Lifeless Thorne 5

by Mark Billingham

  “Hang on, let’s think about this. I know she never bothered to tell us when she came down to ID the body. If the silly cow had mentioned it, we’d have put the whole thing together a bit quicker, wouldn’t we? But we’ve spoken to her since then.”

  “DC Stone called with the death message.” It was this phone call Holland had been trying to place in a pattern of what had been known, and when.

  “Right. So, she’d have talked about it then, surely. Why the hell wouldn’t she?”

  Holland had no idea at all.

  Yvonne Kitson was trying to stay calm. It was her team and she was ultimately responsible. She should have made sure. She should have known about this. Then it occurred to her that perhaps Susan Jago had told them about her brother and that they’d simply failed to process the information. “Is it possible that DC Stone did not update the CRIS after he’d spoken to Susan Jago?”

  Holland knew it was more than possible. There was no record of the conversation on the system. Stone might well have decided that as Susan Jago was no longer important to the investigation, he could get away without doing the update. But that still didn’t explain it: Stone had spoken to Jago three days earlier, on the Saturday afternoon; that was hours before Thorne had figured out the army connection.

  “It doesn’t make sense. When DC Stone spoke to her, we still didn’t know about the army thing. So if she had said anything, he’d have known it was important and would have passed it on verbally.”

  They walked the rest of the way down the narrow staircase. Both thinking the same thing. Why the hell wouldn’t Susan Jago have told them?

  “Call Stone and double-check …”

  Holland took out his mobile, dialed Stone’s number and got a message. He looked at his watch. “It’s lunchtime, guv. He’ll be in a caff somewhere with his phone switched off.” The lie had come easily, despite the anger he felt. Holland knew very well that whatever Andy Stone was eating, it wasn’t lunch.

  They emerged into a covered courtyard to find themselves part of a small crowd gathered for the daily mounting of the guard. A row of red-coated Life Guards on horseback stood facing their opposite numbers from the Blues and Royals, identical save for the dark coats.

  Kitson and Holland stood with the hushed tourists for a few minutes and watched the ceremony. Cameras clicked furiously as the troops who had ridden down from Hyde Park Corner arrived, the huge horses walking two abreast beneath the arch to Horse Guards.

  Holland leaned his head close to Kitson’s. “How come we never get saucy notes stuck in our boots?”

  But Kitson was in no mood to laugh.

  The place smelled of piss and hospital food.

  As soon as Thorne had walked through the door he’d remembered what Spike had told him when they’d been talking about the facilities at the Lift; how most places were a lot different. He’d been putting it mildly.

  The Aquarius day center in Covent Garden catered purely for those over twentyfive, but they could easily have upped the lower limit by fifteen years. Thorne hadn’t seen a single person younger than himself since he’d got there, and as he looked around, it was hardly surprising. The few people he had encountered were old—before their time or otherwise—and he couldn’t imagine a twentyfive- or thirty-year-old feeling anything other than deeply uncomfortable in the poky, dismal rooms and bare-brick corridors. Where the London Lift was light and well cared for, everything about the Aquarius Centre reeked of neglect, and a lack of the funding necessary to get rid of the stench.

  In the closest thing he could find to a lounge, Thorne sat and tried not to breathe too deeply.

  It felt like a doctor’s waiting room. A windowless box with a dozen chairs pushed back against its flaking walls, and a table in the center with old magazines and overflowing ashtrays scattered across it like litter.

  Ever since he’d worked out how Jago and the other man might have been connected, Thorne had been absorbed in considering why someone who’d served and possibly fought for their country might return to Civvy Street only to wind up sleeping on it. Might end up spending their days in a place like this. The figures were alarming. Some sources claimed that one in every four rough sleepers was ex–armed forces, with the figure even higher for those who had been on the streets long-term. Ironically, squaddies were given the skills that might help sustain them outdoors. They were trained to sleep rough. But what led so many of them to end up doing just that?

  There would be the same risk factors that applied to anyone else, of course; the same triggers. And it wasn’t hard to work out that there would be others, too, unique to a history in the services: post-traumatic stress; difficulties with readjustment; drug and alcohol dependen cy arising from either of those two things. But these were just chapter headings from a caseworker’s textbook. Thorne knew that if he wanted to understand, he would have to find some of these people, and talk to them …

  A man poked his head around the door, stared at Thorne for a few seconds, and backed out again. The room’s only other occupant had not even looked up. He sat opposite Thorne in a ratty green armchair, the floor around his feet littered with bits of foam stuffing that had leaked from its cushion. He gripped the wooden arms as though they were keeping him from rising up into the air, and stared at the front of a Daily Star that had sat unthumbed on his knees for the past fifteen minutes.

  Neither Thorne nor anyone else knew whether Jago and the other man had been killed because of their army background, or because they were homeless, or because of whatever events had led them from one to the other. Brigstocke had contacted the Ex–Ser vice Action Group in hope of guidance. Meanwhile, Thorne knew that his role gave him an opportunity to talk to those who found themselves where Chris Jago and the other victim had once been.

  That said, if Thorne had learned anything over the last few weeks, it was that reaching out to someone was never straightforward.

