Lifeless

by Mark Billingham

  Thorne wondered how anybody was ever fooled.

  He hung around in the car park, waiting for Jesmond. Trying to work out the best way of making the approach.

  At the sound of the door, Thorne looked up to see two men coming out of the station. Recognizing one of them, he tried immediately to turn away without being seen, but he was a fraction too late. He had little choice but to smile and give a small nod. The man he’d been trying to avoid nodded back and Thorne was horrified to see him start to walk over, bringing with him the other man, whose face was vaguely familiar.

  Steve Norman was a senior force press officer, a civilian. He was small and wiry, with a helmet of dark hair and an overinflated sense of his own importance. He and Thorne had crossed swords on a case a couple of years earlier.

  “Tom…” Still six feet away from him, Norman extended a hand.

  Thorne took it, remembering an ill-tempered meeting when Norman had jabbed a finger into his chest. Remembering that he’d threatened to break it…

  “I hadn’t expected to see you,” Norman continued.

  So, the “gardening” leave had become common knowledge. Thorne nodded back toward the main building. “Conference went well, I thought.” Norman had been heavily involved, of course. Thorne had seen him, lurking at the side of the stage looking pleased with himself. He’d stepped up at one point and whispered something to Russell Brigstocke.

  Norman put a hand on his friend’s arm and looked toward Thorne. “Do you two…?”

  Thorne leaned across. “Sorry, Tom Thorne.”

  The man stepped smartly forward and they shook hands. He was midfortyish, taller than Thorne and Norman by six inches or more, and thickset.

  “This is Alan Ward, from Sky,” Norman said. Thorne could see how much he relished making the introduction.

  “Good to meet you,” Ward said. He had large, wire-framed glasses beneath a tangle of dark, curly hair that was three-quarters gray. He put his hand back into the pocket of what Thorne would have described as a denim blazer.

  “You, too…”

  Several typically English moments of social awkwardness followed. Thorne would have left, but for the fact that he didn’t want to seem rude and had nowhere to go. Norman and Ward, who had clearly been in midconversation, were also too polite to excuse themselves immediately. They stood and carried on talking while Thorne hovered and listened, as though the three of them were old friends.

  “I can’t remember you at one of these before, Alan,” Norman said.

  “It’s news, so we’re covering it.”

  “Bit below your weight, though, isn’t it?”

  Ward stared over Norman’s head as he spoke, looking around as if he were taking in a breathtaking view. “We aren’t bombing the shit out of anybody at the moment, thank God, so I’m just here giving the lads on the crew a bit of moral support. Keeping an eye on one or two of the newer guys.”

  There was a bit of chuckling, then a pause. Thorne felt like he should say something to justify his presence. “What is it you do, then, Alan?”

  Norman took great pride in answering for Ward. “Alan’s a TV reporter. He’s normally working in places a little more dangerous than Colindale.”

  “Tottenham?” Thorne asked.

  Ward laughed and started to speak, but again Norman was in there first. “Bosnia, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland.” Norman listed the names with great pride, and Thorne realized that he was showing off, like a kid with a new bike. That, however close a friend Ward actually was, Norman got off on knowing him.

  Thorne looked at Ward and could see that he was embarrassed, that he and Norman were not really close friends at all. The glance Thorne got back, the discreet roll of the eyes, told him Ward thought Norman was every bit as much of a tit as he did. Thorne took an enormous liking to Alan Ward immediately.

  Suddenly it was Thorne’s turn to feel embarrassed. “I thought you looked familiar,” he said. “I’ve just realized. I’ve seen you on the box, haven’t I?”

  Norman looked like he would wet himself with excitement.

  “Have you got Sky, then?” Ward said.

  “I tend to use it for the football mostly, I’m ashamed to say.”

  “Who are you, Arsenal?”

  “God, no!”

