Scaredy cat Thorne 2

by Mark Billingham

  Whatever.

  But he knew that every few seconds, his voice, even as he spoke, would grow quiet to his ears, as if the Mute/Fade button on his brain's remote control were being fingered, and a new sound would take its place. A sound that he had to invent. One that could only exist in his imagination. A sound that very few people, very few people living, could ever have heard. The dull, wet smack of a bat striking a skull. Over and over again. I got Ken Bowles killed. The phone rang. Thorne reached for it absently, picked it up without looking, said nothing.

  After a moment or two, a voice. Tight, impatient, a faint Midlands accent.

  'Is this Thorne?'

  'Yes...'

  'This is Vic Perks. You've been trying to get hold of me.'

  'Have I?'

  Perks sighed. 'Well somebody there has. Ex-DCI Vic Perks. I was in charge of the Karen McMahon investigation in 1985: Thorne grabbed a notepad and began to write... As he jotted down details, as he and Perks made arrangements, an image began to form at the back of Thorne's mind. There one second and gone the next. Then back again, like the picture glimpsed in a cloud formation or an odd arrangement of shadows. He saw a stranger leaning down and reaching out a hand to pull him up - to drag him from the cold, dark water at the very moment he was about to go under.

  EIGHTEEN

  They met in a pub called The Mariners' Arms on the Isle of Dogs. It was a basic kind of place. Thick nylon carpets, a dart board, beer. Wednesday lunchtime, and aside from Thorne and Perks, there were only two people in there: the barman - a student by the look of things with dyed blond hair and bad skin - who stared intently at the small television above the bar; and a wizened old man in a battered brown trilby who sat in the corner with a newspaper, half a Guinness and a fierce-looking Alsatian at his feet.

  While they worked their way through their beers and waited for two cheese rolls to appear - there must have been somebody else there, in the kitchen, because the rolls materialised eventually - they talked about their respective journeys. The pub had been Perks's idea. He hadn't wanted to travel too far from the small flat in Epping to which he and his wife had retired. When the older man mentioned where he lived, Thorne had glanced up from his pint, only for a second, but Perks still knew what he was thinking. That part of the world did have something of a reputation.

  'That's right. Retired to the same place where most of the villains I spent all those years chasing ended up. I see one or two of them now and again. Buying the paper or down the garden centre. We say hello...'

  Thorne had been right about the Midlands accent: Birmingham was his best bet, or Coventry maybe. Perks was a tall man. His face was thin and deeply lined, but Thorne guessed that laughter was probably just as responsible as worry. He was in his early sixties, with his grey hair cut short and a neatly trimmed moustache, a collar and tie beneath the padded car coat.

  Perks finished his last mouthful of cheese roll, wiped the crumbs from around his mouth with a wax-paper serviette and looked Thorne in the eye.

  'You haven't found her. You haven't found Karen, else you'd have said by now.'

  Thorne was still eating. He swallowed quickly. 'No. But I intend to.'

  Perks stood up, scanned the room for the entrance to the toilet. He looked down at Thorne before making a move.

  'So did I...'

  Later, they walked east, along the river. The fine rain was annoying more than anything - not enough to warrant an umbrella, but enough to necessitate screwing up the eyes and hunching the shoulders. The Thames was wide here. They walked within feet of cheaply built sixties'

  council housing, drab and depressing. On the other side of the river, at the top of the hill was Greenwich Observatory, the Royal Naval College and the Cutty Sark.

  They walked slowly; Thorne moving a little slower than he might normally have done. The river belched and slid and slurped beneath them, oily and gunmetal grey. Ahead and across from them, the bizarre monstrosity that was the Millennium Dome rose up through the drizzle, rusting and ridiculous. A million and more a week, so they reckoned, just for it to sit empty.

  'That's a decent hospital every couple of months,' Perks said. 'A school every few weeks.'

  'Did you think she was alive?' Thorne asked. 'When you were looking for her?'

  Perks turned his face away towards the river, towards the wind. When he finally spoke, Thorne had to strain to hear the words. 'For a week, perhaps a fortnight, we hoped. I probably thought so longer than anyone else. That was my job I suppose.'

