Where for three weeks, Thorne had been forced to sit in a room no bigger than an airing cupboard, going quietly insane, and trying to work out how many ways a man could kill himself using only standard office equipment.

He had thought, understandably, that the Demographics of Recruitment could not possibly be as boring as it sounded. He had been wrong. Although, the first few days hadn't been so bad. He'd been taught how the software program-with which he was supposed to turn hundreds of pages of research into a presentation doc.u.ment, complete with block graphs and pie charts-worked. His computer instructor was about as interesting as Thorne had expected him to be. But he was, at least, someone to talk to.

Then, left to his own devices, Thorne had quickly discovered the most enjoyable way to pa.s.s the time. He was just as quickly rumbled. It didn't take someone long to work out that most of those Web sites being visited via one particular terminal had very little to do with the recruitment of ethnic minorities, or why more dog handlers seemed to come from the southwest. Overnight, and without warning, Internet access was denied, and from then on, outside the job itself, there was little for Thorne to do but eke out the daily paper and think about methods of killing himself.

He was considering death from a thousand papercuts when a face appeared around the door. It looked a little thinner than usual, and the smile was nervous. It had been four weeks since Thorne had seen the man who was at least partly responsible for putting him where he was, and Russell Brigstocke had every right to be apprehensive.

He held up a hand, and spoke before Thorne had a chance to say anything. "I'm sorry. I'll buy you lunch."

Thorne pretended to consider it. "Does it include beer?"

Brigstocke winced. "I'm on a b.l.o.o.d.y diet, but for you, yes."

"Why are we still here?"

Thorne hadn't even clocked the name of the place as they'd gone in. They'd come out of the Yard, turned up toward Parliament Square, and walked into the first pub they'd come to. The food was bog-standard-chili con carne that was welded to the dish in places and tepid in others-but they had decent crisps and Stella on draft.

A waitress was clearing away the crockery as Brigstocke came back from the bar with more drinks.

"What's all this in aid of, anyway?" Thorne asked.

Brigstocke sat and leaned toward his gla.s.s. Took a sip of mineral water. "Why's it have to be in aid of anything? Just friends having a drink."

"You weren't much of a friend a few weeks ago, in your office."

Brigstocke made eye contact, held it for as long as was comfortable. "I was, Tom."

The slightly awkward silence that followed was broken by murmured "sorrys" and "excuse me's" as a big man who'd been wedged into the corner next to Thorne stood and squeezed out. Thorne pulled his battered, brown leather jacket from the back of a chair and folded it onto the bench next to him. Relaxed into the s.p.a.ce. The pub was busy, but now they had something approaching a bit of privacy.

"Either you want to have a good moan about something," Thorne said, "or you want to talk about a case that's p.i.s.sing you off."

Brigstocke swallowed, nudged at his gla.s.ses with a knuckle. "Bit of both."

"Midlife crisis?" Thorne asked.

"Come again?"

Thorne gestured with his gla.s.s. "Trendy new specs. Diet. You got a bit on the side, Russell?"

Brigstocke reddened slightly, pushed fingers through his thick, black hair. "Might just as well have, the amount of time I'm spending at home."

"The rough-sleeper killings, right?" Thorne grinned, enjoying the look of surprise on Brigstocke's face. "It's not like I've been in Timbuktu, Russ. I spoke to Dave Holland on the phone a few nights ago. Saw a bit in the paper before that. A couple of bodies, isn't it?"

"It was a couple . . ."

"s.h.i.t . . ."

" 's.h.i.t' is bang on. Deep s.h.i.t is what we're in."

"There's been a lid on this, right? It literally was a 'bit' I saw in the paper."

"That was the way it was being played until last night. There's going to be a press conference tomorrow afternoon."

"Tell me . . ."

Brigstocke leaned across the table and spoke, his voice just loud enough for Thorne to hear above Dido, who was whining from the speakers above the bar.

Three victims so far.

The first body had been found almost exactly a month earlier. A homeless man somewhere in his forties, murdered in an alleyway off Golden Square. Four weeks on, and his ident.i.ty remained unknown.

"We've spoken to other rough sleepers in the area and can't get so much as a nickname. They reckon he was new and he certainly hadn't made any contact with local care services. Some of these people like to matey up and some just want to be left alone. Same as anybody else, I suppose."

