Death Message (28 page)

'I know.' Kemal peeled back tinfoil from her sandwiches.

'And there's no point bullshitting you: we're getting nowhere. We've done all the things we're supposed to do, you know? Everything we can think of. Spoken to everyone we could, put out an appeal on TV. I
know you saw that.'

The girl said nothing. A cement lorry rumbled slowly past them, waited to turn left on to the main road.

'The only lead we've got is you,' Kitson said.

Kemal shook her head, but to Kitson it seemed more about resignation than denial. 'It's so hard,' she said.

'Of course it is.' It was a knee-jerk response, but Kitson truly believed that it
was
difficult for the girl. Dealing with the loss of her boyfriend. With whatever knowledge she had, much as she might wish to be ignorant.

'How can I face the family?'

Kitson leaned forward on the bench so she could look at the girl square on. 'Whose family? Deniz's?'

Another shake of the head, its meaning even more ambiguous than the last.

'It's OK, Harika. Really.' Kitson watched the girl turning the sandwich over and over in her hand without taking a bite. Looking at her, Kitson found it hard to imagine how she'd become involved with a man like Deniz Sedat. She did not seem the type to be impressed by money and flash cars, and she was certainly sharp enough to have known where that money had come from. Kitson wondered if she was reading Harika Kemal all wrong. Or perhaps there had simply been a physical attraction between her and Sedat that had transcended everything else.

'I would have nobody.'

Kitson nodded back towards the university. 'You've got good friends, that's obvious. People who care about you a lot. And I told you before, we'll make sure that you're protected. You and the people close to you.'

Kemal raised her head suddenly. 'What if it's the people I'm close to who I need to be protected from?' There was anger and impatience in her face, but her voice had broken before she'd finished speaking.

Kitson reached for a tissue. She passed it across, but the girl had already found one of her own. Had been keeping them handy.

'Whatever you need.'

'I need Deniz to be alive.'

'And I need to find the man who killed him,' Kitson said. She thought about taking the girl's hand but decided that would be too much. 'Tell me who it was, Harika.'

The girl sniffed and wiped her eyes, then stuffed the tissue back into her pocket. 'Hakan Kemal,' she said.

'
Kemal?'

'My older brother. My brother killed Deniz.'

Kitson nodded, as though she understood, but her mind was starting to race. She had many more questions. She wanted to tear back to the office and get things moving. But she knew that, for a few minutes at least, she needed to stay on the bench with Harika Kemal.

Kitson glanced back across at the two students, who were still watching from the other side of the Holloway Road. They both looked as though they would happily rip her head off.

... I was sitting in the park in the middle of the night, getting rained on, and thinking what a soft piece of shite I am. That I can get rid of everyone I blame for what happened, and feel next to nothing, but that I don't have enough bottle to kill myself. It was my first thought back inside, when I got the news. Taking a blade to myself, I mean, and I'll admit that it was a relief when I started to think about making other people pay instead. Once I had that, I didn't have to think too hard about topping myself any more; facing up to the fact that I didn't have the bottle to go through with it.

It might help if I believed in something, I suppose. In fucking anything. If I thought there was even a chance I might see you both again afterwards. I know this much, if I believed in God or whatever else to begin with, I certainly wouldn't any more...

And look, I know this is never going to happen, not now anyway, but I've started to imagine what it might be like to be with someone else one day. To have another kid, even. Christ, I'm so sorry, baby, I can't stop those stupid things popping into my head. I think about the sex, and going on holidays and Christ knows what, and the rows me and this woman would have. How she'd always be jealous of you, feel like she was competing with a dead woman, whatever. I imagine her flying off the handle big time, and saying something about you or cutting up an old picture, stuff like that. And then I'd just fucking lose it and want to hurt her. End up boozing, probably, messing up everybody's life.

See? I've got far too much time to think about this sort of shit. All the time when I'm not writing letters to a ghost.

