Lifeless

by Mark Billingham

  De-prioritized in terms of fucking manpower, maybe. In terms of money. Try telling the victim’s family that they’ve been de-prioritized…

  Holland knew that catching the man who was killing the ex-servicemen was the only acceptable outcome; that was their priority. He understood the decision not to reveal the videotape at this time. Still, he hoped when the time came, though some or all of those responsible would already be dead, that as much effort would go into investigating the murders of four Iraqi soldiers.

  Kitson stopped on her way out. “I’ll let you get back to it.”

  “Boy’s stuff,” Holland said.

  Brigstocke pursed his lips and nodded, mock serious; masking the bullshit with silliness. “Right. You wouldn’t be interested…”

  As she walked back toward the incident room, Yvonne Kitson tried to keep the irritation in check. She’d had enough of this crap the year before. When her private life had become the stuff of pub chat and watercooler gossip.

  She’d been as rattled as anybody else by Brigstocke’s briefing that morning. Everyone had been talking since they’d seen it in the paper, of course, but hearing it from the DCI was something else. She knew very well that undercover operations could succeed only through secrecy, but still she’d felt as a DI that she could have been taken into confidence. Brought within the inner circle.

  She hadn’t let Brigstocke or anyone else see how she was feeling, though. That was something else she’d learned the previous year. When Brigstocke had asked how everyone had taken it, she’d lied.

  But hopefully she’d done so just a little better than he and Holland just had.

  She walked back into a crowded and bustling incident room, wondering why it was that people whose job it was to find the truth lied like such rank amateurs.

  He only came into the West End for work. At other times he couldn’t see any point in it. In terms of shopping or entertainment, you could get everything you needed locally, and he preferred not to venture too far from where he was staying. It wasn’t that he was a long way away; it wasn’t too much of a slog to get into town or anything like that. Central London just wore him out. Once he’d returned home, and the buzz of the job he’d been doing had worn off, he was left ragged and wrung out, with a dull ache, as if a muscle he’d been working on was complaining at the effort.

  The West End was greedy.

  Everywhere your eyes fell, the place had its scabby hand out in one way or another, from sandwich boards to neon signs and a hundred foreign students with a thousand pointless leaflets. Everyone wanted something, and not just those poor, useless buggers with nowhere else to go. All of them: the people working in shops and behind fast-food counters and the ones in cars and those walking fast along the pavement, tutting and growling, looking like they were ready to kill someone if their progress was halted for even one second. They all wanted something—your money, or your time, or your fucking attention—and if you wanted to make absolutely sure they got nothing, that no part of you was touched, it was crucial to stay on top of your game.

  He wandered through the streets around Soho and Covent Garden, moving quickly between those places he needed to visit. There was a list of them in his pocket, and he’d worked through most of it already. He turned from Dean Street on to Old Compton Street, heading toward Piccadilly. Past the cruisers and the coked-up media wankers. Past a wild-haired wino, breathing heavily and scowling at the world from the doorway of a fetish-wear boutique.

  As he walked he realized where that dull ache came from. It was the effort of staying self-contained that drained you; of keeping yourself impervious to the offers and the pleas; to the promises of pleasure of one sort or another. It was as though he’d been forced to spend the day permanently clenched, and he knew that when he got home he’d need to spend long hours flicking through the channels or working at the controls of the PlayStation. Sleep wouldn’t come until the knots had fallen out.

  He wasn’t complaining. You went where the job demanded, but still, he was pleased that he’d been able to define what it was that was niggling him. He’d write it down somewhere when he got back. All that stuff about greed…

  At least it was an appropriate place to be, he thought. Considering why he was there in the first place. After all, if one idiot hadn’t got greedy, none of it would ever have been necessary. They would all still be alive. The driver and the gunner and…

  He waited until the man who was walking straight toward him had stepped aside before pulling the list from his pocket and checking the next address.

  By the time it was dark he’d be well away, and he’d made an early start so as to be sure of it. He’d been around the West End late on a Saturday night before and it wasn’t something he was desperate to repeat unless he had to. That was when the fights broke out and the gutter seemed as good a place to lie down as any; when all the alleyways ran with piss and every hidey-hole contained some moron throwing up or sleeping off the excesses.

  On Saturday night you couldn’t tell who was homeless and who wasn’t.

  The young blond-haired woman was still unhappy with the background. She waved her hand, urging her subject to move just a little farther to the right…

  There was no shortage of photo opportunities in London. The gasometers of King’s Cross were perfect for the seriously arty, as were the estates of Tower Hamlets and Tottenham for a certain sort of documentary maker. Snap-happy tourists, of course, were spoiled for choice. The Americans and the Japanese on their European tours, the Geordies and the Jocks down for the weekend; they could all point their cameras just about anywhere, and few landmarks were more popular than Eros. Visitors to Piccadilly Circus clicked away oblivious, thinking that the figure atop the memorial fountain was the God of Love, and equally misguided about many of those who gathered around the steps of the monument. The statue was actually meant to be the Angel of Christian Charity, and a number of those within range of his bow were among the city’s lost: runaways, junkies, and rent boys for whom a little Christian charity was long overdue.

