Rabbit Hole

by Mark Billingham

  You’re a star, Johnno.

  I’d been wasting valuable time trying to get to the bottom of this or that argument, wondering how drugs had got in and pissing about with daft ideas about hitmen. Newbie mistakes, so bloody stupid. Most important of all, me and DC Seddon both had been casting the net too wide, thanks to Graham and the fun he liked having with mashed potato and the like.

  Screw the camera . . .

  It was no great surprise that the official investigation had stalled – and it certainly felt that way – because they were still looking for a motive and, biggest mistake of all, they were focusing on a time-frame that left them with two dozen suspects.

  Well, for once I was ahead of the game.

  Now, I had just the one.

  See, it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference when that camera had gone off, because Kevin Connolly had been murdered in plain sight.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I’d thought it was definitely worth a punt, because they could only say no, but I can’t say I was overly confident that Banksy would be able to pull it off. That man is a marvel though, I’m telling you. A right hard bastard if he needs to be, but he can charm the pants off someone when he wants to.

  As soon as we’d both lit cigarettes, I pulled him into a hug.

  ‘Thanks for sorting this,’ I said.

  Banksy said that I was welcome, but I’m not sure I really was, and bear in mind this was before I’d told him what I’d actually brought him in to hear. We sat down on a bench opposite the main entrance and I said nothing for a while. I wanted to spend just a couple of minutes enjoying my fag and feeling sunshine on my pale face before I got into it.

  The break in the case . . .

  Even before Banksy had turned up – he’d told me on the phone he’d be in sometime late afternoon – I’d decided we should at least give it a bash. The obs stats are the obs stats for good reason, but I knew that every now and again, if such and such a nurse was in a good mood, they might do someone a favour or look the other way. Ilias goes out for a smoke with Malaika sometimes and I’m damn sure he’s not supposed to. A month or so before, Donna’s sister had been allowed to take her outside for an hour because it was her birthday. Outside as in away from the hospital and down to the shops. Obviously with the usual provisos about trust and not absconding and sending the police after her and all that.

  So, I definitely thought me and Banksy should at least ask.

  I mean, we were the police.

  Banksy said that Marcus was a bit dubious to begin with – yeah, I thought, I bet he bloody was – but apparently, once Banksy had flashed a pukka warrant card and explained that we really needed privacy because there was a sensitive police matter to discuss, he’d softened a bit.

  Bansky had thanked him for his cooperation, he told me, and promised that we wouldn’t go far.

  I stubbed out my fag and turned to look at him.

  ‘Let’s hear it then,’ he said.

  I won’t lie, I’ve seen him look keener. So I tried to stay calm as I laid it all out and not let on how fired up I was. I told him about the drugs that had been smuggled out of the ward after being given to Kevin by an insider (with a healthy percentage presumably coming back to that same insider once they’d been sold). I told him about the irrelevance of the camera on Kevin’s corridor, the time when it was on and when it wasn’t. Finally, I told him what had happened to Shaun – or, to be accurate, what had been done to him to ensure that he couldn’t tell anyone what he knew.

  I asked Banksy for another cigarette when I’d finished.

  I lit up and waited.

  ‘So, why kill Kevin?’ he asked, finally. ‘You know, if there’s this cushy little drug thing going which presumably everyone’s doing very nicely out of. Why scupper it?’

  ‘I don’t think Kevin wanted to do it any more.’

  ‘You’re just guessing though, right?’

  ‘Look, I know him and Shaun had been arguing and I think that’s because Shaun wanted him to stop. In the end Shaun got his way, so Kevin told everyone involved that he wanted out. That’s why all those drugs were found in his room, because he wasn’t passing them on to his connections any more. He’d had enough.’