  At that moment, over Norman’s shoulder, Thorne saw Trevor Jesmond emerge. Jesmond looked across, froze, then quickly tried—as Thorne himself had done a few minutes earlier—to spin away without being spotted. Thorne raised a hand, horrified that he and Jesmond shared anything at all in common.

  “Well then…” Norman said.

  To the press officer’s obvious delight, Thorne said hasty good-byes. Ward shook his hand again, and gave him a business card. As Thorne walked away, the reporter said something he didn’t altogether catch about getting free tickets for matches.

  He caught up with Jesmond just as the detective superintendent reached his car.

  “Shouldn’t you be at Scotland Yard?”

  “I was wondering if DCI Brigstocke had said anything to you, sir.”

  Jesmond pressed a button on his key to unlock the car. He opened the Rover’s door and tossed his cap and briefcase onto the passenger seat.

  “My sympathies for recent events are a matter of record…”

  “Sir…”

  “But if they have left you in an emotionally charged state, where you are not presently fit to work as a member of my team, what on earth makes you think you’d be able to function efficiently as an undercover officer?”

  “I don’t think what I’m suggesting is…complicated,” Thorne said. “I think I’m perfectly able—”

  Jesmond cut him off. “Or perhaps that’s it.” He blinked slowly. His lashes were sandy, all but lost against his dry skin. He might have been trying to appear knowing and thoughtful, but Thorne watched the thin lips set themselves into what looked to him like a smirk. “Perhaps your emotional state is precisely why you think you should be doing this. Perhaps it’s why you consider yourself suitable; why you consider this job suitable for you. Have I hit it on the head, Tom? Are you going to be dossing down in a hairshirt?”

  Thorne could say nothing. He flicked his eyes away and watched the light slide off the chromed edge of the car’s indicators, catching the buttons of Jesmond’s immaculate uniform.

  “Look, I’m not saying it’s a completely stupid idea,” Jesmond said. “You’ve certainly had stupider.”

  Thorne smiled at the line, seeing the glimmer of possibility. “This one’s not even in the top ten,” he said.

  “On the plus side, even if you screw it up, I can’t see that we have a great deal to lose.”

  “I can’t see there’s anything to lose.”

  “Give me a day or two, yes?” Jesmond stepped between Thorne and the car door. “It won’t be solely my decision anyway. I’ll have to talk to SO10.”

  “I really think we can get something out of this,” Thorne said.

  “Like I said, a day or two.”

  “We can get it quickly as well. There’s no need for a long lead-up time, we just do it.” He stared at Jesmond, trying hard to look relaxed even as his stomach jumped and knotted. “Come on, you’ve seen some of these down-and-outs. Staggering around, ranting at the world with a can of cheap lager in their hand. You know me well enough. How hard can that possibly be?”

  FIVE

  The mood of the café owner had obviously not improved as he cleared away the plates. Holland had eaten toast before he’d left home, but had done his best with a bacon sandwich. Thorne had made short work of the fullest of full English breakfasts.

  “The eggs were hard,” Thorne said.

  “So? You ate them, didn’t you? If you don’t like the place, you can fuck off.”

  “We’ll have two more mugs of tea.”

  The owner trudged back behind his counter. The place was a lot busier now, and he had more to do, so it was difficult to tell whether he had any intention of ever bringing the tea as req
uested.

  “Can you find something to arrest him for?” Thorne said. “Being fat and miserable in a built-up area, maybe?”

  “I’m not sure who he hates more, coppers or tramps. We’re obviously not doing much for his ambience.”

  Thorne stared hard across the room. “Fuck him. It’s hardly the Ritz, is it?”

  “I picked up a couple of papers on my way here,” Holland said. He reached down for his bag, dug out a stack of newspapers, and dropped them on the table. “Our picture of Victim One’s on virtually every front page today.”

  Thorne pulled a couple of the papers toward him. “TV?”

