‘Everything’s fine,’ he said.

  She smiled and nodded. She closed the dishwasher and moved back to the island. ‘You’ve just been a bit quiet, that’s all. I thought maybe you were pissed off with me for some reason.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you were pissed off with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Like . . . you were being distant or something.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry.’

  Thorne shook his head. ‘Forget it, I’m just being stupid. Seriously, this is the best I’ve felt in days.’

  ‘Good.’ She leaned to kiss him, then reached for her wine. ‘It’s hard to tell with you sometimes.’

  The documentary finished and she began looking for something else to watch.

  ‘I was thinking about Christmas,’ Thorne said.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What you wanted to do.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I mean, you’ve probably got some family stuff.’ Melita’s parents had moved back to Sri Lanka a few years before, but there was a sister Thorne hadn’t met yet; nephews and nieces. He guessed there would be commitments.

  ‘Only on Boxing Day, but if you’re planning to whisk me off to Barbados I’m not going to argue.’

  ‘Unlikely, if I’m honest,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Well, Crouch End works just as well. Or Kentish Town. I don’t mind.’

  ‘Whatever’s easiest . . . but I’m happy to cook Christmas lunch.’

  ‘I’ll cook,’ she said.

  Thorne nodded, relieved. ‘Fine. I’ll sort out a tree.’

  ‘You’re on,’ she said. ‘Just not one of those horrible silver ones.’

  FORTY

  If Rebecca Driver was as happy to see Thorne as Melita had suggested might be the case, she wasn’t letting her face know about it. Thorne guessed it was the fact that they were surrounded by dozens of her fellow prisoners and their visitors, even if nobody else in there seemed remotely interested in him or the woman he was here to see. The choice of the public visits area had been a deliberate one, based on what Melita had said to him the previous evening. It was not an official interview and he was here alone, so a private visits room was not necessary anyway. More important, though, he did not want Rebecca Driver to feel special.

  She sat staring down at her shoes or up at the ceiling; glancing across once or twice towards a woman on the other side of the room. Thorne wondered if it was a prisoner Driver had become friendly with, or perhaps one with whom she’d fallen out. It didn’t much matter, because he was in no mood to waste any time.

  ‘I want to talk about Stuart Nicklin,’ he said.

  Now she looked at him. In their last conversation, before Driver had been charged and taken away, Thorne had tried and failed to ascertain where she had obtained the scalpel, knowing full well who it had once belonged to. In her first interview with Tanner and Chall, Driver had been happy enough to talk about the person who had influenced her so much, and before the session with Melita had been cut short she’d seemed more than willing to discuss that special someone all over again.

  This was the first time the someone had been mentioned by name.

  ‘Well, course you do,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a thing for him.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I read all about it.’

  Thorne nodded. ‘The Campbell book.’

  ‘You read it?’

  ‘I’ve got better things to do,’ Thorne said.

  ‘You’re a liar.’

  She sat back and folded her arms. It had only been a week, so the change was subtle, but Thorne could see it. Rather, he could see the effort she was making to disguise it; the sullen expression and the slumped shoulders. The regulation attitude to go along with the regulation grey sweatshirt and blue bib. He’d seen it at the station a week before, or thought he had. A glimpse of the lost and lonely girl who had become a vicious killer.

  Only a week, but now she’d had a taste of it.

  The noise and the stink and the bludgeon of time that would beat out the rest of her life.

  Thorne sensed the fear and he hoped it might give him a chance.

  ‘I’m not here to talk about my relationship with Nicklin,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘I’m much more interested in yours.’

  She blinked and shrugged. She said, ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘You think you’re the first? You think you’re the only one he’s ever chosen? You obviously didn’t read that book very carefully.’ She looked away again and Thorne could see the muscles working in her jaw. ‘I’m guessing it was all emails, the communication with him. I know you’d have preferred handwritten letters doused in his after-shave, but we can’t have everything we want.’

  She looked back at him and smiled. ‘I got what I wanted.’

  Thorne looked around. ‘Really? Was this what you signed up for, Rebecca?’

  The smile stayed in place, but her eyes slid away from his. ‘I got what I wanted.’

  ‘I’m happy for you. So, what difference would it make if I saw all those emails? I know they’re just sitting there on that flash-drive we found, so where’s the harm in letting us take a look? All I need is the password, then I’ll have the full story. Your story. Isn’t that what you want? I know how proud of it you are.’

  ‘Yes, I am, but that doesn’t mean I want to share it with you. It’s between me and Stuart.’

  ‘So there are things Stuart wouldn’t want me to see?’

  ‘You’ll see what he wants you to see, when he decides it’s the right time.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  She shook her head, gnawing at fingernails that Thorne could see were already bitten to the quick. ‘Isn’t this where you offer me something?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing you can give me. I mean you can hardly promise me a reduced sentence, can you?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Not when I did three.’ She held up three fingers, just in case Thorne had forgotten.

  Richard Sumner, Hari Reddy, Thomas Bristow.