  Thorne went another step or two before he realised that Perks had stopped. He turned and walked back towards him. 'There were sightings weren't there?'

  'Several. Always plenty of sightings though. People are well meaning or else they're being plain malicious. Hard to tell at the time. One though in particular...'

  'Carlisle?'

  Perks nodded, wiped rain from his face with the back of a brown leather glove. 'A few miles outside actually. Three days after she went missing. That one was hard to ignore. The clothes were spot on - we never released everything but the description was perfect. Hair, clothes, the car. That one felt right.' Perks said something else but it was lost as a screaming gull passed just overhead, its cry mingling with the clatter of a nearby helicopter. Thorne looked up and saw a bulky, tomato-red chopper swooping down towards City Airport. Perks moved past him. Thorne followed, but kept an eye on the helicopter, unable to explain the sudden, morbid thought, but not wanting to miss a moment should it burst into flame and plunge into the river.

  'So that's why you never searched locally?' Thorne asked.

  'We searched everywhere...'

  'Sorry, I mean.., looked for a body, looked for it in the area where she disappeared. The country park, the railway line...'

  'The sightings were one reason; certainly. Didn't make sense for whoever took her to kill her and bring her back to dispose of the body. Not that these animals do anything normal...'

  Perks's gaze was steady but despite the disgust in his voice, Thorne thought that there was something missing from the eyes. It was something Thorne saw in the bathroom mirror every morning, flickering into life. On a good day he might call it passion. On a bad one, panic.

  'Then there was the lad's statement,' Perks said. 'The boy that saw her get taken. We had an eye witness who watched Karen get into that car.'

  'Stuart Nicklin.'

  Perks's eyes narrowed for a moment. 'Yes. Nicklin.'

  They walked on in silence for a few minutes. A varied panorama of heavy riverside industry moved slowly past them on the other side of the water, some of it flourishing, some of it long dead. All of it pig ugly. A disused power station, a grain processing plant, the scrap yard where the Marchioness was finally broken up and melted down, wharves piled high with gravel and aggregates, rusting cranes poking skywards.

  The sky, the shore, the water, the buildings. Black, grey and brown...

  'Tell me about Nicklin.'

  'He was a strange kid...'

  Thorne nodded, thinking, Jesus...

  'You don't know how much things like that are going to affect kids down the road, do you? He was really upset. Seeing her get into that car. He knew it was wrong, you see. I think he knew he should have done something to try and stop it. He never said that but.., he knew. Seeing her taken like that, it shook him. They were close, not boyfriend and girlfriend, but close. Best friends, you might say. Actually there was another kid, Martin Palmer. They were a bit of a threesome. They'd all been together earlier that day, but then they'd had some kind of falling out and Palmer had gone home.'

  'Any idea what they'd fallen out about?'

  Perks squinted at him, his mind racing ahead, aching to work it out. 'No...'

  'You knew that Nicklin had been expelled from school before this?

  Him and Palmer?' The look on Perks's face - the confusion, the desperate desire to know - made Thorne feel suddenly guilty. He was going round the houses. Pissing a decent ex-copper around for no g
ood reason he could think of. He should have just said what he had to say back there in the pub, told Perks what he wanted - what he wanted confirmed. Thorne put a hand on Perks's arm. 'I wanted to talk to you about Stuart Nicklin. Palmer as well, but really.., this is about Nicklin. I wanted to check that his statement was the only reason why you didn't look for Karen closer to home; how much what he said to you at the time had to do with that...'

  They couldn't walk any further. They'd reached Saunders Ness, the end of the riverside walk. A spit, or nose, of land formed by the huge curve of the river as it swept round the Isle of Dogs and out towards the estuary.

  Perks leaned on the handrail and stared out across the river. 'The Thames was more or less dead a couple of years ago. Did you know that? Bugger all could live in it.' Thorne was not surprised. All manner of shit got dumped in the river and most people didn't know or didn't much care. To the average Londoner, the Thames was just something you had to cross sometimes. Perks looked at him as if reading his thoughts. 'The few people who gave a toss did something about it though. There's nearly a hundred different types of fish in there now sea trout, salmon, jellyfish. They found seahorses up past the Dartford crossing. They've brought this thing back to life. Nice you can do that; isn't it?'

