Cry Baby

by Mark Billingham

  Horrible as opposed to straight-up hideous.

  He looked at the details of a flat he quite liked the look of in Kentish Town. It was handy for the Tube and there was an Indian restaurant just around the corner he’d heard good things about. Taking into account stamp duty, solicitor’s fees and the like – if he didn’t mind doing without food and furniture for a while – he reckoned he might be able to afford it, once the house was sold and he’d taken his share.

  Then he blinked and that memory jumped into his head again. Jan laughing at him. Passing out day in Hendon.

  His mum and dad had been there, too, dressed up to the nines, and they’d laughed along with her. They’d always loved Jan, still did as far as Thorne could tell. They certainly kept strangely quiet whenever he said anything negative about her and he nursed an uncomfortable suspicion that they thought the divorce was all his fault. That perhaps he had devoted more time and attention to the Job than he’d done to his wife. That maybe he was the one to blame for what she and the lecturer had been getting up to while he was busy working overtime shifts.

  Right . . .

  Clearly, he’d as good as begged her to sneak round to the lecturer’s flat wearing brand-new underwear. To unbutton the creepy bastard’s denim shirt and climb into his bed. Candles burning in wine bottles, almost certainly, and a red cloth draped over a lamp, with some tuneless sixties shit playing while they were at it . . .

  She’d been taking a picture, that blazing afternoon at the Police Training College, and had struggled to keep the Instamatic straight because she’d been laughing so much.

  ‘What . . . ?’

  ‘Nothing. Just . . . you in your massive policeman’s helmet, that’s all.’

  Saying the words ‘policeman’s helmet’ made her laugh even more.

  ‘Just hurry up and take it, love. I’m roasting in all this.’

  ‘Why d’you have to wear those stupid white gloves, anyway?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Are they so your helmet stays nice and shiny?’

  She’d laughed a whole lot harder later on, once she’d watched him trying to march.

  Thorne opened the paper again and drew a circle around the Kentish Town flat. It was all academic anyway; looking at places he might be able to buy once the house in Highbury had been sold when the house hadn’t even been put on the market yet. He would do it, because he’d promised Jan, because he knew it was the right thing to do, but not quite yet.

  Talk about putting the cart before the horse. It was like . . . opening a murder investigation before you’d got toxicology results. Thorne muttered to himself, a cod Glaswegian growl. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’

  Presuming they did open a murder investigation, he wondered – bearing in mind the degree of responsibility the team could be seen to have had for the death – just how thorough any such inquiry would be. How hard would they really try to catch the person responsible for the death of Grantleigh Figgis?

  Probably about as hard as they’d be looking for Kieron Coyne.

  Seven days missing, there was an unspoken understanding that, whether Figgis had taken the boy or not, they were almost certainly looking for a body. They wouldn’t stop, but they wouldn’t waste unnecessary effort, either. Preservation of life was the number one priority, always would be, but once that seemed futile . . .

  Manpower shortages, fresh cases, back-burners.

  Of course, once in a blue moon, someone would wander into a police station somewhere and announce that they were Child X or Teenager Y who had gone missing many years earlier. It was always a huge story because it was so unbelievable, so extraordinary. It didn’t take long on the job before you came to see just how extraordinary such things were, because day to day you dealt with crimes that, however terrible, were perfectly, shockingly ordinary.

  You understood that such things were run of the mill.

  You hoped, but you tried not to be stupid.

  You played the odds.

  Thorne tossed the paper on to the garden table, picked up a mug of coffee that had gone cold and wandered back inside. He moved aimlessly from room to room, thinking about Catrin Coyne. He thought about the individual tasked with identifying Grantleigh Figgis’s body and tried to imagine how much harder it would be if the body you were staring down at was your child’s.

  If. When . . .

  On cue, George Jones began to sing ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ which was, Thorne thought, just about the saddest song he’d ever heard. It was one the great man had nearly not recorded because he’d thought it too miserable, famously describing it as a ‘morbid son of a bitch’.

