Lifeless Thorne 5

by Mark Billingham

  gone on just before.

  “I need to get this rubber-stamped by Jesmond

  first thing in the morning,” he said. “He’s gone higher

  up, but for what it’s worth, I’ve told him I don’t think

  we should tell the army about the video just yet.” Thorne considered this for a moment or two. “It

  makes sense.”

  Brigstocke looked relieved that Thorne was agreeing with him, but explained himself anyway. “What’s

  on this tape is a bloody big deal, and once the army

  gets hold of it, they might well think they’ve got better things to worry about than a few murders.” “You’re worried they’ll try and find some way to

  cover it up?”

  Brigstocke looked worried about something, certainly. “I don’t know. Look, when our case is put to

  bed they can do what they want with it and I’ll be

  happy to cooperate in any way I can. Right now,

  though, that tape’s just evidence in my murder investigation, and I need their help.” He looked down

  at the photograph on the table. “I need the names of

  those men, and if the army knows about this tape,

  I’m not sure we’ll get given them very quickly. See

  what I’m saying?”

  “Like I said, it makes sense.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?”

  It was obvious that Brigstocke was still nervous

  about having made such a potentially dangerous decision. He needed reassurance, and Thorne could understand why he’d sent Holland out before he’d gone

  looking for it. Thorne wanted to tell him that he was

  handling the situation well, that he was making a good job of a miserable case. He wanted to tell him that he wasn’t the only one in the room who needed

  reassurance. The moment came and went … “Jesmond might well bottle it,” Brigstocke said.

  “If he orders us to hand the tape over, we’ll hand it

  over and see what happens. The Met’s worked well

  enough with the RMP when we’ve had to. It’ll probably be fine …”

  “Or it’ll be like we never had the tape in the first

  place.”

  “We’ll see …”

  “What about the sister?” Thorne asked. “She’s back home, but we got pretty heavy with

  her. She thinks there’s a charge of conspiracy to pervert hanging over her.”

  “Is there?”

  “We’ll let the CPS decide. It’ll be a difficult one to

  call, because she never actually did anything. She

  was lying to protect a dead man.”

  Thorne had never met Susan Jago. He imagined

  her as hard-faced and cunning. He pictured thin lips

  and dead eyes; features she’d have shared with one of

  the men behind goggles and a colored kerchief. A

  man who’d tied up prisoners and executed them.

  “She didn’t know he was dead when she lied, though,

  did she?”

  The two of them sat back in their chairs, waiting

  for Holland to return with the food and hot drinks. “It’s just such a fucking relief,” Brigstocke said.

  “To have a motive. It’s got to be blackmail, agreed?” Thorne nodded. “It’s the only thing that explains

  why it’s happening now.” It was the obvious conclusion. Someone was willing to kill to prevent this tape

  getting out. A threat had been made to expose what

  had happened fifteen years before, and whoever had

  been threatened had reacted violently. Thorne looked

  at the picture of the four soldiers. Whoever was doing the blackmailing, the killer had decided to take

  no chances …

  Brigstocke sat up, leaned down to study the photograph alongside Thorne. The conditions when the

  picture was taken, alongside that of the broken-down

  image itself, had combined to give it the strange quality of a double exposure. The figures, dark green

  against gray, seemed incomplete, almost spectral.

  Brigstocke traced a finger along the row of soldiers.

  “We know two of those four are dead, right? If the

  other two are still alive, we need to find them.” “Especially if one of them’s the killer,” Thorne said. “I don’t think it’s very likely.” Brigstocke sat forward. “A blackmailer’s going to target someone with

  money. Someone who’s done pretty well for himself.

  Right? Based on what we know so far, that doesn’t

  sound like your average ex-squaddie …”

  Thorne had to agree that it made good sense. He

  thought about the voice on the tape, distorted on occasion, and too close to the mike. The voice that had

  seemed to be giving the orders. “Well, that only leaves

  one option,” he said, nodding toward the blank

  screen. “We’re looking for whoever was behind the

  camera.”

  By the time they’d finished at the Lift and Thorne had gone on his way, Holland and Brigstocke were off duty for the night. Brigstocke had gone straight home, and Holland knew that he should really do the same. Instead, he’d called the office to see who might still be around, and, finding that Yvonne Kitson had not yet left, had arranged to meet her for a drink. He’d jumped on the tube and headed all the way back north to Colindale, to meet the DI in the Royal Oak.

  Inside half an hour they’d put away a couple each and begun to loosen up a little.

  “Where are the kids tonight … ?” As Holland was asking the question he realized he was unsure what he should call Kitson. He couldn’t remember having a drink with her on her own before, and something about it—and perhaps about the fact that they were drinking so fast—seemed to alter the dynamic between them.

  “Tony’s got them. He picks them up from the child minder if I’m on a late one.”

  “Right.” Holland hadn’t heard Kitson mention her new bloke’s name before.

  “And ‘Yvonne’s’ fine, by the way,” she said. “I think we’re off the clock in here.”

  They took sips of white wine and lager top and looked around at the pub’s brightly lit and unwelcoming interior. The place had no frills, but was still very busy. As it happened, being very much the local for the Peel Centre, there were usually just as many coppers in the place as were to be found up the road in Becke House.

