‘Best way,’ Thorne said.

  Coleman stopped outside a door. ‘We’re in here.’

  ‘So, how’s it all going?’ Thorne asked, nice and casual.

  If there was hesitation, it was only momentary. ‘We’ve got a prison guard . . . Gordon Ames. He was approached in a pub on Wednesday night and encouraged to look the other way while Driver was attacked. Threats against his

  family.’

  Thorne nodded. At the very least this would put paid to the ludicrous idea that Driver’s murder had been random; a coincidence. ‘What about the woman who shanked her?’

  ‘Karen Sinclair,’ Coleman said. ‘A lifer, which would make her an ideal choice.’

  ‘Nicklin obviously got to her too.’

  ‘Well, someone did, but we’re not sure exactly how or when just yet. Sinclair’s not denying that she murdered Driver, but she isn’t saying a fat lot besides.’

  Thorne remembered the woman Driver had been glancing at when he’d visited and wondered if that might have been the woman who had stabbed her to death the next day. Brigstocke’s words of warning from the day before were ringing in his ears, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘I presume you’ve checked to see what visitors Sinclair had on Wednesday.’

  Coleman took a little longer this time. Long enough for the flash of annoyance to flare, then settle into a fixed, impatient smile. ‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘But Karen Sinclair didn’t have any visitors on the day you were at the prison.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘She did have a visitor the day before that, though.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘Her mother.’ Coleman reached for the door handle and pushed. ‘Shall we?’

  Once inside, the Kent DI was all business. He strode across to a desk and sat down. Waiting for Thorne to do the same, he took out his notebook and said, ‘It’s always a bit awkward interviewing a colleague, even when it’s non-evidential.’ He had the good grace to look at least a little uncomfortable. ‘Obviously you know how this works. The blah blah blah I have to say about rights and recording before we kick off.’

  ‘Fill your boots,’ Thorne said.

  As soon as Thorne was seated and the blah blah blah was out of the way, Coleman said, ‘So, you attended HMP Bronzefield to visit the victim the day before yesterday, is that correct?’

  Thorne told him that it was.

  ‘Would you mind telling me what you talked about?’

  ‘We talked about a man called Stuart Nicklin.’

  ‘Right. The man you believe murdered . . . ’ He reached for glasses and glanced down at his notes. ‘ . . . Kevin Bartley.’

  ‘I don’t believe he murdered Kevin Bartley. I know he did.’

  Coleman’s grunt sounded like a shrug, as though the distinction was unimportant.

  ‘He’s murdered a lot of people.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I know who he is.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Can you be a bit more specific? About what you and the victim discussed.’

  ‘I was trying to persuade her to give me the password to a flash drive we found at her flat. I think there may be records of her communication with Stuart Nicklin on it. She said no.’

  ‘Did she say anything else?’ Coleman waited. ‘Apart from no.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You were there for almost forty minutes.’

  Thorne shifted in his seat. ‘We talked about her relationship with him. Her misplaced loyalty. She mentioned a book about Nicklin we’d found on her shelves.’

  Coleman nodded. ‘The one you’re in.’

  ‘Right.’ Thorne was feeling tense and fidgety; starting to get a little short of breath. ‘We talked about what it was going to be like for her in prison. I tried to put the wind up her a bit, to give her a sense of what she might be in for. The dangers.’

  Coleman wrote something down.

  Thorne settled himself, or tried to. ‘Look, I really don’t see what this has got to do with anything or how any of it helps. Rebecca Driver was killed because I went to see her . . . because Nicklin found out I was going to see her. Simple as that. You’ve got the woman who did it and you’ve identified the prison officer who colluded, so what do you need from me?’

  ‘Well, if, as you say, your visit was the reason this offence was committed—’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘—I’d suggest that the details of your conversation have everything to do with our investigation.’

  ‘I asked for her help,’ Thorne said. ‘She refused. What else is there, for fuck’s sake?’

  Coleman looked up at the swear word, as though he’d never heard it spoken before. He removed his glasses, but the gesture did not carry the same threat as when Russell Brigstocke did it. The man just looked faintly amused. He leaned back and said, ‘I was warned this might be tricky.’

  A few seconds crawled by and suddenly the room felt very warm.

  ‘Warned by who?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, does it?’

  ‘Oh, I think it does,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I’m just saying, it’s . . . well known that you’re a bit closer to this case than you might be to some others. That’s all. That you might be taking it a bit personally.’

  ‘Too bloody right I am.’

  ‘There you are, then.’

  Thorne was leaning across the table now, but he made every effort to keep his voice calm. Every effort. ‘We’re talking about a very dangerous man who I put away when you were still in uniform.’

  Coleman smiled.

  ‘Who I’ve had dealings with several times since.’

  ‘I read the book,’ Coleman said, still smiling.

  Thorne stopped bothering to sound calm. ‘Someone who’s murdered colleagues of mine and seriously assaulted others. Who’s made threats against me many times in the past . . . serious threats . . . and the other day Rebecca Driver intimated that he was making those threats again.’

  ‘Intimated?’