  “This place is a shithole,” Thorne said. “Isn’t it? They should just lob a fucking grenade in and be done with it …”

  The man sitting opposite rose from his chair—letting the newspaper slide onto the floor among the foam debris—and walked out of the room.

  Thorne got up and retrieved the paper. He turned to the sports pages and saw that, despite the draw they had scraped with Liverpool the previous Saturday, Spurs were still flirting dangerously with the bottom three.

  Then he followed the man out.

  Walking fast toward the exit, he thought about his father’s war stories. Jim Thorne had been no more than nine or ten when the Second World War had broken out, and his army experience had taken him no farther than Salisbury Plain. But he’d been happy to pass on the fact that he hadn’t seen a pineapple until he was eighteen, and recalled nights spent belowground while the bombs fell on north London with a clarity that remained undimmed even at the end. Thorne knew this sort of thing was not uncommon, but still he marveled at how his dad could describe every inch of an air-raid shelter, then forget to put on any underwear.

  “For pity’s sake, Dad …”

  “I forgot. I fucking forgot the bastard things!”

  Thorne’s father had told him, often, that he’d enjoyed his time as a soldier; that he’d needed the discipline and the routine. Thorne wondered if the problems of many of those who left the army each year stemmed from an inability to deal with the chaos, with the lack of any pattern to their lives in the real world. It would certainly explain why so many regained the order they craved in another way, by moving quickly from army to prison.

  He wondered if Jago or the other man might ever have done time …

  Approaching the exit, he saw the man from the lounge, and something in the stance reminded Thorne of his father’s friend Victor. He had a few years on Jim Thorne, had seen active service, and Thorne wondered what a soldier of Victor’s generation would make of all this. He knew about how men with shell shock had been mistreated after the Great War, but did that compare with the fate that awaited so many who’d
returned from Sarajevo, Belfast, Goose Green?

  Thorne remembered reading somewhere that more British soldiers had committed suicide since returning from the Falklands than had been killed during the entire conflict.

  The man from the lounge was standing at the door, arguing with someone who looked like a caseworker. Thorne hovered, pretending to study the row of tatty paperbacks on a shelf, not wanting to push past the men in the doorway.

  “We were supposed to fill those forms in together,” the caseworker said. “It’s important, Gerry. You promised me you’d bring them in today.”

  Gerry was clearly agitated. “I forgot. I fucking forgot the bastard things …”

  Back at Becke House, Holland made sure he got to Andy Stone first.

  “Guess how many ways you’re in the shit?” The smile slid off Stone’s face.

  “I’ve tried to call you half a dozen times since

  midday.”

  “The phone was off for an hour at the most, I

  swear,” Stone said.

  “That’s only one of the ways. Why didn’t you update the CRIS after you spoke to Susan Jago?” “When?”

  “After you rang with the death message. Last Saturday afternoon.”

  Stone opened and closed his mouth, looked at the

  ceiling.

  “You’re a fucking idiot,” Holland said. And he

  knew that he was, too, and that Kitson felt much the

  same way. She was already in with Russell Brigstocke,

  and Holland wasn’t so sure that the DCI would be

  quite so ready to blame himself. “I walked into a

  meeting this morning, unable to answer the simplest

  question, because we hadn’t got any of the information about Chris Jago that we should have been given

  by his sister.”

  “I’m not with you …”

  “When you spoke to Susan Jago last Saturday, did

  she tell you that her brother had been in the army?” “No.”

  Holland toyed with being pissy just for once demanding a “sir,” but he decided against it. “She said

  nothing about his service history at all?”

  “Fuck, don’t you think I’d have told you if she

  had?”

  “I thought you’d have updated the CRIS,” Holland said. “Looks like I can’t take anything for

  granted.”

  The implications of what Holland was telling him

  were starting to dawn on Stone. “So she never said

  anything to anybody?”

  Holland answered with his eyes. “I thought Kitson had the information and she thought I’d got it

  off the system. It was never on the system in the first

  place.”

  “Bloody hell.” Stone leaned back against a desk,

  folded his arms. “After Thorne came up with the idea

  that the tattoo was an army thing, I did think it was

  strange that she hadn’t mentioned it. I just thought

  someone would have checked with her. I thought someone would be getting in touch to ask her about it, you

  know?”

  “Well, nobody did.”

  “Hang about. Has it not occurred to you that she

  didn’t say anything about him being ex-army because he wasn’t. It’s only a theory, isn’t it … ?” Holland shook his head, adamant. “He was exarmy. That’s an army tattoo.” Even as he said it, Holland was aware that this was still conjecture, but he

  knew instinctively that it was true. And, equally, instinct told him that Susan Jago had been deliberately

  keeping the information back from them. Yes, they

  should have checked, but they’d been so fired up by

  Thorne’s theory that they’d neglected to get the simplest piece of procedure right. But the fact remained

  that Susan Jago had volunteered nothing. Holland had

  already called Phil Hendricks, asked about his and

  Jago’s conversation in the car on the way to Euston,

  and she’d evidently said nothing to him either. “So, how pissed off is Kitson about this CRIS

  thing?”

