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TWENTY-SEVEN

A working day that began and ended with positive developments on any case was a rarity in itself, but had Tom Thorne known it would be their last for some time, had he had the slightest idea what lay ahead, he might have appreciated it even more than he did.

He’d have got down on his knees and thanked God.

‘Looks like your girl’s done what we wanted.’ Brigstocke handed over a piece of paper for Thorne and Tanner to examine as soon as they’d sat down in his office. ‘She’s got him talking, anyway.’

Thorne and Tanner studied the transcript of the online exchange between protected witness and prime suspect, which Emily Mead had instigated late the night before.

Why would I be scared?

I didn’t really think you were.

You were trying to wind me up?

Just strange that you weren’t talking to me.

THEY’RE the ones who need to be scared.

I’m sure they are.

And I don’t know about WE but I am not done.

‘I hate to say I told you so,’ Tanner said.

‘I know for a fact that you love it,’ Brigstocke said. ‘But you can’t say it anyway, because we’re not there yet. Nowhere near there. Yes, she’s managed to get him communicating again, which was the first thing we needed, but we’re not going to push it.’

‘Course not,’ Tanner said.

‘I see that,’ Thorne said. ‘Nobody wants him getting suspicious and we don’t want to scare him off, but the rate this bloke’s going, I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time.’

Brigstocke nodded, thinking about it. ‘There’s still nothing that links the ex-copper in Stoke Newington to any of this, by the way.’

‘There will be,’ Thorne said.

‘Maybe, but yeah . . . I take your point. We’ll have to get Emily to push for a meeting sooner or later.’

‘I vote for sooner.’

‘I hear what you’re saying, Tom, but if our suspect does smell a rat and backs off, it’s all been for nothing. We’ll have nothing. Now, obviously, if there’s any further contact between them, I’ll let you know and we can take a view on it, but for the time being . . . softly softly, right?’

‘Let me talk to Emily again,’ Tanner said. ‘See where her head’s at and try and come up with an approach that’s likely to work.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’ Brigstocke leaned back and sighed heavily. ‘So, what did you make of the press conference?’

‘Walker did a good job,’ Tanner said. ‘Catherine Holloway’s mother was amazing.’

‘Yeah, she was.’ Thorne could not quite bring himself to add to the praise for Jeremy Walker. ‘Has anything useful come in?’

‘I don’t know about useful,’ Brigstocke said. ‘But we’ve had plenty of calls already. You two need to get out there and start answering a few.’

‘Can’t wait,’ Thorne said.

‘Got to be done.’ Tanner waved the transcript in Thorne’s face. ‘And this is not nothing.’

Thorne couldn’t argue. With many hours of what some officers referred to, somewhat insensitively, as the nutbags’ phone-in stretching ahead of them, it was nice to be greeted with some good news.

‘Nicola’s right,’ Brigstocke said. ‘And you never know, if one of these tip-offs from a member of the public comes good, we might not even need Emily Mead to do anything else.’

‘And where would that leave her?’ There was no need for Thorne to add that he was talking about possible charges against Emily Mead.

‘Remains to be seen,’ Brigstocke said.

Tanner stood up, ready to go to work. ‘She’s done everything we’ve asked of her up to now, though, right?’

‘Nobody’s saying she hasn’t.’

‘She’s doing a good job, Russell.’

‘Listen, if this pans out, you can spell out I TOLD YOU SO in big shiny balloons and hang them up over my desk.’

‘I’ll take pictures,’ Thorne said. ‘Should make the front page of The Job .’

‘But until such time . . . ’ The DCI stared down at a copy of the transcript on his desk. ‘Yes, this is looking good.’

Tanner waved her own copy again. ‘It’s looking like progress.’

‘Happy days,’ Brigstocke said.

All calls received following an appeal to the public were screened by the Met’s central call centre before being put through to the requisite incident room.

This would, theoretically at least, avoid the kind of time-wasting that could seriously jeopardise an investigation.

The fact was however, that the civilian members of police staff manning the phones on a major case like this one, could be somewhat .

. . risk averse. While they would weed out the most obvious of crank callers – those who insisted the killer was an alien or a ghost or Paul McCartney – almost anyone else ringing the tip line stood a decent chance of being put through to a member of the investigation team.

