Rabbit Hole

by Mark Billingham

  Paper and pens was fine for today, though.

  I wasn’t there because I think I’m Picasso anyway.

  ‘How come you got to go outside yesterday?’ Lucy asked.

  It was unusually quiet as everyone laboured over their masterpieces, so I took care to keep my voice down, hoping that Lucy would take the hint and do the same. ‘It was a police thing,’ I said.

  ‘About Kevin?’

  ‘It’s not something I can really talk about.’

  ‘Oh, OK then.’ She went back to her picture.

  ‘But, yeah.’

  Lucy nodded, slashing her pen from side to side on the paper, which she told me later was how you shaded things in. ‘Are you going to be working on the case, then?’

  ‘I am working on it.’ I looked down at what I’d managed so far. It was going pretty well. ‘I’m working on it now.’

  I knew I had plenty of time, so I spent as much of it watching our substitute therapist as I did putting my felt-tips to good use. Mostly she kept busy with whatever she was drawing, but she was watching us too, because it wasn’t like we were art students or anything and a pencil can do a lot of damage in the wrong hands.

  In here, almost anything can.

  A plastic fork, a broken guitar, a pillow . . .

  At the table in front of us, Ilias suddenly screwed up the piece of paper he’d been working on and threw it away angrily. He put his hand up like a schoolboy and waited for Debbie to look up and see him.

  ‘Can I draw a vagina?’

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ Debbie said.

  ‘Can I have it when you’ve finished?’ Bob asked.

  The sun was streaming through the windows and that pissed me off quite a lot, because I’d really enjoyed that half an hour outside with Banksy the day before. The being outside part of it, anyway.

  It was hot, so it was hard to concentrate.

  I knew that I had to, though; that I needed to make a good job of this. I tried not to spend every second willing the mobile in my pocket to ring and then, when I did finally feel it buzzing against my leg, I tried not to kick the table over when it turned out to be fucking Sophie.

  Lovely 2 talk to u the other day. Miss u so much.

  A sad-faced emoji.

  The time went really quickly in the end, and when Debbie announced that we only had a few minutes left I looked across to see what Lucy had come up with. She’d done exactly what she told me she’d do, even if it was a bit cartoonish. I studied the pair of saggy tits with bright red nipples as if I was some expert on Antiques Roadshow. I stroked my chin and told her the tits were ‘strikingly hideous’ and that the curly orange bush that covered most of the subject’s bottom half was ‘especially disgusting’.

  She looked across at Debbie and stroked her own chin and laughed until I thought she might wet herself.

  ‘Right then . . .’ Debbie said.

  Despite the two hours everyone had put in, they all buggered off fairly sharpish when the time was up – Lucy included – without apparently being bothered about what they’d drawn or painted or daubed and certainly not giving a toss what anyone else might think about it.

  I hung around though, obviously, and helped Debbie collect all the work up, except mine which I wanted to keep back until the moment was right. Once the materials had been locked back in the cupboard, she wandered back over to me and rubbed her hands together.

  ‘Shall we have a look at our wee exhibition?’

  Mostly it was the predictable scrawls, except for Ilias’s vagina, which was remarkably detailed and really quite disturbing. ‘Holy fuck,’ Debbie said, laughing.

  She stopped at Lucy’s picture and stared.

  ‘I think it’s supposed to be you,’ I said.

  ‘Not bad.’ She laughed again and pointed at the orange bush. ‘Though I don’t usually let things get that wild downstairs.’ Then she held a hand out towards the sheet of paper I was holding. ‘Come on, let’s have a look at yours then.’

  I didn’t even try pretending to be reluctant and handed it over.

  I’d done much the same thing quite a few times, done it with Johnno and with Banksy. When you’ve decided it’s the right time to casually slide a photograph across an interview room table. A close-up of injuries, a victim’s battered face, blood-spattered flesh or clothing. That moment when you show the most shocking picture you can get hold of to the animal you know very well is responsible for it, because you’re looking for a reaction or, if you’re lucky, an admittance of guilt.

  At the very least, you’re trying to get a read.

  Like I said, I’m not much of an artist, but I reckon I’d managed to get what I was going for. A single bed with guess who lying on it. There was no face, obviously, just the pillow where the face should have been, although I don’t think I’d been able to make it look that much like a pillow, so it was more sort of a blurry rectangle. I was pleased with the collection of little bottles, though. Dozens of them scattered about under the bed, with a few of them lying on their side. Best of all was the figure on one side of the picture, shadowy, kind of, like someone was creeping out of the room, with a few tiny dots of red and yellow and blue and green, right at the edge. The flash of a rainbow-coloured lanyard.

  I stood and watched Debbie looking at my picture.

  I wanted to get that read.

  ‘That’s fucking excellent,’ she said, pointing. ‘Honestly. The way you’ve done the shadow and everything. You going to keep it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You could put it up in your room if you want.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  She looked at me. ‘You all right, Alice?’

