Her hand moved across his and when she squeezed it, he nodded.

  Then he laid his cheek against the desk and waited for it to stop.

  ‘Last time, you told me how much you were enjoying this,’ Perera said.

  ‘Because I am.’

  ‘That’s very nice to hear, but I’m keen to know if you think it’s helping you at all.’

  The man sitting opposite her smiled. ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Understanding myself, I suppose.’

  Perera waited. She spent a lot of her job saying nothing.

  ‘Look, I can’t be the first person to sit here and worry if he really is mad, just because so many people have said he is.’

  ‘That’s not really a word I like—’

  He grunted a laugh. ‘I know, it’s a stupid word, really, isn’t it? Makes you think of people who’re convinced they’re Napoleon or something. I certainly don’t believe I’m someone I’m not. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that these sessions have helped me understand who I am, and that different is not the same as . . . is there a better word for it?’

  ‘Well . . . suffering from mental health issues.’

  ‘Yes, but surely we all suffer from those to one degree or another. It’s a sliding scale, isn’t it? From mildly anxious to . . . raving lunatic. I’m fairly sure you’re on that scale somewhere.’

  ‘Back to me again.’

  The man held up a hand. ‘Sorry. Can’t help myself.’

  ‘So, how do you feel afterwards? When we’ve finished a session.’

  ‘Fired up,’ the man said. ‘Raring to go.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, but I do still have one major concern.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The drugs.’

  The man seemed taken aback. ‘You’ve known about them from the beginning.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve been honest with me about them, and that’s always positive, but I wonder how much of the way you feel is to do with real understanding, and how much might be because of the tablets.’

  ‘I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘Have you taken one today?’ Perera asked.

  ‘More than one,’ the man said.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, because I think we’d make a lot more progress without them. I think there’s still a lot more work to do.’

  The man shrugged. ‘Sadly, I don’t think we’ll have the time.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Perera said.

  ‘The way it is.’ The man took out a chocolate bar from his jacket pocket, waved it at Perera and began to remove the wrapper. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Well, I don’t usually . . . ’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ He reached down to stroke the seat beneath him. ‘Worried about your lovely oatmeal cushions?’ He bit into the chocolate and began to chew. ‘Don’t worry, I eat these things so quickly I never get any on my fingers.’

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  There had been a time, not very long ago, when a hug between himself and Helen Weeks would have been awkward. Instinctive, of course, and not out of the ordinary considering their shared history, but a little uncomfortable nonetheless, in light of the fact that it was history. Now, though, when Helen opened the door and Thorne moved towards her, the embrace felt perfectly natural, effortless, and he clung to his ex-partner rather longer than he might have done otherwise, because he needed to.

  He stepped back to collect the gift-wrapped box he’d set down on the doorstep before ringing the bell.

  ‘Come on,’ Helen said. ‘Alfie’s already excited . . . ’

  It had been a while since Thorne had been back to the flat in Tulse Hill, where he’d as good as lived for a couple of years. It didn’t seem very different. A little less messy, perhaps, which Thorne put down to there being fewer action figures and bits of Lego scattered around. Alfie was only seven, but Thorne guessed he spent a lot more time up in his room these days; that he didn’t play with toys quite so much.

  Computer games, Thorne reckoned. He hoped so, anyway.

  While Helen was making coffee, Alfie appeared in the living room doorway. He looked a little nervous and something jumped in Thorne’s stomach. Alfie’s father had died before the boy was born and Thorne had been the nearest thing to it for a long time. Though he hadn’t told Melita about every occasion, he had seen Helen fairly regularly since the break-up and talked to her on the phone every couple of weeks, but this was the first time Thorne had seen her son in almost six months.

  ‘Hello, mate . . . ’

  Alfie nodded, his hands in the pockets of Avengers pyjamas. He looked down at his slippers. ‘How long are you staying?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thorne said. ‘For a bit.’

  The boy nodded again and looked at him.

  ‘A cuddle would be nice.’ Thorne waited. ‘Or, I don’t know . . . maybe you’re too grown up for cuddles now.’

  Alfie nodded solemnly, teasing him.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Thorne said. He let out a long theatrical sigh, then opened his arms when the boy ran to him. It was another hug Thorne needed badly and he only let go when Helen appeared with the coffees and Alfie began to wriggle.

  ‘Nice to see Uncle Tom, right?’ Helen said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Uncle Phil says hello, too,’ Thorne said.

  Alfie grinned again. ‘Spiky Uncle Phil.’

  ‘Yeah, spiky.’ Thorne turned to look at the small Christmas tree in the corner by the TV; a real one like he’d promised Melita. He nodded towards the gift he’d slid beneath it. ‘Father Christmas left something for you early.’

  Alfie rolled his eyes, put his hands on his hips. ‘Mummy’s Father Christmas.’

  Helen looked at Thorne and shrugged. ‘Yes, well now Uncle Tom’s Father Christmas too, so what do you say?’

  ‘Can I open it now?’

  ‘No, you cannot.’

