Yeah, I think so.

  Up until recently, things had been good . . . better than good . . . and if they didn’t feel quite as perfect right now – if there was a tension between them that neither seemed ready to acknowledge – Thorne knew it was down to him. He had not been himself since Stuart Nicklin had made his presence felt and there had been changes in his behaviour beyond losing his temper or his confidence; more subtle than insomnia or panic attacks. Melita had picked up on it straight away; of course she had. She’d even offered to help, and, being an idiot, Thorne had ignored her. Now it felt as though she was doing the sensible thing and . . . withdrawing. Offering a little less of herself, at any rate.

  Thorne promised himself that when this was all over he would ask Melita how she felt about moving things on a little. He would find out where he stood. If she was up for it, he could rent out his flat again and move in with her, put the money towards Melita’s mortgage payments. They could even do it the other way round . . . or, if she preferred, they could keep things exactly as they were.

  Either way, though it remained a mystery to him, he would do whatever he could to remind her why she wanted to be with him in the first place.

  The alert sounded on his phone as he was approaching traffic lights. He waited until he was stationary before taking his phone out, thinking how proud Nicola Tanner would have been.

  A text message from a withheld number.

  Did Alfie like his present?

  He was probably sitting there no more than a minute and it felt as if he was hearing the noise from deep underwater, but when Thorne finally became aware that drivers behind him were leaning on their horns, he moved quickly away from the lights then pulled straight into a bus lane and stopped.

  He flicked on his hazards, stared at Nicklin’s message.

  He had no doubt whatsoever that it was Nicklin and no concerns as to where Nicklin might have got his number, because stuff like that was child’s play. The breaths were coming a little faster and his heart jumped in his chest because of what else Stuart Nicklin knew.

  Nicklin had been ahead of the game all along, Thorne was well aware of that, but only in terms of the investigation. The dark web business, the operation in Coventry. Thorne had only bought those presents for Alfie a few days earlier, wrapped them the previous night after Hendricks had left, so how the hell could Nicklin possibly have known about them?

  This wasn’t a leak from within the team or an email being hacked.

  Thorne started when the phone rang on the seat next to him and he snatched at it, certain that it was Nicklin; ready for him. He was as disappointed as he was relieved when he saw that it wasn’t. It felt like it was time.

  ‘Hi, Dave . . . ’

  A few seconds passed before Holland asked him if he was all right. ‘You sound a bit . . . stressed.’

  Thorne told him why.

  ‘That’s sort of the reason I’m calling,’ Holland said. ‘I was thinking about what you told me . . . Nicklin knowing what your plans were.’

  ‘Knowing fucking everything.’

  ‘Right, so . . . he’s always kept an eye on you, hasn’t he? Or paid other people to. Wasn’t he going through your bins at one time?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Thorne remembered Nicklin gleefully telling him that he was ordering far too many takeaways.

  ‘So, I’m guessing that the stuff he knew about was prob-

  ably stuff you’d talked about on the phone. Conversations with Tanner or Brigstocke or whoever when you were at home.’

  ‘You reckon he’s bugged my phone?’

  ‘No. Listen, this is just a thought—’

  ‘Dave, he knew about me giving presents to Alfie. A bugged phone doesn’t explain that.’

  ‘I was actually thinking cameras,’ Holland said.

  SIXTY

  It wasn’t as if they’d fallen straight into bed.

  Tanner had opened another bottle of wine first and put some music on and they’d talked for maybe half an hour. Films they both loved – Goodfellas, Bridesmaids, Mean Girls – TV personalities they hated – Piers Morgan, Jeremy Clarkson – and nothing whatsoever was making Tanner think this was a mistake. Quite the opposite, in fact, especially as it looked as though Fiona was feeling the same way. She was every bit as excited about what was going to happen as Tanner was – she said so – but she also seemed completely at ease. There were more funny/bitchy stories about her friends and co-workers, and if she was remotely curious about the woman whose photographs were all over Tanner’s front room, she didn’t say anything.

  Tanner wondered if, had she known she’d be bringing someone back, she would have taken Susan’s photographs down.

  She didn’t think about it for very long.

  She tried not to think about Susan once she and Fiona were in bed, but it was impossible. To begin with, at least. This was the first time she had been skin-to-skin with anyone at all since Susan’s death and she couldn’t help but compare the different bodies. Fiona was slighter than Susan had been and there were sharp angles in places where Tanner had grown used to softness. Fiona tasted different and made different noises, smiled a lot more while they were doing it, and by the time they eventually rolled away from one another, grinning and sticky, it was only Fiona that Tanner was thinking about.

  ‘That was a really good idea,’ Fiona said. She rubbed her foot against Tanner’s. They were both still breathing heavily.

  ‘And sensible, too,’ Tanner said. ‘Saving money, remember?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Fiona turned on to her side, leaned on her elbow. ‘I’m not hungry yet, though.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Not tired?’

  Tanner smiled. ‘Well, I might need a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that.’ Fiona threw her leg across Tanner’s and straddled her. ‘I’ll be doing all the work this time.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Tanner said.