  And then, though he couldn’t quite remember how he’d got there, Thorne was on his feet and, despite the fact that Coleman’s face had become a little blurry, he could see the man’s eyes widen and that stupid fat mouth falling open, right before his own spittle started flying into it.

  It didn’t go very well after that.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  This time, they did the sensible thing and went to bed before dinner.

  ‘It’s a question of timing,’ Melita said.

  ‘It’s a question of priorities,’ Thorne said.

  Melita had already put a chicken in the oven, so by the time they’d finished in the bedroom there was only a salad to prepare. Thorne was keen to help, but it wasn’t the biggest kitchen – certainly not with that bloody island taking up so much space – so while she sat there chopping tomatoes and spring onions, she asked Thorne to sort the drinks out and put some music on.

  Thorne poured wine and opened beer, then approached the Alexa in the corner as if it were a potentially dangerous animal. He’d recently done the unthinkable and bought one himself, though in what he thought of as his defence he mostly used it for news updates, settling arguments with Phil Hendricks about football trivia or setting alarms.

  Alexa, wake me at eight AM with ‘Folsom Prison Blues’.

  ‘What do you fancy?’

  Melita didn’t look up from the chopping board. ‘Something singer-songwritery?’

  This was a challenge and Thorne knew he had to tread carefully. His idea of what constituted a great singer-songwriter and Melita’s were entirely different, so a compromise of some sort was called for. He settled on Tim Hardin, then watched for a reaction when the guitar kicked in on ‘If I Were A Carpenter’. Melita didn’t turn and pull a face, so he guessed he’d done pretty well.

  ‘I’m sorry for giving you a hard time the other night,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ He moved behind her and kissed the back of her neck.

  ‘All that waffle about guilt and shame.’ She reached around to stroke the back of his head. ‘You were right. It was a bit like I was giving you a session for nothing, and I didn’t exactly pick the best time, what with having the . . . what did you call them?’

  ‘The nadgers,’ Thorne said. He certainly didn’t have them now; he was good and relaxed. On top of which, chicken and salad was only a light dinner, so there was always at least the possibility of sex again later on.

  Or maybe he was just talking a good game.

  ‘I need to get better at leaving the work behind,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you couldn’t be worse at that than I am.’

  ‘Nobody could be worse than you are.’ She fetched the ingredients for the dressing, nodding along to the music. ‘It’s just not that easy to switch off, is it? Especially when I’ve got a . . . problematic client.’

  ‘Which I’m guessing you have.’ Thorne knew that the men and women Melita saw were rarely easy, so for her to be remotely troubled by a client meant that problematic was almost certainly putting it mildly. ‘You want to talk about it?’

  ‘Oh God, no.’ Her expression hardened for a moment, but she quickly shook off whatever was troubling her, conjured a half-smile. ‘That’s exactly what I’m trying not to do. Even if I did . . . ’

  ‘I know, the confidentiality business.’

  She sliced up the remaining tomato and stared down at it. ‘I want to work with these people. You do get that, right? I need to.’

  ‘Yeah, I get it.’

  She stood very still, the knife in her hand. ‘Most people with mental health issues never commit an act of violence, and even the ones that have done seriously bad things . . . their brains aren’t really any different from yours or mine. That’s what’s so fascinating, how delicate the balance is.’ She thought for a few seconds, slowly shook her head. ‘It’s a thin line.’

  Thorne sipped his beer and watched her.

  ‘I’m not saying it’s easy or that it’s a lot of fun. I mean, even if people haven’t done anything bad . . . some of the things going on in their heads are tough to deal with.’ She scraped everything on her chopping board into a bowl. ‘You know?’

  Thorne said nothing. Instead, proving that what Melita had said about him just a minute earlier was right, he downed the rest of his can and thought: Haven’t done anything bad . . . yet.

  He laid out the knives and forks and tablemats while Tim Hardin sang ‘Reason To Believe’.

  They’d only been eating for five minutes when Brigstocke called.

  Any call from his DCI at this time was unlikely to be unofficial and Thorne found himself wondering if Greg Hobbs had worked another miracle. The tone of Brigstocke’s voice when he said Thorne’s name quickly killed that optimism stone dead.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘As I remember,’ Brigstocke said, ‘when you came bowling back into the office this afternoon, and I asked you how everything had gone in Ashford, you said, and I quote, “All good”.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Define all good.’

  ‘DI Coleman asked me some questions and I answered them.’

  ‘Really? Nothing else you maybe should have mentioned?’

  Thorne could see where this was heading; had seen it from the moment Brigstocke had said his name like it was a hazard. ‘It was nothing, Russell. It was a spot of handbags—’

  ‘You called him a “useless cunt”.’

  ‘Well, he is.’

  ‘Your fists were clenched.’

  ‘I don’t think they were.’

  ‘I saw the fucking tape, Tom. Jesus . . . ’

  Thorne looked across and saw that Melita was watching him. He didn’t doubt for one second that she could sense there might be a problem. She mouthed a What? and Thorne shook his head before turning away.

  ‘Anyway, the long and the short of it is, he’s made a complaint.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

  ‘And it’s not like it’s the first time, is it? You losing your rag.’

