Cry Baby

by Billingham, Mark

  It wasn’t an enormous list.

  There would be several boxes of albums and CDs of course, and . . . some other stuff, but probably nothing that would necessitate hiring a van. He wasn’t sure what else, if anything, Jan would want once the house was sold, presuming that the lecturer already had everything they needed. He had everything she needed, clearly. Perhaps they should just bring in one of those house-clearance companies and split the profit. He could use his share to buy new carpets and curtains and furniture that was . . . smaller. He flopped back down on to the enormous sofa he and Jan had bought from an overpriced designer-place on Tottenham Court Road, happy enough for now that it was big enough to stretch out on, but seriously doubtful that – if it ever came to it – it would fit into the front room of that place in Kentish Town.

  Not altogether sure yet if he would.

  He was just starting to wonder how much longer the Dutch national anthem was going to drag on for, when the doorbell rang.

  Thorne stared at the man who was beaming at him from the doorstep.

  He said, ‘Oh . . . ’

  ‘If you remember,’ Hendricks said, ‘a few days back, you said you’d be watching the game at home, and I said, ‘Is that an invitation?’ And you didn’t say . . . no.’

  ‘I didn’t say yes, either.’

  Hendricks held up a heavy-looking plastic bag. ‘I’ve got quite a lot of beer.’

  ‘Come on,’ Thorne said. ‘They’re about to kick off.’

  One hour and forty-five minutes later, after a good deal of air-punching, they opened the last two cans in the bag and touched them together. They shook their heads, still marvelling at the result.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Thorne said.

  Hendricks got to his feet, his arms aloft as though holding an invisible scarf, shouting, in what was clearly intended to be a Dutch accent. ‘We were comprehenshively shtuffed . . . four-one, for heavensh shake . . . shlaughtered by a far shuperior team.’

  ‘That was more like a shit impression of Sean Connery,’ Thorne said.

  Hendricks sat down again, laughing. ‘Never said I was Rory Bremner, mate.’

  On TV they were showing the goals again. Sheringham and Shearer: the SAS. Jimmy Hill and Trevor Brooking were as animated as Thorne had ever seen them and the England fans were still singing.

  ‘So . . . getting divorced then, yeah?’ Hendricks looked at him. ‘Someone said.’

  ‘Someone said right.’ Thorne turned to look at the pathologist and nodded. ‘Miserable fucking business, which I would seriously advise against. I mean, I might be talking out of my arse, because obviously it means you’ve got to get married first and I don’t know your . . . situation, do I?’ Thorne wasn’t sure why he was feeling so chatty suddenly, but whatever the reason, he felt . . . comfortable. ‘You likely to get hitched any time soon?’

  ‘Extremely unlikely,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Never out of the question though, is it? Right woman comes along.’

  Hendricks said nothing.

  ‘Mind you, I thought the right one had come along, so what do I know?’

  Jimmy Hill certainly thought he knew, at least when it came to England and their prospects in the tournament. Unbeaten, they could go a long way in the competition, he said, if not all the way.

  ‘Wrote up the PM on Dean Meade this afternoon,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Yeah?’ By now, thanks to those reporters who’d seen the body before anyone else, half the country knew that Dean Meade had been stabbed to death and Thorne wasn’t expecting any great revelation. Still – off the clock or not – he thought he should at least show a degree of interest. ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘Well, cause of death was basically being cut from arsehole to breakfast time.’

  ‘You put that in the report?’

  ‘I tarted it up ever so slightly,’ Hendricks said. ‘Chucked a bit of Latin in there, so it looks proper. Of more interest though . . . I’ve seen the preliminary toxicology report on Grantleigh Figgis and I was right. Not that I’m surprised, because I usually am.’

  Now, Thorne sat up.

  ‘Shedloads of 6-MAP but, like I thought, sod-all noscapine. So, definitely not street smack.’

  ‘So, he was murdered.’

  Hendricks raised his can in salute. ‘Let’s see what your boss has to say about it, now.’

