Lifeless

by Mark Billingham

  Holland could see by the look on Kitson’s face that she was in no mood to be messed around. “Let’s not waste any more time with this, all right? I’m going to stop saying ‘forgot to mention’ and ‘neglected to inform’ and I’m going to call it what it is: lying. You lied to us, and you withheld information that might have been important to a murder investigation.”

  Jago slapped her palms against her jeans and raised her voice. “They’re not the same thing. They’re fucking not. You tell me when I lied…”

  “What about the tattoos?”

  The skin around her mouth slackened suddenly, as if the ponytail had been keeping it taut and had suddenly been removed.

  “I haven’t done anything wrong.” She held Kitson’s stare, but her voice had lost all of its stridency.

  “You were asked on a number of occasions, by myself, by DS Holland, and by DC Stone during your telephone conversation on seventeen September, if you knew what the significance of the tattoos was. On each of those occasions you said that you did not.”

  “On each of those occasions I was hardly thinking straight, was I?”

  “You lied.”

  “No.”

  “You knew very well they were army tattoos.”

  “I never lied. I’ve already explained that the first time I was messed up. I’d just seen a dead body, for crying out loud, I’d been looking at some poor sod with most of his face kicked to shit. Then, later on, when he asked me about the tattoos on the phone, I was in a complete state, wasn’t I? Because I’d just found out that Chris had been murdered as well. How was I expected to think straight?” She shook her head, kept shaking it, but both Holland and Kitson could see immediately that she knew what she’d just said.

  “That’s a strange way of putting it, don’t you think, Susan? Your brother was the victim of a hit-and-run driver, wasn’t he? You’d been given no other information than that. You were told it was an accident. Yet you just said ‘Chris had been murdered as well.’ Like the first victim had been murdered…”

  Outside on the street a car was being revved up, and somewhere along the corridor a telephone was going unanswered.

  Kitson leaned forward. “Why did you lie to us?”

  It hadn’t taken very long. Susan Jago had been prepared, certainly, had been gearing herself up to front it out, but no amount of hard-faced posturing could mask the agony she felt inside. Once she started talking, it came quickly, like poison from a boil that’s been lanced.

  “I didn’t think it mattered, I swear I didn’t. It’s like I told that pathologist bloke in the car, I just thought Chris had gone walkabout—you know?—and that he’d come waltzing back when he was ready. So why would knowing what he’d done before matter to anyone except me and him? I just wanted to forget all of it. I managed to convince myself that I didn’t know much about his past and that it wasn’t hurting anybody to leave it like that.” She looked from Holland to Kitson and back again. “Then I found out he was dead, and I knew there were two of them. When I knew they’d both been murdered, I wanted to come clean about it all. I wanted to tell, honestly I did, but it was like I’d got so caught up in the lie that I couldn’t figure out a way to make it right again…”

  “Did you recognize the man you saw in the mortuary?” Kitson asked.

  She raised her eyes, every trace of bravado long gone. “I could really murder that fag now.”

  “Did you recognize him, Susan?”

  “Yes. He was in the crew with Chris. But on my children’s lives, I never knew his name. I just saw a photo of the four of them together once, that’s all.”

  “What crew?” Holland said.

  “Chris was a Tanky. He was in the Twelfth King’s Hussars. That’s a cavalry regiment—”

  Kitson raised a hand, needing to slow things down a little. “Four of them, you said. Why four?”

  “There’s four in a Challenger crew. That’s the tank Chris and his mates were on. It was the four of them that went out and got those tattoos done just before they were flown out. The blood groups and those letters, which is just a piss-take, by the way, because they all hated the Royal Tank Regiment. There was some stupid rivalry, because they thought the Royals were posh, and the Royals’ motto is ‘Fear Nought,’ right? So Chris and the others got their own mottos done, as a joke: S.O.F.A.—Scared Of Fuck All…”

  Holland was struggling to take all of it in, but he could sense its importance. The room seemed to constrict suddenly and grow warmer. It felt as though his ears were popping. “We’ve got plenty of time to get all this down, Susan. Can you just tell us why you wanted to keep it a secret?”

  Jago reached down and lifted her handbag onto her lap.

  “You can have that fag in a minute, Susan,” Kitson said.

  But it wasn’t a cigarette packet Jago took out. It was a videotape. She placed a hand flat on top of it; then, after a few seconds, she pushed it across the table.

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” she said. “Anything I can. But I will not watch it…”

  1991

  There are two groups of men, four in each…

  Now all of them are gathered together. Those who were previously tied up are sitting much closer together, with the others squashed in around them, squatting or stooping. Though only four of these eight men are dead, the entire group is momentarily still.

  Posed and posing.

  Behind this bizarre tableau, for the first time the hulking figure of the tank is visible. Its side and its muddy track, streaked with petrol rain, provide the perfect backdrop. It also offers something to lean the dead men against.

  After a few seconds we hear the voice from close by. Shouted this time. The words are just discernible above the relentless pop and spatter of the rain: “Put your arms around them…Give the fuckers a cuddle.”

  Two of the soldiers do as they’ve been told. They lean forward and each throws an arm around the shoulder of a corpse. The other two soldiers remain still, with their heads lowered.

  “I can’t see faces…Lift their heads up.”

  One of the soldiers is down on his haunches between two bodies, an arm now around each one. He looks across to one of those who has not moved. “A bit late to pussy out now.”

  After a few moments, the soldier who has been challenged stoops to grab the hair of the dead man and pull back his head. Close up, we see that the corpse’s eyes are half-closed and the jaw is hanging slack. Rain pours into the open mouth, spills from the side.