  Once the prospect of an unexpected present had disappeared, Alfie seemed keen to get back to his room; he was restless and monosyllabic until Helen put him out of his misery. She told him to brush his teeth and that Tom would be up to say goodnight before he left.

  ‘The lure of that bloody computer,’ Helen said, when he’d gone. ‘I mean . . . seven years old.’

  Thorne nodded. ‘I got him some games and a pair of those headphones with a microphone on.’

  ‘You’re hardly helping.’ Helen shook her head, then smiled. ‘Thanks, he’ll love that.’

  ‘Oh, and there might be a new Spurs shirt in there, as well. In case he’s grown out of his old one.’

  They talked for a while about how Alfie was doing at school, about some issue Helen was having with the nosy woman next door, about nothing much. It wasn’t until Thorne had finished his coffee that he got round to telling her the real reason he’d wanted to come over.

  ‘Yeah, well obviously,’ Helen said. ‘I knew what it was about as soon as you called.’

  Of course she did, Thorne thought. Helen worked as a DI on a child protection unit, and, once the word had gone out, Nicklin’s name would have been mentioned as much at her station as it would anywhere else. His picture on the wall.

  ‘What took you so long?’ she asked.

  It was a fair question. Helen had been the one waiting for him when he’d come back from Bardsey Island, the one who’d had to live with the man Thorne became for a while afterwards. She had seen first-hand what Nicklin could do and Thorne knew that he should have told her sooner; that they should have been having this conversation two weeks ago, the minute Nicklin’s name had first come up.

  He thought: I’m a fucking moron. He said, ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

  ‘So, why worry me now?’

  ‘He’s made threats,’ Thorne said.

  ‘What sort of threats?’

  ‘Nothing specific, but it might well involve people I’m close to, so . . . you might want to think about getting something organised.’

  Helen nodded, like she was thinking about it. ‘What, you mean like getting a patrol car to drive by the house twice an hour every night?’

  ‘Yeah, exactly like that.’

  ‘Which is why it’s already happening.’ Her face was partially hidden by the coffee cup she was cradling, but Thorne knew she was smiling. ‘Good job some of us are on the ball.’

  Thorne knew that he should not have been surprised, because whenever he’d been stupid enough to underestimate Helen in the past, he’d invariably fallen on his arse. All the same, he could not help wondering why Melita’s reaction had been so different. Perhaps it was simply down to the fact that Melita was not a copper and that she didn’t have a child to protect.

  ‘So, Nicklin aside,’ Helen asked, ‘how’s work?’

  For a few moments, Thorne badly wanted to tell her.

  Well, Christ only knows when I last had a decent night’s sleep and most of the time I can barely string a sentence together, but if you overlook that, and the full-on panic attack I had this morning, everything’s peachy . . .

  The attack had lasted less than fifteen minutes, but had left Thorne seriously shaken. Tanner had told him there was no reason to . . . panic. She’d laughed and told him that she’d had a few of them too, soon after Susan had been killed. She said she’d learned not to be afraid of them, that he should look online for the best ways to cope if it happened again, but that, in all probability, it was a one-off.

  Yeah, and I did come quite close to beating the shit out of a witness. Oh, and a fellow officer.

  He said, ‘All good. You?’

  Helen talked for a few minutes about her own job, but dealing with those who abused or killed children was never something she was keen to discuss outside the workplace and Thorne wasn’t surprised when she changed the subject.

  ‘Everything still going well with Melita?’

  Thorne took a few seconds. Helen waited.

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’ He hoped so, but sometimes it was hard to tell. It had always been very black and white with Helen. If Thorne had pissed her off, he’d known about it very bloody quickly, and he guessed Helen would probably say the same about him. Melita was somewhat trickier to fathom sometimes. That noise in her head he knew was there, but which she seemed keen to prevent anyone else from hearing. ‘What about you? Are you seeing anyone?’

  Helen shook her head and nodded upstairs. ‘Too busy with his lordship.’

  Thorne said, ‘Yeah, I bet,’ but was wondering what to make of the fact that he was so happy about it.

  Twenty minutes later on the doorstep, after Thorne had nipped upstairs to say goodbye to Alfie, he said, ‘I’ve missed him.’

  ‘Well, don’t leave it so long next time, then,’ Helen said.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Maybe don’t wait until there’s a serial killer running around. Just a thought, Tom . . . ’

  The hug was perhaps a little more formal this time, a little less desperate, but all the same, Thorne walked back to his car feeling as good as he had done in days. As happy as he could possibly feel, all things considered.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  They had chosen a pub just off Trafalgar Square, found a table in the upstairs bar, where it was a little quieter.

  ‘Aye, this is better,’ Fiona said, as she shucked off her denim jacket. ‘I hate it when you have to shout to make yourself heard.’

  ‘Me, too.’ Tanner was already wondering if she was over-dressed.

  ‘I mean, I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but sweet nothings aren’t quite the same if you have to yell them.’

  The fact that this woman was even tastier in the flesh than she looked in her profile picture meant that Tanner was content to let Fiona Bridges get as far ahead of herself as she fancied. The sexy accent didn’t hurt, either.