  Thorne guessed that, right then, it was exactly what he was. It was hard to know if this was just something he’d learned – a grim default position, adopted once hope had given way to expectation – and by the time the song had finished he was still trying to remember if he’d been like this all those years before.

  Full of piss and vinegar on that blazing afternoon.

  In a stupid hat and spotless white gloves.

  FORTY

  The IRA were not in the habit of doing the Metropolitan Police any favours, and certainly not four months earlier, when a bomb in Docklands had killed two people and injured over one hundred more. Today, though, there were some officers in their debt, even if most would not dream of saying such a thing out loud. Not to anyone who wasn’t a fellow football fan, anyway.

  Thorne had overheard one such officer talking quietly to an Irish colleague and saying: ‘I owe your boys one.’

  The Irishman, who happened to be from Dublin, had smiled thinly and said, ‘Not my fucking boys.’

  News of a serious explosion in the centre of Manchester had begun to come through just after eleven thirty a.m. and, though details were scant, the headlines did the job: a massive blast; widespread damage and countless injuries, but, thanks to a telephoned warning and a well-organised evacuation, no fatalities.

  A large-scale terrorist incident on the day of a major football international inevitably resulted in a shift of priorities. While anti-terror units were immediately placed on high alert and security measures ramped up in advance of the three o’clock game at Wembley Stadium, the focus was temporarily taken away from those tasked with investigating serious crimes that were not politically motivated.

  A degree of leeway had been created.

  On the second floor of Islington station, calls were made to the top brass, schedules were hurriedly rearranged and an accommodation reached before the smoke had settled. Any officer who was happy to work an extra hour at the end of their shift could take a slightly later and somewhat longer lunch if they so wished. It was no great surprise when a decent number opted to eat their lunches between two forty-five and four forty-five in the nearest pub and it didn’t hurt that the DI was as keen to see the England/Scotland game as anybody.

  ‘I hope football is coming home,’ Boyle said, several times. ‘Just so we can break in this afternoon and nick it.’

  Now, five minutes before kick-off, the main bar of the Crown on Penton Street was rammed, and though many were keen to stay up to speed with developments in Manchester, a cheer went up when the channel on the big-screen TV was changed and the serious face of a newscaster was replaced with the lush green of the pitch, an undulating wall of flags and the two teams of players lined up and itching to get going.

  Venables looking nervous in the dug-out.

  The pundits making last-minute predictions.

  The cheering turned quickly to boos, in the pub as well as the stadium, when ‘Flower of Scotland’ was played. Boyle, at a table with a handful of fellow Scots, turned, grinning, to raise a finger and someone at the back of the room – clearly more concerned with impressing his mates than getting promoted any time soon – began to chuck peanuts at him.

  ‘Here we go, then . . .’

  Thorne looked up from his seat at the table he was sharing with several others, including Paula Kimmel w
ho, it turned out, was a rabid Crystal Palace fan. Phil Hendricks had somehow managed to commandeer a spare chair and now he was struggling to squeeze it in next to Thorne’s.

  ‘Sorry about the smell,’ the pathologist said. ‘It was either shower or miss the kick-off and I’m probably only a bit . . . corpsey.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Kimmel said.

  ‘You get used to him,’ Thorne said, shifting his chair sideways.

  Hendricks rubbed his hands together. ‘Right, who wants a drink?’

  Thorne stared glumly down at a glass of Diet Coke. ‘I’d love one, but I’d better not.’ A good few of those around him, Kimmel included, had decided that the leeway extended to a pint with their late lunch, though they were well aware that their boss might not be quite so prepared to look the other way if Scotland went three goals down.

  ‘Well, I’m having one.’ Hendricks tugged gently at the spike beneath his lip. ‘Only got one more job on this afternoon and the gentleman concerned is hardly likely to smell it on my breath, is he?’

  He began pushing his way towards the bar and the officer on the other side of Thorne leaned over, rolling his eyes. Muttered, ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘His name’s Phil,’ Thorne said.