  ‘So they decided to kill him, that’s what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe they did . . . his connections on the outside.’ I held up a finger. ‘Or maybe it was just one person’s decision.’ Banksy nodded. He already knew who I was talking about of course, because I hadn’t wasted any time in telling him who had killed Kevin. ‘What about if Kevin had been stockpiling those drugs? Holding on to them as some kind of insurance policy or something?’ Then another idea struck me which suddenly made perfect sense. ‘Maybe he was using those drugs to blackmail her.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Why not? Or at least planning to down the road.’ I was a bit annoyed with myself for not working this out before, but I wasn’t going to blame myself for not being match-fit after everything that had happened. ‘Sounds like a pretty decent motive to me.’

  ‘How come she didn’t take the drugs, then? When she killed him?’

  I shrugged. ‘Couldn’t find them.’ I still didn’t know exactly where in Kevin’s room the drugs had been hidden. ‘She certainly wouldn’t have had much time to go looking for them, turn his room over, whatever. A couple of minutes, that’s all she would have been in there for. In, pillow over his face, and out again.’

  Bitch, I thought. Stone cold bitch.

  I flicked my fag-end away and watched Banksy nodding like he was thinking about it. Course, he was actually trying to decide the best way to tell me what he really thought, but I didn’t know that at the time, did I? Right then, I was still buzzing because I’d broken the case wide open, sitting there like a twat waiting for him to tell me how we should work it.

  ‘I still don’t quite get this business with Kevin’s boyfriend.’

  ‘Shaun,’ I said. ‘I’ve said his name like a hundred times.’

  ‘Yeah, with Shaun.’

  I told him again what had happened that night in the TV room when Shaun had gone up the pole, what had been said to him and how he’d been ever since.

  ‘So, she knew that’s what would happen, did she?’

  I nodded, remembering her exact words. Stone cold . . .

  ‘She knew he wouldn’t be able to speak afterwards?’

  ‘That’s her job, isn’t it?’ I chose not to tell him what Malaika had said to me on Saturday. All that bull about an attempt to ‘shock’ Shaun out of his mania and Dr Bakshi allegedly saying it had been something worth trying. I didn’t bother telling him because it was blindingly obvious that Malaika had been every bit as alarmed by what had happened in the TV room as me. That she only said what she did afterwards because the nurses look after one another and she was trying to stick up for her colleague. As a copper I’d done similar things myself and so had Banksy.

  So it wasn’t relevant.

  I said, ‘Look, Shaun had been trying to tell me everything that night. He was desperate to let me know it was one of the staff . . . right? That was what set him off, because he was terrified. Because he knew what the woman who’d killed Kevin was capable of.’ I didn’t want to talk to Tim like he was daft or wet behind the ears, but I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t getting it. ‘She needed to shut him up.’

  ‘Yeah, I hear what you’re saying,’ he said.

  We watched a well-dressed, middle-aged couple walking hand in hand towards the entrance. Lucy’s parents. I waved and Lucy’s father conjured a frosty smile.

  ‘I tell you something else,’ I said. ‘The woman who killed Shaun also sexually assaulted me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I first came in.’

  Banksy looked properly confused. ‘Why are you only telling me this now?’

 
‘I just want you to know the kind of person we’re dealing with.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Fair enough, but you know . . . make a complaint, Al. I mean that’s something we can arrest her for.’

  I shook my head.

  He sighed and sat back. Muttered, ‘Fucking hell . . .’

  I clocked him checking his watch and guessed that we didn’t have much time left. ‘So, are you going to talk to Seddon, or what?’

  Another sigh. ‘This isn’t my case, Al. You know that.’

  ‘You’re still a copper, though. It’s your duty to bring new information to his attention, at least.’

  ‘I don’t think there is any new information.’ He turned and looked at me, the expression of a doctor about to deliver bad news. ‘I just don’t think it hangs together.’

  ‘Come on.’ I felt like I might lose it at any second and I was clutching on to the edge of that bench for dear life. ‘How long have we worked together, Banksy? You knew Johnno, for God’s sake . . . you know me.’

  He couldn’t look at me. ‘I used to,’ he said. ‘But, you know . . . this?’

  By the time he did look up, I was on my feet and away. ‘Nice to have a natter and a fag,’ I shouted back to him. ‘Don’t worry, mate, I can see myself back up.’