  ‘I’m guessing he’d rather avoid the subject.’ Thorne raised his own can and told Hendricks exactly what had happened that morning. The appearance of the witness whose statement proved that Grantleigh Figgis was innocent; a witness DI Gordon Boyle had made no effort whatsoever to trace. Thorne’s confrontation with his senior officer at the woods. The accusation, the denial then the Scotsman’s increasingly desperate attempts at justification.

  Thorne and Boyle had driven back to the station in separate cars.

  Thorne had not spoken to him since.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Hendricks asked. ‘What did he say?’

  Thorne still had no idea what he was going to do. ‘He said that it was an honest mistake, that he had a lot on, blah blah blah. He said these things happen on a major case. Then he got shitty, but I wasn’t expecting anything else. Same old digs as always. He said I would’ve sussed that Figgis was innocent from the off . . . yeah, course I would, because I’d have taken one look at him and . . . known. Looked the bloke in the eyes and known straight away, just like last time.’

  Hendricks was staring at him. ‘I’m not with you, mate.’

  Thorne took a drink to shut himself up and let his head drop back. The beer had made him a little more talkative than he’d intended. Or perhaps it had simply forced the lock on a door he’d been needing to walk through for a long time.

  Since losing the only person he’d ever really spoken to about it.

  Hendricks was still staring. ‘What happened last time?’

  So Thorne told him.

  ‘Ten years ago . . . a bit more. Nineteen eighty-five. The Johnny Boy killings.’

  ‘I heard about them.’ Hendricks studied his beer can. ‘Gay men, yeah?’

  Thorne nodded. ‘Half a dozen, in eighteen months. The press and everyone else going mental. We’d been interviewing builders, dozens of them, because one of the victims had told his mate the bloke he was meeting was a builder, so . . .

  ‘I wasn’t even the one doing the interview. I was just a DC back then, didn’t know my arse from my elbow . . . but afterwards, I was showing this bloke out. This builder, Frank Calvert.’ Thorne sucked in a fast breath, then another. ‘Francis John Calvert. Just routine, that was all. More to eliminate him than anything else and he was . . . helpful enough. We gave him a fag, he signed a quick statement and that was it.

  ‘There was a song playing as I showed him out, I remember that. From the locker room or somewhere, on the radio. “There Must Be An Angel”. Nice song . . . ’

  Hendricks nodded.

  ‘He stopped at the door, I said thanks for coming in, something like that, and he made some comment about all the overtime we must be making. Then we shook hands.’

  Thorne paused, remembering. He stretched out his fingers, flexed them.

  ‘And when I looked at him, I knew there and then he was the bloke we were after. Simple as that. Fuck knows how, I haven’t got the foggiest . . . but I knew. And worst of all, I could tell that he knew I knew. He couldn’t have understood it, but I saw a flash of panic . . . thought I did, anyway . . . because he knew he’d given himself away.

  ‘This was on a Friday and for two days I didn’t say a word about it to anyone. Not for the whole weekend. Not to my guvnor or to my missus . . . but it wouldn’t stop going round in my head. I was just lying awake every night and thinking about the way he’d looked at me. Hearing that song. Telling myself I was being stupid, then telling myself I was bang on. Backwards and forwards with it all weekend, you know?’ Thorne glanced at Hendricks, then went back to talking to the wall above the television.

  Taking care to sep
arate the memory from the dream.

