Cry Baby

by Mark Billingham

  Angie looked at her.

  ‘That copper, Thorne. He came round, told me he’d been in to see Billy about Dean.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘After what happened to him, I mean.’

  Angie nodded, but looked no more bothered about Dean Meade’s murder than her brother had apparently been. ‘Fair enough, I suppose. They’re not very imaginative, are they?’

  ‘I don’t think Billy was straight with him . . . when they were talking about Dean being Kieron’s real dad.’

  ‘Sounds right.’ Angie slurped her tea.

  ‘But what did he say to you? When you told him.’

  Angie thought about it. ‘Not a lot, to be honest. He went very quiet.’

  ‘That’s not good,’ Cat said. ‘That’s never good.’

  ‘I said, “these things happen”, you know? Told him not to be a twat about it.’

  ‘Right.’ It had taken a while, but Cat had come to understand the shorthand between Billy and his sister. ‘Thanks, Ange.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  She guessed that don’t be a twat meant don’t hurt anybody.

  ‘I told you, it’ll all sort itself out. And anyway, Billy’s more concerned about what’s happened to Kieron, same as you.’ Angie finished her tea and tossed the cup away. ‘Besides, who knows what he’s been up to inside? It gets a bit . . . lonely in there, you know what I mean? Any port in a storm and all that.’ She nodded slowly, as though Cat should prepare herself for the inevitable, if unpalatable, truth.

  Then they both burst out laughing and Cat flapped her arms, spluttering like she was choking on her tea.

  ‘Can you even imagine?’ Angie was doubled over with it. ‘Billy doing that?’

  Christ, it felt great to laugh, to really laugh, like an explosion of sunlight, and Cat’s mood lifted as the weather warmed up a little, and then, when business began to do the same, she was amazed to find herself talking easily to the customers. She even managed to sell a few things, much to Angie’s delight.

  ‘I should put you on commission, babe.’

  It didn’t take very long, though, for the guilt to kick back in, hard.

  That stone inside her, heavier than it had ever been.

  By the time things were every bit as busy as Angie had predicted, Cat could barely string a sentence together. Could hardly move. She hung back, leaning against the fence behind the stall, or sat and let her eyes wander across the pits and stains on the road beneath her feet.

  Scraped out and used up, oblivious to the chat around her.

  Every few minutes, between customers, Angie would step across to see if she was all right. To ask her if she wanted to go home. To tell her it was easy enough to put her into a cab.

  Cat said that she was fine and she didn’t want to cause a fuss. She said, ‘I’m good here, for now.’

  She could not bear the idea of being at home, not then. All her baby’s things screaming at her and those woods only five minutes away. So she sat and let the morning slop over her and tried not to think about what Thorne and the rest of them would be doing among those trees, on that road.

  The end of her life being acted out.

  Two boys, running in a playground . . .

  FIFTY-ONE

  Two boys, running in a playground. One wearing a bright yellow coat, the other a tartan anorak with a furry hood. They clambered across the metal climbing frame, jumped on and off the roundabout, then rushed to climb the stairs up to the slide. They shouted and laughed, pushed one another and laughed even louder. They chased one another until they were out of breath.

  ‘Cut . . .’

  The director walked across to tell the two young actors how pleased he was with them, before they were ushered across to where their chaperone was waiting.

  Thorne turned to see Maria Ashton hovering.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  She pointed to the woman who was sitting alone on a bench, holding a cigarette. The actress was now being ministered to by a make-up lady with whom Gordon Boyle had been getting decidedly friendly.

  ‘Do I really have to be smoking?’

  ‘You told us you were smoking.’

  ‘Yes, I was, but it’s hardly an important detail, is it? I just wondered if we could get rid of it. It doesn’t look very . . .’

  ‘We need to be as accurate as we can if this is going to do any good,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Every detail is important.’ He looked across at the two boys, who were still clowning around together, even between scenes. The kid playing Kieron Coyne saw Thorne looking and stuck his tongue out. Thorne had to admit, they looked the part, the pair of them almost as alike as the children they were portraying. ‘Anyway, thanks again for agreeing to do this.’

  Maria nodded and nudged the toe of her boot through a tangle of fallen branches. ‘Sorry, that was stupid of me.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Not especially,’ Maria said. ‘I mean, I know it’s the last thing I should really be thinking about today of all days, bearing in mind why we’re all here. But . . . we’re having a lot of trouble with Josh and I’m at my wits’ end really, so . . .’

  ‘It must be hard for him.’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s been playing up at school, so they’ve suspended him.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Thorne said.

  ‘They think I should be getting him some kind of professional help.’

  Thorne said nothing. The director was waving at Boyle. They were ready to move on.

  ‘I’m starting to think my ex-husband had the right idea.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Getting out of London,’ she said. ‘The pressure and everything. I mean, it’s all so . . . full-on, isn’t it?’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Thorne said.

  Maria looked around and shook her head, sadly. ‘This fucking city,’ she said. ‘Forgive my language.’

