Detective Superintendent Trevor Jesmond smiled like he was sucking on a lemon.
'Let me see if I've got this straight. There's a double murderer sit ring in the cells at Kentish Town right now, and you're suggesting that not only do we keep the fact that we've caught him to ourselves, but that we start filling the newspapers with stories of other murders that haven't even happened? Murders that we… make up?'
Jesmond raised an eyebrow and looked to the men on either side of him, Russell Brigstocke and Steve Norman.
The fourth man in the room rubbed at a mysterious white patch on the sleeve of his black leather jacket.
'In a nutshell.., yes.'
Thorne was watching Brigstocke and Norman as well, looking for a reaction, trying to gauge just how much, how many, he was up against. He thought that Brigstocke looked non-committal, the slight shake of his head unreadable. Norman, the oily media merchant, just looked bored.
Thorne spoke again, thinking: I've beaten tougher opposition than this. 'We didn't catch him.'
Jesmond stared. 'I'm sorry?'
'We didn't catch Palmer. He wandered in off the street.'
Brigstocke leaned forward. 'Tom, splitting hairs isn't…'
'It makes a difference.'
The DCI leaned back again, the head movement loud and clear this time. Don't go getting cocky and fucking up your chances, Tom. This whole idea sounds stupid enough as it is…
It was two days since Palmer had walked a little unsteadily into a police station with a head wound, a revolver and a few dark secrets to whisper. The idea had lodged itself in Thorne's head from the moment Palmer had first spoken to him.
I don't know who he is…
The idea grew, rolled around his brain like a snowball being pushed around a field, making more noise as it gained weight, groaning, until it was massive and immovable, impossible to ignore. Palmer had been like a man in a dream, terrified of waking up to the nightmare of an agonising reality.
He told Thorne all he knew. About the past and the messages and the terror, and Jesus, the excitement. He told him all he'd done. With his knife and his hands and the tears that had to be wiped away, so that he could see their faces properly as he killed them. Now, he wanted no more than to be punished for it. To be put somewhere secure. To be removed. Thorne though, wanted much more and as soon as the plan had become fully formed in his mind, he had offered Palmer a way, surprising and simple, to make the waking up more bearable. To end the nightmare…
Palmer had agreed in principle to all of it. Now, he sat waiting, as Thorne waited, for approval of what at the very least was an unorthodox move, and at the very worst, would end a career or two.
Jesmond shuffled his chair a little closer to the table, sat up straight.
'I have to tell you, I'm not convinced.'
You don't have to tell me anything, thought Thorne. It's written all over your pointless, pinched face. Spelt out in the red veins across your nose and cheeks…
Jesmond continued. 'Palmer is a multiple murderer, a serial killer if you want to be sensationalist about it…'
Norman nodded. 'Why not? It's what the press want.'
'Right. Now, we can give him to them. Now, we have a chance to ease what I assure you, Detective Inspector, is a great deal of pressure to get some results, and I must say I'm inclined to take it.'
Thorne tried to make it as clear-cut as he knew how. 'If we announce that we've got Palmer, we lose a far more dangerous killer.'
Jesmond flicked a finger across his thin lips, glanced down at the notes in front of him on the table. 'Smart Anthony Nicklin. As was.'
Thorne nodded. 'Yes, sir.'
'"Far more dangerous" is a little bit over the top isn't it? Nastier, agreed, but he and Palmer have each killed twice, so…'
'That we know of, sir.'
Brigstocke nodded. 'I have to agree with DI Thorne, sir. Nicklin seems to be the more predatory of the two. Certainly the more violent.'
Thorne thinking, thank fuck, about time. 'Nicklin is the one that has arranged these killings. Without him the killings would stop. Without Palmer… I think he'll simply go to ground.'
There was a pause. Thorne looked over at Brigstocke but the DCI was looking at the table. Thorne shifted his gaze to the window. The sky was the colour of a long-dead fish. It was quietly drizzling. It was Norman who spoke up. 'And that's.., bad is it? Nicklin just disappearing?'
Thorne tried to sound informative, tried not to make Norman feel too stupid. 'He won't disappear for ever. He'll wait until he thinks it's safe, then start again. He'll do it differently. Maybe he'll move and start killing somewhere else.'
Norman nodded, but Thorne caught something in his look that told him he hadn't tried hard enough. Norman felt stupid… Brigstocke took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose. Thorne had a sudden, disconcerting memory of seeing him do the same thing, right before he punched the front teeth out of a pedophile's mouth. 'I'm not sure the papers will go for it, Tom. Knowingly running false murder stories could get them into deep shit with their readers later on. They'll only play along up to the point that their circulation gets hit.'
'Nicklin needs to think that Palmer's still out there killing for him. Can't we make the papers print what we want them to?'
Jesmond glanced at Norman. 'Steve?'