  When I stomped into the lobby, I saw that Lucy’s mother and father were standing inside the lift, waiting for it to close. I shouted, ‘Hold the doors,’ and ran to join them. I pretended not to notice them inching towards the back wall as the doors began to shut.

  But it didn’t help.

  I’m not using the fact that I was angry and looking to lash out as an excuse for what I said. I don’t remember the last time I needed an excuse for anything, but it’s an explanation, fair enough? Obviously I knew who they were, so I get that it was bad. I knew who they were visiting and I knew exactly why she was there.

  As the lift juddered slowly up, I turned round and grinned at them.

  I said, ‘I’ve just been shooting up outside.’ I moaned a bit and rubbed at my arm. ‘Smack is just fabulous, don’t you reckon?’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Tuesday morning I was determined to get stuck in, so after breakfast and meds I worked through some old contacts on my phone and made a few calls trying to find the number for Seddon’s incident room. The direct line, I mean. I’d wanted to do it the day before once Banksy had left, but I knew that, by then, most of the people I needed to speak to would prob­ably have gone home already. It didn’t much matter in the end, because when I got back on to the ward there were too many distractions – George was trying to dissuade Graham from making a fresh dent in the wall with his head and Lauren was shouting at Femi about someone coming into her room and going through her stuff – so I was finding it hard to focus on anything approaching work.

  That’s been the big problem up to now.

  Life in this place, getting in the way . . .

  I was never the type to cut corners. Never one to take the easy route, or ‘delegate’, when most of the time that really means skiving off. No, really, if I was working a case I was like a fucking laser . . . I was dead focused. In here, though, it’s hard to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes without something kicking off. I can sit in my room and do stuff on my laptop if I have to, but like I tried to explain to Marcus, that’s not what being a detective is about.

  You need to get out there and engage with people.

  Nine times out of ten, engaging with someone on the ward means arguing with them or just keeping them out of your face. Watching them nod off or just amble away while you’re talking. Listening to a blow-by-blow account of some sexual encounter that didn’t happen or else some half-arsed cobblers about how radio waves are reacting with metal in the vaccinations we were given as kids and turning us into aliens.

  Then there’s all the other stuff you have to do, the routines that eat into your day. I know, I’m normally the first one to moan about how boring it is in here – at least it was, before bodies started piling up – but there’s still the meals and the one-to-ones and the tests and the groups and the community meetings and the washing and the visits and the meds.

  Mustn’t forget the meds.

  Like I said before, I’m still struggling with the best way to manage them as far as making headway in my case goes. It’s hard to get anywhere when the drugs are wearing off because I can get a bit jittery, and when they’re kicking in I’m every bit as likely to zone out completely. So taking all this shit three times a day means I’ve only got a small – what do you call it? – window of opportunity, which isn’t ideal.

  Like I’m going after a suspect with one arm tied behind my back.

  It is what it is, though, and anyone who knows me will tell you I’ve never backed away from a challenge. They’d definitely say that. Not that I trust many of them now and it’s not like they’ll even talk to you, but you get what I’m on about.

  I got the number I was after in the end, though it took a while and one or two of the conversations were a bit awkward, but I didn’t really have a lot of choice.

  ‘Bloody hell, Alice!’ DS Trevor Lambert, who I’d worked with a hundred years before. On a team somewhere in south London now. ‘Blast from the past or what?’

  ‘Been too long, Trev.’

  ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Oh, the usual, you know.’

  ‘You still working up west?’

  ‘For my sins, yeah. Listen, there’s a murder case and it’s kicking everyone’s arse, if I’m honest, mate. I wondered if you could do me a favour.’

  ‘What do you need?’

  Trevor clearly hadn’t heard about my misadventures and I wasn’t going to put him straight, was I? It was him that found me the number I needed, as it goes. Called me back with it, good as gold.

  ‘We should have a pint and catch up.’

  ‘Let’s do that,’ I said.

  ‘Fair warning though, I’m a bit fatter and a bit greyer than the last time I saw you. That’s the kids, I reckon.’

