Page 5

FIVE

The forty minutes or so it took Helen to get her son Alfie bathed and into bed gave Thorne time to get dinner sorted.

He’d never been much of a cook and rarely put much effort in if he was eating alone, but pasta was easy enough and it didn’t take very long to knock what looked like a decent carbonara together.

He began dishing it up when Helen came in, then paused when Alfie shouted from his bedroom and she immediately went out again.

A few minutes later she was back, and as soon as she’d poured herself a large glass of red wine and Thorne had opened a bottle of Peroni, they sat down and started to eat.

‘He OK?’ Thorne asked.

‘He wants me to tell you to say hello to “Spiky Uncle Phil”.’

‘I will. I saw him today, actually.’

Helen nodded, knowing exactly what that meant, as she twirled spaghetti around her fork. ‘And to tell him that Arsenal are rubbish.’

‘That’s definitely not a problem.’ Thorne couldn’t be doing with the twirling business and was busy cutting his spaghetti up into manageable pieces.

Had there been a bottle in the fridge, he’d have happily added some brown sauce which – while knowing that most foodies would consider it monstrous – he deemed perfectly acceptable, considering he was basically eating bacon and egg.

‘This is good,’ Helen said.

‘Really?’

Helen nodded and took another mouthful.

‘Well, I don’t think I’m ready for MasterChef just yet.’

‘It’s all good,’ she said. ‘You cooking me dinner, that’s a shedload of Brownie points for a kick-off. And you know . . . you being here.’

Thorne looked at her in mock-amazement. It was the first time she’d said anything quite so .

. . couply since they’d become a couple again.

It hadn’t been an immediate thing. They hadn’t fallen weeping into one another’s arms and neither had needed to ask why they’d ever split up in the first place.

Thorne knew the reason had been him.

Helen had been there for him when his last relationship had ended in circumstances that Thorne preferred not to think about too much and what had begun as plain and simple comfort had eventually settled into an easy familiarity and, finally, the committed relationship that they’d clearly both missed a great deal.

That wasn’t to say that the first time they had shared a bed again was much to write home about. Not even worth a postcard.

‘I’m not sure I can remember what you like,’ Thorne had said.

‘Don’t worry.’ Helen had winked and rubbed his arm. ‘I’ll tell you.’

Now, she looked across at the smile creeping across Thorne’s face. ‘Come on, don’t you think this is good? The two of us.’

‘No argument from me.’ Thorne thought it was way better than good, but hearing it from Helen was by far the high point of his day, so he was happy to let her make the running.

‘Better than last time, I reckon.’

‘You think?’

‘When last time wasn’t terrible, I mean.’

‘Probably because I’m not here quite as much,’ Thorne said. ‘If I was around any more than I am, I’d soon start getting on your tits again.’

‘Maybe.’

When they’d first been together, Thorne had divided his time fairly equally between his own flat in Kentish Town and Helen’s in Tulse Hill, but second time around he didn’t take the nights spent at her place for granted.

It remained something to look forward to and he knew that the arrangement suited them both.

There was Alfie to consider, of course, the school two streets away, but one thing that hadn’t changed was the need they both had for space.

For precious time alone, a few nights a week, at least.

‘Be honest,’ Thorne said, his smile widening. ‘It’s really about the cooking dinner thing, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, I could certainly get used to it,’ Helen said. ‘But I do think you’re different. I mean, we both are, obviously, but you’re definitely a lot less stressed.’

Thorne stared down at his plate. ‘Yeah, well, that might be about to change.’

They ate in silence for a few minutes, and when they’d finished, they carried their drinks across to the sofa.

‘The murdered PCs,’ Helen said. ‘That’s why you saw Phil today, right?’

‘Arsenic, he reckons.’

‘He’s usually right.’

Thorne nodded. ‘Someone went to a lot of trouble, getting hold of the stuff, working out the best way to use it. That’s a lot of planning.’

‘Someone who wanted to make a statement.’

‘A serious statement,’ Thorne said. ‘Four dead coppers. Well, three dead and one as good as.’

Helen sipped her wine. ‘It’s hardly a surprise, though, is it? Plenty of cops got attacked in the US after what happened to George Floyd. Sarah Everard was our George Floyd moment, so now it’s our turn.’

Thorne said nothing.

‘There’s a thousand Met officers on suspension at the moment. Enough coppers to police a small town have been deemed unfit to serve, and I’m not even talking about the ones who’ve been convicted.’

‘I know,’ Thorne said. ‘I know all that.’

‘I’m just saying, it’s not a big shock that plenty of people don’t like us.’

‘ Us ?’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘It’ll take a while . . . ’

Having spent a number of years as a DI on a Child Protection Unit, Helen Weeks had quit the Job a month or so after she and Thorne had got back together.

Knowing that the horrors she’d dealt with on a daily basis could make Homicide seem like a cushy option, Thorne had fully supported what had been a difficult decision.

These days, she had more time to spend with her son and, without childcare to pay for, it was easy enough to live off her police pension, while volunteering two days a week at Citizens Advice.

Even if Thorne wasn’t convinced he was any less stressed than Helen thought he’d been before, he was damn sure that she was.

‘It’s not going to be easy,’ Helen said.

Thorne raised his beer bottle to his lips, having momentarily lost the thread of their conversation. ‘What isn’t?’

‘To turn things around. To start with, you need to come down hard on any copper that thinks they’re above the law. To be seen to come down hard, not just these stupid suspensions on full pay.’

Thorne couldn’t argue. For every dodgy copper that might eventually get prosecuted, there seemed to be hundreds more sitting on their arses at home and getting paid every month for the privilege.

There was plenty of big talk from the Independent Office for Police Conduct, but they seemed rather more reticent when it came to actually putting anyone away.

‘Then you need to do whatever’s necessary to win back the public trust, and that’s not going to be easy.’

‘What I need to do is catch this maniac.’ Thorne stood up, trudged across to the table and began clearing away the dirty plates. ‘There’s no guarantee he’s finished.’

‘Yeah, obviously,’ Helen said.

He carried the dishes through to the kitchen, rinsed them and began loading the dishwasher.

He actually began re -loading it as, to his mind, Helen was somewhat cavalier when it came to the task.

He rearranged the dirty cutlery so that all the forks were facing the same way.

He imagined how outraged Nicola Tanner would be at the chaos and how delighted she’d be at his efforts to restore some order.

He shouted back through to the living room. ‘I tell you what we do need . . . ’

‘What?’

‘You’re out of brown sauce.’