There must have been something in his voice when he picked up.

‘Not a good time?’ Brigstocke asked.

Thorne’s answer might have sounded vague, but was about as honest as he could be. ‘Yes and no.’

‘I just wanted to see how life on the Kidnap Unit was treating you.’

Thorne took the phone through to the living room. ‘You just wanted to see if I fucked up on my first day, you mean.’

‘Oh, I know you didn’t fuck up. I’ve already spoken to the DCI.’

‘And?’

‘Gold stars all round, I reckon. You impressed DI Porter, by the sound of it. What did you make of her?’

Thorne dropped into the armchair, swiftly followed by his terminally confused cat, who jumped on to his lap and began digging in her claws. Thorne lifted Elvis up until she let go and tossed her back to the floor. ‘She seemed OK,’ he said. ‘She certainly knows what she’s doing.’ He couldn’t be sure why he was so reluctant to say what he really thought, especially when she’d obviously said such good things about him. The fact was that he’d been very impressed with Louise Porter. In every sense.

‘Exciting enough for you?’

‘Well, I’m not stuck behind a desk,’ Thorne said. ‘But I’m not sitting here waiting for my pulse to return to normal, either.’ He could hear one of Brigstocke’s kids in the background. The tone of the silence changed as a hand went over the mouthpiece, and he heard Brigstocke’s muffled voice telling the child that he’d be with him in a few minutes.

‘Sorry…’

‘I’m not even sure we’re looking at a kidnap,’ Thorne said. ‘This business with the woman’s bloody odd. And if someone is holding the kid, it doesn’t make any sense that they haven’t got in touch.’

‘What does Porter think?’

‘She thinks it’s strange, too. We were talking about motivation, you know? About why anybody takes a hostage. There’s always a reason. It might be drugs, or money, or some kind of political statement. But they always want something.’

‘You think the boy’s just left home?’

‘God knows. I think we might be wasting a lot of time and effort, though.’

The doorbell rang, but almost as soon as Thorne was on his feet, Hendricks had come inside and was making his way to the door. Thorne reached into his leather jacket for his wallet but Hendricks waved him away.

‘So I’d be right in thinking you wouldn’t be keen on me making this transfer permanent, then?’

‘This is going to sound weird, and I know that, whatever the reason turns out to be, there’s still a missing kid, but I find it hard to get… excited about it. There’s an element of going through the motions. Does that make sense?’

‘You’re happier when there’s a body, aren’t you?’ Brigstocke said. ‘You want a killer to go after.’

Thorne thought about what Holland had said to him in the car that morning: ‘Sounds almost like you’re hoping.’ He wondered if the pair of them might have a point; if perhaps there were a part of him that could only be described as ‘ghoulish’. ‘I just think we should do what we’re good at,’ he said. He knew, even as he spoke, that he was sounding sulky and defensive.

Brigstocke sniffed. ‘I could say something deep and meaningful here, about how some people care more about the dead than they do about the living, but I’m not sure I can be arsed.’

‘I think you’d be doing the pair of us a favour if you didn’t,’ Thorne said.

Brigstocke said nothing. Just hummed, like he was thinking about it.

The front door slammed and Hendricks walked back towards the kitchen with the boxes. Thorne was eager to follow him. ‘I need to go. I’m about to eat my dinner.’

‘I know. I heard the doorbell,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Curry or pizza?’

Thorne laughed. ‘You haven’t lost it.’

A minute later he was taking two fresh cans of beer from the fridge, glad that the call from Brigstocke had ended on an upbeat note. It could easily have gone the other way. So many conversations he’d had of late had seemed dangerously poised, while Holland, Hendricks and a number of others had all used the phrase ‘walking on eggshells’ more than once. When Thorne got snappy, told them in no uncertain terms that they were being oversensitive, they just looked at him like he’d proved their point.

‘Shall we eat this outside?’ Thorne asked.

Hendricks was already picking at pepperoni slices. ‘Are you kidding? It’s even colder now. I’m young, free and single, mate, and if I’m going out on the pull, the last thing I need is my knob shrinking to the size of an acorn.’ He picked up his pizza box and wandered into the living room.

Thorne was about to shout after him, ask if he fancied putting some music on, then thought better of it. Hendricks might have been gagging it up, but the pain hadn’t gone anywhere. He would almost certainly pull out an album with at least one unsuitable track on it; the makeup of Thorne’s collection would make it hard not to. It was, as people never seemed to tire of telling him, the problem with country music: too many songs about dead dogs and lost love.

‘Stick the TV on,’ he shouted as an alternative. ‘See if there’s a game on Sky.’

He stepped back outside to bring in the kitchen chairs. It was a clear night, but there was no guarantee it wouldn’t piss down before morning. He thought through what he’d said to Brigstocke about not feeling excited, and about what it might take to start the blood pumping that little bit faster. He wondered how bad he’d really feel if the body so many people accused him of wishing for turned up. He just hoped to Christ that if it did, it wasn’t Luke Mullen’s.

He looked up as a plane passed, winking and droning overhead. The sky was the colour of a dusty plum, and spattered with stars. He carried the chairs inside and shut the door. Hendricks was already shouting at the television.

In spite of his bad back, of the boredom and the morbid thoughts, Thorne was feeling pretty good. Relative to the recent past, at any rate. All the same, it was a welcome diversion to spend a few hours with someone who – if only for the time being – was in worse shape than he was.

CONRAD

The kid was clever, no doubt about that. A bit of a smartarse, in fact, but it didn’t matter how brainy you were if you weren’t the one in the driving seat. The kid had probably passed a ton more exams than he ever had, but it didn’t count for much now, did it? Clever didn’t mean a lot with a bag over your head.

Because he was the one calling the shots.

Even as the words formed in his mind, it struck him as a smart way of putting things. ‘Shots’ as in guns, and ‘shots’ like when you give someone an injection.

He’d always been tall and well built, and he’d always looked after himself, but he’d never been given any real respect. Not when he was younger, anyway. Back then he’d lacked the ‘necessary’, the something in the eyes or whatever, that made people take you seriously; that made them back off, try to smile, and say, ‘All right, mate, whatever you want.’ He’d wanted to make someone react like that ever since his balls had dropped, and he could still remember when it had happened for the first time. It was a few years ago now, but he could remember every single detail of it. It was like watching a film that he was starring in.

A poxy red Fiesta.

The spiky-haired ponce behind the wheel had cut in front of him at the lights, swerved across into his lane instead of turning right like he should have done. Then, to top it off, the arsehole had given him the finger when he’d leaned on his horn, as he’d every bloody right to do!

So he’s chased the fucker. He’s right up his arse, doing fifty and sixty through Dalston and Hackney, all the way to Bow. There’s big puddles on the streets and precious little traffic around that time of the morning; just night buses and the odd dodgy minicab getting out of the way seriously fast.