  Thorne nodded, acknowledging that yes, it was nice. Perks smiled and pointed towards the water. Thorne peered at the shoreline and saw what he was so pleased about; his tale of life after death being illustrated for him, right there. White against the dark water, a heron, standing motionless in the shallows, looking for lunch. Thorne took a breath, and started. 'Stuart Nicklin has murdered at least four people. He ... manipulated Martin Palmer into killing another two. I'm sorry if this is hard for you to listen to. I can only say that I want to catch him, every bit as much as you wanted to catch the man you thought abducted Karen McMahon. Nicklin, whatever he calls himself now, whoever he is... he's a man who kills for pleasure.'

  He waited just a second or two before saying the hardest thing of all.

  'That said, you won't be surprised when I tell you that I don't think he told you the truth about what happened to Karen.'

  Thorne stopped, waited. It was impossible to gauge exactly how Perks was going to react. In most cases, being told, however sensitively, that something you had done was wrong, or at the very best, a touch misguided, was likely to provoke a defensive reaction. Thorne remembered Lickwood's anger: a predictable response to allegations of incompetence. This was far from that, but still, a similar reaction would be entirely understandable.

  Perks turned and looked at him, looked at his eyes. Thorne had been wrong in thinking he'd get an angry response. The tone was gentle, comforting almost. Vic Perks did no more and no less than voice thoughts that were familiar to him. These were words that passed through his mind daily: simple and straightforward words he'd heard many years before, and now spoke easily and without hesitation. As Perks talked, Thorne knew that he'd been wrong about something else. The passion wasn't missing at all.

  'She got into a blue car, sir. A Cavalier, I think they're called. Blue with rust on the front bumper and a sticker on the back window, and a six and a three in the number plate. She had a strange look on her face. I remember wondering what she was thinking, but she didn't seem frightened. Just before her head disappeared, down behind the door, I think she might even have waved at me. Just a little wave. Either that or she might have been pushing the hair back behind her ear. She did that a lot. It was hard to tell because the sun was in my eyes...'. Perks stopped, screwed up his own eyes. He was trying to remember something else, or perhaps he was simply recreating the face of the boy who'd first spoken these words. Thorne couldn't be sure.

  'He was fourteen, Thorne. A few weeks older than she was, that's all. Karen had just turned fourteen. 17 July, 1985.' He blinked twice, slowly. 'Karen would be thirty-one this year.' Thorne nodded. It was clearly a calculation Perks could do in his sleep. 'He was still a child. I had no reason not to believe him.'

  'l know.'

  'Christ, people saw the car. Bloody idiots thought they saw the car, thought they saw Karen...'

  Thorne was a fraction of a second from reaching out a hand and placing it on the old man's arm, when Perks turned away, shaking his head. He leaned on the wall, fixed his gaze on the shoreline. The tide was almost fully out. Thorne stared down at the assorted detritus revealed by the retreating water, squatting in the sludge. Tyres, dozens of them, broken crates and of course the ubiquitous supermarket trolleys. How the hell did these things get here? He couldn't imagine anybody unloading the weekly shop into the back of the car and then merrily hoisting their trolley off the nearest bridge. Yet here they were, probably deeply symbolic of something or other, but to Thorne, right at this minute, just a bunch of old trolleys stuck in the mud.

  This was a fairly typical bankside treasure trove, though Thorne had often come across more exotic items. A number of artificial limbs. A 1968 Harley-Davidson. A dead white bull-terrier, bloated and snarling like a hideous space hopper.

  And of course, the occasional body.

  Every so often the river gave them up. Gently laid them out on a sandy bank, coughed them up into a tangled bed of weeds or spat them onto the mud. Most were never identified, never claimed, remaining as anonymous as the supermarket trolleys. Many still waited to be discovered, moving up and down the river far below the surface. Their eyelashes and fingernails, the flakes of their skin, snacked upon by sea trout, salmon and seahorses.

  Thorne wondered how quickly, "if at all, the body of Karen McMahon would be given up, released into his care so that he could learn things from it...