  ‘Yeah, we should definitely get together . . . I’ll give you a bell when this thing eases off a bit. Up to my tits at the moment . . .’

  Then, once I’d called the Incident Room: ‘DC Seddon isn’t available at the moment.’

  ‘I’d like to leave a message, then.’

  ‘What’s it concerning?’

  ‘Just tell him it’s about the Kevin Connolly murder.’

  ‘Can I take your name, madam?’

  ‘I don’t think you understand. I’m actually here. Where the murder happened. I’m on the spot.’

  ‘OK, but I’ll still need your details.’

  I gave the woman my name then I gave her my rank. She took my mobile number and assured me that a member of the team would call me back.

  I stayed in my room for a couple of hours after that, trying to decide the best way forward while I was waiting for Seddon to ring. It was hard, though, because after a while I began to think about Johnno then about Andy and those two-faced psychiatrists at A&E and everyone else who’d betrayed me. I started to wonder if Seddon could even be trusted at all.

  I opened my laptop and did some Googling.

  How much does a nurse earn?

  British nurse average wage.

  Steven Seddon Met Police Record.

  Just before lunch, L-Plate knocked on my door and strolled in. There was going to be an occupational therapy session in the afternoon, she announced, and was I going to come. I told her that I didn’t know they’d found the money to get the OT woman back and Lucy said they hadn’t, that one of the staff was going to run the session.

  ‘Probably won’t be as good,’ she said. ‘But it’ll be nice to do some drawing again.’

  ‘I’ve got things
to do,’ I said.

  ‘Come on, Al, it’ll be fun.’

  ‘Will it?’

  Lucy giggled and leaned close, whispering, like it wasn’t just the two of us in the room. ‘I’m going to imagine her with no clothes on . . . stark bollock naked . . . and draw that. It’ll be hysterical. Or repulsive, I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Imagine who with no clothes on?’

  ‘Debbie. She’s the one who’s organising it.’

  It didn’t take me long. ‘OK, sounds like a plan,’ I said.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The occupational therapy room had been put back to the way it normally was. The way it had been before Kevin’s memorial, I mean. The orange curtains open, a scattering of tables and chairs, the locked materials cupboard at the end of the room.

  There were maybe six of us in there.

  Me and Lucy sitting together. Ilias, Bob and I think Graham . . . or it might have been Donna. Doesn’t matter.

  I sat and watched as Debbie opened the cupboard then cheerfully distributed paper and felt-tip pens along with boxes of crayons for the less ambitious and some large pads and watercolours for those who wanted to try something a bit more advanced. She said we could paint or draw anything we wanted to, but lifted one of the ferns on to a table in the centre of the room in case anyone fancied a bash at a still life. One time someone had suggested we should have a life model, but even though Ilias had immediately volunteered the suggestion was quickly given the thumbs-down by the staff. The following week, Ilias had waited until none of the nurses was looking and whipped all his clothes off, which, trust me, is something I cannot ever un-see.

  All that hair.

  Lucy says that sometimes she still wakes up screaming, though to be fair she does that a lot anyway.

  ‘We’ve got a couple of hours,’ Debbie said. ‘So there’s no need to rush anything. Let’s see what we can come up with.’ She took a pad and a few pens for herself and went to sit at a table on her own.

  Back when there was still some money so they could do things properly, we used to get up to all sorts in OT sessions. We had a few afternoons messing about with an ancient Wii which was a right laugh. Tennis and Mario Kart and stuff. We did drama a couple of times, which I quite enjoyed, but it always ended up a bit lively because Bob tried to turn everything into a sex scene. One week the woman who used to run things even got a friend of hers to bring a potter’s wheel in. Again, that didn’t go well. Graham immediately used his clay to disable the nearest camera while most of the other blokes just made cocks (their own, all predictably huge), and when the therapist suggested they might want to go in a different direction everyone just started chucking stuff about. I was finding bits of dried clay in all my cracks and creases for days afterwards and there are still a few blobs of it stuck to the ceiling.