  ‘I saw you at Kevin’s memorial.’ I waited, just a beat or two. ‘You looked upset.’

  ‘Because I was,’ she said. ‘I still am.’

  ‘I saw you . . .’ I crossed myself, though after the up and down part I wasn’t sure which shoulder you were supposed to touch first.

  She nodded and smiled. ‘Glasgow Catholic girl,’ she said. ‘Not a very good one, mind.’

  ‘Confessing your sins and all that?’

  ‘Not for a very long time.’

  I gathered all the pictures together in front of her and straightened them. I made sure mine was on the top.

  I said, ‘Maybe you should think about starting again.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Wednesday lunchtime, more than twenty-four hours after phoning the incident room and I was climbing the walls – staring at them, bouncing off them – because I was still waiting for Detective Cuntstable Seddon to call me back. Actually I’d just about given up waiting, because by then it was blindingly obvious he wasn’t going to. I’d half expected to be ignored anyway and you didn’t need to be a genius to work out why that might have been.

  Who called? That mad woman who’s in there, the one who got thrown off the Job? Yeah, well, I think I’ve got better things to do than waste my time listening to her crackpot theories . . .

  I was damn sure Steve had no end of better things to do. Like having a wank or refilling his stapler or sticking needles in his eyes.

  Part of me had always suspected I’d end up working this case on my own.

  I’m not going to lie, it was a bit scary . . . out of my comfort zone and everything. I’d always worked as part of a team and within that I’d always been partnered up, which was how I liked it. The banter and the piss-takes to kill those endless hours in the car together. Someone always there to celebrate with you when things were going well or help you drown your sorrows at the end of a bad day.

  Someone to watch your back as well, let’s not forget that.

  Even if it didn’t work out particularly well for my partner.

  Well, if the only way I could get a result on this case was to do it on my own then that was
how it would have to be. I’d managed pretty well so far. I wasn’t just going to work it, though, I was going to crack it . . . I mean I’d cracked it already, because my crackpot theory wasn’t just a theory, but I was going to make damn sure the guilty party got what was coming to her.

  I’d do it for Kevin and I’d do it for Johnno.

  I’d do it to show Seddon and all those officially involved that they’d been wrong to ignore me and stupid to refuse my help.

  I’d do it so all those jumped-up arseholes with pips on their shoulders who decided I should be ‘medically retired’ would see that I was a copper to my toenails.

  I’d do it because it was the right thing to do.

  I’d do it for the buzz and the rush of the blood pumping and because for the first time in forever it made me feel like a person again.

  I’d do it because so many people had told me not to.

  I’d do it because it would be a big fat fuck you to everyone who’d conspired to put me in here. To that crackhead with a Stanley knife in his pocket and the pair of Job-pissed pricks who decided I wasn’t fit to testify and those doctors who didn’t listen when I told them I’d only freaked out because I’d been awake for forty-eight hours. To Andy . . . for sure, and to Sophie and to Mum and Dad and the rest of them. To good Catholic Debbie, obviously, who hadn’t got a clue that I’d worked it all out or that I was coming for her and who’d live to regret the day they’d found me a bed on her ward.

  I’d do it because I loved it.

  I’d been keeping a close eye on the time, just so I could be at the meds hatch when it opened. It took some serious self-restraint not to elbow Graham out of the way when it came to it, but in the end I decided that a few more minutes weren’t going to kill me. I didn’t want to wait much longer than that, though, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything – least of all pick up the phone and call in a massive favour – while I was feeling frazzled and fidgety and likely to do something daft. Not a chance. I couldn’t do things properly while a whispering voice inside my head was telling me to march straight up to Debbie and pin her against the wall.

  The voice nobody but me could hear telling the one that came out of my mouth just what to say.

  I know exactly what you did and I know why you did it.

  Tempting, course it was, but that was not the way I was planning to go.

  Mia opened up the hatch and once Graham had shuffled up and taken his pills I stepped cheerfully forward to collect mine. I smiled and said, ‘Thank you,’ like a good girl.

  A good officer.

  Lucky for me that I caught DI David Dinham on his way to work. He was obviously doing a late turn, which was never anyone’s favourite, but it had been a while since shift patterns meant anything to me. One day I might get up good and early and the next I won’t bother to get up at all. Some days I get dressed and some days I can’t be arsed, meaning I’ll slob around in the pyjamas I was issued with or, if I feel like making an effort, I might push the boat out and parade around the place in my own trackies and T-shirt, but the point is that it doesn’t much matter.

  The days are measured out in meals and meds, simple as that.

  Lucky, though, because coppers have flappy ears and Dinham wouldn’t be free to have the conversation that I was planning while he was sitting in the office. Last thing I’d heard, that office was in Brighton or some other seaside place, which was convenient for me, because him working outside the Met meant there was no reason the Kevin Connolly case would be on his radar. Unlike Trevor Lambert, though, Dinham was aware that I’d been . . . in the wars as far as the Job was concerned, but that was fine.