  Tanner told herself to calm down.

  Both of them had travelled into town on the tube, so having quickly downed a beer each they decided there was no harm in splitting a bottle of red. Tanner was happy to let Fiona choose.

  ‘I don’t want you to think I’m a pisshead,’ Fiona said, pouring for both of them. ‘I just get a bit nervous.’

  ‘I’m not feeling hugely laid back myself,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Well, what’s the worst that can happen?’ Fiona raised her glass, leaned across and touched it to Tanner’s.

  ‘So, have you done this before?’ Tanner asked. ‘What you said about getting nervous . . . ’

  ‘A few times.’ Fiona smiled. ‘What about yourself?’

  ‘Just once.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘A disaster.’ Tanner laughed. ‘Well, that’s probably putting it a bit strongly. She was perfectly nice, but she was a copper, so . . . ’

  ‘That not a good idea, then?’

  ‘Oh, God, no.’

  ‘What about a copper and a nurse?’

  ‘Just . . . as an example, you mean?’

  ‘Aye, just as an example.’

  ‘Sounds pretty good to me,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Well, that’s all right, then.’

  Fiona told Tanner about moving down from Edinburgh a year and a half earlier, the relationship that had broken up just before that, which had been the reason she’d wanted to get away. She talked about her job and how much she loved it. Telling one funny story after another, she ran through what sounded like a fairly hectic dating history since the move south, then asked Tanner about hers.

  ‘I was with one person for a long time.’ Tanner stopped, not sure where to go next.

  ‘What happened?’

  Tanner had guessed this might come up, but knew there was no way that talking about what had actually happened could possibly do her any good. It might well put the mockers on a date that seemed to be going pretty well; or, at the very least, make Fiona feel like she was competing with a dead woman. Tanner had felt a sharp stab of guilt when she decided to say nothing, and she tried to imagine how things might go had Susan been the one out on a date, dealing with the fact that Tanner had been murdered several years

  before.

  She could almost hear Susan laughing.

  Are you kidding? If you’d been dead this long I’d have probably forgotten your name by now.

  ‘I’d rather not talk about it,’ Tanner said now. If things worked out, she would tell Fiona about it later, obviously. ‘It was all a bit shit . . . so I’d rather just forget about it and carry on having a good time.’

  Fiona smiled over her wine glass. ‘You having a good time, then?’

  ‘A great time, so far.’ Tanner smiled back. ‘I mean, I don’t want to get ahead of myself either . . . ’

  ‘Your hair looks fab, by the way.’ Fiona reached across until she could very nearly touch it, then drew her hand back. ‘It’s a lot different from how it was in your photo.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Tanner felt hugely relieved, after an afternoon at a salon in Hendon having every trace of grey taken out, then going a bit mad and having blonde highlights put into what had started as a shaggy mess and was now a sleek bob. The girl in the salon had told her she looked great, that it took years off her, but Tanner still worried that she’d gone a little far. Up until the moment Fiona had complimented her, Tanner imagined she was carrying a big sign saying Mutton Dressed As Lamb. ‘Yours is gorgeous, too. It was actually the first thing I noticed.’

  Fiona blinked at her, slowly. ‘So, not my puppy-dog eyes, then?’

  ‘All right, the second thing.’ Tanner grinned and let her eyes drift obviously down to Fiona’s chest. ‘OK, so maybe it was the third thing.’ The laughter masked the shock Tanner felt at how . . . forward she was being, but the chat came easily and the wine was certainly going down very easily, and even if she was rather more pissed than she’d been in a while she felt no desire to fight against it.

  Half an hour later, Fiona was pulling her denim jacket back on.

  ‘You want to get some food, then?’

  ‘Well, yeah, we could,’ Tanner said.

  ‘What are you suggesting, Detective Inspector?’

  ‘Just . . . there’s food at my place.’ Tanner felt herself reddening. ‘Unless you’d prefer to go out somewhere.’

  ‘No, food at your place sounds perfect . . . and cheaper, right?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Tanner said. ‘It’s a money-saving exercise when you think about it.’

  ‘Oh, I am thinking about it,’ Fiona said. ‘I’m thinking that what would be even better is if we work up an appetite first.’

  They were laughing again as they began walking towards the tube.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Driving home, Thorne was doing his best to remember the circumstances that had led to he and Helen splitting up. It was hard to get the chronology straight. He recalled some of the arguments all too well, even if the reasons for them eluded him. It was his fault, almost certainly; caring too much about the wrong things at the wrong time, or unwilling to make the final commitment. More likely than not, Helen had simply got fed up with him. All he could remember clearly was that she had suggested a trial separation, and that a few months down the line, neither of them had seemed particularly inclined to wind the trial up. If Helen ever thought she’d made a mistake, Thorne had seen no sign of it, but he certainly did. If he was honest with himself, he had been temporarily excited back then at the prospect of being single again; by the promise of freedom, whatever he’d thought that meant. By the time the gloss had worn off, it was too late and he was stuck with it.

  Lumbered with himself, until Melita had come along.

  Everything still going well with Melita?