  Thorne said nothing, because he knew what was next.

  ‘I’m surprised that little shite-hawk Cameron Herbert didn’t make a complaint as well, because he had every right to.’

  ‘Who told you about that?’ Thorne had a pretty good idea, but he wanted Brigstocke to confirm it.

  ‘I run this team.’ Brigstocke sounded exasperated. ‘How would I not know about it?’ Thorne could almost hear the glasses coming off. ‘So anyway, I need to make a call on this.’

  ‘Come on, Russell, don’t do that.’

  ‘No, you fucking come on. You’ve put me in this position and it’s not like you haven’t got plenty of other cases to be working, is it?’

  Half a minute later, as soon as Brigstocke had hung up, Thorne dialled Nicola Tanner’s number. It went straight to voicemail, but he didn’t bother leaving a message.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  At the morning team briefing, Russell Brigstocke got the ‘call’ he’d been forced to make out of the way good and early. He explained that, effective immediately, there was to be a degree of . . . reallocation when it came to caseloads. It paid off sometimes, he said, to shift personnel around and it was always useful to get a fresh pair of eyes on things. He went on to announce that DI Thorne would be providing that fresh pair of eyes when it came to the fatal hit and run that DI Tanner was currently working, as well as the domestic murder investigation that he would now be running alongside DS Chall.

  ‘It’s a minor bit of rejigging, that’s all.’ An arm was raised, but he waved the question away. ‘I’ve got no concerns because you’re all good officers, so it doesn’t much matter which cases you’re on.’

  Thorne sat listening, at the back of the room, head down, ignoring the sly glances he knew were being thrown in his direction. Thinking: All good, but some not considered quite as good at this precise moment. Not quite as reliable and most definitely not at the top of their game.

  Not needed . . .

  As to the investigation with which DI Thorne would no longer be so closely involved, Brigstocke went on to say that strictly speaking there wasn’t one; not in the conventional sense. The murder of Kevin Bartley in Coventry was being run by West Midlands, the murder at HMP Bronzefield was being investigated by officers in Kent and, for obvious reasons, preparations for the trial of Rebecca Driver were no longer necessary. All this was not to say that the hunt for Stuart Nicklin was no longer a major priority, because it absolutely was. Every team in the Met had been made aware of its importance, with red flags ready to be activated should Nicklin’s DNA and prints show up at any crime scene and a careful monitoring of intelligence right across the city.

  ‘We’re not easing up on this,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Make no mistake, it’s of vital importance that we apprehend this man, but until such time as that opportunity presents itself . . . we’ve got plenty of other cases to be getting on with. So bugger off and get on with them.’

  As the officers trooped dutifully away, Thorne ignored the looks he was getting from Nicola Tanner, the invitation to talk; moving quite deliberately so as to put as many people as possible between the pair of them. He’d done much the same thing on the way in. He’d dropped several calls from her first thing that morning and taken careful steps to avoid her for the half-hour between getting to the office and the start of the briefing.

  He wasn’t interested.

  At his desk, he began working through the evidence on the hit and run, a young man named Alistair Savage who had died instantly after being struck by what was probably a Vauxhall Insignia in Dalston. Though there was nothing to indicate that the hit had been deliberate, the run certainly had, so that meant a manslaughter suspect who needed to be caught. A witness had provided a partial registration, so unless and until ANPR came up trumps, Thorne was looking at a long spell of computer-bashing and several hours on the phone with the DVLA.

  It would take his mind off things, if nothing else.

  Halfway through the morning, Dipak Chall ambled over. He stood next to Thorne’s chair and kept his voice low.

  ‘Do you mind me asking . . . is everything OK between you and Nic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s good, because—’

  ‘Yes, I do mind.’

  Chall nodded and sniffed. He thrust his hands into his pockets and waited a while. ‘She stuck up for you,’ he said. ‘Just so you know.’

  Thorne carried on staring at his screen, stabbing at the keys.

  ‘When she found out what the boss was thinking of doing. She said it was a mistake and tried to get him to change his mind. She told him that you were just . . . ’

  ‘Just what?’ Thorne pushed his chair back and looked up.

  ‘Just under a bit of pressure or something. Look, I thought you should know, that’s all.’ Chall waited a while longer, then, when Thorne showed no inclination to discuss things any further, he wandered away again.

  Thorne was unconvinced.

  He went back to the hit and run files, or tried to.

  Whatever Tanner had told Chall she’d said, Thorne had a pretty good idea how it had all played out, late the day before. She would have been the person Brigstocke had called in to discuss the situation; same rank as Thorne, supposedly close, the obvious choice. Once she’d been told about what had happened at Ashford, she’d have had to at least mention what had happened with Cameron Herbert, even if Brigstocke had already known. She’d have made sure he knew on which side of the line she stood when it came to serious disciplinary matters such as this.

  Sir, you should probably be aware that . . .

  Of course she’d have mentioned it, because that was what Tanner was like. Job-pissed. A degree of reluctance at the end perhaps, before she was forced to agree, then resignation, a show of sadness even, once the decision had been made.