  Hendricks was back at the table just as the players were taking their positions in and around the centre circle. He laid down a pint of Guinness and several bags of crisps, then shrugged off his leather jacket to reveal a vintage Arsenal shirt. There were more than a few jeers, from Kimmel and others.

  ‘Oh, spare us,’ Thorne said.

  Hendricks sat down, shaking his head. ‘Don’t be like that. We put our petty rivalries to one side when England are playing, don’t we?’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Thorne asked.

  Hendricks looked at him. ‘Yeah, I’m good, mate. What?’

  The accent would have made it obvious to anyone who’d ever seen an episode of Coronation Street, but Thorne remembered exactly where Hendricks had told him he was from.

  Blackley boy . . .

  ‘The bomb,’ Thorne said.

  Hendricks nodded. ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Just wondering if you still had any family up there.’

  ‘Not in the city centre,’ Hendricks said. ‘Anyway, I’ve already called and everyone’s fine.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Thorne said.

  ‘So, they reckon the IRA did a couple of million quid’s worth of improvements this morning. Pretty funny, right?’ Hendricks smiled, but only for a second, before he took a decent-sized gulp of beer.

  ‘Horrible, though,’ Thorne said. ‘You must have been worried.’

  Hendricks swallowed fast and began to clap when the whistle went.

  Forty-five tense and shouty minutes later, it was still nil-nil and there was a rush for the toilets, while those throwing caution to the wind and keen to get more drinks in moved with equal speed towards the bar.

  Thorne said, ‘So, why all the tattoos?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I mean, I can understand one or two.’

  ‘What, like LOVE and HATE across my knuckles?’

  ‘There’s more ink than skin.’

  ‘They’re notches on my bedpost,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Well, I had a couple when I was younger . . . nothing very fancy mind but lately I’ve been getting myself a new one every time I get lucky – every time someone else gets lucky, I should say. I get my end away, then I’m straight down the tattoo parlour the next morning for a souvenir. I’ve got loads, mate.’ Hendricks tore open the remaining packet of cheese and onion, grabbed a handful and offered it to Thorne. ‘Getting a bit addicted to it, if I’m honest, and I don’t mind the pain. Quite like it, as it happens.’ He stuffed more crisps into his mouth and grinned. ‘Then again, you’re probably used to pain, being a Spurs fan.’

  ‘What happened to putting petty rivalries aside?’

  ‘Only during the game, mate,’ Hendricks said. ‘Half time doesn’t count.’

  Thorne turned back to the television, having decided that there really were a lot of tattoos and that there had to be some seriously strange women about. Thinking that if the bloke had any other piercings like that vicious-looking one below his gob, it would be like shagging a hedgehog.

  Eight minutes into the second half, the pub erupted when Shearer put England ahead. Once things had settled down a little, Thorne stared across towards Boyle’s table, hoping the Scotsman would turn round, but he was out of luck. With ten minutes left and England still ahead, the predictable song had just begun to ring around the bar when Scotland were awarded a penalty.

  Now Boyle turned round. He got to his feet and shouted, ‘Get it up ye!’

  The roar when Seaman saved the spot-kick had not yet died down when Paul Gascoigne flicked the ball delicately over a defender’s head at the other end and volleyed home what was surely the winner. Boyle was quickly on his feet again, but this time he and his pals were on their way out. A chant of ‘Bye-bye, bye-bye’ quickly gave way to ‘Football’s Coming Home’, which was still being sung enthusiastically when the final whistle went, and five minutes after that, when Thorne and Hendricks stepped out on to the street.

  ‘Result,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Too right,’ Thorne said. They began walking back towards Islington station. ‘But it won’t do much for my senior officer’s mood, so swings and roundabouts.’

  ‘Not a fan of his, then?’

  ‘Put it this way, he didn’t exactly go mad for your theory about the heroin that killed Figgis.’

  ‘Well, he’s clearly a twat,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘That was a pretty smart bit of detective work, you ask me. Best I’ve seen so far, anyway.’