  ‘Monday morning, I was outside his house. Just sitting in my car watching the place, with no real idea what I was doing there. His van was still parked on the drive, so I guessed he was inside. Best part of an hour I sat there. One minute I’m telling myself I’m stupid again, all set to start the engine and drive away, then the next thing I’m banging on his door and when there isn’t any answer I’m running back to get a truncheon out of the boot and smashing his bloody door in. Long story short.’ Thorne swallowed hard, dry-mouthed. He shook his can but there was nothing left. ‘They were all dead. His wife was in the kitchen. He’d strangled her. She still had a wooden spoon in her hand. The kids were in a small bedroom at the back. Three of them . . . all laid out like they were ready for bed, like he’d put them in nice clean nightdresses before he’d suffocated them. Their feet were all lined up, you know . . . ? Lauren, Samantha and Anne-Marie. She was only five . . . ’

  Thorne’s voice cracked then, just a little, and he was aware of Hendricks shifting on the sofa next to him; sitting forward and tentatively reaching out an arm, like he was about to stop him. To tell him there was no need to carry on.

  ‘I didn’t find him until about half an hour later. Calvert. I needed to stay with the girls a bit . . . I don’t know why, because there wasn’t anything I could do, but I just couldn’t leave them on their own. That make sense? He’d blown his brains out in the front room. Redecorated the wall above the fireplace. I was sick everywhere and I remember thinking how much trouble I’d be in for messing up the crime scene. I still haven’t got the faintest idea what happened that day at the station, when I was showing that animal out. What it was. All I know for sure is that it had never happened before and it hasn’t happened since. And that I’m still terrified by it. I think it’s happening sometimes when it isn’t. I thought it had happened with that poor bastard Figgis, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. That one time, it was luck . . . that’s all. Good luck and terrible luck, because if I’d done something about it sooner, things might have turned out differently.’

  Thorne leaned forward to put his empty can on the table and turned to Hendricks. ‘So, since then, because everybody heard about it and it got . . . talked up, that’s been the thing they make cracks about. Some of them, anyway. Little digs about me looking in people’s eyes, about knowing things. I shouldn’t get wound up about it, because that’s what coppers do, right? Me included. We take the piss out of someone else because it makes us feel better about the stuff that’s screwing us up. We look around for weak points to poke at. It’s harmless most of the time and I shouldn’t let it get to me, but whenever Boyle or anyone else starts on about it all I can see is that bed.’

  Thorne said nothing for a while after that. On TV, somebody was interviewing Terry Venables and he watched without really taking any of it in, then got up and went to the bathroom. He grabbed a handful of toilet paper, wiped away the tears and the snot, then came back downstairs.

  Hendricks turned when Thorne appeared in the doorway. ‘You OK, mate?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m good,’ Thorne said. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Don’t be soft.’ Hendricks’s sympathetic half-smile widened suddenly, as he thought of something daft to say that might change the mood and make Thorne feel a little less self-conscious. A stupid gag that would get them both off the hook. A gift.

  He nodded at the TV. ‘A result like that, you’re bound to get a bit emotional.’

  FIFTY-THREE

  Hendricks called himself predictable names as he walked, somewhat unsteadily, in the general direction of Highbury and Islington tube station. He was happy enough to be a little the worse for wear – though not quite as bad as Tom Thorne – but he cursed himself nonetheless, for the usual reason.

  Spineless twat. Chickenshit. Liar . . .

  By the morning he’d probably have forgiven himself, because he usually did. But for now, until he was home and dead to the world, it would be all about hating the place he’d so carefully staked in it. Being appalled at who he’d become and furious on behalf of the person he still wasn’t quite brave enough to be.

  More mannequin than man.

  Inked-up idiot. Pussy-arsed fucking . . . disgrace.

  It wasn’t like he didn’t want to look the way he did. He’d always enjoyed . . . making an impression, standing out a bit. If he was being honest with himself, though, he knew he was only making one statement to avoid another. The piercings, the tattoos, all of it. Because getting stared at because of the way he looked was fine. Because it was easier to answer questions about that than about who he chose to sleep with.

  Because doctors were no different from coppers, were they?

  Looking for those weak points and poking at them, because that was how some of them got through the day. That was how they coped. He spent his days working with doctors and coppers, so he’d decided a while ago that when it was his turn to be on the receiving end, he was going to be the one who chose the target they could aim at. He was game for all the piss-takes and prejudice they could throw at him, but on his terms.