  Fiona sat up and stared at her, then leaned down fast to take hold of Tanner’s arms. ‘Oh, it will be.’ The smile was there again, but now Tanner thought it was a little weird and . . . wolfish. Without releasing her grip on Tanner’s arms, Fiona began scanning the room; looking for something to use. ‘Because I’m going to tie you up.’

  SIXTY-ONE

  Thorne did not even bother to take his jacket off.

  He started with a straightforward visual sweep of his living room; the corners, the light fittings, the edges of the television and satellite box. He knew that these days a camera could be made to look like almost anything, or simply be small enough to hide in plain sight. He began to prowl around the room a little more quickly, growing angrier and more impatient, and all the time he was racking his brain for some way that Nicklin or someone working for him could have got in to his flat to install a camera in the first place.

  He hadn’t had any break-ins.

  There hadn’t been any unscheduled visits from British Gas or BT.

  Aside from people he knew, there hadn’t been any visitors at all.

  The more he thought about it, though, the more Holland’s suggestion made sense. He remembered the phone conversations with Hobbs about the pill bottle scam, and there had been several about Kevin Bartley and the operation in Coventry. Most of these cameras had built-in microphones . . .

  After fifteen minutes of vaguely methodical searching and finding nothing, Thorne became a little less concerned about making a mess. He stamped around the room, shouting at the walls. He swept books off shelves and ransacked cupboards. He tipped out drawers and tossed what he’d once thought of as ornaments but now seemed like pointless bits of old crap on to the floor. He scattered his carefully ordered albums and CDs, threw aside collections of magazines, and felt nothing, because by now he’d decided that if Nicklin had hidden a camera somewhere he was going to find it, even if that meant tearing the entire flat apart.

  By the time he’d finished in the kitchen, he needed to pick his way through the debris.

  Forty minutes later, Thorne sat slumped at the foot of his bed, sweating and wasted, surrounded by the carnage of what had proved, in the end, to be a fruitless search. The air was thick with dust and rage. All around him his possessions lay cracked or splintered, and it took him a moment to realise that what he’d thought was some kind of tinnitus or maybe a wheeze in his chest was actually something electrical he’d broken which was now feebly beeping at him from the next room.

  Now it looked as though there had been a break-in, or a minor explosion.

  He let his head fall back, then left, and just as he was wondering when and where the hell he was going to start putting the flat back together again, he saw it.

  The camera was on the floor.

  He crawled across the carpet, sweeping clothes out of the way, to get a closer look. He’d been stupid, he realised; he’d been searching higher up. This was the perfect place, a gap between the chest of drawers and the wardrobe. Just an inch or two of nothing, but big enough . . . with a lead running to a socket behind the chest of drawers that Thorne had forgotten was there.

  How many times had he looked and not seen it?

  Thorne had to get down on his belly to reach in and pull the thing out. It was black, around the same size as a golf ball, with a lens no bigger than his fingernail. Hidden where it was, Thorne doubted that the field of vision would have been ideal, but it would have done the job. He knew it had. He turned it and saw a microphone that he guessed would have picked up any conversation in the bedroom and probably the living room too.

  Grunting, he pushed himself up on to his knees and stared down at the lens, seeing only the distorted reflection of his face, puffy and pale. Thorne sensed what was coming, yet strangely the tension began to ease and the roaring in his ears faded, until finally he was calm. It felt as if all the fear and the panic and the anger of the last few weeks – of the last crazed forty minutes – had shrunk and been squeezed into this inevitable moment of stillness and silence.

  Thorne stared, and held his breath, and wondered if Stuart Nicklin was staring back.

  The question was answered almost immediately when his phone rang.

  ‘Well, someone’s made a mess,’ Nicklin said.

  Thorne swallowed, breathed, swallowed again. He had thought many times about what he would say to Nicklin this time around when the opportunity presented itself, but here it was, and he had nothing. There was just the dead, black lens of the camera and the phone, hot against his ear.

  ‘And you look like shit, by the way.’

  ‘You don’t look too good yourself,’ Thorne said, finally. ‘I’ve seen the pictures.’

  Nicklin laughed. ‘Jealousy’s a terrible thing, Tom.’

  ‘Fuck this.’ Thorne reached behind the camera and yanked out the lead.

  ‘Now, what did you do that for?’ Nicklin sounded disappointed. ‘I was enjoying looking at you, even if you were a bit . . . blurry. Then again, I reckon you’ve been getting blurrier all the time lately.’

  Thorne got to his feet, took a few steps backwards then dropped on to the edge of his trashed bed. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Well . . . a lot of people think that what I want is to have my head examined, and I’m sure you’d agree with them.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Oh, it’s never too late.’ Nicklin laughed again, a ragged hiss in it. ‘On the plus side, the person doing the examining is very easy on the eye.’ He waited. ‘Hello . . . ?’

  Thorne was getting slowly to his feet and fighting for breath. He had just about managed to suck up enough spit to get the words out when he heard Melita scream.

  Heard her say, ‘Please . . . ’

  Then Nicklin again. ‘Are you still there, Tom?’

  ‘Listen to me—’

  ‘Please don’t start listing all the horrible things you’ll do to me if I hurt her. All that stupid avenging angel stuff. You’re better than that.’