  “No…further…keep moving…”

  The blonde spoke with a thick Scandinavian accent and kept waving from behind the camera, eager to keep the trio of scarred and scruffy-looking wasters out of her shot. Her boyfriend was growing increasingly impatient, unaware of the three figures on the steps directly behind him.

  Spike and Caroline were tucking hungrily into greasy pizza slices while Thorne sat engrossed in what was happening on the far side of the circus. He watched as a big man in an unfamiliar blue uniform leaned down to talk to a beggar outside Burger King. There was some head shaking before the man on the ground snatched up his blanket and stalked away.

  “Who’s that?” Thorne nodded toward the man in the uniform.

  Spike stood up and peered across the traffic. “PCP,” he said.

  “Piccadilly Circus Partnership.” Caroline shoved the last bit of pizza into her mouth and wiped her fingers on the back of her jeans. “A bunch of local businesses pay for a few little fucking Hitlers to keep the streets clean. Someone told me they’re in radio contact with the police and there’s a huge control room full of CCTV screens in the Trocadero.” She pointed toward the huge entertainment complex on Coventry Street. “They’re supposed to be on the lookout for all sorts of stuff. Cracked paving stones, blocked drains, or whatever…”

  “Yeah, right.” Spike was lighting a roll-up. “These fuckers think some things smell a damn sight worse than that, like.”

  Thorne watched the man in the blue uniform walking slowly across the zebra crossing toward Tower Records. There were plenty of these cut-price coppers to be seen around the West End, differentiated—to any but the trained eye—only by the colored fluorescent strips across their uniforms and peaked caps. Aside from the PCP goons, there were council-appointed city wardens patrolling the streets in pairs. Then there were the Met’s own community support officers. The CSOs had the power to detain rather than arrest, and despite the publicity that had
surrounded their introduction a few years previously, they were seen—not least by real police officers—as something of a joke.

  “Look at that cocky sod,” Caroline said. “I bet he goes home and gets his wife to piss on him…”

  In general terms at least, Thorne shared Caroline’s suspicions. He thought that those who wanted to be full-time police officers were dodgy enough. Anyone who couldn’t manage that, but still had some overwhelming desire to pull on a uniform and strut around trying to keep the streets clean, almost certainly needed watching.

  Spike tried to blow smoke rings, but the breeze pulled them apart. “Or he makes her dress up as a beggar and handcuffs her to the bed.”

  Caroline laughed. “With a sign saying ‘Homeless and Horny’…”

  “Dirty bastard…”

  Thorne thought about the “policeman” that Mannion and others had mentioned. The one who was supposed to have been seen asking questions prior to the first killing. Was it possible that this man had been one of these ancillary officers? With a few drinks inside you, wouldn’t one uniform look much the same as another on a dark night? He thought it was unlikely. They didn’t know for sure that the officer described had even been uniformed, but if he had, Thorne guessed that most of those sleeping rough around the West End, many of them living on the fringes of one law or another, would know a genuine copper when they saw one.

  He turned, and watched a real enough police officer marshaling the queue that was moving slowly into a matinee at the Criterion. He decided that thinking out loud could do no harm.

  “Do you reckon this killer might be a copper?”

  Spike sat down again. The smoke from his cigarette moved quickly across Thorne’s face. “Fuck knows. It’s what a lot of people think.” He turned to Caroline. “Caz thinks he’s a copper, don’t you?”

  “Got every chance,” she said. “That’s why they’ve sent this undercover copper in to catch him. It’s like in films, when they talk to convicted killers to find out what the one they’re after is thinking. It-takes-one-to-know-one kind of thing…”

  Thorne nodded, thinking that he didn’t understand what went on in his own head, let alone anybody else’s.

  “I wouldn’t fancy doing it,” Spike said. “Sleeping on the street if you didn’t have to, with a killer knocking around.”

  Caroline leaned across and touched Thorne’s face. The graze on his forehead had scabbed over and the bruises were yellowing nicely, their edges indistinct. “This undercover bloke’ll be all right,” she said. “If he’s as handy with his fists as the coppers that did this, I don’t think he’s got much to worry about.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Where’ve you been?” Holland asked. He stepped into a shop doorway to escape the noise of the traffic.

  “Sorry. I only just got your message. I fancied a lie-in…”

  “Where are you?”

  “Hang on…I can’t see a street sign. I’m somewhere round the back of the National Gallery.”

  “I was looking for you at the theater.”

  “That’s where I normally am.”

  “I know. I went in to the London Lift when you didn’t return the call and that’s where Brendan said you’d be.”

  “I moved,” Thorne said.

  Holland grunted, relieved that Thorne was okay but pissed off that he’d spent all morning running around like a blue-arsed fly, trying to find him. “We’ve had a bit of luck,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Where can we meet?”

  The three of them had walked the length of Oxford Street before Spike and Caroline had gone down into the subways beneath Marble Arch to catch up on some sleep. Thorne had crossed the road into Hyde Park and sat down on a bench near one of the cafés at Speakers’ Corner.

