Hendricks walked around to the passenger side and got in. He’d changed out of the protective suit and was wearing black jeans and a skinny-rib sweater over a white T-shirt. ‘Just about done,’ he said.

Thorne grunted.

‘You OK?’

‘Sorry… yeah.’ Thorne turned and looked. Nodded and smiled.

A skein of red and blue ink was just visible above the neckline, but most of Phil Hendricks’ tattoos were hidden. Much to the relief of his superiors, a good few of the piercings remained out of sight, too. Thorne was happy to have been spared the graphic details, but knew that some had been done in honour of a new boyfriend, one for each conquest. There hadn’t been a new piercing for quite a while.

It was not what many people expected a pathologist to look like, but Hendricks was the best Thorne had ever worked with; and still – despite the many ups and downs – the closest friend he had.

‘Fancy a pint later?’ Thorne asked.

‘What about Louise?’

‘She’ll be fine.’

‘No.’ Hendricks grinned. ‘I mean she’ll be jealous.’

‘We’ll make it up to her,’ Thorne said. In truth, he was the one who had suffered from jealousy. He and Louise had been together almost a year and a half, having met when Thorne was seconded to help out on a kidnap case she had been working, but it had taken her only a couple of weeks to get as close to Phil Hendricks as Thorne had managed in ten years. There were times, especially early on, when it had been disconcerting; when he’d found himself resenting them their friendship.

One night, when the three of them were out together, Thorne had got pissed and called Louise a ‘fag-hag’. She and Phil had laughed, and Phil had said how ironic that was, because Thorne was the one acting like an old queen.

‘Yeah, OK then,’ Hendricks said. He looked towards the house, from which officers had begun to drift in twos and threes. ‘Mind you, if I’m going to be elbows deep in that poor cow first thing in the morning, I’d better just have the one.’

‘Well, I’m having way more than one,’ Thorne said. ‘So we’d best go to my local. I’ll give you a lift.’

Hendricks nodded, let his head drop back and closed his eyes. Thorne had given up trying to find any decent country music and had tuned the radio into Magic FM. It was nearly ten o’clock, and 10cc were winding up an uninterrupted hour of easy-listening oldies.

‘He brought his own bag,’ Hendricks said.

‘What?’

‘The bag he used to suffocate her. He knew what he was doing. You can’t just grab some carrier bag out of the kitchen – they’re a waste of time. Most of them have got holes in, so your vegetables don’t sweat or whatever. You want something air-tight, obviously, and it needs to be a bit stronger, so it won’t get cut to ribbons by your victim’s fingernails, if she’s got any.’ Hendricks tapped his fingers on the dash in time to the music. ‘Also, with a nice, clear polythene bag, you can see the face while you’re doing it. I think that’s probably important.’

‘So, he was organised.’

‘He came prepared.’

‘He didn’t bring the vinegar bottle, though.’

‘No, I’m guessing that was improvised. First thing he could grab hold of to hit her with.’

‘Then he gets the bag out once she’s down.’

Hendricks nodded. ‘Might even have hit her hard enough to do the job before he had a chance to suffocate her.’

‘I suppose we should hope so.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ Hendricks said. ‘You ask me, the bottle was just to make sure she wasn’t going to struggle too much. He wanted to kill her with the bag. Like I said, I reckon he wanted to watch.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I’ll know tomorrow.’

The windows were beginning to steam up, so Thorne turned on the fan. They listened to the news for a couple of minutes. There was nothing to lift the mood even slightly and there was nothing in the sports round-up to get excited about. The football season was still only a month or so old and, with neither of their teams in action, none of the night’s results proved particularly significant.

‘Six weeks until we stuff you again,’ Hendricks said. A committed Gunner, he was still relishing the double that Arsenal had done over Spurs in the north London derbies the previous season.

‘Right… ’

Hendricks was laughing and saying something else, but Thorne had stopped listening. He was staring down at the screen of his mobile, thumbing through the menu and checking he hadn’t missed a message.

‘Tom?’

Making sure he still had a decent signal.

‘Tom? You OK, mate?’

Thorne put the phone away and turned.

‘Is Louise all right?’ Hendricks waited, saw something in Thorne’s face. ‘Shit, is it the baby?’

‘What? How d’you know…?’ Thorne pushed back hard in his seat and stared straight ahead. He and Louise had agreed to tell nobody for the first three months. A good friend of hers had lost one early on.

‘Don’t be pissed off,’ Hendricks said. ‘I forced it out of her.’

‘’Course you did.’

‘To be honest, I think she was desperate to spill the beans.’ Hendricks looked for a softening in Thorne’s demeanour but saw none. ‘Come on, who else was she going to tell?’

Thorne glanced across, spat it out. ‘I don’t know, her mother?’

‘I think she might have told her as well.’

‘Fuck’s sake!’

‘Nobody else, as far as I know.’

Thorne leaned down and turned off the radio. ‘This was why we agreed we wouldn’t say anything. In case this happened.’

‘Shit,’ Hendricks said. ‘Tell me.’

When Thorne had finished, Hendricks began telling him that these things usually happened for good reasons, that it was better now than later on. Thorne stopped him. Told him he’d heard it all already from the woman who’d done the scan and that it hadn’t helped too much then, either.

Thorne saw Hendricks’ face and apologised. ‘I just didn’t know what to say to her, you know?’

‘Nothing much you can say.’

‘Need to give it time, I suppose,’ Thorne said.

‘Tell her to call me whenever she likes,’ Hendricks said. ‘You know, if she wants to talk about it.’

Thorne nodded. ‘She will.’

‘You, too.’ He waited until Thorne looked over. ‘All right?’

They sat in silence for a minute. There was still plenty of activity at the front of the house – vehicles coming and going every few minutes. Half a dozen spectators were crowded on the opposite side of the road, despite the best efforts of the uniforms to keep them away.

Thorne let out an empty laugh and smacked his hand against the steering wheel. ‘I told Lou I was going to get rid of this,’ he said.

‘Your precious Beemer?’ Hendricks said. ‘Bloody hell, that’s a major concession.’

Thorne’s 1971, ‘Pulsar’-yellow BMW had been a cause of much amusement to many of his colleagues for a long time. Thorne called it ‘vintage’. Dave Holland said that was just a euphemism for ‘knackered old rust-bucket’.

‘Promised I’d get something a bit more practical,’ Thorne said. He tugged at the collar of his jacket. ‘A family car, you know?’

Hendricks smiled. ‘You should still get rid of it,’ he said.

‘We’ll see.’

Hendricks pointed to the front door, to the metal trolley that was emerging through it, being lifted down the step. ‘Here we go…’

They got out of the car and walked slowly across to the rear of the mortuary van. Hendricks talked quietly to one of the mortuary assistants, ran through arrangements for the following morning. Thorne watched as the trolley was raised on its concertina legs and the black body-bag was eased slowly into the vehicle.

Emily Walker.

Thorne glanced towards the onlookers: a teenager in a baseball cap shuffling his feet; an old woman, open-mouthed.

Not viable.