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favourite with everybody?' Nods around the table.
    'A long way from odds-on, though,' Thorne said. There were things which bothered him, which didn't quite mesh with the vengeful relative scenario. He couldn't picture an anger carried around for that many years, fermenting into something lethal, corrosive, then manifesting itself in the way it had in that hotel room. There was something almost stage-managed about what he had seen on that filthy mattress. Posed, Hendricks had said.
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    And he was stil troubled by the early morning cal to the florist... Thorne thought there was something odd about the message. He couldn't believe that it was simple carelessness, so the only conclusion was that the kil er must have wanted the police to hear his voice on that answering machine. It was as if he were introducing himself.
    'What came up at the briefing,' Kitson said, 'the stuff about Remfry turning queer inside? Worth looking into...?'
    Thorne glanced towards Hendricks. A gay man who was choosing to ignore the word Kitson had used, or else genuinely didn't give a luck.
    'Yeah,' Thorne said. 'Whatever he might or might not have got up to when he was inside, he was definitely straight before he went in. Don't forget that he raped three women...'
    'Rape's not about sex, it's about power,' Kitson said.
    Yvonne Kitson, together with DC Andy Stone, had come into the team to replace an officer Thorne had lost, in circumstances he tried every day to forget. Of al the murderers he'd put away, Thorne was happy to remember that the man responsible was serving three fe sentences in Belmarsh Prison.
    Thorne looked at Phil Hendricks. 'Never mind Remfry, can we be certain the kil er's gay?'
    Hendricks didn't hesitate. 'Absolutely not. Like Yvonne says, the tape's got nothing to do with sex, anyway. Maybe the kil er wants us to think he's gay. He may wel be, of course, but we have to consider other possibilities...'
    'Whether it was a gay thing or not,' Kitson said, 'he could stil have been set up by someone he did time with, someone with a major grudge...'
    Brigstocke cleared his throat, at some level finding this al a bit embarrassing. 'But the buggery...?'
    Hendricks snorted. 'Buggery?' He dropped his Mancunian accent and adopted the posh bluster of the gentleman's club. 'Buggery!!'
    Brigstocke reddened. 'Sodomy, then. Anal intercourse, whatever. How could you do that if you weren't homosexual?'
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    Hendricks shrugged. 'Close your eyes and think of Claudia Schiffer...?'
    'Kylie for me,' Thorne said.

    Kitson shook her head, smiling. 'Dirty old man.'
    Brigstocke was unconvinced. He stared hard at Thorne. 'Seriously, though, Tom. This might be important. Could you?'
    'It would depend how much I wanted to kil somebody,' Thorne said.
    There was a silence around the table for a while. Thorne decided to break it before it became too serious. 'Remfry went to that hotel wil ingly. He booked the room himself. He knew, or thought he knew, what he was getting into.'
    'And whatever it was,' Hendricks added, 'it looks as though he went along with it for a while.'
    'Right,' Kitson said. She turned the photocopied pages of Hendricks's post-mortem report. 'No defence wounds, no tissue underneath the fingernails...'
    The phone on the desk' rang. Thorne was nearest.
    'DI Thorne. Yes, Dave...'
    The others watched for a few seconds as Thorne listened. Brigstocke hissed at Kitson. 'Why the fuck did Remfry go to that hotel?'
    Thorne nodded, grunted, took the top off a pen with his teeth. He took it out of his mouth, put it back on the pen. He smiled, told Hol and to get his arse in gear and ended the cal .
    Then he answered Brigstocke's question.
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    4 DECEMBER, 1975
    They sat in the Maxi, outside the house.
    She'd held it together al morning, through al the real y hard parts, the personal stuff the intrusion. Then, when it seemed the worst was over, she'd begun to wail as she'd stepped through the doors he'd held open for her. Out of the police station and running