Scaredy cat Thorne 2

by Mark Billingham

  'I'll fetch the party hats...'

  Then the desk got him.

  Thorne swore loudly and kicked at the offending corner - the ball of screwed-up paper he'd taped to it long gone. As he rubbed his thigh, he decided that while the rest of the place was celebrating the end of term, he was going to do something useful. He shouted to no-one in particular:

  'Right, get me a fucking saw...'

  A couple of regulars sat up at the bar, nursing grudges and pints, moaning to the landlord and throwing dirty looks over their shoulders, but the place belonged to Serious Crime. There were a hundred or more officers and civilian staff crammed in to the back bar. Though it was officially just a lunch-time thing, Thorne was pretty sure, based on the morning, that there wasn't going to be a fat lot of work done in the afternoon.

  'Fancy a drink, big boy?'

  Thorne actually started slightly. Despite the noise and the crush, he'd actually drifted away for a moment, thinking about the generations either side of himself. Young boy and old men...

  'Only you've been stood here with that half for twenty minutes,'

  Hendricks said. 'Wishing you were somewhere else.'

  'That obvious, is it?'

  'I was going to say you've got a face like a smacked arse, but, looking at it, kicked arse would be a bit more accurate.'

  Thorne raised his glass, took a sip and then gestured with it, pointing at nothing in particular. 'This is fucking nonsense though, isn't it?'

  Hendricks shook his head, leaned on the bar. 'Don't agree, mate. We all need to let our hair down, this lot more than most. You as much as anybody...'

  'A copper with a pint pot in his hand is not my idea of a good time. Christ, it's rough enough working with them.'

  'Not been flattened in the rush for a matey chinwag then?'

  Thorne finally smiled. 'Most of them stay away...'

  'Are you having another one?' Thorne shook his head. Hendricks turned to the bar and raised his hand to attract the attention of a barmaid.

  Most of them. Steve Norman had marched straight up and bent Thorne's ear for ten long minutes. Keen to impress upon him just how hard he was working. Delighted that after the depressing weeks on Nicklin and Palmer, he finally had some positive material to work with - the McMahon discovery and the hotel murders. He'd drunk two tomato juices before rushing away, as he told Thorne excitedly, to prepare a press release detailing the brilliant operation that had resulted in the arrest of Jason Alderton.

  Hendricks was back at Thorne's elbow with a pint of Guinness and a disgruntled expression. 'We've got to pay for these now. How much did Brigstocke put behind the bar?'

  'Two hundred and fifty. It lasted about fifteen minutes.'

  The two of them said nothing for a minute or two. They stood and watched as police officers of all ranks and ages enjoyed a momentary triumph. Battered bomber jackets and fleeces with bottles of lager. Shirts with grimy collars and Christmas ties, spilling pints of bitter. Sharp suits on spritzers. Women who were harder than they looked and men who were a damn sight younger. Old stagers from the squads, a squeak away from their pensions, and West End wannabes with Audis on double yellows and dialogue from a Guy Ritchie movie. A couple of hours to pretend, to forget. Then back to it. The Met was hemorrhaging. It was losing officers at the rate of five a day. Thorne was surprised it wasn't ten times that number. He was amazed he was too stubborn, or stupid, or scared, to be one of them.

  'It'll all still be there tomorrow, Tom,' Hendricks said. 'A couple of hours on the piss isn't going to make a blind bit of difference. Have a drink, catch the fucker another day...'

  Thorne smiled and finished his drink, thinking: Tomorrow is another day nearer the next body. A couple of hours might make all the difference in the world.