  Holland had already taken a step toward Brigstocke’s office. He needed to tell them that he’d spoken to Stone and confirmed their suspicions. That

  they needed to talk to Susan Jago urgently. Stone shouted after him. “I just presumed someone had called her …”

  Thorne had sat through many tedious hours on stakeouts; in strategically chosen attic rooms or in the backs of unmarked vans. He had felt time drag as slowly as he’d ever imagined it could, and that was with the benefit of company, and coffee. With the prospect of a beer and a warm bed when it was all over.

  Time spent on the streets passed like something that was spread over you; marked out in footsteps that could only grow heavier. And heavier still. There were moments when it felt like no time could have passed; when you found yourself staring into a familiar window or treading the same stretch of pavement yet again. It was only the blisters and the burning through the joints at the end of each day that made you certain it had passed at all.

  Thorne settled back against the door of the theater and thought about a couple of boys he’d seen in a narrow side street when he’d left the day center: their skinny fingers cradled around the smoking rock; a flattened and gouged-out Coke can used as a crack pipe.

  He had come to understand just why so many of those with drink and drug problems had turned in desperation to such comforts after they’d begun sleeping rough. If anything—bottled or burned—could numb the pain of hours that spread like tumors, or speed up the ticking steps, then Thorne saw clearly that it was something to be clutched at and cherished.

  He reached behind him, felt for the can in his rucksack. At least he still had the prospect of beer …

  Deep inside his pocket, the tiny mobile phone was still cradled in his hand. When he’d spoken to Holland earlier, when he’d been told that they would be bringing Susan Jago down from Stoke for an interview, he’d told him to check whether her brother had ever been in prison. It couldn’t hurt to ask.

  From the sound of it, it wouldn’t hurt to ask the woman a great many things. There had to be a very good reason why she was being secretive, and now they had to hope they would find it. Thus far, luck and guesswork had allowed them to take a few, faltering steps—in who knew what direction—but Susan Jago might provide the hand shoved firmly in the back. The push that would give them the impetus to catch up with a killer.

  As Thorne took out the phone and dialed, he wondered whether Chris Jago had been a good soldier. He also wondered if he’d known the driver of the car that had killed him.

  The man who answered the phone recited his number slowly, then asked who was speaking.

  “It’s Tom. I’m sorry for calling so late …”

  “It’s not late, son. Don’t worry.”

  It had gone midnight, but Thorne’s apology had been no more than a courtesy. If anyone had spent longer than he had on the phone to his father in the small hours, it had been Victor. Thorne had been fairly certain that he’d be awake.

  “So, what’s up?” Victor asked.

  “Nothing, really. Just calling for a natter …”

  Even as he spoke Thorne thought that, in truth, there was nothing very much worth talking about; nothing that would have any bearing on the case, at any rate.

  “That’s fine, son. It’s good to talk. Let me just go and turn the radio off …”

  Thorne watched as a pair of young women in fuckme heels clattered past on the pavement opposite. It was far too cold for belly tops and bare midriffs …

  “That’s better.”

  If anyone had ever told him where Victor had originally come from, Thorne had forgotten, but he spoke with the faintest of accents. Somewhere Eastern Europe an, by the sound of it. It struck Thorne that he had no idea which army Victor had fought for. He realized that actually, there
were a great many things he didn’t know about his father’s best friend. Things that he wanted to know. Like whether Victor had any family. What he had done before he retired. Where he had met his father, and how long had they known each other, and why he was the only one of his dad’s mates who hadn’t suddenly developed a busy life when the old man started going loopy.

  “Tom?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not doing a lot of nattering, son.”

  “Sorry. So, how’ve you been? Keeping yourself busy?”

  “Oh yes, I’m always busy,” Victor said. “What about yourself? How’s the job?”

  “You know …”

  “When the phone went I thought it was him, you know? Just for a few seconds. Calling up with some quiz question, or one of his jokes, or trying to find out the word for something he’d forgotten. Remember how he used to do that?”

  Thorne closed his eyes. He’d seen some film or read a book in which memory could be wiped out with a pill. Right now, even though good memories would be erased along with the bad, he’d take it.

  “It’s okay,” Victor said. “I miss the silly old bugger as well, you know?”

  Thorne felt suddenly as though he were only seconds away from sleep. “I’m fine, honestly, Victor. I really didn’t ring to talk about him.”

  Then a low, amused hum. “ ’Course you didn’t …”

  SIXTEEN

  Becke House was not a fully functioning police station. There were no cells—other than those the detectives were required to work in—and no formal interview suite. As with anyone else who had to be questioned, or held, Susan Jago was taken to Colindale. It had the necessary facilities in abundance, and the added advantage of being just five minutes up the road.

  “How long d’you think this is going to take?” Jago said.

  Holland opened the door and showed her inside. “I’d say that was very much up to you, Susan …”

  It was a narrow room and windowless, but cleaner than most. Jago dropped her handbag down by a chair and nudged it under the table. She looked up at the digital clock on the wall. Though she’d caught an early train from Stoke and been collected by uniformed officers from the station, it was already a few minutes after eleven o’clock. “I was hoping I could get back to pick the kids up from school.”