  Holland nodded. “All the national TV news broadcasts as well. Both ends of London Tonight. It’s pretty comprehensive…”

  Thorne stared down at the Mirror, at the Independent, into a pair of eyes that had been generated by a software program, but nonetheless had the power to find his own, and hold them. Victim One was long-haired and bearded. His flat, black-and-white features were fine, the line of jaw and cheekbones perhaps a little extreme to be lifelike. But the eyes, like the heavy bags beneath them, looked real enough. Dark, narrow, and demanding to be recognized. It was a face that said, Know me.

  “What do you think?” Holland asked.

  Thorne looked at the text that accompanied the pictures. The crucial facts rehashed: a brutal reminder of just how much was known about this man’s death when nothing at all was known about the life that had been stolen from him.

  Then the reproduction of the tattoo. The vital collection of letters found on the victim’s shoulder. It had been hoped early on—as Brigstocke had told Thorne in the pub—that this might help identify the body, but that hope had proved as temporary as the tattoo itself was permanent.

  AB–

  S.O.F.A.

  The decision not to print a photograph of the tattoo had been taken on grounds of taste. A similar decision with regard to the victim’s face had not been necessary: they’d had no choice but to computer-generate, and not just because the face itself was unrecognizable. It was unrecognizable as a face: every feature had been all but kicked or stamped clean off the victim’s head. The unmarked face that was confronting thousands of people, that very minute over their cornflakes, had been fashioned by a microchip from little more than bone and bruise.

  “It’s like King’s Cross,” Thorne said. “It’s what they did with the victim they couldn’t put a name to.”

  The fire at King’s Cross underground station in November 1987 had killed thirty-one people, but only thirty bodies were ever claimed. One victim had remained anonymous—in spite of numerous appeals to those who might have known who he was. Thorne remembered that face, too: the sketch on the poster in a hundred tube stations; the clay reconstruction of the head that was lovingly fashioned and paraded in front of the television cameras. Ironically, the dead man, known for years only as Victim 115, had finally been identified just the year before, nearly twenty years after his death, and had turned out to have been a rough sleeper. Many commentators in the press claimed to have been unsurprised. It was obvious he was homeless, or else someone would surely have come forward much earlier, wouldn’t they? Thorne wasn’t so sure. He doubted that material belongings had a great deal to do with being missed. He thought it was perfectly possible to have a roof over your head, a decent car, and two nice holidays a year, yet still go unacknowledged and unclaimed if you had the misfortune to find yourself trapped on a burning escalator.

  Thorne reckoned it was less to do with being unknown than with being unloved.

  “I think we’re in with more of a chance, though,” Holland said, looking at the picture. “The quality of this is far higher. It’s got to ring a bell with somebody.”

  “Let’s hope somebody loved him enough.”

  Thorne handed the Independent back across the table and turned the Daily Mirror over to the sports page. He wondered how many footballers had been accused of rape since the last time he’d read a newspaper.

  SIX

  Thorne leaned in close and stared at himself in the small, square mirror. A week without razor, soap, or shampoo didn’t seem to have made a great deal of difference. Seven days during which he’d tried to start looking the part, while a pair of stroppy sorts from SO10—the unit that ran undercover operations—had done their best to put him through a refresher course.

  It had all been fairly straightforward. As Thorne had been keen to stress to Brigstocke, the job would be purely about intelligence gathering. There would be no real need to fabricate a detailed backstory—to create what those who worked in this area called a “deep legend.” When necessary, tax details, Land Registry records, and electoral rolls would be doctored, but there would be no need for any such elaborate preparations in this case. Whatever the reason for their being there, those who ended up on the street tended to reinvent themselves anyway; to keep their pasts to themselves. They were starting again.

  Thorne took one last look, slammed the locker door shut, and hoisted the rucksack onto his shoulder.

  “Once you’ve been out there a couple of weeks you’ll see the difference. Black snot and a proper layer of London grime that won’t wash off easily…”

  Thorne turned to look across at the man standing by the door. “Who am I fucking kidding, Bren?”