Norman looked across at Thorne. Now who's asking stupid questions? 'There's something in what DCI Brigstocke is saying. A balance would need to be struck. We'd have to let them feel that they were being altruistic, at the same time as offering them the big story if it works. If we get Nicklin.'
Thorne nodded. It sounded like a way forward. Norman hadn't finished. 'There would of course be other, bigger problems. There could be… almost certainly would be, leaks from within the investigation, not to mention the odd, slightly unusual journalist with a strange compulsion to tell the truth.' He smiled at Thorne a little sadly, and shrugged.
'Perhaps I'm being a bit dim,' Jesmond said, flashing sharp incisors, 'but I'm still not quite sure why we don't just print the truth in the papers. About the failed attack on Ms Kaye I mean.'
Norman was nodding halfway through Jesmond's speech, and didn't stop. 'Right. "Twin killers strike again. One strikes out.'"
'Or something of that sort,' Jesmond agreed. 'Might not reporting the failure frighten Nicklin a little? Prompt him to contact Palmer perhaps?'
All eyes on Thorne now. He seriously doubted that much would frighten Nicklin, but despite seeing some sense in what Jesmond was saying, he stuck to his guns. 'I'm convinced that the most dangerous thing would be to disrupt the pattern.'
Jesmond was stubborn as well. Stubborn, and with pips on his shoulder. 'He might know about it anyway. He might have watched Palmer mess it up. He might have seen him fail to kill Jacqueline Kaye. What then?'
'Obviously, we can't rule that out completely until the missing body turns up and we establish time of death, but the Lovell and Choi killings would indicate that isn't part of his pattern. I think Nicklin does his bit and then gets another jolt from sitting back later, and watching the reports of Palmer's killings on TV and in the papers. Sir.'
Jesmond shook his head, slowly. 'We must have other options. More conventional avenues of investigation. We have a description for a start and it certainly sounds as if a decent description is what got us Palmer in the first place.'
'You're right, sir,' Thorne said, thinking, Yes, and who was that down to? 'Unfortunately, the description Palmer has given us, based on the single meeting the two of them had in the brasserie, is hardly decent. Nicklin had a beard. For all we know he doesn't have it any more. All Palmer really has is an impression of this man, a description based on his memory of him, rather than on the way he looks now.' Thorne pictured the look of confusion on Palmer's face, as he'd tried, with very little success, to recall how the boy he used to know had looked that day he'd strolled up to his lunch table and turned his dull little world on its head. 'Palmer can describe the fifteen-year-old boy like he saw him yesterday, but he can't give us an accurate picture of the man who walked into that brasserie six months ago. We've got height and a rough idea of weight, clothes, colouring, but we don't have a face. We sat him down with the CCTV footage from Euston, but he couldn't pick Nicklin out.'
'Or wouldn't; Jesmond said. 'We can't be certain he wants his friend caught as much as he says he does.'
Thorne shook his head. 'I am certain of that, sir.'
And yet…
There was something that Palmer was keeping hidden. He appeared to be co-operating fully, to be answering every question, but Thorne sensed there were secret places he was unwilling to go, pictures he was wary of painting too fully.
Thorne would keep digging. If they'd let him…
'What about these e-mails?' Jesmond opened a green folder and began pulling out copies of the messages Nicklin had sent to Palmer. The tech boys had printed them out from Palmer's home PC.
'They're untraceable,' Thorne said, emphatically. 'Anonymous servers. Accounts set up on stolen credit cards. He was very careful.'
Jesmond quickly re-read a couple of the mails, clenching his jaw at the most chilling – the ones that had issued Palmer with his instructions: the dates, venues and methods of the killings.
'Can't we just monitor his e-mails?' Jesmond asked. 'Have them forwarded on to one of our computers?'
Thorne leaned forward. 'We will be watching for any communication from Nicklin, of course, and using the description we've got, but I still don't think it's enough sir. It's got to be all or nothing.' He pulled one piece of paper away from the others, slid it in front of Jesmond.
'Look at that one, it pre-dates the first killing by a few weeks.'
Jesmond picked it up, started to read.
Received: (qmail 27003 invoked by alias); 28 Jun 2001
11:35:29 -0000
Date: 28 Jun 2001 11:35:29 -0000
Message-ID: ‹921065729.27000@coolmail. co. uk› To: martpalmer@netmail. org. uk
Subject: THINKING OF SUMMER
From: Old Friend.
Martin. Any thoughts yet? I can see you're thinking about it. You look miles away sometimes and I know that you're picturing it. Soon it will be a lot more than a picture. I'm presuming (as I could always presume with you) that you're on board. I will give you details in the fullness etc., etc. Your face tells me that you're remembering those summers. Think about the summers to come…
Jesmond looked up, and across at Thorne, his face giving nothing away. Stupid, or just playing stupid, Thorne was finding it hard to tell.
