Page 3

THREE

Seeing no real need to sit through a trio of back-to-back post-mortems, certainly not when each of the victims had died the same way, Thorne had ducked out once the procedure had been completed on the body of Christopher Tully.

He trudged up the road to a café he’d visited countless times on such occasions and spent the rest of the day drinking coffee, talking on the phone to other members of the team and poring over hospital reports and statements from family members on his laptop.

The man behind the counter knew exactly where Thorne had been and who he was waiting for. He didn’t bother asking if Thorne wanted anything to eat.

Still stinking of formaldehyde, Phil Hendricks breezed in late afternoon and immediately ordered the all-day breakfast. He carried a mug of tea across and dropped into the seat opposite Thorne.

‘I could eat a scabby dog on a bap.’ He looked across at the man behind the counter.

‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any scabby dog? ’

‘Fresh out,’ the owner said.

‘I’ll stick with the breakfast, then.’

Thorne closed his laptop. ‘So . . . arsenic?’

‘I usually just go with ketchup,’ Hendricks said.

Thorne shook his head and looked across at his friend; the collage of tattoos and the fearsome array of facial piercings including a chain running from ear to lip which Thorne couldn’t remember seeing before. ‘Do you still think it’s arsenic?’

‘Yeah. I smelled garlic on all three of them, so unless they all happened to have had Italian food at the same time, my money’s on arsenic.

Arsenic trioxide’s your best bet, I reckon.

You make an incision in your doughnut, whack in half a teaspoon of that, because guess what, it looks like sugar anyway, and Bob’s your uncle.

His uncle . . . the killer’s uncle. You know what I mean. ’

‘OK, so where would someone get hold of that stuff?’

‘Well, you could get it shipped over from the US and there’s a few places in the far east, I think, but over here .

. . a lab or a chemical manufacturing firm, something like that?

A hospital maybe, because they actually use it to treat leukaemia, in a very different form, obviously .

. . which is ironic as it goes, because it can actually cause cancer.

Oh, and FYI, it was once used to treat syphilis. ’

‘I’m not sure that helps,’ Thorne said.

‘You never know, it might come up in a pub quiz.’

‘Pubs are for drinking in.’

‘Agreed.’

‘But thanks anyway.’

Hendricks rubbed his hands together as his all-day breakfast was laid in front of him. He added a sizeable squirt of ketchup to his plate and began buttering bread.

‘Anything else?’ Thorne asked.

Hendricks laid down his knife. ‘Yeah. Kazia Bobak was pregnant.’

‘Oh, Christ . . . ’

‘Very early stages. I’m not sure she’d even have known, but either way you’ll have to inform the next of kin, right?’

Thorne nodded. The conversation with Kazia Bobak’s partner was certainly not one he was looking forward to, but he had no choice.

The pregnancy would come out at any subsequent trial, and if there was one thing guaranteed to cost him the trust of a victim’s family it was holding information back.

Much as Thorne would have liked it to, this new information would make no difference to the charge when it was finally brought.

The killer could not possibly have known about the pregnancy, besides which no destruction of a child charge could be brought before a child had actually been born, despite the sterling efforts of pro-life nut-jobs to amend the law.

Thorne sat and watched Hendricks eat.

He was glad of the few minutes’ silence, even if it was . . . unusual. Having a mouthful of bacon and egg had never stopped Hendricks gobbing off before and, despite his jokiness a few moments earlier, Thorne sensed that his friend wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders.

‘You all right, Phil?’

‘Yeah . . . I’m sound.’

‘You sure?’

Hendricks folded a slice of bread and butter then sat back and ran a hand across his shaved head. ‘I don’t always love what I do, you know that, right?’

‘You and me both,’ Thorne said.

‘Even if I am frighteningly good at it.’

‘Goes without saying.’

‘I mean, I don’t want to blow my own trumpet.’

‘No?’

‘Trust me, I would if I could, but I’m not supple enough.

’ He tried for a cheeky smile, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

‘Multiple victims is always a bad day at the office, that’s all.

’ He turned and nodded back towards the mortuary.

‘Them three in there . . . none of those poor sods was even thirty yet.’ He turned slowly back to stare at Thorne. ‘That was a bastard.’

Thorne waited. He knew that Hendricks would shrug it off, because he always did. He knew there’d be another joke or a filthy comment or a football-related dig coming soon enough.

There’d be something to change the mood.

‘Down to you now, though, mate.’ Hendricks sliced a sausage in half, speared the biggest piece and pointed with it.

‘Your mission, Jim, if you choose to accept it, is to get out there and catch the scumbag responsible.’ He stared at the end of his fork.

‘This sausage will self-destruct in five seconds.’

‘Nothing too difficult, then,’ Thorne said.

‘No, not for a successful and highly experienced copper who’s insightful yet tenacious. Whose cunning is matched only by his deep understanding of the criminal mind and formidable powers of deduction.’

Thorne sighed, waiting for it.

Hendricks grinned and jammed the sausage into his mouth. ‘So yeah, you might find it a tad tricky.’