  Thorne was already moving, tossing stuff aside and trying to find the jacket which contained his car keys and was now buried somewhere among the carnage.

  ‘Good,’ Nicklin said. ‘Now, I won’t insult you by telling you not to be silly about this. What the consequences would be if you didn’t come alone or if any of your colleagues came charging in later on, all of that. If it was anyone else I would, obviously. I’d spell out exactly what would happen to this lovely young woman if they didn’t follow simple instructions, but I think you and me are past all that. I mean, you know, don’t you . . . ?’

  Thorne found his jacket, dug out the car keys and ran to the front door.

  The phone was still pressed to his ear.

  ‘Well, you’re not saying much, but I’m guessing you’re in a bit of a hurry, which is fair enough.’ Nicklin’s long sigh became a soft hum. ‘So, see you soon then, and . . . drive safely. Your girlfriend will be gutted if you don’t get here in one piece.’

  SIXTY-TWO

  Nicklin called back ten minutes later, when Thorne was halfway there.

  ‘Just out of interest, Tom, how many of the seven wonders of the world can you name?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, surely you can name a couple.’

  Thorne swore, at himself and at Nicklin; screamed it as he ran two sets of lights at the Archway roundabout, ignored the cacophony of horns from drivers as he cut them up and accelerated up the hill.

  ‘Too hard?’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘OK then, in which country is the world’s highest waterfall?’

  ‘Look, I’m coming, all right . . . what else do you want?’

  ‘Nothing much. We’re just getting bored waiting, that’s all. Plus I forgot to say, make sure you bring some handcuffs with you.’

  The buzz as he pushed through the front door seemed abnormally loud and Thorne winced when it crashed shut behind him. He stood in the parquet-floored hallway and listened. Just his own breathing and the distant hum of traffic from the main road. A boiler grumbling somewhere. He saw no reason why the occupants of the two upstairs flats should not be at home and, based on the time he’d spent here, he knew that noise in the building carried easily. More than anything, it was vital that whatever was about to happen, happened quietly.

  If one of the people upstairs should hear anything untoward and decide to call the police, there would be no time for Thorne to explain that he had nothing to do with it. One yelp of a siren or the glimpse of a blue light and all bets would be off as far as Nicklin was concerned. He was a man who kept his promises and Thorne had no doubt about what that would mean for Melita.

  As Nicklin had said, Thorne knew.

  He was unsurprised to find that the door to Melita’s flat had been left a few inches ajar. He sucked in a lungful of air that tasted of floor polish and eased it open. He took a few tentative steps and froze. Melita’s small hallway was thickly carpeted, but he obviously had not been as quiet as he thought.

  ‘We’re in here.’

  Nicklin’s tone was casual and welcoming; as if Thorne had arrived fashionably late to a dinner party.

  He carried on past the pristine kitchen, then left at the main bedroom, until he stood outside the door to the smaller one, which Melita had converted several years before into her consulting room. He waited, feeling the tremors build in his arms and legs, but this time Thorne understood only too well why he was shaking. With no way of knowing what was waiting for him on the other side of the door, he wondered if he’d made a terrible mistake. He could simply have told Tanner what was happening and specially trained officers would have been in position outside the house before he’d got there. A firearms unit, surveillance officers, a hostage negotiator. Wasn’t there at least a chance that Nicklin could have been taken without endangering Melita?

  ‘You don’t have to knock, Tom. No standing on ceremony.’

  The quiet confidence in Nicklin’s voice was enough to convince Thorne he was right to be afraid, but also that he was doing this the only way possible. If Nicklin faced a return to prison, it would only be to resume a life sentence, and as one of the few offenders in the system for whom life meant life, another murder added to his tally would be neither here nor there. Nicklin had never needed a reason to kill anyone, but killing Melita simply to make Thorne suffer would be as good as any.

  Thorne pushed the door open.

  It was a small room, designed to promote calm and openness; rugs across stripped boards, framed photographic landscapes on the walls, muted colours. There was a desk in one corner and bookcases either side of the window, but the room was dominated by a pair of comfortable chairs facing each other across a low glass table.

  Melita sat in the chair furthest from the door and Nicklin stood, leaning against the back of it, the kitchen knife in his hand no more than a few inches from her neck. Thorne stepped into the room.

  ‘So, here we are then,’ Nicklin said.

  The CCTV footage from the pub had not done justice to the awful peculiarity of Stuart Nicklin’s new face. His nose was far too narrow, or perhaps it only seemed that way because his lips were now so absurdly plump, as bizarre as the deep cleft in his chin and a hairline that was crusted and bloody. Thorne looked from Nicklin’s ravaged face to Melita’s perfect one; to the knife next to it, bouncing gently against the top of the chair.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Melita nodded, but her eyes were fixed on the rug beneath her feet.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Nicklin said. ‘Aren’t you fine?’

  Melita nodded again, muttered something.

  ‘You’ll need to speak up,’ Nicklin said.

  Now Melita raised her head; shook it as she looked at Thorne. ‘I’m so sorry, Tom. He promised he wouldn’t hurt you.’