  Thorne knew exactly what the woman meant, even if their current bucolic surroundings were hardly typical of the city she was talking about. The director was waving again. He pointed, said, ‘Sorry, I need to . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ Maria said. ‘It seems to be going very well, doesn’t it?’

  Thorne jogged across to join Boyle, who was already talking to the director, then walked with them as they followed the small crew into the woods on the far side of the playground. He watched as they set up for what the director was calling the hide-and-seek shot. A single of the boy playing Josh, covering his eyes and counting before getting up and searching for his friend.

  ‘Coming, ready or not . . .’

  Leaning back against a tree as the camera operator arranged the light and the sound man fiddled with his boom, Thorne understood exactly why Catrin Coyne had refused to take part. He could only imagine how she might have felt, watching a boy who looked like her son laughing and running into the trees; hearing his name echoing around the woods.

  Reliving it.

  ‘OK, we’re good to go,’ the director said. ‘Can we bring “Josh” in, please?’

  Half an hour later, when they’d got what they needed, the unit moved towards the road. This would be an altogether more complicated set-up, with multiple points of view needed and uniformed officers stopping the traffic each time they went for a take.

  While the unit was getting ready to shoot, Thorne walked across the road to where Felix Barratt stood waiting to be called upon. He was muttering to himself as Thorne approached, breathing heavily and looking for all the world as though he was about to play Hamlet.

  ‘Ready for my close-up.’ Barratt smiled nervously.

  ‘Thanks for doing this,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Oh, of course. Whatever I can do.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too long.’ Thorne looked at Barratt’s clothes, a variation on what Thorne had seen when he’d visited him at home. Did the man even own anything . . . casual? ‘This is what you were wearing on Saturday, June the eig
hth?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I was even told to dig out the same tie. Details are important, I imagine.’

  ‘And this is where you were?’

  ‘Give or take a few feet, yes.’

  Thorne looked back across the road. From where he was standing, he could clearly read the number plate on the red VW Polo they were using and wondered again why their witness had not been able to tell them any more than the vehicle’s colour and the basic shape. Why he’d been able to tell them almost nothing about the boy and been so vague when it came to describing the man he’d seen with him. A nondescript jacket, a cap. Thorne could not recall seeing Barratt wearing glasses or even hinting that his eyesight was anything less than perfect.

  ‘The weather was the same as this,’ Barratt said. ‘That day. A perfect June morning.’

  ‘Bit of luck,’ Thorne said.

  It was due to the vagaries of Barratt’s description that this section of the film would be voiced over by the show’s presenter.

  A witness describes seeing . . .

  Barratt was playing himself, so he could certainly be shown clearly, but there would be no close-ups of the car or of the man and boy he claimed to have seen getting into it. This was the part they were least sure about, but also the part they hoped would prompt the most useful response. People calling in to say they’d seen the boys playing in the woods would only be of limited use. What they really needed was information from someone who’d seen rather more of what had happened on this road than the man currently straightening his tie and lifting a foot to polish his shoe on the back of his trousers.

  The director waved again. They were ready to shoot.

  ‘Do they need me to do anything?’ Barratt asked.

  ‘You just walk past and look,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s what you were doing, isn’t it?’ He waited. ‘On your way back from the shops, right?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  Thorne was about to cross the road, then stopped. He said, ‘Shouldn’t you have binoculars or something?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’d been watching birds in the woods . . . earlier. Before you went to the shops, so I just thought . . .’

  Barratt nodded, as if he’d just remembered. ‘Yes, you’re absolutely correct, of course. I did have a bag and binoculars with me, but I dropped them off in my car on the way to Muswell Hill.’

  ‘Right,’ Thorne said. They had already checked, of course. The only car they could find registered to Felix Barratt was a blue Audi A3.

  ‘After I’d been in the woods and before I went to the shops.’

  ‘Got it,’ Thorne said. ‘And thanks again.’

  It had taken the best part of two hours to get what they needed and the crew were setting up for the last shot of the morning. The man – medium height, dark jacket and a cap jaunty enough to satisfy Felix Barratt – was driving away having ushered the boy into the red car. They could only guess at the direction, of course, but decided that someone in the process of abducting a child would probably not have wanted to attract unwanted attention by turning round on a busy road.

  The director had just called for quiet when Thorne was approached by one of the uniformed officers on traffic duty.

  ‘DS Thorne . . . ?’ The officer was proffering the mouthpiece of his radio and unclipping the unit from his tunic. ‘I’ve got Control on the line, with a DS Brigstocke calling through from Islington.’

  Thorne thanked the officer, took the radio and wandered back towards the Gypsy Gate entrance to the woods.

  ‘DS Thorne to Control. Am I on talk-through to DS Brigstocke?’

  ‘Control to DS Thorne. Confirmed talk-through is on, but keep it brief.’

  ‘DS Thorne to DS Brigstocke. Go ahead, Russell, over.’

  ‘Tom . . . a bloke called Alan Munro has just walked into the station. Thought you’d like to know. I’ve put him in an interview room, over.’

  Thorne knew that the name was significant, but he was struggling to remember how.

  ‘Tom, did you receive my last, over?’

  ‘I’m just trying to place him, over.’