  Thorne wanted to reach across and snap every finger. He wanted to see her face distorted by pain and ask just how special and different she felt now. Instead, he nodded, acknowledging her achievement. ‘I know you’re doing everything you can to serve your sentence in a hospital, but even with those there are good places and bad places. A secure unit’s still a prison, just with a few more doctors around and a couple of beanbags. We can make sure you wind up in one of the better ones.’

  ‘You could do that?’

  ‘If you help us, I’ll do my best.’ He wouldn’t, of course, but right then Thorne was willing to promise anything.

  It didn’t matter.

  She pressed a hand across her mouth, as though she was trying to stop herself laughing. ‘You really are a shit liar, but fair play for giving it a go. Don’t feel too bad, though, because even if I thought you could work some miracle and get me acquitted, I still wouldn’t give you what you wanted.’ She leaned towards Thorne, eyes wide and bright. ‘I would never give up the smallest piece of him.’

  ‘I’m sure he would be very moved by your loyalty,’ Thorne said.

  ‘He deserves it.’

  ‘People less sensitive than me might say it just goes to show how stupid you really are . . . what with him still out there and you spending the rest of your life inside.’

  She stared, as though Thorne was the stupid one. ‘Him being out there . . . that’s the main thing.’

  Thorne remembered what Melita had said about the power of information; of holding on to it. He leaned close and said, ‘I’m not convinced you know anything that would be of any use to me at all, but just supposing that you do . . . you keep it to yourself. See how much good it does you six months from now, when people are pissing in your tea every day, or someone you’ve looked at the wrong way gets clumsy with a kettle of boiling water.’ Thorne reached for the jacket he’d folded over the chair behind him.

  ‘Stuart has got plans for you.’ She enjoyed seeing Thorne freeze, then turn slowly back to her. ‘Just in case you were feeling a bit neglected.’

  ‘You talking about Kevin Bartley?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘K-Man. The message.’ Thorne waited for a reaction, but he could see that she did not recognise the name.

  ‘Fun plans. Now, don’t waste your time asking what they are, because that would spoil the surprise. Like I said, when the time comes.’

  Thorne stood up and pulled the jacket on.

  She sat and watched him. ‘Why are you even here?’ She waved to one of the guards to make it clear she was ready to go back to the wing. ‘Why would you even think I might want to help you?’

  It was a good question. ‘Fuck knows.’ Watching the guard walking towards them, Thorne felt as though he was the one about to be led away to a cell, and for a few moments it seemed perfectly reasonable. Like it would be no less than he deserved. ‘Because I’m an idiot. Because I thought maybe there was still some bit of you in there, some sliver of something that hadn’t been . . . poisoned. Stupid, obviously, because nothing he’s touched can ever be good again.’

  The guard arrived and stood behind the chair, waiting for her prisoner to move, but Driver wanted the last word.

  She looked up at Thorne. ‘Does that include you?’

  FORTY-ONE

  Thorne had left for HMP Bronzefield just after ten o’clock, but even though Ashford was only an hour’s drive away, Tanner guessed he wouldn’t be back until the afternoon. She didn’t know how long his conversation with Rebecca Driver would last, but she knew very well that security procedures meant nobody got in and out of a prison very quickly, not even police officers. She was just trying to decide what to do about lunch when Phil Hendricks called and asked if she fancied the Oak.

  Tanner was at the pub before him. She ordered Diet Coke and a bowl of soup and sat at a table in the corner. She remembered the last time she had eaten here, the day after she’d called Thorne in a state, and now here she was waiting for the only other person who would understand exactly why she’d been so upset.

  Not that she had any intention of talking about that.

  It wasn’t exactly like they were in a saloon with the music stopping when Hendricks eventually pushed through the doors, but the man knew how to make an entrance and, in a bar almost full of besuited coppers or business types, his appearance was certainly noticed. Tanner waved to let him know where she was, then watched him walk to the bar to order.

  When he sat down, he raised his glass in a toast to the two women staring from the next table, then stuck his tongue behind his bottom lip to move the spike around.

  ‘You’re such a child,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Trust me, there’s far worse things I could show them.’

  ‘Please don’t put those pictures in my head.’

  ‘You know you love it.’ Hendricks leaned across and whispered. ‘Lying there every night, thinking about the studs in my ball-bag and flicking your peanut into the wee small hours—’

  He stopped and sat back, grinning when the barman came across with his meal; laying down the plate then setting out oversized salt and pepper grinders and cutlery wrapped in a paper serviette.

  The barman smiled and said, ‘Enjoy.’

  Hendricks stared at the atrocity in front of him. ‘Is he kidding?’ He turned the plate around, as though what was on it might look more appetising from a different angle. ‘This looks like it might have actual shepherd in it.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tanner was laughing. ‘I should have warned you.’

  ‘This is why you should only ever eat snacks in pubs.’ He shook his head. ‘What the hell.’ He dug in, wincing at the first mouthful, but pressing on.

  ‘I’m honoured,’ Tanner said. ‘You coming all the way up here for lunch.’

  Hendricks swallowed, grimacing. ‘I’m starting to wish I hadn’t bothered.’