  Lunch-time was excruciating. Talking to people, and eating and smiling. Looking like he was interested in their pointless drivel. It was so hard today, when such excitement was so close. He managed it every other day of course, but that was just routine. And didn't everyone dissemble to some degree or other? Saying you're not bothered about getting the stupid job when you'd happily kill for it. Saying that you just want to be friends when actually you're already fucking somebody else. Wearing a mask. Pretending to care. On the days he killed, though, it was always like this to some extent. He remembered the tedious meeting at work on the day he'd killed the Chinese girl; the expression of concentration stuck on to his face when all he could think about was what she might look like, how it was going to feel. He could still feel Caroline's mouth against his freshly shaved cheek as she kissed him goodbye on the morning he'd paid his visit to Ken Bowles. He'd smiled and kissed her back, they'd talked about what they might have for dinner later, and all the time he could feel the wonderful weight of the bat in his bag... This one was going to be even better. This time, he was having trouble keeping himself from grabbing people and shouting into their faces. Telling them exactly what he was planning to do, how brilliantly he'd arranged everything, how superb it was going to feel. The buzz was already building. He could almost feel the mask beginning to slip. Somebody spoke to him. He said something back. He stuck something tasteless into his mouth, glanced at his watch. He needed a little time on his own. Just half an hour or so, for a coffee and a bar of chocolate. To gather himself before the adventure started.

  Thorne looked up to see Holland pushing through the tables towards him. He could see by his face that Holland was having about as good a time as he was. The fact that he'd been stuck in a corner with Derek Lickwood couldn't have helped.

  'Thanks for that,' Holland said, squeezing in between Thorne and Hendricks.

  'Privilege of rank, Holland. I get to inform the next of kin, you have to talk to DCI Lickwood. Did he do that thing of looking over your head while he's talking to you?'

  Holland smiled and shook his head. 'He's such a wanker. Kept having little digs about Palmer escaping. Asked if you'd ever worked for Group 4.'

  Hendricks snorted into his Guinness. Thorne turned to him. 'Shut it.'

  'He's off,' Holland said. Thorne looked across in time to see Lickwood at the door on the far side of the room. Just before stepping through it on to the street, he turned and cocked his head towards Thorne. It was a hard expression to read, but Thorne would have put good money on smug.

  'I've got a good idea why he was here, though,' Holland said. 'He seemed very disappointed that DS McEvoy wasn't around. A bit confused...'

  Hendricks enjoyed this sort of intrigue hugely. 'What? Lickwood has the hots for McEvoy?'

  'Oh yeah, fancies the pants off her.'

  'What did you tell him?' Thorne asked.

  'I just sort of ducked it really, made out like I didn't know where she was myself. He was pissed off about it, though, definitely.'

  Hendricks downed the rest of his Guinness. 'She's a popular girl is McEvoy.'

  'That's true,' Thorne said. 'Problem is, I'm not sure she likes herself very much.'

  If Thorne had had a problem reading the expression on Lickwood's face, the one on Dave Holland's at that moment was well beyond his reach. He stared at it for a second or two and then turned away, his heart sinking at the screech of feedback from across the room. Some idiot had got hold of a microphone.

  'It's Jesmond,' Hendricks announced.

  Thorne knew a cue to leave when he heard one. 'Come on, Holland. Let's get the hell out of here.'

  'Where are we going?'

  'Happily, I have a pressing engagement in Colindale with the Directorate of Professional Standards. You can hold my hand.'

  As the first distorted platitudes rang across the bar, Thorne and Holland pushed their way towards the exit. Thorne wondered whether the beer on his breath might count against him at his meeting. Behind him, Holland was remembering how cold it had been at half past three that morning. Sitting naked on the edge of his bed. Whispering into his mobile with Sophie stirring next to him, disturbed by the phone, but not fully awake yet.

  McEvoy's voice
had been strained, garbled.., raised just enough to reach him over the noise in wherever the hell she was calling from; as heartbreaking a mixture of helplessness and arrogance as he could ever have imagined.

  'I'm fine. OK? I just wanted to tell you that. I really am absolutely fine.'

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The voice was getting quieter, line by line. She hadn't slept in nearly thirty-six hours. She hadn't been straight for a good while longer. It was hard to work out exactly which of these things was responsible for the various things her body was now subject to every few minutes. She was overtired. She was shaking. She was out of it. She was wired, hysterical, comatose, terrified, buzzing, fearless... The night before, as soon as Holland had gone, she'd done the last of the coke in the flat and rushed to her computer. She'd written a few e-mails, received a few and then she'd gone out to score. Walking, running most of the way, she hadn't stepped on any of the cracks in the pavement, as per usual. That way she knew that her dealer would be there, that he'd have something for her.