  ‘A friend of Grantleigh Figgis,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Well, for one night, at any rate. Over . . .’

  A few minutes later, when Brigstocke had told him everything, Thorne thanked Control for the talk-through and walked quickly back out on to the road. The timing was perfect: Gordon Boyle was marching in his direction and looking horribly pleased with himself. Perhaps the Scotsman had managed to wangle the make-up lady’s number out of her or simply witnessed an entertaining road accident, but whatever the reason for the DI’s mood, Thorne could not wait to piss on his chips.

  ‘That’s a wrap,’ Boyle said. ‘Everyone’s happy so we can get the hell out of here.’ He looked at Thorne. ‘What’s up with your face?’

  Thorne momentarily considered taking a swing at him, then decided there was really no reason to ruin two careers at the same time. He said, ‘I’ve just spoken to Russell and there’s been a . . . development. Grantleigh Figgis.’

  Boyle nodded, happy to hear it. ‘Oh, please tell me those DNA results from his car have finally come back. They’ve had over a week, so—’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t matter, because there’ll be nothing in his car. Nothing in his flat, either.’

  The DI narrowed his eyes. ‘We don’t know that.’

  ‘Remember the man Figgis said he met at the Astoria the night before all . . . this?’

  Boyle said nothing.

  ‘The man he said he went home with that night? The man he was still in bed with the next morning when Kieron Coyne went missing?’

  ‘Yeah, I remember. What’s—’

  ‘His name’s Alan Munro and he’s waiting at the station to give us a statement confirming everything Figgis said.’ Thorne enjoyed seeing the blood drain from the DI’s face, the Adam’s apple jumping in his throat as he swallowed hard.

  Boyle shifted his weight from one foot to the other. ‘And this bloke’s waited the best part of two weeks to come forward, has he?’

  ‘He was on holiday,’ Thorne said. ‘He got back this weekend and someone at the Astoria told him all about it.’

  ‘Right . . .’

  Thorne took a step towards him, thrust his hands deep into his pockets in case the temptation to use them became too strong. ‘You never sent anyone down there, did you?’

  ‘Now, hang on—’

  ‘You never checked.’

  ‘Well, I thought I had . . . I’d need to go back through HOLMES.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Thorne said. ‘I know you didn’t.’

  ‘OK, well, if you say so. I mean, it’s a major case and when you’ve got as much on your plate as I have, things can slip your mind.’

  ‘What, like failing to check the alibi of your prime suspect? Are you serious?’

  ‘You try heading up an inquiry like this and then maybe you can—’

  ‘Only he wasn’t a suspect, was he?’ Thorne let that hang for a second or two. ‘You’d already got Figgis marked down as the man we were after. Job done . . . big fat fucking tick as far as you were concerned, so forgetting to check his alibi because you were so busy was pretty bloody convenient.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting, pal.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Thorne said.

  A horn sounded as the car carrying the child actors drove past them. The chaperone waved and the boy playing Kieron was sticking two fingers up through the window.

  ‘You’re responsible for Grantleigh Figgis’s death,’ Thorne said. ‘You do know that?’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Well, as I wasn’t the one who gave him those drugs, it might as well be.’

  ‘Let’s see what Andy Frankham reckons, shall we?’ Thorne watched that big Adam’s apple dancing again. ‘What the DPS reckons when he passes it up the line.’

  ‘I suppose you knew Figgis wasn’t our man all along, that right?’ Now Boyle
looked every bit as ready to fight as Thorne was. ‘You looked in his eyes and you knew. That’s how this shit works with you, yeah?’

  Thorne shook his head, not wanting to go there.

  ‘You took one look at that freak and you knew straight away whether or not he’d done it. Just like you did all those years back with—’

  ‘This isn’t about me.’ Thorne leaned closer still, until he could smell the sweat. ‘You’re the one getting a bit forgetful in your old age. Letting things “slip your mind”. So you take the piss all you like, pal, because when this is done and dusted, I’m not the one they’re going to crucify.’

  Five minutes later, walking back towards his car, Thorne could still feel the adrenalin pumping through him. The tang of it in his mouth, like he’d been sucking on an old coin. He stopped, to spit it out. It was only a shame, he thought, that there hadn’t been a camera still running. One trained in their direction and able to get a good close-up of the expression on DI Gordon Boyle’s face.

  When he’d got that first, priceless sniff of the shit he was in.

  When he understood just how deep it was.

  Now, that was a tape Thorne would have worn out seriously quickly.

  FIFTY-TWO

  It was always possible that Jimmy Hill and Trevor Brooking were imparting words of wisdom that would have fundamentally changed his thinking about the beautiful game, but Thorne seriously doubted it. He’d heard the pair of them droning on often enough, so he was keeping the volume down, at least until the teams appeared. Instead, he’d put on Red Headed Stranger, having rarely been let down by Willie Nelson’s words of wisdom, and spent the time before the start of the match drifting slowly around the house. He’d stood in each room, making a mental inventory of the things he’d be taking with him, if he ever got round to selling the place and moving into a flat.

  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.