  ‘Don’t you usually go to that greasy spoon opposite the hospital?’

  ‘Just fancied a change . . . and I’d forgotten how warm the welcome was in here.’ He turned to smile again at the women at the next table, but they’d lost interest. ‘So, what’s happening?’

  While they ate, Tanner gave him what little news there was. Stuart Nicklin’s fingerprints had been found on the computer taken from Kevin Bartley’s flat in Coventry. This confirmed Greg Hobbs’s theory about when K-Man had been killed, while the brain matter caked on to the empty wine bottle in the living room had given them a pretty good idea how.

  ‘The pathologist up there reckons Bartley was still alive when Nicklin started cutting.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s fond of that,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘So, that’s where we are.’

  ‘Which is . . . ?’

  Tanner held up her hands. ‘We know exactly who we’re looking for, but we haven’t got the first bloody idea where to start.’ She used a last chunk of bread to mop up what was left of her soup. ‘He hasn’t been Stuart Nicklin for a long time, that’s our biggest problem. There’s no point looking for phone records or car registrations or council tax or in any of the places we’d normally go to, because we don’t know who the hell we’re actually trying to find. Basically, we don’t know who he is.’ She brushed crumbs from her lap and sat back. ‘We don’t even know what he looks like any more.’

  ‘You think he’ll have changed his appearance?’

  ‘Well, unless he’s an idiot and we know he’s not that. Tom told me that the first time he went to see him in prison, Nicklin was almost unrecognisable.’

  ‘Yeah, well, prison can do that.’

  ‘Right, but when he showed up on Bardsey Island a few years after that, he looked different again. He’d made the effort to change himself even when there wasn’t much point. I’m just saying, with access to money and plastic surgery or whatever . . . ’

  ‘Yeah, I get it.’ The mood was darkening a little, inevitably and when Hendricks sat forward suddenly, it was obvious that he was keen to do something about it. ‘So, who would you look like, if you had the choice?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t got the money, for a start.’

  ‘If you did, though.’

  Tanner thought about it. ‘Elle Macpherson, maybe?’

  ‘Christ, I didn’t mean that much money.’

  Tanner laughed and gave him the finger. Said, ‘What about you, then?’

  Hendricks raised his hands up to frame his face. ‘You can’t improve on perfection, mate.’

  They both laughed, needing it; smiling at each other while the barman cleared their dirty crockery away and shaking their heads in unison when he asked if they would like to see the dessert menu.

  ‘So, what now then?’

  ‘Well, most suspects do the job for you in the end,’ Tanner said. ‘They slip up. Nicklin’s not most suspects, though. I don’t know . . . maybe he’ll take one too many of his ecstasy tablets and we’ll find him dancing in the middle of the road somewhere, off his tits.’

  ‘Maybe Tom can get something out of Rebecca Driver.’

  Tanner nodded. ‘Right.’

  So Hendricks knew about Thorne’s trip to Bronzefield. Thorne had obviously mentioned it to him, but more important, it meant that Hendricks had known, when he’d called her, that Thorne would not be there when they were having lunch. She watched him lean towards her and began to breathe just a little faster, the panic starting to build; knowing now that Hendricks had come to talk about the very thing she so desperately wanted to avoid.

  ‘I wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Listen, Phil—’

  ‘Do you think Tom’s OK?’

  Tanner tried not to let her relief show. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He seemed a bit . . . off, the other night. He told me he was fine, but you know what he’s like.’

  Tanner certainly did, though she didn’t know him nearly as well as Phil Hendricks, so she wasn’t going to take the pathologist’s concern lightly. ‘He blew up a bit yesterday, as it happens.’

  ‘Blew up?’

  ‘He just lost his temper, but we can all do that, so . . . ’ She looked away and they both waited a few seconds, until the charge of what should have been a harmless comment had dissipated.

  ‘I think it’s starting to get to him, that’s all.’

  Tanner nodded. ‘He was definitely shaken up by that message. Well, he’s been a bit edgy ever since he found out who we’re dealing with, but why wouldn’t you be? I’m not exactly chilled about it, myself.’ She watched Hendricks as he fiddled with one of the many rings in his ear. ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘How are you doing? I mean, apart from Tom, if anyone has a right to be freaked out that Nicklin’s knocking around again, it’s you.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’ Hendricks shrugged and sniffed, carried on worrying at the metal in his ear. ‘I’m right as ninepence, mate.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Just . . . keep an eye on him, will you? You see a lot more of him than anyone else. For which you deserve a medal, obviously.’

  Tanner said, ‘No worries, Phil.’

  Once they’d paid the bill and stepped away from the table, Hendricks put an arm through Tanner’s. ‘Trust me, Nic, you are way hotter than Elle Macpherson.’

  ‘You’re full of shit.’

  ‘I’m telling you.’ He leered theatrically. ‘If I was straight . . .’

  ‘Yeah, and if I was.’

  ‘If we were both spectacularly pissed.’

  Tanner could see that Hendricks was still drawing the attention of several customers as the two of them walked towards the exit. She opened the doors and they stepped out into the afternoon chill. They shivered and swore.