  For the rest of that night she'd been awake - drinking and chain smoking, opening up the wrap made from a folded lottery ticket, chopping out a line every half an hour or so. Since the sun had come up, she'd been doing one every fifteen minutes. The fucker was ripping her off, must be. She'd always got four lines out of a quarter, and now, suddenly, she was getting no more than three. She was needing to make the lines thicker. The bastard must be cutting her stuff... Still, cut or not, the stuff was doing the trick. It was silencing the voice. The voice in her head - so much posher and more attractive than the one that came out of her mouth - had been growing quieter with each new line. The voice that told her she was stupid, that what she was planning was insane, that she was risking her life. Each hit was turning it down another notch.

  There were other voices she could still hear, that she needed to hear. Holland's voice, telling her she couldn't do her job any more. Her mother's voice. The voice she had never heard, but which she imagined when she read the e-mails. These were the voices that, for the time being, she didn't want to tune out, that were making her do this thing, that she would soon silence once and for all. A wave of rage swept over her as she imagined them all taking the credit for what she was going to do; praising her initiative and then taking all the glory. Fuck that. She imagined Holland coming back to her, walking out on his dim girlfriend and trying to start things up again...

  She moved to the table. The empty vodka bottle. The empty wrap. Fuck, fuck, fuck . . .

  She opened up the lottery ticket, pressed it flat on the table and licked. She got down on her knees and began dabbing at specks on the carpet, rubbing equal amounts of cocaine, dirt and dead skin into her gums. Christ alive, how much had she got through? Bastard must have cut it half and half. Must have...

  She lit a cigarette, put on her coat.

  There wasn't a great deal of time. There was still that one crucial piece of information she needed. The one thing he'd held back while he was sending his cryptic little messages. He thought he was being so clever this last week or so, but he had no idea how good she was. None of them did. She was one step ahead of them, all the time. And she was one step ahead of him.

  She sent an e-mail, and when she didn't get an immediate reply, she sent another, telling him she had to go out. Telling him how he could contact her. It was the only thing she could do, other than sit and wait until lunch-time which was when he usually came on line. She couldn't wait another second.

  She grabbed her bag, and after making sure there was nobody on surveillance outside, she closed the door behind her, shivering as she stepped into the cold air.

  McEvoy walked quickly away down the greasy pavement, making quite sure she didn't step on any of the cracks.

  'How did it go?'

  Holland had been waiting for Thorne in reception, chewing the fat with an old mate on duty behind the desk. He waved goodbye as he and Thorne pushed out through the doors and started the ten-minute walk back to Becke House.

  What little sun there was up there was having no luck breaking through a solid blanket of cloud. The sky was the colour of pewter. There were already one or two cars with sidelights on. It was a little after three o'clock.

  'How was it really?'

  'I think I got lucky,' Thorne said. 'A pair of rubber-heelers with a sense of humour.'

  Holland smiled. Rubber-heelers. You couldn't hear the buggers coming. 'What was it that they found funny... ?'

  It hadn't begun well.

  DCI Collins (short and overweight) and DI Manning (tall and overweight) did not look like they enjoyed a laugh. Both had that strange expression - a mixture of boredom and seething resentment which Thorne had previously seen only on the faces of men standing on Oxford Street with signs reading GOLF SALE. Manning had shuffled papers while Collins had leaned forward across the table to deliver the caution. It had begun and ended with much the same words that Thorne had used to caution Martin Palmer. In the middle, they had detailed the neglect of duty - the procedural lapse that had allowed Palmer to escape - speaking slowly and seriously. These officers were doing their job of work so much better than Thorne had done his.

  'I'd like a number of other serious incidents noted for the record,'

  Thorne had said. 'Incidents where I neglected my duty.'

  Manning had thrown a sideways glance at Collins and then at the tape recorder to check that the spools were turning. 'Go ahead, Inspector.'