  “What about you, Dave? You were somewhere near Leicester Square, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.” Kitson still had no idea that Thorne had gone undercover, and so obviously had not been informed that Holland and Brigstocke had gone into the West End to meet up with him and show him the tape. “Some old boy told one of the local lads he’d seen something on the night of the last murder. Waste of bloody time …”

  “That’s only a few stops from Elephant and Castle, isn’t it? You could have been home in quarter of an hour.”

  A copper, whose face he’d seen before in the pub and at various times around Becke House, came to the table and asked Holland if the empty chair opposite him was taken. Holland shook his head, watched the man take the chair across and join a group who looked like they were settling down to make a night of it. He turned back to Kitson. “It’s not fair on Sophie. I’m bringing such a lot of shit home with me at the moment, you know? Like I’m walking it through the flat and getting it everywhere. Dirtying everything …”

  “Is this about the tape?”

  “It’s mad, I know. We see loads of horrible stuff, right? It’s just seeing it happen like that. Watching them do it.”

  “It’s how you’re meant to feel, Dave. You should be worried if you didn’t.”

  “This is going to sound stupid, but I don’t want to pass any of it on to Chloe. I have to deal with it, but there’s no reason why she should, is there? It’s like passive smoking or
something. I don’t want her anywhere near anything that might affect her, and right now it’s like I’m choking on it. I feel like I’m carrying it around on my clothes and in my hair. Passive evil …”

  Kitson smiled as she raised her glass to her lips.

  “Told you it was stupid,” Holland said.

  Kitson shook her head. “It’s not that,” she said. “I curse my three sometimes, but perhaps I should be grateful I’ve got so much chasing round to do. I’m too busy sorting out football kit, and nagging them about homework, and running a taxi service, to worry about bringing work home with me.”

  “Maybe me and Sophie should have a few more kids,” Holland said.

  Kitson drained her wineglass. “My shout …”

  While Kitson was at the bar, Holland thought about the way Susan Jago had fought to protect her brother; to defend him, even in the face of the sickening evidence. He wondered what Jago’s mother would think about what her son had done. He’d confronted the parents of those who had committed the most shocking acts and knew that in most cases they never stopped loving their children. They couldn’t, any more than he could conceive of not feeling as he did now about his daughter, no matter what she did. For the families—especially the parents—of those who killed or abused, faith could be destroyed. But love, he knew now, was unconditional. When your children did such things, you did not stop loving them. You simply began hating yourself.

  Kitson was coming back to the table with the drinks and she smiled as he caught her eye. Holland thought suddenly that she looked quite sexy. Asked himself what the hell he was thinking about …

  “What were you doing,” Kitson asked sometime later, “in 1991?”

  Holland did the math. “I was sixteen, so I suppose I was going out a lot. I can remember coming back late from parties or clubs a couple of times and sitting up watching the bombing on TV. What about you?”

  “I was just finishing college,” Kitson said. “We were all dead against it, obviously. Not as much as with the last one, but there were still plenty of protests. We thought it was all about oil.”

  A cheer went up as someone hit the jackpot on the fruit machine in the corner. Holland leaned forward, spoke up to make himself heard above the rhythmic chink and clatter of the payout. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a copper or a killer, does it?” He swallowed a mouthful of beer. “How well do we really know anybody?”

  Kitson raised her eyebrows. “Bloody hell …”

  Holland reddened slightly. He hadn’t meant it to sound so stupidly portentous. “I never had you down as a lefty, that’s all,” he said.

  “Watford Polytechnic was hardly Kent State.”

  Holland laughed, though he didn’t understand the reference. “Even so …”

  “And I never had you down as someone who takes such a lot of the job home with him.” She smiled, nodding toward Holland’s glass. “Speaking of which …”

  “What?”

  “If you do want to have any more kids, you’d best finish that, go home, and get down to it …”

  “You look wankered, mate,” Spike said.

  Thorne grinned and swayed to one side, waving a young woman past as if he were a bullfighter. “I feel wankered,” he said. “Bladdered, fucked, off my tits …”

  “How many of those have you had?”

  Thorne had just about got used to the taste of Carlsberg Special Brew, but he hadn’t been prepared for the kick. It was somewhere past chucking-out time and he’d been drinking steadily since he’d left the London Lift. Since he’d said good-bye to Holland and Brigstocke and begun trying to walk off the memory of what he’d seen on that videotape.

  “Not enough.” Thorne could feel the weight of the cans in his rucksack. “Plenty more, though …”

  Walking hadn’t done the trick, so he’d gone straight into the nearest Tesco Metro and handed over a quarter of his weekly money in exchange for eight cans.

  “You should save a couple,” Caroline said.

  He’d met up with Spike and Caroline on Bedford Street and they’d walked aimlessly around Covent Garden ever since. Thorne had announced that he wanted to go to sleep an hour before, that he had to get back to his theater, but somehow he never quite kept going in any one direction and it seemed stupid to doss down anywhere while there was still a can open.

  “Have one!” Thorne tried to reach behind into the rucksack, his arm flailing.