I was thinking, though. If it ever did happen, if someone else came along, I mean. Would you leave me then? Would that be when I lost you and Robbie for good? Thing is, I know you'd want me to be happy, to move on, but it's really not on the cards.

Happy means forgetting...

Thorne stared at the last line for a few seconds, then slipped the photocopy of the letter back into his desk drawer with the others. He nodded to Sam Karim as the DS passed his office door, then sat back and slurped his tea, and thought about the terrible power of grief.

He understood what drove Marcus Brooks. The impulse. Looking again at the newest picture of the man, the one based on the description given by the security guard, he was starting to see behind it. To connect with someone anaesthetised by loss; aloof from the basic pain and pleasure of everyday life. Someone astonished all the time by their own capacity to walk, or to dress themselves, and functioning for no other reason than to hunt down those who had smashed their life into pieces and scattered them.

When that trainee DC had eventually grasped the nature of the letters Thorne had discovered in Hammersmith, he had rolled his eyes and said something about Brooks 'losing it'. It was an understandable reaction, and Thorne had smiled and nodded. Had suppressed an urge to give the bumptious little prick a slap.

When I'm not writing letters to a ghost...

Thorne had done something similar; had spoken to his father for a while after the old man had died. Actually, his father had been the one doing the talking, but Thorne knew well enough that it amounted to the same thing.

It took a second to say 'good-bye', and a lifetime.

He looked up as Kitson bustled in, tossing her coat across the back of a chair, rattling on about how students looked even younger than policemen nowadays.

'You should chuck the job in,' Thorne said. 'Go back to college as a mature student. Don't you fancy three years of drinking and sleeping with eighteen-year-olds? Thinking about it, I'll come with you...'

Kitson told him about her meeting with Harika Kemal. The name of the man she'd identified as her boyfriend's killer.

'How does she know for sure?' Thorne asked. 'She said before she didn't see it happen.'

'I'm not sure about that any more.'

'Going to be iffy without a witness.'

'I'll worry about that later.'

'Did she say
why
her brother did it?'

'I wasn't getting that out of her without thumbscrews,' Kitson said.

'There must be some knocking around somewhere.'

Kitson rummaged in her bag and took out a small jar. 'Hakan runs a dry cleaner's on Green Lanes.' She pursed her lips, ran a dab of balm across each. 'Up near Finsbury Park...'

Thorne knew that many businesses in that area paid local drug gangs for protection; that some operated as fronts for the dealers and heroin traffickers. Restaurants, minicab firms, supermarkets. He wondered if Hakan Kemal might be laundering more than shirts and blouses.

Kitson had obviously been thinking along the same lines. 'Maybe S &O had it right all along, and it
was
gang-related.'

'Not the smoothest hitman I've ever come across,' Thorne said, 'but what do I know?'

Kitson was happy to agree on both counts.

Thorne looked across at her, deadpan: 'Have you ever seen a film called
Shy and Shaven
...?'

He was trying to give an accurate description of the smell in Davey Tindall's office when his mobile rang. He looked at the caller display, thought about dropping the call, but felt immediately guilty. Sighing, he hit the green button.

'Tom?'

'Hello, Auntie Eileen, I was going to call you tonight.'

'Sorry if you're busy, love. I don't like to phone when you're at work.'

'It's OK...'

'Only I'm trying to get numbers organised for Christmas, you know?'

'Right.' It was the conversation Thorne knew had been coming. He winced inwardly at the thought of that technician listening in his cupboard; pissing himself.

'Obviously it'd be smashing to see you, love. We've asked Victor if he'd like to come over for Christmas lunch.'

'That's good of you,' Thorne said. Eileen, his father's sister, had semi-adopted the old man who had been her brother's only friend in the last year of his life. 'I'm sure he'll like that.'

There was a long sigh. 'Poor old bugger...'

Thorne wasn't certain if she was talking about Victor or his father.

'So, anyway, you have a think about it,' Eileen said. 'Only I'd hate to think you were sitting on your own, like you were last year.'