  Thorne had cleared his throat. 'I have, on a number of occasions, farted without apologising, and though I have never actually appeared in The Bill, a woman who was drunk told me I looked a bit like the bloke who plays DI Burnside...'

  Manning and Collins had looked at each other and then pissed themselves.

  'So, how did it finish up?' Holland asked. They were approaching the pub where, doubtless, Serious Crime was still busy inside, pursuing various lines of enquiry.

  Thorne wasn't certain what would happen next, but for a change he had decided to think positive. 'I'm not exactly off the hook, but I don't reckon they're sorting me out a uniform just yet.'

  Holland stopped and nodded across the road towards the pub. 'Are we going back in?'

  Thorne kept on walking, shouted back over his shoulder. 'You can do what you like, Holland, I'm going to go and pick the car up. I thought I'd go and see how McEvoy's getting on. Find out if her mother's any better...'

  At three thirty, they pulled up outside Sarah McEvoy's flat in Wembley.

  Thorne got out of the car and walked up the steps to the front door. He turned and looked at Holland who was still sitting in the passenger seat, staring forwards. 'Come on, Dave ...' Holland got out while Thorne rang the bell. He arrived next to him as Thorne rang again. Nothing.

  Thorne took a step back, peered to his left at the dark blue curtains drawn across the bay window. 'Is that her flat?' He'd picked McEvoy up outside the place on a few occasions, dropped her off on a couple more, but he'd never been inside.

  Holland's answer was non-committal. 'Maybe she's in bed,' he said. Thorne shrugged, thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and trudged back down towards the car.

  Holland watched Thorne moving away, wrestling with it, knowing how easy it would be to jog gently down the steps after him. His voice when he spoke was louder than he'd intended it to be - more urgent.

  'I think we should go in...'

  Thorne turned, twirling the car keys around a finger. 'I don't think I want the Funny Firm doing me for breaking and entering as well, Dave...'

  'I've got a key,' Holland said.

  Thorne came up the steps two at a time and took hold of the arm that was already reaching forward to push a key into the lock.

  'We'll need to talk about this, Holland...'

  It was as dark and gloomy inside the flat as it was outside on the street. As well as the curtains at the front, in McEvoy's bedroom there was a blind pulled down over the back window, the one that looked out on to the garden.

&nb
sp; 'Well, she's not asleep,' Holland said, coming back into the living room.

  Thorne wasn't listening. He was staring at a dozen reflections of himself. He counted at least a dozen of them. Mirrors were suspended from the ceiling, propped up on the floor, leaning against the walls at a variety of strange angles. Heavy and ornate, plain and unframed, round, square, all highly polished...

  'What the fuck is this... ?'

  Holland moved past him to the window, raised the blind, then turned around. He opened his mouth to answer the question but nothing came out.

  Thorne moved slowly around the room, every glance bringing some new reflection, some bizarre perspective on himself. The back of a leg, the top of his head. His fading bruises appeared straight on and profiled at the same time.

  On the table, Thorne saw another, smaller mirror, and the creased lottery ticket. He knew at once what he was looking at.

  'How long have you known about it?' he asked.

  'About three weeks.'

  'You're a fucking idiot...'

  Holland raised a hand to shut Thorne up. Yes, he was a fucking idiot, he was much, much worse, but he had to stop Thorne going off on one. Not now. He could bow his head and accept the bollocking another time. Now, there was something else...

  'Sir, I think McEvoy's in some sort of trouble.'

  'Some sort... ?'

  'Real trouble.' Holland couldn't say why he was worried. He didn't know what it was that was nagging at him, couldn't explain where the feeling came from. It made him shiver and it kept him awake, and he needed to tell someone. It was there in McEvoy's eyes and the things she said, and the way she'd been acting for a while. It was as if she had a secret. Another secret...

  'What?' Thorne said.

  Holland shook his head, looked around the room, searching desperately for something that might bring this indistinct unease into sharp relief. His gaze settled on the computer.

  .The look on McEvoy's face a few days before, when he'd walked in to the office and found her on the Internet. Panic, and something else. Defiance?

  Triumph... ?