'He's watching him, sir. He says so. "I can see you", "you look miles away", "your face tells me". He's watching him.'
'It sounds like he was watching him, granted,' Jesmond said.
'I think he still is. He likes to be in control.'
Norman was keen to show that if his last question was a little… silly, it was a long way from typical. 'If he is watching, then what are we talking about? You've said yourself that we can't be sure he didn't see Palmer screw up with Jacqueline Kaye? He might also have watched him walk into that station on Monday. If he already knows we've got Palmer, Detective Inspector, what you're asking would be an enormous and potentially dangerous waste of time. Wouldn't it?'
It was the obvious question. The one Thorne had been most afraid of. He knew his response was hardly convincing, but it was the only one he had. 'It's a risk worth taking. It's why we need to do this quickly.' Jesmond stared down at the papers in front of him. Norman put away his pen. Thorne thought of something else. 'I'm not saying he watches Palmer all the time. He can't. He gave Palmer the impression that he had a full-time job…'
Jesmond started gathering up his notes, like he'd already made up his mind. 'Risk, you said. Risk is a very good word for it, Thorne. We take a murderer, a man who has killed at least two women, and just put him back on the street…'
Thorne sighed in frustration. 'That isn't what we'd be doing. I told you…'
'What would you call it, then?'
'Just leaving him… in vision. Not frightening Nicklin off. One way or another, when it's over, Palmer goes away.' Thorne looked back to Brigstocke, searching for backup and not getting it. He knew he couldn't rely on the DCI's support. Brigstocke was still smarting from Thorne going it alone two days earlier. Interviewing Palmer without waiting for him. The bollocking he'd dished out was still being talked about by anybody who'd been within half a mile of his office. Back to Jesmond. 'Organised Crime do this sort of thing all the time, sir,' Thorne said. 'When they need a witness on the inside. I don't see why we can't do the same. We release Palmer on police bail, pending further enquiries. It's a common enough procedure…'
It was probably as close as Jesmond came to losing his temper. 'I'm perfectly aware of the procedure, Thorne, but Palmer is not a fucking loan shark. He's killed two women, and we don't normally go around releasing murderers on police bail.'
There was little Thorne could say and Jesmond quickly relaxed. The advantage was his. He took out a handkerchief and pushed one corner up a nostril, digging around, his face contorting with the effort. 'So, hypothetically, Palmer's walking about, we're watching him. Then what? Nicklin makes a silly mistake? He hasn't made too many so far has he? So, we wait for him to kill again?' Thorne said nothing. He knew it might come down to just that. 'I'm not sure you've thought this through, Inspector.'
'With respect, sir…' The volume rising now. Precious little respect anywhere.
Brigstocke leaned across the table. 'Listen, Tom…'
Thorne narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth far too quickly.
'That fence you're sitting on must be playing havoc with your arse, Russell.'
Jesmond raised a palm but Thorne carried on. He looked at each of them as he spoke, knowing he only had the one chance, if that. 'Yes, Palmer is a killer, a fucking freak, and when this is all over, whatever we decide to do, he's going away for the rest of his life. He wants to go away, he's not angling for anything, he's not trying to make a deal.' He stopped, took a breath, carried on. 'I firmly believe, however, that if this investigation continues along the lines I have suggested, he will not be a danger to anybody…'
Jesmond was ready to come in. Thorne didn't let him. 'I think this is our only chance to get Nicklin and if we don't take it, we'll regret it down the road. Now, as things stand, with a killer in custody, we all get patted on the back or promoted or whatever. Later there'll be blood.'
He stared at Jesmond. Why the luck should you care? You'll probably be long gone by then. He had drawn the line at talking about 'taking full responsibility' but something in Jesmond's small, ratty eyes told Thorne that it would be a given; that should it prove necessary, the grip he was barely maintaining on his career would be loosened by a few strategically placed boots on fingers. Something else told him that it was all academic anyway. They weren't going to go for this in a million years…
Thorne stood up. 'I've said my piece I think, sir.'
Jesmond looked to his colleagues, straightening his papers like a newsreader for want of anything better to do. 'Thank you, Inspector. Obviously, this needs discussing and not just by us. I've got a conference call with the Deputy Assistant Commissioner arranged and he may want to take it even higher. So…'
So… Thorne sat in the office next door, fighting a childish urge to put a glass against the wall, and cursing the tiny strand of DNA somewhere within him that made him do… these things. Made him incapable of settling for anything.
He had never been one for war stories. He could prop up a bar with the best of them and swap tales, but when stories of who put who away were told, he would smile, slap backs and retreat inside himself to where he could silently revisit failure. Success did not occupy him a great deal, but failure was always around, waiting to be given the nod. He was English, after all.