  'Two things,' Perks said suddenly. Thorne turned to him, waiting. 'I know I won't be the first person you call, or the second. Probably won't be high up on the list at all. Get to me as quickly as you can though, will you? When you find her?'

  Thorne nodded. He hadn't needed to be asked.

  'What's the other thing?'

  Perks turned to him, shivering, tucking his scarf down inside his car coat. 'I want to be the one that tells Karen McMahon's mother.'

  Holland stood in the doorway, blocking it. McEvoy moved to go past him. He moved to prevent her.

  She laughed without a trace of humour. 'This is stupid.'

  'Yes, it is,' Holland said. 'If you come into the office and I'm here, you turn around and leave. I come in when you're already here, you get up and go...'

  'So, ask the DCI if you can move offices.'

  'Right. What am I supposed to tell him?'

  'Anything you like.'

  '... that we're suddenly not getting on?'

  Holland sighed and stepped forwards, giving McEvoy little choice but to move back a step or two. He closed the door.

  'We're not doing our jobs properly, Sarah.'

  McEvoy narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice. 'You're on that one again, are you?'

  'I said we, Sarah. Both of us need to sort this out before it goes too far.'

  'Is that a threat? Going to grass me up, Holland?'

  Holland brushed past her, sank into a chair. 'Jesus, Sarah, you're so paranoid.'

  'Yeah? Well you should see me when I've done a few lines.' She glared at him, standing her ground but wanting more than anything to throw open the door and run. Wanting to bolt into the toilets and open her bag and sniff up a little confidence It was almost as if Holland could see the need in her face. 'And have you? Done a few today?' McEvoy said nothing, but felt the burning start behind her eyes. 'Where do you keep it? When you're here I mean. In your bag is it? In here somewhere ... ?' Holland's eyes scanned the room. 'Better pray none of the trainee sniffer dogs ever gets loose in here...'

  She cried easily these days. The tears could come at almost any time. They were just gathering in the corners of her eyes, only a drop or two, and easily pressed back with the heel of her hand, but still enough to stop Holland dead in his tracks.

  'Sarah . . .' 'No/'

  Her hands dropped back to her sid
es and she raised her head. Not a trace of softness remained in the set of her features. The anger always followed the tears and she welcomed it. She was on safer ground then. A clenched fist and a tightness in the chest felt more comfortable than the taste of saltwater in her mouth.

  'Listen, I don't want your help and I don't need your advice. I certainly don't need telling what's good for me, work-wise or any other fucking-wise.'

  'Nobody's trying to tell you...'

  'A few fucks and a grope in the car park does not give you any rights at all, OK? And I didn't hear you complaining the other day when you were giving me one on the bathroom floor. Grunting and pushing me into the side of the toilet...'

  'I only want...'

  'Just leave it alone. I don't do it at work.'

  The single knock was followed instantly by the noise of the door opening and they both turned at the same time. McEvoy instinctively took a step towards the door. Neither she nor Holland had a clue whether the man in the sharp suit with, the slicked-back hair who was walking into the office had heard any of their conversation, but it was all either of them was thinking during the exchange that followed.

  'I'm looking for McEvoy.'

  'I'm DS McEvoy. Do you not know how to knock?'

  'I knocked.'

  'You knock, you wait, you get asked to come in, you come in. It's pretty bloody straightforward.'

  'Who's got time? I'm DCI Derek Lickwood from SCG east.' He dropped an overcoat on to a chair, held out a hand. 'You're nothing like you sound on the phone.'

  Thorne got on to the Docklands Light Railway at Island Gardens which straddled the Greenwich Meridian. Here, a filed Victorian walkway ran right under the river, connecting with the south shore near the Cutty Sark. In no time at all, the train was rattling through the heart of Canary Wharf; the view as breathtaking to Thorne as any he had just seen staring across the Thames.

  It was a bizarre journey. A matter of minutes separated one of the oldest parts of London from the brand new developments that were changing the skyline for ever: from nineteenth-century tea clipper in Greenwich dry dock to forty-foot yacht in Limehouse Basin; from the classical elegance of the Queen's House to the very different beauty of the new skyscraper, days away from becoming the tallest building in the city; from stucco and slate to steel and mirrored glass in a couple of minutes.