  “I keep telling you, I don’t want one,” Spike said. “I’ll take one off you to sell, mind you …”

  “You can piss off,” Thorne said.

  Caroline pulled a face. “That stuff tastes fucking horrible …”

  “I don’t understand why you two don’t drink.” Thorne held up the gold-and-red can and read the writing; the By Royal Appointment. “If it’s good enough for the Danish court …”

  “Prefer to save our money, like,” Spike said. “Spend it on the good stuff.”

  Caroline took Thorne’s arm and hooked her own around it as they walked. “I’ll have a vodka, mind you, if there’s one on offer.”

  “I bet fuckall gets done in Denmark,” Thorne said.

  Spike cackled.

  “Be nice to get dressed up one night, wouldn’t it?” Caroline reached out her other arm and drew Spike toward her. “Go out somewhere and dance, and drink vodka and tonic or a few cocktails …”

  Spike leaned over to kiss her and Thorne pulled away from them.

  He whistled. “Give her a snog, for Christ’s sake, and tell her you love her.” He was aware of how he sounded: the words not slurred exactly, but slow and singsong; emphasized oddly, like he was speaking through a machine. “Go on, put your arms round her …”

  Put your arms round them … Give the fuckers a cuddle.

  Thorne stopped dead and shut his eyes. The can slipped out of his hand on to the pavement. “Fuck …”

  Caroline and Spike walked over.

  “We need to get you bedded down,” Caroline said.

  Thorne looked down at the thick, golden liquid running away across the curb. He pushed the toe of his boot into it. His stomach lurched as he watched it spread and darken, leaking from the wound and staining the sand.

  “I want to go to sleep,” he said.

  Spike pushed him forward. “I thought you boozers were supposed to have some kind of tolerance …”

  Sleep hung around, but refused to settle. Instead, thoughts collided inside his thick head like oversize bumper cars moving at half speed …

  Atrocious was a meaningless, fucked-up word. A crappy meal could be atrocious, yes, or a shit football team or a bad movie. Atrocious didn’t come close to describing the thing itself: the atrocity. That’s what they were calling it. Brigstocke and the rest of them. Not murder. An atrocity. All about the context, apparently …

  There were rats in the skip around the corner. He could hear them digging into the bin bags. Chewing through Styrofoam for crusts, and wrappers slick with kebab fat.

  He’d probably seen things as bad in Surbiton semis and Hackney tower blocks, or at least the aftermath of such things. He’d certainly known of worse—of acts that had left a greater number dead—happening in that war and in others. He’d watched them on the news. Weren’t those things atrocities, too?

  He belched up Special Brew, tasting it a second time. Moaning. Biting down into each sour-sweet bubble.

  Why was what he’d seen on that piece-of-shit tape any worse than when a bomb fell through the red cross daubed on a hospital roof? These were not civilians, were they? This was soldiers killing soldiers. Yet somehow it was worse. You knew perfectly well that things went wrong, that machines went wrong, and that people fucked up. But this wasn’t fucking up; this was basic bloody horror. This was inhuman behavior from those who’d been there—who were supposed to have been there—in defense of humanity.

  He shifted, driving an elbow into the rucksack behind him and pulling at the frayed edge of the sleeping bag. He could smell himself on the wa
rm air that rose up from inside.

  If anything, what he’d seen on that tape, what had happened at the end, was more terrible than the executions themselves. But whoever was behind the camera hadn’t filmed the actual shootings. There was no way, from seeing the tape, of knowing if each of the four soldiers had done his bit.

  If each one of ours had killed one of theirs … He hoped it hadn’t been the case. Hoped that one soldier, or at worst two, had done all the killing. He pictured one of the soldiers lining up the prisoners and trying to kill as many as he could with one shot. If those heavy heads were close enough together, if all those ducks were in a row, would the bullet pass straight through one and into the next? Through two or three maybe … ?

  Now the soldiers themselves were being hunted down and killed. It was hard to feel too sorry for them, though, kicked to death or not. They weren’t shitting themselves, were they? Sitting there, watching it happen, and waiting their turn.

  He lay down flat and turned his head. The stone felt wonderfully cool against his face.

  It had to be the man who’d shot the video, didn’t it? Surely. That’s what he felt in his guts, swilling around with the beer and the tea and the sandwiches. They’d know soon enough; they’d know what was happening when they found the other two soldiers. If they were alive, they could identify whoever had been pointing that camera.

  Somebody shot soldiers shooting.

  Fucking tongue twister …

  Thorne smelled something familiar and opened his eyes.

  He had no idea how many hours it had been since Spike and Caroline had dropped him at his doorway and left. He was equally clueless as to how long Spike had been back, sitting there on the steps with a skinny joint in his hand. Without a watch, Thorne relied on his mobile phone to tell him the time. Even if he could have dug it out now in front of Spike, he wouldn’t have bothered …

  “When d’you come back?”

  “Just.” Without turning, he offered Thorne the joint. “Want some?”

  Thorne groaned a negative. “Where’s Caroline?”

  From the back, Thorne could see the shrug, and shake of the head, but not Spike’s expression. “Busy …”