Page 20

NINETEEN

There were two unmarked squad cars parked nearby, their occupants with eyes on the entrance to the building. Thorne and Tanner walked past both vehicles on their way to the front door, but took care to show no sign that they recognised any of their fellow officers.

Having rung the bell, they held their IDs to the camera on the entryphone and were buzzed in from the street.

They exchanged meaningless pleasantries with the uniformed officer in the lobby, signing in next to their names on a list of approved visitors before being allowed access to the stairs.

Two flights up, Thorne and Tanner raised their faces to a second camera, then knocked quietly on a door and waited for the building’s only resident to open it.

It was called a ‘safe house’ but was actually a single-bedroom apartment in a bog-standard block of flats in Edgware.

There were eight rooms in the place and, at any one time, these might be housing protected witnesses, vulnerable refugees or victims of domestic violence and people-trafficking.

To find this one unoccupied had been a major stroke of luck, as similar properties managed by the UK Protected Persons Service were considerably busier.

The Modern Slavery Unit had just brought down a large Romanian gang in Harrow and more than forty young women who’d been forced into sex work had been housed in protected accommodation across three different boroughs.

When she’d begun ringing around, Tanner had, coincidentally, been offered space in a building currently playing host to the man who’d grassed up Nick Cresswell. The former member of Cresswell’s firm who would, when the time came, be giving evidence against him.

‘I hope it’s damp,’ Thorne had said when Tanner told him. ‘I hope it’s got rats.’

Emily Mead just nodded when she opened the door, then immediately turned back inside. Thorne and Tanner followed her through to the small sitting room. A beige carpet and a two-seater sofa Thorne guessed would be described as oatmeal.

‘It’s nice,’ he said.

Tanner nodded, though she’d seen it the day before when she’d dropped Emily off, so already knew how bland and depressing it was.

Emily Mead stood next to the low pine table in the middle of the room and stared around as though this was the first time she’d seen it. ‘It’s boring as fuck,’ she said. ‘Clean, though, and I’ve got tea- and coffee-making facilities.’

‘Coffee sounds good,’ Tanner said.

Emily walked across to the galley kitchen. ‘Instant, obviously.’

‘Fine with me,’ Thorne said. ‘I like instant coffee.’

‘What?’ Tanner looked horrified, as though he’d just confessed to some unspeakable perversion.

‘You’re such a snob,’ Thorne said. The truth was he drank instant coffee now and again because it’s what they’d drunk at home when he was growing up and it reminded him of his parents.

The Mellow Bird’s his mum had loved, made with hot milk once in a while as a treat.

‘Why don’t you fire off a strongly worded email to the PPS and insist they supply cafetières? ’

‘I’ll just have tea,’ Tanner said.

When Emily had brought the drinks across, she sat down next to Tanner on the sofa.

Thorne took a small hardback chair that was leaning against the wall and sat opposite them.

The young woman looked a lot better than she had when Thorne had last seen her.

She was showered and wearing fresh clothes that had been brought from her home address in Brixton.

The silver Puffa jacket was hanging up just inside the door, though Thorne guessed she wouldn’t have the chance to wear it for a while.

Not unless she agreed to the proposal they were there to make.

‘How’re you settling in?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, fine.’

‘Did you sleep OK?’ Tanner asked.

Emily shrugged then turned to stare at the wall. ‘It’s weird not having windows,’ she said.

‘Trust me, you’re not missing much,’ Thorne said.

Tanner sipped her tea. ‘No, it’s not the loveliest view.’

‘Unless you like gazing out at scaffolding and the odd skip.’ Thorne saw a smile appear and for the first time he got a good look at Emily Mead’s teeth, or what was left of them.

He remembered the drug problems to which she’d alluded during the interview.

Meth, he guessed, or maybe a serious cocaine habit that had led to a poor diet and excessive teeth-grinding.

He sometimes wondered if drug dealers and dentists were in cahoots.

‘Are they worried about snipers or something?’

‘You don’t need to worry about anything,’ Tanner said.

Thorne remembered an occasion five or six years before at a safe house in Enfield that did have windows, when Kalashnikov-wielding associates of a particularly nasty oligarch had shot the shit out of the place from a passing car, but he decided that now was not the time to share.

‘So, what’s going to happen?’ Emily asked.

‘You stay here,’ Tanner said. ‘That’s it. You stay here, where you’ll be safe, while we try to catch the man who killed Callaghan and those other officers.’

‘I mean after. What’s going to happen to me when you’ve caught him?’

‘We can talk about that—’

‘And what if you don’t catch him?’

Tanner looked at Thorne. The fact was that Russell Brigstocke had not been altogether convinced by the proposal that their suspect should become a protected witness and had only agreed after Tanner had pushed, hard.

Even then, he had made it clear that Emily Mead might yet end up facing charges, though he couldn’t say for sure at this stage what those might be.

‘There’s no point us not being straight with you,’ Thorne said. ‘If recommendations are made, the Crown Prosecution Service could still decide to press charges against you once this is all over.’

‘ What? ’

‘We just don’t know,’ Tanner said. ‘That’s the truth.’

‘Who makes those recommendations?’ She looked in desperation at Thorne and then at Tanner. ‘You?’

‘Probably not, no,’ Thorne said.

‘It’s not fair,’ she said.

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘I believe you.’ Tanner put her mug down and moved closer to her. ‘I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but what I can say for sure is that the likelihood you would face any serious charges would be considerably reduced if you worked with us.’

Emily sat back. ‘How do I do that?’

‘We want you to help us by reaching out to the man who killed Callaghan,’ Thorne said. ‘The man you know as LoveMyBro.’

Tanner raised a hand when she saw Emily begin to shake her head. ‘It’s just a few messages, that’s all. You start a conversation and then ask if he’d meet you somewhere.’

‘Are you serious? I saw that mad bastard stab someone to death and people like that don’t tend to like having witnesses knocking around. He might say he wants to meet up just so he can use that knife on me.’

‘You’ll be perfectly safe,’ Tanner said. ‘If a meeting was arranged, we’d obviously be there to make sure of that.’

‘So, I’m what . . . like bait?’

‘No,’ Tanner said. ‘It’s not—’

‘Yes, exactly like that,’ Thorne said. ‘So we can catch this man before he has the chance to kill anyone else, give some kind of closure to the relatives of the people he’s already killed and, as a nice little bonus, maybe keep you out of prison. So yeah, bait.’

Emily barked out a laugh, but she still looked horrified. She dropped her head back and closed her eyes. Half a minute later she opened them and sat up. ‘I haven’t got a computer,’ she said.

‘We’ll supply all the equipment you need,’ Tanner said. ‘And someone to help you with it. To talk you through everything.’

‘When?’

‘As soon as I can get it all set up. Maybe we can start tonight?’

She took another minute or so, stared at the wall where the window should be, then shrugged. ‘I’ve got sod all else to do, have I?’

‘Thank you,’ Tanner said.

Thorne nodded thanks of his own, then raised his mug. ‘Coffee’s pretty good, too.’ He gave another nod towards Tanner. ‘Whatever the Duchess of Hammersmith here might think.’