Page 9

NINE

Dave Holland began scraping away with a knife at the burnt bits of lasagne around the edge of his bowl. ‘One of the things I was hoping might have changed while I was away was the lunchtime menu in this place.’

Holland had returned to the Met less than twelve months before, having spent several years in Bedfordshire and more latterly Buckinghamshire, where he’d earned himself a promotion and acquired a fiancée: now his wife, Pippa.

He’d come back to be closer to his daughter Chloe, whose mother – Holland’s ex-wife – had never approved of his career choice and who had hated Tom Thorne in particular, seemingly for no other reason than Holland had aspired to be like him.

Back then, at least.

Thorne had always thought it was a laudable ambition, but understood why others might disagree.

‘Well, you’re an idiot, then,’ he said now.

He stared down at the sorry-looking slice of gammon on his own plate, the congealed egg sitting on top.

‘Maybe that lot in Thames Valley were a bit quick to bump you up to inspector.’

‘Oh, shut up and stop being an arse,’ Tanner said.

‘I’m not sure he can do both,’ Holland said.

They were sitting at a corner table in the Oak, the pub of convenience if not of choice.

As usual, its proximity to both Becke House and Colindale station meant that there were plenty of coppers in there eating lunch.

It was far from being the nicest pub in the area and it certainly didn’t provide the best food, but it was definitely the least likely to get robbed.

Thorne looked across at a group of uniformed officers sitting at a table on the other side of the room. One of them caught his eye and nodded. Thorne nodded back, remembering what he’d said to Jeremy Walker.

Suits and lids.

He’d been in a black mood most of the morning, largely due to his confrontation with the DCI from Wood Green.

The work that had needed doing meant that he’d got his head down and had been largely able to mentally gloss over his rant in Brigstocke’s office, but it had been somewhat harder to forget what Walker had said to him outside the toilets afterwards.

That fuck you smile when he’d said it.

‘So, what are we thinking?’ Holland asked.

Thorne did not want either of them to know what was on his mind at that very moment, so was happy enough to discuss progress on the case, such as it was.

‘I’m thinking there’s bugger all to talk about, but that we should definitely talk about it anyway.

’ He speared a chip like he was putting it out of its misery.

‘Then this becomes a working lunch, and we might be able to claim some of this shit on expenses.’

‘Toxicology confirms it was arsenic,’ Holland said.

Thorne grunted and ate the chip. He’d never doubted that Hendricks would be right.

‘Charita and several others are phone-bashing, chasing down all the likely sources, but I can’t see it throwing up anything useful.’

‘It won’t throw up anything at all,’ Thorne said.

It was already obvious to him that they were looking for someone who planned and prepared carefully.

Wherever the killer had got the poison from, he’d have taken care not to leave a paper trail.

‘I’ll talk to Russell, but I think we should give up on that. ’

‘I spoke to the lab that’s working on the doughnut box.’ Tanner poured the last of her sparkling water into a glass. ‘There are prints and we’ll obviously run them, but we know our man was wearing gloves, so chances are they’re from whoever was working in the shop he bought it from.’

‘From someone in the Amazon warehouse more likely,’ Holland said.

‘Right.’

‘Something a bit more promising.’ Tanner leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘I’ve been able to establish that Tully and Knowles did know each other.’

Now, Thorne and Holland leaned forward, too.

‘They joined up in the same year, same intake, and even if it doesn’t prove they were best mates or anything, we now know they were at Hendon together.’

‘We should talk to other coppers who were there with them at the same time,’ Holland said. ‘See if we can find out just how pally they were.’

‘D’uh, Dave.’ Tanner shook her head. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Yeah, that’s definitely promising,’ Thorne said.

‘Promising . . . ish ,’ Tanner said. ‘It could easily be coincidence, or it could just be that LoveMyBro is someone who knows Tully and Knowles trained together. Remember what you said about our man maybe being a copper himself?’

‘It was just a suggestion,’ Thorne said. It hadn’t been an idea that had really taken hold, although maybe that was just because it was so hard to process.

‘Yeah, well, if he is, maybe he was at Hendon with both of them.’

‘Whatever,’ Thorne said. ‘It’s somewhere to start.’ He knew it would never convince the likes of Jeremy Walker that they weren’t wasting their time, but what Tanner had discovered was enough to tell Thorne they should keep on wasting it. ‘What about Tully?’

‘Steve Pallister’s been flat out on that,’ Holland said.

‘No red flags on his arrest record and as far as his service record goes, there’s nothing to get worked up about.

No disciplinary concerns, no complaints from members of the public, just .

. . sod all, basically. Christopher Tully was a model copper. ’

That in itself was enough to bother Thorne more than slightly, because the only model policemen he’d ever come across were in toyshops.

There was always something.

‘What about his domestic set-up?’

‘Same thing,’ Holland said. ‘Nothing to frighten the horses. Happily married with two little lads and a wife who’s apparently in bits.’

Thorne knew that in itself meant next to nothing. He’d seen it up close often enough to know that the wives and girlfriends of men who preyed on women were usually oblivious. Women who would live the rest of their lives feeling guilty because they wrongly believed that they should have known.

That said, Thorne saw the expression on Nicola Tanner’s face, and he could guess what she was thinking.

What if Walker was right and they were looking for dirt where there was none; casting baseless suspicion on a wholly innocent murder victim?

What about the grieving widow and the two fatherless children?

In fact, though Thorne could not know it, she was thinking about what she’d seen when she was scrolling through those anti-police message boards with Greg Hobbs. That simple, shocking statement from someone calling herself ButterflyGrrrl.

As Thorne sat back and pushed his half-eaten lunch away, he saw two of the four uniformed officers he’d noticed earlier approaching the table. He’d seen both of them around but was struggling to put names to faces. ‘Lads . . . ’

The taller of the two PCs hooked his thumbs inside his belt. ‘Don’t want to disturb you while you’re eating, but just wanted to say . . . we know you’re working on the poisonings and if you need any extra help with anything at all, you know, donkey work or what have you, give us a shout.’

‘Cheers,’ Tanner said.

‘If you need spare bodies, you’ve only got to ask.’

‘You might be sorry you’ve offered,’ Holland said.

‘No chance,’ the PC said. ‘Anything we can do. We’re all Job, aren’t we, especially when something like this happens. We’re a team, or at least we should be.’

Thorne nodded along with the others, but despite everything he’d seen in Tanner’s face – the very reasonable doubt and the concern – something in that anonymous message still nagged at him, still felt as though it was demanding to be taken seriously.

Two peas in a pod .

‘We’re all on the same side, right?’ the PC said.

Thorne watched the two officers step away from the table, saw the thumbs-up before they turned and walked back across the pub.

Thinking: Some of us .