, Chall was actually looking nervous.

  ‘Well, it’s a mixed profile . . . obviously, plenty of prints that we weren’t able to identify, but they found another blood profile on the blade. It’s a bit more degraded than the others, but we got a match on that one, too.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘It’s Dr Hendricks.’

  Thorne stared, aware that he should be saying something, but he could only reach up slowly to the nape of his neck; the spidery fingers that had begun to creep across it. He tried to swallow but couldn’t. He felt sick; dizzy.

  ‘Maybe somebody messed up,’ Chall said. ‘I mean, it doesn’t make any sense, because Dr Hendricks hasn’t been anywhere near that scalpel. He hasn’t even seen it.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Sir . . . ?’

  Thorne turned and began to walk back towards the interview room. He understood that finding Phil Hendricks’s blood on that blade made perfect sense. There could only be one explanation and, terrifying as it was, he knew exactly where that scalpel had come from. The name of its previous owner.

  He knew who Rebecca Driver’s special someone was.

  PART TWO

  A GAME

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sometimes, he struggled to remember who he was supposed to be.

  There was so much juggling to do, so many things to get right and keep track of. Names and accents and the details of whichever brief biography he’d created and drip-fed. Then, perhaps most important, there was his appearance. It wasn’t hugely complicated, because it wasn’t as if there were umpteen versions of himself knocking around at any one time. That would cause more problems than it solved. That was how you tripped yourself up. No, he only ever took the precautions he felt were sensible and necessary, but even then there was always plenty to bear in mind, and apart from the simpler things he needed to think about each time he ventured outside – glasses or coloured contact lenses, the state of the facial fuzz, clothing, all that – he had made any number of more radical changes over the years.

  The dental work and the bits and bobs of cosmetic surgery.

  Nose and jaw and . . . ears, for heaven’s sake. Thanks to 3D scanning and facial recognition software, the unique geometric features of an individual’s ears were now pretty much as good a way of identifying someone as fingerprints. Who knew?

  Those bloody hair transplants . . .

  Stuart Nicklin carried his tea across to the sofa and browsed on his iPad for a few minutes. Running fingers gently across a still-tender scalp, he looked at a few of the sites where he might occasionally get a mention, killing time while he waited for the next afternoon quiz show to start. He preferred the shows that were on early evening, but the slightly cheaper ones they trotted out after lunch or repeated on the more obscure cable channels were entertaining enough. You could spend all day watching quiz shows if you fancied it. He didn’t, of course, because he had other things to do.

  His own show to organise.

  Young Ms Driver had been a fantastic contestant, all things considered, even if she had been a bit star-struck by the host. Not that he didn’t know very well that this was why her sort wanted to play his game in the first place. He was always the big draw. Fair play to her, though, she had done as well as he could have hoped. She’d gone all the way, had loved every minute of it and, most significantly, won the big prize. Not that most people would consider life imprisonment – which she would surely be given – as something very desirable, but she’d always known what the rules were, what would be waiting for her at the end of the final round, and she’d been very happy to go for broke. Good girl.

  Watching his favourite shows, he never had any time for the lightweights who bottled it at the final hurdle. The ones who’d ‘had a lovely day, thank you very much’. The losers who shook their heads, perfectly content with whatever pitiful amount they’d won getting to the final and refused to take the final gamble.

  What was the point of not seeing it through?

  What was the point of anything if you weren’t going to go all the way?

  He put his iPad away and reached for the newspaper, turning straight to the back pages to see how Tottenham Hotspur were getting on. Averagely, as it turned out. He had no interest in football, thought it was pointless and dull like the people who watched it, but he always made a point of checking on Spurs.

  Strange, that.

  He reached into his pocket for a small tin, opened it and picked out an embossed yellow pill which he quickly swallowed. He’d always thought it was funny that by adding just two letters, MDMA could become MADMAN. Not that he was that, of course, not in a million years, but he’d been described as such plenty of times in the past. Because it made for a better story, because people were lazy and lacked imagination. It didn’t make him angry, not any more, and besides, one man with whom he would soon be having an interesting conversation certainly knew better.

  He wondered how Rebecca was going to cope in prison. He’d managed well enough; very well by the end, learning quickly how to get through the days, then how to thrive thanks to the reputation he’d already earned by the time he got there. She would be there a lot longer than he had been, of course, and he wasn’t sure she would handle things quite as gracefully as he had. Whatever reputation she would bring inside with her, she was still a young woman at the end of the day, and, though he had never met her in person, she did not strike him as someone particularly . . . hardy.

  The programme started and he nodded along with the jaunty theme tune, thinking about swings and round­abouts. Silver linings. At least Rebecca would have plenty of time to read.