  ‘Oh . . . hey, Al.’ Yeah, he was well aware. ‘Listen, I’m in the car, so . . .’

  ‘I do hope you’re hands-free,’ I said.

  ‘Course I am.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. So, how’s tricks, mate?’

  ‘Tricks are . . . good. What about you?’

  I don’t think he knew the details – where I was and why – but I didn’t see any reason he needed to know. ‘Well, I’ve been better, Dave, I’m not going to lie . . . but I’ve been worse an’ all, so no point belly-aching about it, is there?’

  ‘No, I suppose—’

  ‘I need a favour.’

  ‘Right.’ I could hear the panic in his voice. ‘What sort of favour?’

  ‘I need intel on a suspect.’

  ‘A suspect?’ He clearly knew enough.

  ‘On an individual, all right? Less you know about it the better . . . but I need financials, yeah? What has this woman got in the bank? Savings, mortgage, credit report, all that. Basically I need to know if she’s got more money than she should have.’

  ‘Right, and how exactly are you expecting me to find all this out?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Dave.’ If I still had access to the Police National Computer I could easily have got the information I needed myself. But that avenue of inquiry had been taken away along with everything else, which is precisely why I was asking Dinham. Why was he making it so difficult? ‘Five minutes on the PNC.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘Look, I don’t know how long you’ve been . . . I mean have you forgotten all this stuff?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten anything,’ I said.

  ‘In which case you know that the minute I log on I’ve left a digital fingerprint. Everything I search for is a matter of record and I’d need to provide a very good reason why I was searching for it. I couldn’t even run a number plate for you, and unless this individual gives their consent I’d need a court order to access their bank details.’

  I could hear that he was breathing quite heavily. I imagined him sweating a bit, knuckles white around the steering wheel. I almost felt sorry for him. I said, ‘I need this.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Alice, it’s a sackable offence.’

  ‘How long have we known each other, Dave?’

  ‘Are you not listening—’

  ‘I need this.’

  For almost a minute all I could hear was the rasp of his breathing again and the growl of traffic. Finally, finally, he said, ‘Look, there might be another way.’

  I waited.

  I ran my finger down the crack in the wall next to my wardrobe.

  I pushed a fingernail in and began to dig at it . . .

  ‘There’s a bloke I know,’ he said. ‘Ex-Job, running a private investigation and intelligence firm.’

  ‘Really?’ I knew what that meant. Some boozed-up old saddo sitting in a car spying on unfaithful husbands and wives.

  ‘Actually, he’s got a decent set-up. I think he can find out pretty much anything. I don’t know exactly how he does it and I don’t really want to know . . . but I reckon he could get what you’re after.’

  I scraped harder at the paint around the crack. I picked at it until my fingernail split and rubbed the blood into the dirty yellow paint.

  ‘You’d need to pay him, obviously.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Look . . . give me five minutes. I need to pull over. I’ll send you a link to his website.’

  ‘He’s got a website?’

  ‘Like I said, he does all sorts. Some of it’s kosher, but I’m fairly sure that some of it . . . isn’t.’

  Ten minutes later, he texted me a link and I got straight online.

  The Pindown Investigations (stupid name) website was fairly impressive, no denying it. Some tasty pictures of fast cars and binoculars and computers. All manner of stuff banging on about the wide range of services on offer and the excellent value for money they were able to provide.

  Covert surveillance, employee vetting, mystery shopping (whatever that was). These activities were – so they promised – tailored to a client’s requirements and ‘
guaranteed to exceed expectation’. It was handy that I couldn’t find the word ethical anywhere, but unorthodox popped up quite a few times which was nice to see. The fact that it didn’t say that they were members of the Association of British Investigators was another good sign, and after a few minutes’ digging I found the bit that said they would be more than happy to discuss my particular requirements and provide a bespoke service.

  Bespoke was good. I loved the sound of bespoke.

  Get in touch, they said. Tell us what you need. We can assure you of absolute confidentiality.

  Confidentiality was nice, obviously – like a bonus – but I didn’t think it was going to matter much in the end. Once I’d got the intel I needed and you-know-who was being pulled apart in an interview room, all bets would be off anyway, and by the time charges were being pressed nobody would care one way or the other how I’d got the information.

  It was all about the result.

  I sucked the blood from my finger and fired off an email.

  Then I went to get my dinner.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was one of the best nights ever in the TV room, though for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what everyone was watching, because I wasn’t really paying attention. Not to the TV, anyway. I’d got in early to bag a VIP seat next to Lady Lauren up the front and sat there, happy as Larry, while she got more and more pissed off because I was wearing my headphones. I wasn’t listening to anything, obviously, so I could hear the TV perfectly well, but I just sat nodding my head like I was well into my tunes and really enjoying myself because I knew it was winding her up.