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THIRTY

Thorne was almost home when Hendricks called to ask him if he’d eaten. Liam was away, he’d said, but had cooked the night before and there were leftovers. Thorne turned immediately towards Camden.

‘Away where?’

‘Some conference in Edinburgh,’ Hendricks said. ‘Species Specific Rapid Identification Using Probe Technology.’

‘Sounds like a bag of laughs.’

‘It’s going to be a riot, mate. There’s a particular focus on blowflies.’

‘Course there is.’ Liam Southworth was a forensic entomologist, so it wasn’t all quite as strange as it sounded. ‘Your pillow talk must be riveting.’

‘There isn’t much time for talking.’

‘Don’t start that again,’ Thorne said. ‘You’ll put me off my dinner.’

Fifteen minutes later, Thorne was sitting in Hendricks’s front room; a minimalist arrangement of chrome and leather with several new additions to the somewhat idiosyncratic décor.

The skull of something with horns was sitting on a shelf near the enormous home cinema system and a stuffed weasel perched on a branch had been mounted above a doorway.

Or maybe it was a polecat. Thorne shouted through to the kitchen where Hendricks was preparing the food.

‘Fuck’s that thing on the branch?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Hendricks shouted back. ‘A stoat, maybe?’

Thorne looked around. There was also a stuffed magpie, a fox’s head and a barn owl in a glass display case. It obviously wasn’t a surprise that Hendricks was at home with dead things, but Thorne knew most of them had come courtesy of his boyfriend; the buying if not the actual stuffing.

‘Liam really loves all this weird shit, doesn’t he?’

‘It’s very on trend, mate.’

‘Is it?’

‘You’re such a philistine.’

‘I thought the latest trends in interior design were about how many cushions you should have on the bed, or what colour you should paint your wall.’ Thorne looked again at the beady-eyed magpie.

‘Not which dead animal was all the rage. Oh, and just so you know, the answer to how many cushions you should have on your bed is obviously none .’ He heard the ping of the microwave and, a minute or so later, Hendricks carried through a tray; a beer for each of them and a bowl of something.

‘Your cassoulet, monsieur.’

Thorne looked at it. ‘It’s a casserole, yeah?’

‘A cassoulet.’

‘Right. A casserole with beans.’

‘Just eat it.’

Thorne looked at the tray, then at Hendricks. ‘Salt and pepper?’

‘Oh, for fu—’ Hendricks stomped back to the kitchen, shouting. ‘It’s already seasoned. Liam would go apeshit . . . ’ He quickly reappeared with the condiments, as requested. ‘Oh, I forgot, you’re the bloke who puts HP sauce on a carbonara.’

‘What, and you’ve suddenly got a sophisticated palate, have you, Phil?

’ Thorne added salt and pepper while Hendricks sat down shaking his head.

‘I watched you eat a pizza with half a pig on it the other night, remember?’ He took a mouthful of the cassoulet and moaned appreciatively. ‘It’s very nice.’

‘I’ll tell Liam,’ Hendricks said. ‘Not about the salt and pepper, though, because to him you might just as well have pissed in it.’

Thorne spooned in a few more mouthfuls, then looked up. ‘You going to sit there and watch me eat?’

‘I’ve got a high boredom threshold. Plus I’ve already had a plateful.’

Thorne grinned. ‘You put salt and pepper on, right?’

‘Course I did,’ Hendricks said. ‘I love Liam to bits, but when it comes to food the bloke’s a Nazi.’

They opened their beers and Thorne ran Hendricks through the last twelve hours.

From the frenzied tedium of the tip-line calls and the contact between Emily Mead and LoveMyBro, right through to the DNA match that had pointed them towards the ‘bro’ in question, and finally the identification of Alex Brightwell as their prime suspect.

Hendricks said, ‘Sounds like you had a busy one,’ then sat back. ‘You not going to ask me about my day, then? You aren’t the only one whose job is a never-ending thrillfest.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘So, this morning I was elbows deep in an old woman whose heart looked like it had bacon wrapped round it, and this afternoon it was a sixty-six-year-old alcoholic with a liver that even a cannibal would have sent back. Oh yeah, mate, I’m properly buzzing.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ It would have taken descriptions far more disgusting than either of those to prevent Thorne finishing his food.

‘Sounds like you’ve got another fun-filled day lined up for tomorrow,’ Hendricks said. ‘What are you hoping to get out of Brightwell the elder?’

‘His brother’s current address would be good, but I might be being optimistic.’

‘You think he knows what his brother’s up to?’

‘We’ll find out.’

‘Do you know?’

‘I think I know what it started as,’ Thorne said.

‘A reaction to the offence his brother was convicted for, which obviously Alex thinks he didn’t do.

Revenge against the cops generally, but with a specific thing about the ones who are rapists themselves.

I really don’t know what his motivation is now.

He thinks Tully was a rapist, and we know Callaghan was.

Holloway, Hussain and Bobak were in the wrong place at the wrong time and Needham was just doing his job. So, God knows . . . ’

‘Maybe he’s enjoying himself.’

It was something Thorne had been afraid of. ‘That’s always the worst,’ he said. ‘When they start to get a kick out of what they’re doing and eventually doing it becomes reason enough in itself.’

‘Strange, though, don’t you reckon?’ Hendricks said. ‘That Tully, who just happened to have arrested Alex’s brother right before he was arrested for raping Siobhan Brady, turns out to have been a rapist himself.’

Thorne was still struggling to work any of it out.

As yet, there wasn’t a shred of evidence that Tully had been a rapist, but Thorne remained convinced that he was, and the fact that Alex Brightwell believed it was all that mattered in terms of the investigation.

If it turned out that Brightwell was wrong, Thorne would live with it.

You never messed up, Tom?

He would make some kind of penance to Chris Tully and his family. He’d do what he could to honour the memory of a good officer.

Right then, though, he was fairly sure he’d never have to.

Hendricks carried the tray back into the kitchen, then spoke from the doorway. ‘Does Helen talk much to Alfie about his father?’

Thorne looked up. ‘Did he say something?’

‘No, but I was thinking about it the other night, when I was telling him that story.’

‘Oh yeah, once upon a time there was a crab-infested corpse . . . ’

‘You think I’m a maniac?’

‘I think it’s a possibility,’ Thorne said.

‘I told him the one about the giant peach, obviously .’

‘Look, he knows his dad’s not around any more, but I’m not sure how much Helen’s told him about why.’ Alfie’s father had been a police officer called Paul Hopwood, who’d been killed while Helen was pregnant. ‘It’s between them, isn’t it?’

Hendricks nodded. ‘Yeah, and I mean, it’s not like the lad hasn’t got any positive male role models, is it? He’s got you . . . OK, so maybe not all that positive, but he’s got me, right?’

‘The poor little bugger’s definitely going to need therapy,’ Thorne said.