"DSS?"

"We're still checking missed appointments, but I'm not holding my breath. They don't all sign on anyway. Some of them are on the street because they don't want to be found."

"Everyone's got some official stuff somewhere, though. Haven't they? A birth certificate, something."

"Maybe he had," Brigstocke said. "He might have left it somewhere for safekeeping, in which case that's where it's going to stay. We also have to consider the possibility that he kept it on him, and whoever killed him took it."

"Either way, you've got sod all."

"There's a tattoo, that's about it. It's pretty distinctive. It's the only thing we've got to work on at the moment . . ."

There was less of a problem putting a name to the second rough sleeper, killed a couple of streets away a fortnight later. Raymond Mannion was a known drug abuser with a criminal record. He had been convicted a few years earlier of violent a.s.sault, and though there was no ID found on the body, his DNA was on record.

Both men had been kicked to death. They were of similar ages and had been killed in the early hours of the morning. Both Mannion's body and that of the anonymous first victim had been found with twentypound notes pinned to their chests.

Thorne took a mouthful of beer and swallowed. "A series?"

"Looks likely."

"And now there's been another one?"

"Night before last. Same area, same sort of age, but there are differences. There was no money left on the body."

"Unless it was taken."

"That's possible, obviously. No money was found on the body."

"You said differences. What else?"

"He's still breathing," Brigstocke said. Thorne raised his eyebrows. "Not that the poor b.u.g.g.e.r knows a great deal about it. Name's Paddy Hayes. He's on life support at the Middles.e.x . . ."

Thorne felt a shudder, like cold fingers brushing against the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. He remembered a girl he'd known a few years earlier: attacked and left a fraction from death by a man who'd murdered three before her. Helpless, kept alive by machines. When they'd found her, the police thought that the man they were after had made his first mistake. It was Thorne who had worked out that this killer wasn't actually trying to kill anyone. That what he'd done to this girl was what he'd been attempting with the rest of his victims. It was one of those ice-cold/white-hot moments when Thorne had realized the truly monstrous nature of what he was up against.

There'd been far too many since.

"So you think Hayes is part of the pattern or not?"

"It's a b.l.o.o.d.y coincidence if he isn't."

"How did you get his ID?"

"Again, nothing official on him, but we found a letter jammed down inside a pocket. Someone from the day center where he hung out took a look at him and confirmed the name. They had to take a d.a.m.n good look, though. His head looked like a sack of rotten fruit."

"What sort of letter?"

"From his son. Telling his father just how much of a useless, drunken b.a.s.t.a.r.d he was. How he couldn't give a toss if he never set eyes on him again." With a finger, Brigstocke pushed what was left of an ice cube around his gla.s.s. "Now the son's the one who's got to decide whether or not to pull the plug . . ."

Thorne grimaced. "So I take it you're not exactly on the verge of making an arrest?"

"It was always going to be a pig," Brigstocke said. "When the first one wasn't sorted within a week it started to look very dodgy, and as soon as the second body turned up they were pa.s.sing the case around like a t.u.r.d. That's when we ran out of luck and picked the b.l.o.o.d.y thing up. Just after you went gardening, as it happens."

"Maybe G.o.d was punishing you."

"Somebody's f.u.c.king punishing me. I've had officers on fourteen-hour tours for three weeks and we're precisely nowhere."

"Grief from above?"

"Grief from everywhere. The commissioner's on our back because he's getting it in the neck from every homeless charity and pressure group out there. They seem to think because we aren't making any obvious progress that we must be dragging our feet. That, basically, we don't care."

"Do we?"

Brigstocke ignored him. "So now it's a political issue, and we're f.u.c.ked because the homeless community itself has bought into this idea that we're not trying very hard. So they've more or less stopped talking to us."

"You can hardly blame them, though . . ."

"I'm not blaming them. They've got every right to be suspicious."

"They've got every right to be scared, if there's a killer out there. These are people who can't lock the door, remember."

They said nothing for a few moments. Dido had given way to Norah Jones. Thorne wondered if there was an alb.u.m t.i.tled Now That's What I Call Scampi in a Basket.

"There's another reason they're not talking to us," Brigstocke said. Thorne looked up from the beer mat. "There was a statement taken early on from a kid sleeping rough. He reckoned that a police officer had been asking questions."