In fact, Thorne had spent the previous Christmas - the first since his father had died - with Hendricks and his then boyfriend, Brendan. Now that the boot was on the other foot, and Hendricks was the single one, Thorne had been wondering if he should offer to return the favour.

'The first few Christmases are always the worst, love. That's why I thought you might want family around.'

'OK, thanks.'

'You're welcome to bring your new girlfriend, of course...'

Louise had already raised the idea of spending Christmas with her parents, which was problematic in itself. At the time, Thorne had attempted that trickiest of manoeuvres - appearing keen while hedging his bets - and he knew it hadn't gone down too well. They'd agreed to talk about it properly later, which was another conversation he wasn't much looking forward to. He'd never met Louise's parents, but her father had been in the army and Thorne had already formed a daunting mental image of the man. He wasn't sure he fancied a Christmas Day spent listening to war stories, or a long walk with the family dog after lunch. Much as he wanted to spend the time with Louise, he was starting to think that getting pissed with Hendricks and watching
The Great Escape
sounded pretty good. He needed to check and see who Spurs were playing on Boxing Day, come to that.

'Everything's up in the air, to be honest,' he said. 'They don't sort the work rotas out until the last minute and even then, you know, if we catch a big job...'

'That doesn't matter. You turn up on the day and we'll cope.'

'I don't want to mess you about.'

'Don't be silly, love. You know I always get too much in anyway.'

'I can't hear you very well, Eileen.'

'Tom?'

'Sorry... the signal's terrible in here...'

'Don't worry, love. I'll try you again next week-'

When Thorne put the phone away and looked up, Kitson was staring at him. She shook her head, and he couldn't tell if she was shocked or impressed.

'You are a
frighteningly
good liar,' she said.

'It's better than digging a ditch.'

In his more lucid moments, Thorne's father had been fond of trotting that old saw out, whenever Thorne had moaned about his particular lot being a far from happy one. There had been plenty of occasions when Thorne would have swapped places with any ditch-digger alive, but he knew what the old man had meant.

It was usually just a question of perspective.

On the Victoria Line rumbling south, Thorne had kept his head buried in the paper. He'd stared at the same page for twenty minutes, the story and the pictures becoming meaningless, and decided that he was better off than some. Even allowing for the situation he'd got himself into - 'sticky' or 'career-threatening' depending on his mood - he knew that life could be a damn sight worse.

And was for a great many people.

Russell Brigstocke, slowly collapsing beneath the weight of whatever he was keeping to himself; Harika Kemal, who was paying for giving it up; the families of Raymond Tucker, Ricky Hodson and Martin Cowans; Anne Skinner and her daughter...

And Marcus Brooks. Whether or not he spent it in a prison cell, Thorne guessed that the man responsible for most of the misery would probably suffer the most wretched Christmas of all.

It was a thin line, Thorne knew that; between counting your blessings and using the distress of others as a sticking plaster. But whichever side of the line he was on, he wasn't alone in being altered. He knew that the things they saw and did every day affected how those he worked with behaved when they clocked off.

There were nights when Dave Holland got in and held his daughter that little bit tighter. When Phil Hendricks couldn't get his hands clean enough. Hours when Louise had clung to Thorne, sweating and near to tears, after the only way she'd been able to get a traumatic day out of her system had been to come home and fuck his brains out. Drink, sex, jokes...

Coping mechanisms.

Thorne also knew very well that whatever you used to change the way you felt, it was only temporary. That you'd be back again the next day, moving through it and trying to keep clean; picking up dark bits on the soles of your shoes.

Digging in the shittiest ditch of all.

He stepped off the train smiling, thinking that, towards the end, his old man would not have bothered with homilies at all and would just have called him a moaning little fucker. He walked up and on to the street, checked his watch. It was a little after six-thirty, but in a city where the 'rush hour' was nearer three, the pavement was still thick with people hurrying to get home.