  Most important of all, of course, the silly mare would finally have the notoriety she craved. That had always been the jackpot she was playing for, and now she’d have the rest of her life inside to enjoy it. She’d wanted what he had, and he understood that, because a lot of people did. The big difference was that now he wasn’t behind bars any more and, given the choice, he would prefer the situation to stay that way. Ultimately, the choice would not be his, but that was fine, because that was the new game. The big decision that the new player would have to make at the end of it.

  Nicklin sat back and sipped his tea. Considered the various outcomes.

  Everything would depend on whether the next, very special contestant was willing to take that final gamble.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘So, you’ve come to my local, again . . . ’ Hendricks stared round the bar of the Spread Eagle and narrowed his eyes, suspicious. ‘You’ve got the first round in and you’re paying for the snacks.’ He sipped the top off his Guinness, thinking about it. ‘So either it’s something bad, like you’ve got cancer, or you’ve found God . . . or maybe the idea is to ply me with strong drink until my standards start to drop, because you’re finally going on the turn and you want me to break you in gently.’ He looked at Thorne. ‘Am I close?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Good, because trust me, I would not be gentle with you.’

  Thorne managed a weak smile and let Hendricks laugh. It was fine, because it might be the last time either of them laughed for a while. There were two things his friend was guaranteed never to find funny: the secret the two of them shared with Nicola Tanner, and the man Thorne had asked Hendricks here to talk about. The man who he now believed had finally resurfaced.

  Thorne took a drink himself and got it over with.

  ‘Fuck,’ Hendricks said, when Thorne had finished. He said the word quietly, his voice colourless. He said it again, then quickly downed half of what beer he had left and nodded towards the bar. ‘You’d best get a couple more in, mate.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Phil—’

  ‘Are you sure, though?’ Hendricks leaned across the table. ‘So, yeah, she uses that scalpel . . . the scalpel Nicklin’s mates used on me, to kill those three blokes, but how do you know Nicklin had anything to do with it?’

  ‘Because she as good as told us,’ Thorne said. ‘She never actually named him, but only because she knew damn well we were about to find out for ourselves. Playing games, like Melita said she would. She just kept banging on about the “special someone” who’d inspired her, like he was her fucking spirit guide or something.’ Thorne stared down at the food in front of him and wondered why he’d bothered ordering it when he doubted either of them would manage so much as a mouthful. ‘He’s the one who made it happen, same as he always does. I don’t believe they ever met, but he might just as well have put that scalpel in her hand.’

  ‘Why, though?’

  ‘Come on, Phil, you know him as well as I do. It’s just his way of letting us know he’s around. Using bodies to wave hello.’

  Hendricks sat back and closed his eyes, as though he was in pain.

  Or perhaps, Thorne thought, he was just remembering it.

  Six years before, Thorne had escorted Stuart Nicklin to a remote island off the Welsh coast. After ten years in prison, Nicklin had promised to reveal the whereabouts of a body: the young man he had killed and buried on the island many years before. It had, of course, been part of an elaborate plan and had resulted in Thorne being made a fool of and Nicklin escaping from police custody. The key part of the enterprise had involved the kidnap and imprisonment of Phil Hendricks, and in order to make the seriousness of Thorne’s predicament perfectly clear, Nicklin had arranged for an A4 sized piece of skin to be neatly cut from Hendricks’s back with a scalpel and delivered to Thorne in a Jiffy bag.

  Thorne had known what he was looking at straight away.

  He had recognised the tattoos.

  In the end, faced with a choice between his friend’s life and Nicklin’s liberty, Thorne had taken the only decision he could; the decision Nicklin had known he would make all along. Though obviously thankful to Thorne for choosing to save his life, Hendricks had been all too aware that Thorne was the reason he had been taken in the first place, so even though tears were shed when they saw one another again, there had been no conventional display of gratitude. There had only been a few dark jokes when Thorne had handed Hendricks back his own skin; tentative banter and mock-macho posturing, until eventually it had just become . . . awkward. There was little time for emotion-drenched post-mortems on either side anyway, what with the press fallout to deal with, a career in the balance and the ongoing hunt for an escaped lunatic; with umpteen skin grafts to be endured, and weeks of trauma therapy.

  It had taken them both a good while to recover.

  They had not seriously talked about it since and Hendricks had never shown Thorne the scars.

  ‘I understand if you want to stay well away from this,’ Thorne said. ‘If you just want to lie low, or whatever.’ Hendricks opened his eyes. ‘It would probably be the sensible thing to do, bearing in mind what happened on Bardsey.’