It was annoying, but ultimately forgivable.

Nobody was trying to make extra work for detectives, but equally, nobody wanted to dismiss a caller only to discover down the line that the killer was that creepy-looking man who’d built their shed or was working in their local chip shop.

Nobody wanted to be the person who didn’t put the crucial call through.

Nobody wanted to screw up.

None of this was of any comfort to Thorne, Tanner and the rest of the team as they dutifully logged every detail provided by a caller: the times and locations of every possible sighting; the names and addresses of any named individuals; makes and registration numbers of vehicles that might be significant; mobile phone numbers, clothing descriptions, train timetables and, on more than one occasion, the breed of dog that the ‘man in the picture’ had been spotted walking.

Surprisingly, the morning passed quickly enough and at lunchtime Thorne and Tanner each grabbed one of the sandwiches that had been delivered to the incident room.

Tanner had plumped for a tuna salad and said she thought it was a decent gesture by Brigstocke – or whoever else had organised it – to provide lunch for a team that was already overworked when the day started.

Thorne, who was using his teeth in an effort to extract his ham and cheese from its impenetrable plastic packaging, was rather more cynical.

‘Yeah, and also it means we don’t have to leave the building.’

For the duration of their foreshortened break they talked about some of the more outlandish tip-offs they’d received, but, grumpy as Thorne was, he certainly didn’t need Tanner to remind him that the job needed to be done, or that what they’d been doing all morning – and would be doing again all afternoon – was only the start of it.

In the days to come, hundreds of officers, the majority of them uniformed, would be out on the streets doing the legwork; following up on every single lead, however flimsy, because it was important.

Because a break in the case could come from anywhere.

Tanner saw the look on Thorne’s face as he continued the struggle to release his sandwich and decided to remind him anyway.

‘Dennis Nilsen was only caught because one of his neighbours called in a plumber when the drains started to smell.’

‘I know,’ Thorne said. ‘The only time in history an extortionate call-out charge turned out to be worth it.’

‘Son of Sam was caught because a woman spotted a man hanging around in the middle of the night, near a place where the police had been handing out parking tickets.’

Thorne sighed in satisfaction, having finally managed to get his sandwich out.

He brandished it at Tanner. ‘I know what you’re saying, I know any snippet could turn out to be vital, but even so .

. . if the man we’re after turns out to be the owner of a distinctive-looking Schnauzer, I’ll give you a hundred pounds. ’

There was no let-up for the rest of the day, as people who had only just seen the e-fit in their newspapers or on the afternoon news called in with information. The time didn’t pass quite as quickly as it had in the morning, but Thorne kept his head down and did what was required of him.

He understood why Brigstocke’s optimism had been so cautious.

Without some kind of break, via the conversations with Emily Mead or as a result of information provided by the public, they had nothing.

They had a reasonable description of the killer, they knew his online alias and – if those prints lifted from the park turned out to be his – they knew what size boot he wore.

It was nowhere near enough.

It was not evidence.

So Thorne saw out the day with as much hope and enthusiasm as he could muster, thinking about Catherine Holloway, Asim Hussain and Kazia Bobak.

About the ex-copper run down in Stoke Newington who, until he learned otherwise, was another innocent victim of the man Thorne wanted to catch as badly as any killer he had ever hunted.

Preventing all offences against people .

That was part of the oath he had sworn many years before.

All that said, Thorne was still thinking about home – about beer and bed – when Dave Holland came marching across the room, clutching a sheet of paper as if it was a winning lottery ticket.

‘Who’s a clever boy, then?’

‘What?’

Tanner was moving across to join them as Holland slapped the piece of paper down in front of Thorne and pointed to the key information. ‘Those fag ends you thought we should collect from Hendon Park? They ran all the DNA and we got a hit.’

‘Right.’ Thorne was trying not to get over-excited.

The cigarette end that had provided the DNA match could just as easily have been discarded by someone who’d been nicked for drink driving or once been done for shoplifting.

Then he looked at Tanner, who had already read the first few lines of the report and begun to grin.

‘A big, fat, fucking hit,’ Holland said.