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her…?” Thorne looked across at Russell Brigstocke, who held up three fingers. He turned back to the room. “Her third husband. We’ll hopefully have a lot more in terms of Remfry’s movements and so on later today. DCs Holland and Stone are there at the moment with a search warrant. Mrs. Remfry was somewhat less than cooperative….”
    An acnefied trainee detective near the front shook his head, his face screwed up in distaste for this woman he’d never met. Thorne gave him a good, hard stare. “She’s just lost a son,” he said. Thorne let his words hang there for a few seconds before continuing. “If the landlady is to be believed, Remfry, unless his killer happens also to be his double, booked the room himself. He didn’t feel the need to give a name, but he was happy enough to hand over the cash. We need to find out why. Why was he so keen to go to that hotel? Who was he meeting…?”
    Thorne, in spite of himself, was smiling slightly as he recalled the interview with the hotel’s formidable owner—a bottle blonde with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp and a sixty-fags-a-day rasp.
    â€œAnd who pays for the replacement of those sheets?” she’d asked. “All them pillows and blankets that this nutter nicked? They were one hundred percent cotton, none of ’em was cheap…” Thorne had nodded, pretended to write something down, wondering if her memory was as good as her capacity to talk utter shite with a straight face. “And the stains on the mattress. Where do I get the money to get that lot cleaned?”
    â€œI’ll see if I can find you a form to fill in,” Thorne said, thinking, Will I fuck, you hatchet-faced old mare …
    In the Incident Room, the trainee detective Thorne had stared at before poked a single finger up. Thorne nodded.
    â€œAre we looking at the prison angle, sir? Someone Remfry was in Derby with, maybe. Someone he got on the wrong side of…”
    â€œSomeone he got up the back side of!” The comment came from a mustached DC sitting off to Thorne’s left toward the back of the room. Thorne did not know the man. He’d been brought in, like many in the room, from different squads to make up the numbers. His “backside” comment got a big laugh. Thorne manufactured a chuckle.
    â€œWe’re looking at that. Remfry’s sexual preference was certainly for women before he got put away…”
    â€œSome of them develop a taste for it inside, though, don’t they?” This time the laugh from his mates felt forced. Thorne allowed it to die away, let his voice drop a little to regain attention and control.
    â€œMost of you lot are going to be tracing the most likely group of suspects we’ve got at the moment…”
    The trainee nodded knowingly. One of the clever ones.He thought this was some kind of conversation. “The male relatives of Remfry’s rape victims.”
    â€œRight,” Thorne said. “Husbands, boyfriends, brothers. Sod it, fathers at a push. I want them all found, interviewed, and eliminated. With a bit of luck we might eliminate all of them except one. DI Kitson has drawn up a list and will be doing the allocations.” Thorne dropped his notes onto a chair, pulled his jacket from the back of it, almost done. “Right, that’s it. Remfry’s were particularly nasty offenses. Maybe someone wasn’t convinced he’d paid for them…”
    The DC with the porno mustache smirked and muttered something to the uniform in front of him. Thorne pulled on his jacket and narrowed his eyes.
    â€œWhat?”
    Suddenly he might just as well have been that teacher, holding out a hand, demanding to see whatever was being chewed.
    The DC spat it out. “Seems to me that whoever killed Remfry did everyone a favor. Fucker asked for everything he got.”
    It was far from being the first such comment Thorne