  ‘What can I say?’

  ‘What do you call it . . . lateral thinking.’

  ‘That’s me, mate.’ A smartly dressed Asian man in his twenties walked towards them, smiling at something and staring hard at Hendricks as he passed. Hendricks stared right back. A few yards further on, he said, ‘So, fancy meeting up somewhere to watch the Holland match next Tuesday?’

  ‘I’ll probably just watch it at home,’ Thorne said.

  ‘That an invitation?’

  Behind them, the volume of singing increased suddenly, as another group spilled out of the pub, determined to continue the celebration.

  ‘When do you reckon we’ll get those tox results back?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Yeah, you need them on the hurry-up, I know, so I’m kicking the lab up the arse, but you’re looking at another few days minimum.’

  It was the answer Thorne had been expecting, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating. ‘I can’t see a murder investigation getting actioned until we get proof about that heroin, that’s all. Suits a lot of people to sit on their hands and let everyone think Figgis topped himself. Lets them all come up with a nice convenient reason why he topped himself.’

  ‘Couldn’t live with the guilt, right?’

  ‘Perfect, isn’t it?’

  ‘Two birds with one overdose,’ Hendricks said.

  They turned on to Tolpuddle Street, the station only a few hundred yards ahead. Hendricks said, ‘Even if Figgis was murdered, it doesn’t mean he didn’t snatch that lad, does it?’

  ‘If?’

  ‘Oh, he a hundred per cent was. I’m just saying.’

  ‘Yeah, well, guilty or not, he didn’t deserve that, did he?’ Thorne waited, looked at him. ‘What, you think he did?’

  Hendricks raised his arms. ‘Way above my pay grade, mate. I’m just around to cut up stiffs and come up with the odd bit of top-of-the-range lateral thinking.’ The pathologist stopped and slowly shook his head, as though something else momentous had suddenly occurred to him.

  Thorne stopped, too. ‘What?’

  ‘That Gazza goal.’ Hendricks grinned. ‘It was seriously fucking tasty.’

  FORTY-ONE

  Dean Meade couldn’t believe his luck.

  Once he
’d found out about the whole Kieron-going-missing business and sold his story to that paper, he’d seen more dosh coming in than he could ever remember, and no shortage of offers that would bring in plenty more. It was like winning the pools or something. All being well, and as long as he wasn’t stupid with it, he was looking at enough to sort him out for a year or two, he reckoned, maybe more. Enough to mean he’d already started thinking about telling his boss at the poxy tile showroom where he could stick his hand-crafted ceramics. Most ridiculous thing about it, though: minted as he was, he hadn’t needed to put his hand in his pocket for days.

  No worries, mate, I’ll get you one.

  This is on the house, son.

  She treated you like shit, that boy’s mum, but we’re not all like that.

  Backslaps from the blokes ever since the story came out, and girls on him like shit on a blanket, like he was some pop star.

  That was what happened when people knew your name and your face was in the papers, wasn’t it? You were some sort of celebrity all of a sudden. He wasn’t daft, though; he knew this stuff didn’t last long, so he was determined to fill his boots and make the most of it. If everyone wanted to be his best mate and laugh at all his jokes or some girl was desperate to nosh him off in a car park, who was he to say no?

  Like tonight . . . this bloke – he’d said his name, but Dean had already forgotten it – who’d been halfway up his arse and buying him drinks all night, and the two slappers in the corner giggling and giving him the eye.

  Fuck it, he was a victim, wasn’t he?

  He was grief-stricken over his boy and everyone had their own way of dealing with that kind of thing.

  The Duke of Richmond in Dalston was livelier than usual after England had stuffed the Jocks, singing and all the rest, spilling out into the pub garden, and even if it was getting a bit rowdy the landlord certainly wasn’t complaining. Not with the amount being passed across his bar.

  ‘Got you another one in.’

  Dean pulled the new pint towards him, grunted a ‘Thanks’.

  ‘Cracking night, yeah?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Dean said.