It wasn't the ones he caught that Thorne remembered. That he always remembered. It wasn't the ones he finally got to see in an interview room or through the peephole of a holding cell, or across a courtroom. It wasn't them.
It wasn't the Palmers.
Thorne had forgotten the faces of a dozen convicted killers down the years, but he still saw, clearly, those killers for whom he never had a face at all. He would do whatever was necessary to prevent Stuart Anthony Nicklin as was, taking his place in that particular gallery. Bloody-minded, stubborn and pig-headed were easy words to use. Guilty on all three counts. Yes, yes and yes again. But they were not the right words.
It would have been so easy to accept the plaudits and take what had been handed to him on a plate. Easy to look at a picture of Martin Palmer on the front page, to prop up that bar for a night or two. Easy to pose with the victims' relatives, to shake hands and look into grateful faces, then turn away, ready to go to work again, to begin the next hunt.
Easy to crack on, smug and satisfied.
So hard to dismiss a small boy with a squeaky hammer. Can you forget his face, Charlie? I hope so… Now Holland and McEvoy were moving across the incident room towards the open doorway of his office. He watched them getting closer, taking an age to get to him, wondering at the expressions on their faces, tight and dark, the piece of paper in Holland's hand, the fist clenched at the end of McEvoy's arm. Then they were in his office and the sheet of paper was on his desk, and he was trying to take in what it said and McEvoy was talking.
'The body of Miriam Vincent was found this morning in her flat on Laurel Street in Dalston. She's been dead a couple of days. Shot in the head.' McEvoy's tone had been professional, calm and informative. Now, in a reddening rush, she let the anger come through. 'She was a student at North London University. She was nineteen for Christ's sake.., a fucking teenager…'
Holland looked at her, alarmed at the sudden display of emotion. Thorne took it, used it, let her anger clear his head. Where a few moments before he had felt woozy and disorientated, now he was suddenly bright and focused. He knew exactly what to do.
'I haven't seen this.'
McEvoy cocked her head. 'Sorry…?'
'You couldn't find me. Clear?' He handed the piece of paper to Holland, pointed towards the office next door. 'Go and tell them.'
Holland hesitated for a second and McEvoy snatched the paper from him. 'I'll do it…'
Thorne held out his hand. 'No you won't, you're too.., charged up. They've already had me.'
McEvoy handed back the piece of paper, grunted and turned away. Thorne passed it on to Holland, caught his arm, squeezed. 'Calm…'
Holland nodded and quickly marched out. Without looking back he walked straight up to the door of the adjoining office, knocked and went in without waiting to be asked.
McEvoy went back to the incident room and while he waited, Thorne watched her, moving among her fellow officers, fired up about Miriam Vincent's murder, blazing with the knowledge of it. He liked her anger. He understood it. He worried that lately, she seemed a little less able to control it.
McEvoy and Holland were the only people, aside from the three next door, who knew what he was proposing to do. The rest of those working on the case were still flushed with the success of the Palmer arrest. There was suddenly a lot more laughter around the building, and those not laughing were only nursing the hangovers that came from too much celebration. He knew that if his idea was to stand any chance of working, the celebration would need to stop. The lid needed to come down hard and stay on tight.
Thorne suddenly saw how unutterably stupid he was being. Stupid to think that the powers-that-be would agree to releasing Palmer and stupid for wanting them to. He started to feel relieved, light and free of it, anticipating their polite but firm refusal. He knew that what he was planning would have gone down like a cup of cold sick anyway, for all sorts of reasons, not least the time of year. He wondered whether he owed his colleagues a chance to wind down a little, to level out, to have a life with their families. It only took a second or two to remember that there were others, dead and alive, to whom he owed a lot more.
Those that would pull faces if Thorne got his way, those that would mutter in corners and ignore him in the pub after work, had not met Carol Garner's mother and father. They had not met her son. Perhaps he should invite what was left of that family down for the day, show Charlie around the station and sit every single officer, every member of the civilian staff, down with them for fifteen fucking minutes. He wondered whether Carol had bought Christmas presents for Charlie before it happened. Would her mum and dad give them to him, and would they tell him who they were from…?
Thorne heard a door open and looked up to see Brigstocke emerge from the office next door, eyes scanning the incident room, looking for him.
'Russell…'
Brigstocke turned to look at him. When their eyes met, it was clear to Thorne that his earlier comments, which he had meant but now regretted, had neither been forgotten, nor forgiven. They would need to talk.
Suddenly, Thorne wanted it more than anything. Wanted the go ahead. In those last few seconds, while he waited for some sign from Brigstocke, he wanted the chance to stop Smart Nicklin, to be rid of him, and bollocks to careers, and pissing people off and celebrating a job only half done. Less than half done…
Brigstocke closed his eyes and nodded. All right. Thorne acknowledged the nod with his eyes, then spoke the words quietly, but out loud.
'Oh, fuck.'