  ‘Pinhead’, ‘Morticia’, ‘Doctor Death’. Easier, in his professional life, to put up with names like that than a few of the things he’d been called as a teenager. When he’d stood out for very different reasons.

  The shit he’d put up with growing up in Blackley.

  You likely to get hitched any time soon?

  Happy to see the sign for the Underground station ahead, he found himself smiling, just for a moment, thinking about Thorne’s very stupid question. The genuine interest when he’d asked it. Hendricks didn’t know him very well yet, but he reckoned they’d end up getting on well enough, however dodgy the bloke’s taste in music and football teams was.

  He was a decent detective, too, no question about that.

  Hendricks wondered how long Tom Thorne would take to work it out.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  It was all about the colours, Maria decided, that’s what it would probably come down to in the end, when people came forward. The bright yellow and that gaudy tartan. Distinctive garments which she and Cat had chosen precisely because they stood out and were easy to spot in a crowd; across a busy shop, say, or in a crush of pedestrians on a pavement.

  Because they were hard to miss.

  She had been well into a bottle by the time the programme started. She had turned up the volume and topped up her glass with an unsteady hand as Jill Dando walked towards the camera past several rows of people on telephones and introduced the item. A nod, a serious expression.

  ‘And now . . . police need your help in the hunt for a child who went missing in London twelve days ago . . . ’

  People remembered colours, didn’t they? Even if they couldn’t always remember faces, they were unlikely to forget a nice, bright colour. She’d spoken to one of the police officers when they were doing the filming and he’d said more or less the same thing. That witness they’d found wasn’t very clear about the faces, the officer had told her, but he was adamant about the red car.

  Birds could remember colours, Maria had read that somewhere. They’d been tested. The clever ones: the crows and the magpies.

  ‘It was a sunny Saturday morning in Highgate Woods, a popular spot with nature lovers, ramblers and families with young children . . . ’

  So, no close-ups of the boys, because they didn’t want anyone watching to be focusing on faces that were wrong, did they? That made sense. Lots of shots of the colourful coat and anorak, though, as the boys chased one another around the playground then darted out through the small gate into the woods behind and . . . Maria swallowed hard a minute or so in, when viewers were shown exactly what she’d seen from that bench.

  That flash of yellow through the trees, a streak cutting through the green.

  While she had simply sat there and smoked. A useless lump, her mind elsewhere.

  Now, Maria watched and reached for her glass, because she knew exactly what she wa
s looking at, what she’d witnessed at that moment and failed to understand. Not that she could ever have understood, of course, whatever she’d been doing and wherever her mind had been. Nobody could have known what was actually happening, could they?

  Useless, pointless lump . . .

  Josh tearing through the woods, alone and searching desperately for his friend. Behind trees, deep within bushes. The panic starting to build, that expression he always wore when he thought he was in trouble.

  Her son, asleep now upstairs, or more likely wide awake and thinking and worrying and running through those woods again. Tangled in sheets that would be soaked in sweat by the morning, if not something worse.

  Still searching.

  *

  She had known the reconstruction was being shown this evening, because Thorne had told her and because she’d been thinking about it ever since, but that hadn’t stopped a helpful journalist calling first thing that morning with a reminder.

  ‘Any message for those who might be watching, Cat?’

  Cat had said nothing.

  The woman – they’d taken to using women pretty much all the time – had waited a few seconds, then said, ‘How do you think watching it will make you feel?’

  ‘Sorry?’ If the woman had been standing in front of her, Cat would happily have punched her into the middle of next week.

  ‘I presume you will be watching?’

  ‘It depends if there’s anything decent on the other side.’

  It was the kind of knee-jerk, smartarse remark that she used to make, that got big laughs in the pub, that Billy said he loved her for, and she decided that the woman’s stupid question deserved no better. She didn’t care that it might be inappropriate. Cat felt as if that stone in her chest was gaining weight with each day that passed, that it might drag her to her knees at any moment, but she refused to let it define her.