  Brendan Maxwell was to be the only person connected with the homeless community who would know what Thorne was doing. What he really was. Maxwell worked as a senior outreach officer for London Lift, an organization providing counseling and practical help for the city’s homeless, in particular those more entrenched rough sleepers who were over twenty-five.

  He was also Phil Hendricks’s boyfriend. Thorne had been privy to the ups and downs of their often-stormy relationship for the last few years and had come to know the tall, skinny Irishman pretty well. Aside from Hendricks himself, and those few officers on the investigation who had been briefed, Maxwell would be—for however long the operation lasted—the only real connection Thorne had between his two lives.

  “Don’t lose the key,” Maxwell said. “There aren’t any spares.”

  Thorne put the key into the front pocket of his rucksack. The locker, where he would leave spare clothes, was one of fifty or so provided for the use of clients at the Lift’s mixed-age day center off St. Martin’s Lane. The organization’s offices were on the top floor, with the lockers in the basement, along with washing and laundry facilities. On the ground floor were the advice counter, a seating area, and a no-frills café serving hot drinks and heavily subsidized meals.

  Maxwell walked over. He had short blond hair and wore a brown corduroy shirt tucked into jeans. He cast an amused eye over Thorne’s outfit, which he’d already referred to sarcastically as his “dosser costume.” The sweater and shoes had come from Oxfam and the black jeans were an old pair of Thorne’s own.

  The gray coat had belonged to his father.

  “There’s all sorts out there,” Maxwell said. His accent was heavy and the disgust was audible beneath the arch, jokey tone. “There isn’t really a look, you know? You could be wearing a three-piece suit and spats, but if you’ve got a can of Tennent’s Extra or a needle in your arm, you’ll fit right in.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  There was a scarred, metal rubbish bin mounted to the wall. Maxwell moved across and took out the stuffed, white bin liner. Began tying a knot in the top of it. “This is very bizarre…”

  “What?”

  “First thing I do, with a lot of the younger ones anyway, is give them a reality check. You know? They’re straight off the coach or they’ve hitched here from wherever and some of these kids really do think the place is paved with gold. I swear to God. It’s my job, very gently you understand, to point out to them how very wrong, how completely fucking stupid they are. It’s usually a waste of time, but even if they tell me to piss off, they find out themselves quickly enough.” He pointed toward a high, dirty window behind a mesh of black metal. “It�
�s dogshit and fucking despair holding the pavements together out there. A reality check?” He looked across at Thorne. “Not much point with you, is there?”

  “Not really.”

  Maxwell dropped the bin bag onto the floor. He reached into his back pocket for a new roll, tore one off. “Phil thinks you’re mental, by the way.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t say I disagree with him. Why all this De Niro shite?”

  “All this what?”

  “You know what I mean…”

  “What are you on about?” Thorne said. “I’ve got a mobile phone in my pocket and I’m wearing thermal underwear.”

  Maxwell smiled. “Fair play. You could still go a bit easier, though, spend the first couple of nights in a hostel.”

  “The men who were killed were all sleeping rough. They died outdoors.” Thorne caught the smell of hot food drifting down from the café. “Besides, if I’m going to do this, I might as well bloody do it.”

  Maxwell picked up the full bin bag and walked to the door. “Listen, I’m not having a go, Tom, and I’ll be around if you need any help, but don’t make any mistake about it. However much you think you’re doing this, you can always walk away.” He opened the door, then turned back into the room. “You can dirty yourself up and spend a bit of time kipping on cardboard, but you’ve got the option to cut and run any bloody time you feel like it. Anytime you like. Jump in a taxi back to your flat and your cowboy music.”

  Thorne was getting irritated, but had to smile. Cowboy music. That was one of Hendricks’s. “I’ll see you upstairs,” he said. “I’d better grab some food before I make a move.”

  Maxwell nodded and stepped out into the corridor. “Stew’s good…”

  It had seemed like as good a spot as any.