  This triangle at the northeast corner of the park should have been a pleasant enough place to sit at this time of year. Even if the verge adjoining the bridle path had been freshly churned into mud, elsewhere the autumn crocuses were in full bloom, bright and lively. The railed-in lawns were still lush, and despite the plastic bags that danced from many of the branches, the leaves provided plenty more color a little higher up—green, and bronze, and butter yellow on the ash trees.

  Thorne knew that twenty-four hours earlier, as on every Sunday morning, the political pundits, the zealots, and the nutcases would have been out in force. They’d have been up on their soapboxes, shouting about freedom and enlightenment, and aliens sending messages through their toasters, each one honoring the tradition of free speech that had been guaranteed on this spot by act of Parliament a hundred and twenty-five years before. Halfway through this bleak Monday, freezing his tits off and with a headache just starting to kick in, Thorne found it far easier to picture the gallows at Tyburn, which had stood on the same spot for centuries before that. It was less effort to imagine the creak of a body swinging—of twenty-four at one time from the Triple Tree—and the blood-thirsty cries of the crowd than to conjure the voices of debate and discussion.

  Holland dropped down onto the bench next to him and nodded toward the corner. A semicircle of pin oaks had been planted on its farthest boundary, fiery red against the off-white brickwork on the far side of Park Lane. “What would you want to get off your chest, then?”

  “Eh?”

  “If you had a crowd, and you could talk about anything you liked…”

  It was one of the main reasons why Thorne enjoyed having Holland around; why Thorne had made himself unpopular with anyone who’d stepped, however briefly, into the former DC’s shoes. Holland had the pleasing knack of being able to punch through the hard shell of a black mood with one glib comment or seemingly innocent inquiry; with a stupid question in too cheery a voice. There were occasions, if Thorne was feeling particularly arsey, when he put this down to insensitivity on Holland’s part, but more frequently he saw it to be the exact opposite.

  “God knows,” Thorne said. “The way things are going, I think I’ll end up as one of the toasters-and-aliens brigade.”

  “Sorry?”

  Thorne shook his head. It didn’t matter. “What about you?”

  “Where d’you want to start? I’d try to win the crowd over to the idea that all children should be taken into care between the ages of one and sixteen. I’d ask them to support my campaign for police paternity leave to be extended to, say, five years, and to include free alcohol and Caribbean holidays. I’d ask if any of them wanted to sleep with me…”

  “Things a bit sticky at home?”

  “How much room is there in your doorway?”

  Thorne did his best to smile, and leaned back on the bench. He watched a pair of squirrels chase each other around a litter bin; saw a fat magpie hop lazily away as one of them ran at it.

  Holland took off his gloves as he reached down to pull something from his briefcase. “I’m only joking,” he said.

  It was a magazine. Glossy, with a picture of a grimfaced soldier on the front: sand all around and in sandbags at his feet; sheets of dust rising black behind him. In bold red lettering across the top: glorious.

  “It’s the regimental magazine,” Holland said. “That’s their nickname: the ‘Glory Boys’ or the ‘Glorious Twelfth.’ A woman from their HQ sent it. She’s the assistant adjutant…”

  “She sent it to you?”

  “Just arrived out of the blue. It’s the Spring 1991 issue.”

  Thorne threw him a sideways look as he began to flick through the magazine.

  “I’m sure she was genuinely trying to help.” Holland tried to summon a cocky grin, but blushed despite himself. “But I think she did take a shine to me…”

  “It’s bloody typical,” Thorne said. “The finest detectives on the force applying themselves twenty-four hours a day, and we get a break because some woman, who’s clearly mad or desperate, thinks you’ve got a nice arse.”

  The magazine was a mixture of regimental news and notices. There were letters, quizzes, and book reviews; advertisements f
or modeling kits, financial services, and shooting weekends. There were obituaries for those who had long since left the regiment and for some who had died more recently, while on active service.

  About half the magazine was taken up by articles and photographs. All these were the work of serving soldiers, and the majority of them concerned what had, in spring 1991, been the very recent conflict in the Gulf: “Christmas in Kuwait”; “Desert Shield—A Trooper’s Perspective”; “Into the Storm.”

  “That’s the one,” Holland said. He leaned across and pointed to where a page had been marked by a piece of paper. “That’s the page she wanted us to see.”

  Thorne unfolded the bookmark. It was headed with the regimental crest and Latin motto. The message was handwritten in blue ink: Thought this would be a shot in the dark, but I think we struck lucky. The photograph is what you’ll probably be most interested in. Lt. Sarah Cheshire.

  “No kiss?” Thorne asked.

  “I’m not listening,” Holland said. He pointed to a black-and-white photo that took up half a page of the magazine. “Our four men are somewhere among that lot…”

  Two dozen or so soldiers had posed for the camera, arranged in front of, around, and in many cases on top of three battle tanks. They all wore desert camouflage and berets. Each carried a rifle and no more than a few of them were smiling. There was a caption to the right of the picture: D Troop, 2nd Sabre Squadron. Bremenhaven. October 1990.