  “Uh-oh…losing one…”

  The body on the far right starts to tip to one side and slowly fall. The soldier behind, who has still not joined in, half reaches out a hand, then pulls it away at the last moment and allows the dead man to drop to the ground.

  “For fuck’s sake…”

  It isn’t clear at first. The rain and the shadows, the dark sand and hair make it hard to distinguish. Then, on the body of the fallen man, we see the patch that is wetter, blacker; high on the side of the head, and just starting to spread an inch or two across the sand.

  “Watch…”

  A soldier has pressed his face against that of a dead man. He raises a hand and wraps it around the neck. He swivels the head around, one way and then another.

  “Gottle of geer, gottle…geer…”

  His friend laughs, pulling off a glove. He leans across and presses a finger to the back of the corpse’s head. He looks at the stained fingertip, rubs it against his thumb for a second or two, then dabs it against the dead man’s forehead.

  A small red spot that starts to run.

  “That’s better. Want to make sure they let him into heaven.”

  The soldier who’d let the body drop stands suddenly and reaches over. He grabs the soldier who is still putting his glove back on and drags him to his feet. Screams into his face.

  “That’s Hindus, you ignorant prick. Not Muslims.”

  “All right…”

  “Not fucking Muslims!” He pushes him away
and the two soldiers stand and look at each other. The horizon is a glowing strip behind them.

  Then, the camera drifts away, and down.

  And white noise…

  SEVENTEEN

  Holland jabbed at the remote and stopped the tape.

  After something close to half a minute, during which nobody spoke, Holland got up and moved across to the television. He crouched down by the VCR and ejected the cassette.

  Brigstocke turned to the man sitting next to him. “What d’you reckon?”

  “I reckon it’s something worth killing for,” Thorne said. “Worth killing to keep hidden.”

  “It’s fucking horrible.” Holland stuffed the cassette back into a large Jiffy bag and sat down again. “That’s the fourth time I’ve seen it and I’m still glad I haven’t eaten anything today.”

  The three of them were sitting in beige armchairs, gathered around a coffee table in the TV room at the London Lift. Though he’d moaned initially, complaining that he’d be in the shit if Lawrence Healey ever found out, Brendan Maxwell had eventually agreed to open the place up for them out of hours. It was just after seven on a Thursday night. Nearly thirty-six hours since Susan Jago had handed over the videotape.

  “What about the sound?” Thorne asked. “You can’t make out a lot of what’s being said. One voice is completely distorted early on, when they’re doing that shit with the bacon.”

  Holland grimaced. “That’s really hideous…”

  “We’re sending it to the lab at Newlands Park,” Brigstocke said. “Having heard some of the things they’ve done with 999 recordings, I reckon they can enhance the dialogue for us. We might find out what everyone was saying.”

  “So what do we know?” Thorne asked.

  Holland took out a notebook, though he didn’t really need it. “It’s the first Gulf War. Chris Jago was posted there from Bremenhaven in northern Germany in October 1990. The date on the tape tells us that what we saw took place on February 26, 1991. As to exactly where—”

  “I’m not sure it really matters,” Brigstocke said.

  Thorne scratched at what had become a pretty decent beard. “What does Susan Jago say?”

  “She says her brother didn’t want to go along with any of it,” Holland said. “She says that he was the one at the end doing the shouting.”

  “Of course she does.”

  “It’s impossible to tell who’s who, so I doubt we’ll ever know.”

  “Like I said before, I’m not sure it really matters,” Brigstocke said.

  Thorne shook his head, let it drop back against his chair. “Nobody tried very hard to stop it. They were all involved on some level.”

  “We do know one of the others is our mystery man in Westminster Morgue.” Holland picked up his briefcase and took out a grainy ten-by-eight photograph: a still from the video showing the four British soldiers; the moment before one of them moved forward from the group and checked his gun; just before the killing began. Holland laid the photo on the table, tapped at it with a fingernail. “With a bit of luck, we’ll have names for all of them by this time tomorrow.”

  Brigstocke looked at Thorne. “Holland and Kitson are going to pay the Twelfth King’s Hussars a visit tomorrow.”

  “You’re going to Germany?” Thorne asked.

  Holland’s expression soured. “Bloody regiment got shifted back here five years ago, didn’t it? They’re based near Taunton now, so I get to go to Somerset instead. Shame. I could have done with a new overcoat.” Officers were given allowances of a few hundred pounds, usually in Marks & Spencer vouchers, if they were traveling to countries that would be warmer, or in this case cooler than they might be used to…

  “Nice to see you’ve still got your priorities sorted, Dave,” Thorne said.

  Holland stood and walked toward a varnished-pine bookcase in the corner. He laid a hand on top of the Jiffy bag as he passed the table. “God knows what they’re going to make of that, mind you.” He sank down to his haunches in front of the bookcase and peered through the locked glass doors at the rows of videotapes and DVDs inside.

  “It’s going to be interesting, all right,” Thorne said.

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “How are you going to play it?” Thorne looked across at Brigstocke and received a small shake of the head in return.

  “You’ve got some good stuff in here,” Holland said. “All the Scream movies. A lot of Jim Carrey stuff…”

  Thorne pointed to the Jiffy bag. “I think I’d rather watch that again.”

  They all laughed, but nobody’s heart was really in it. Least of all Thorne’s.

  “Why don’t you find us a caff, Dave?” Brigstocke said. “Bring us some teas back.”

  Thorne had eaten no more than Holland, but for different reasons. Now he wanted a variety of cakes and sandwiches with his tea, and in the end Holland had to write it all down. When he’d gone, Thorne turned to Brigstocke. “What was all that about?” He mimicked the strange shaking of the head that had 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 willin
g 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.