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getting on very wel recently. The GCSEs had put them both under a lot of strain. Rachel was just letting off steam, that was al , having slogged her guts out. Anne had decided to buy her a present when she got her results, to say wel done for working so hard. A new computer, maybe. She thought about getting it now instead.
    And then she thought about Tom Thorne.
    She looked at the flowers he'd brought with him and smiled as she remembered his apology to Alison for... what was the word he'd used? Humming. She'd thought he'd smelt good. She thought he smelt honest. He wasn't a hard man to find attractive. She probably had a few years on him, but knew instinctively that he wasn't the type that would be bothered by that. He was chunky. No... solid. He looked like he'd been round the block a few times. He was the sort of man to whom she'd found herself drawn since things had begun to fizzle out with SLEEPYHEAD 67
    David - many years ago, if she was being honest with herself.
    It was odd that there was more grey in Thorne's hair on the left-hand side. She'd always liked brown eyes as wel .
    Anne was suddenly aware that she was voicing her thoughts. These late-night conversations with Alison were becoming routine. Nurses were used to discovering her wittering away in the middle of the night. She had begun to look forward to talking to Alison, Engaging with Alison's brain was vital as part of her treatment but Anne found it therapeutic too. It was strange and exciting to be able to speak your mind and not be... judged. It was confession without the spooky stuff. Perhaps somewhere Alison was judging her. She was probably ful of opinions - 'Sod the crusty copper! Find yourself a tasty young medical student!'
    One day Anne would find out exactly what Alison had been thinking. Right now, the hum of the machinery was making her sleepy. She stood up, reached across and gently squeezed the lubrication drops into Alison's eyes before taping them shut for the night. She took off her jacket, scrunched it up and put it beneath her head as she sat down again. She closed her eyes, whispered goodnight to Alison and was immediately asleep.
    By seven thirty the next morning the body had been forreal y identified. Helen Doyle's parents had rung to report that she hadn't come home at about the same time as George Hammond was watching her tumble over the railings into Queens Wood. Within hours of that first concerned phone cal , Thorne was leaning against a wal , watching them walk slowly down the corridor, away from
    68 MARK BILLINGHAM
    the mortuary. Michael Doyle sobbed. His wife, Eileen, stared grimly into the distance and squeezed her husband's arm. Her high heels click-clacked al the way down the stone steps as they walked outside, to be greeted by the dazzling, crisp and completely ordinary dawn of their first day without a daughter.
    Now Thorne stood with his back to a different wal . Dead Helen had taken her place alongside the others. She hadn't spoken up yet but it was only a matter of time. Now, forty or so officers of assorted rank, together with auxiliaries and civilian staff, sat waiting for Thorne to speak to them. As ever, he felt like the badly dressed deputy headmaster of a run-down comprehensive. His audience exchanged bored pleasantries or swapped laddish insults. The few women on the team sat together, deflecting the casual sexism of col eagues for whom
    'harass' was stil two words. The wisps of smoke from a dozen or more cigarettes curled up towards the strip-lights. Thorne might as wel have been back on twenty a day.
    'The body of Helen Doyle was discovered this morning in Queens Wood in Highgate at just after one thirty a.m. She was last seen leaving the Marlborough Arms on Hol oway Road at eleven fifteen. The post-mortem is being carried out this morning but for now we're working on the assumption that she was kil ed by the same man responsible for the deaths of Christine Owen, Madeleine Vickery and Susan Carlish...'
    The dead