Thorne jammed a fist under his chin. "Sorry, I'm probably being a bit b.l.o.o.d.y thick, but . . ."

"It was before the first murder. He claimed that a police officer had been asking questions the day before the first body was found. Showing a picture. Like he was looking for someone."

"Looking for who, exactly? I mean, this is the victim you still haven't identified, right?" Brigstocke nodded. "So didn't this person who was supposedly looking for him mention his name?"

"We could check if we had such a thing as a name and address for the kid who gave the statement. Honestly, nothing about this is simple, Tom."

Thorne watched Brigstocke take a drink. Took one himself. "A copper?"

"We've had to tread a bit b.l.o.o.d.y carefully."

"Keep it out of the press, you mean?"

Brigstocke raised his voice, irritated. "Come on, you know d.a.m.n well that's not the only reason we don't want it plastered all over the papers . . ."

" 'It is considered good practice to deliberately withhold details of the MO used by the offender.' " Thorne yawned theatrically as he quoted from the most recent edition of the Murder Investigation Manual, the detective's bible.

"Right, like the money left on the bodies. So we know the other killings weren't copycats."

"You can't be sure about Paddy Hayes," Thorne said.

"No . . ."

Thorne knew that there were certainly sound procedural grounds for keeping things quiet. But he also knew that even the possible involvement of a police officer in a case such as this would make the Job's top bra.s.s extremely jumpy.

Thorne could see that the next day's press conference made sense. The third body had undoubtedly forced a swift and radical change in media strategy. Now the public had to be told-but only up to a point-what was going on. It was all spelled out in the Murder Investigation Manual: the public had to be rea.s.sured, advised, appealed to.

The Met, of course, was also doing the smart thing by covering its a.r.s.e. G.o.d forbid any more bodies should turn up and they had forgotten that the public also needed to be warned.

"So, what do you think?" Brigstocke said. "Any bright ideas?"

"I think you need to forget about mineral water and go and get yourself a proper drink. A beer gut's the least of your worries."

"Seriously . . ."

"Seriously?" Thorne swilled what little beer there was left around in the bottom of his gla.s.s. "You should have tried picking my brains before you bought me three pints of Stella, mate." He puffed out his cheeks, let the air out slowly. "My afternoon of 'recruitment demographics' is shot to s.h.i.t as it is."

THREE.

It was a forty-minute tube ride home from St. James's Park. As soon as he walked through his front door that evening, he took the CD from his Walkman and transferred it into his main deck. It was part of a boxed set of outtakes and demos from the American Recordings sessions, released a few months after Johnny Cash had died in 2003. Thorne cued up "Redemption Song"-a cover of the Bob Marley cla.s.sic that Cash had recorded with Joe Strummer. Neither of them had lived to see its release.

Thorne moved around the kitchen, making tea, wondering at how Marley and Strummer could both have gone so young, while Mick Hucknall and Phil Collins were still walking around.

Though he'd been joking with Brigstocke, Thorne hadn't actually got a whole lot done that afternoon. He'd stared at columns of figures, had stabbed perfunctorily at his keyboard, but all the time he'd been thinking about Paddy Hayes and the machines that were keeping him alive. Thinking about the letter the man had carried in his pocket. About the d.a.m.n good look those who knew him had needed before they were able to confirm his ident.i.ty.

Thorne carried his tea through to the sitting room. He sat and considered everything that Brigstocke had told him, and why. Now that those who were seemingly being targeted had stopped talking to the police, the investigation would stutter and stall very b.l.o.o.d.y quickly. In all probability, it would grind spectacularly to a halt.

Russell Brigstocke had to have been pretty desperate to come to him for advice in the first place. From what Thorne had heard about the case, that desperation was well founded.

So, what do you think?

In the silence between the tracks, Thorne could hear the distant hum of traffic from the Kentish Town Road, the rumble of a train on the overground line that ran to Camden Town or Gospel Oak. He felt suddenly nostalgic for those few months earlier in the year when he'd shared the flat with Phil Hendricks, whose own place was being treated for damp. It had been cramped and chaotic, with Hendricks dossing down on the sofa bed, and there'd been a good deal of arguing. He remembered the two of them drunkenly rowing about football the day before Hendricks had moved out. That would have been a couple of weeks before the fire . . .

Before the fire. Not "before my father died."