SEVENTY-SEVEN

When the call had ended, Thorne came out of the bedroom. Hendricks lowered the volume on the TV and turned round. ‘How did it go?’

‘Pretty good, I think,’ Thorne said. ‘She sounded . . . up. Her sister’s going round later on.’

‘Yeah, well let’s see how long she stays “up” for.’

‘Didn’t go too badly on the phone apparently.’ Thorne was trying to be optimistic for Helen’s sake, but he knew what Hendricks meant, how difficult Helen’s sister could be. It was inconceivable that things would be the same between them after tonight and he could only hope it was a change for the better.

‘You not going over later then?’

Thorne shook his head. Since coming back from Polesford, he had spent more than the usual number of nights alone at his own flat in Kentish Town, and he had enjoyed them. Hendricks had been travelling to and from Warwick a fair deal and this was their first chance to catch up in a while.

‘Just you and me then, big boy.’

Thorne went into the kitchen to collect beers. When he came back, Hendricks said, ‘You think she’s doing the right thing?’

‘Seeing her sister?’

‘All of it.’

Thorne passed a bottle across and sat down. Having seen how painful it had been for Helen to tell him what had happened all those years before, the thought of her having to going through it again in detail – in interview rooms, from a witness box – was terrible. But that had been her choice and there was nobody else qualified to make it. ‘Right thing for her,’ he said.

‘She say anything about the suspension?’

‘Still ongoing.’ Thorne took a swig. ‘A good few weeks yet, I reckon.’

‘Should have accepted the girl’s offer. To say that she’d been the one holding the knife.’ Hendricks looked as though he had more to say, but then his phone rang and he went into the kitchen to take the call, closed the door behind him.

Thorne knew that his friend was only half joking. There weren’t too many people mourning the death of Trevor Hare and even though Thorne knew the internal investigation would work out in her favour, it seemed hugely unfair that a good officer like Helen had to spend weeks on suspension for unintentionally sticking a knife in him.

‘Helen gets suspended and you come out smelling of roses,’ Hendricks had said back then. ‘You, with an entire drawer in the DPS filing cabinet. I did not see that coming.’

It was not an outcome anyone with any sense would have bet on. Several days’ worth of very positive press. The letters of thanks from the parents of Poppy Johnston and Jessica Toms.

Even Russell Brigstocke had forgiven him.

Once she’d been checked over and released from hospital, Poppy Johnston’s evidence had helped them piece things together a bit more, but with no killer to question, the picture was still largely reliant on best guesses. Poppy had been able to confirm that Stephen Bates had given her a lift on the night she was taken. He had been flirty with her in the car, she told them, made certain suggestions, so she had asked him to drop her off at the bus stop. She had only been there a couple of minutes when Trevor Hare had driven up.

Whether or not Hare had taken Jessica Toms the same night Bates had given her a lift would never be known, but it was obvious he had been watching Bates for a while and knew very well that he was over-fond of young girls. He knew that Bates had already picked up Jessica and that her DNA was there to be found in his car. He knew that he was safe to target her and then Poppy, now that a ready-made suspect had unwittingly lined himself up.

It was just a question of providing a little more evidence.

The cigarette end had been ideal and easy enough to get hold of. The fact that Bates lied to the police could only have been a bonus and the material found on his computer must have been a very pleasant surprise, if Hare hadn’t known about it already.

Thorne still believed that Jessica Toms had been killed no more than a day or two before Poppy had been taken. It was his suggestion that her body had been kept in the boot of Hare’s car between then and the time he chose to bury it in the woods after Bates had been arrested. Forensic tests on the vehicle found parked near Pretty Pigs Pool confirmed Thorne’s theory, though there was still nothing close to a ‘thank you’ from DI Tim Cornish. Poppy herself had been convinced that Jessica’s body had been down there with her in Hare’s improvised dungeon the whole time, but it turned out, of course, to have been the seriously decomposed body of Patterson’s missing piglet. What the rats had left of it. By the time it was finally examined, the stinking corpse was still alive with plenty of those useful bugs and beetles that Hare had been planning to use on the body of Poppy herself.

‘Your Liam would have had a field day,’ Thorne had said.

‘He’s not my Liam,’ Hendricks had said.

Now, that appeared to have changed, too.

Hendricks wandered back in and picked up the beer bottle he’d neglected to take with him. ‘That was Liam on the phone,’ he said.

Thorne had never thought it was anyone else. ‘He well?’

‘Yeah . . . ’

It was clear that there was more and that Hendricks wanted to be asked what it was. ‘And?’

‘He’s thinking of applying for another job.’

‘What kind of job?’

‘Not so much what as where,’ Hendricks said.

Now, Thorne understood. ‘London?’ Hendricks nodded. ‘How do you feel about that?’

‘Well, he might not get it.’

‘So, how would you feel if he did?’

‘Actually, I think I’d be . . . OK with it.’

Hendricks looked more than OK, and Thorne pulled a suitably shocked face. ‘Bloody hell, you’re full of surprises.’

‘Well, one of us has got to be.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning you can’t always follow the same path. Well you can, but eventually you get hit by a car.’

‘Sorry?’ Then Thorne realised that Helen must have told him about the badgers, and more specifically, who was like one. ‘Oh, right, me being predictable. That’s such crap, Phil.’

‘Scared of change, then.’

‘Are we going to order food, or what?’

‘Fine with me.’

‘Bengal Lancer?’ He saw Hendricks grin. ‘Because their food’s the best.’

Hendricks wandered into the kitchen. ‘I’ll sort the plates out . . . ’

Thorne had the number for the Indian restaurant programmed into his phone. They immediately recognised the incoming number and called up the delivery address. ‘The usual order, Mr Thorne?’

‘Yeah, the usual order.’

The waiter said something else, but it was hard to hear above the noise of Hendricks laughing from the kitchen.