Lifeless

by Mark Billingham

  “What makes you say that?” Thorne asked.

  “Nothing particularly. It’s the case I’d presumed you were working on, bearing in mind that we met after the press conference.”

  It was Thorne’s turn to be professional: “I’m sure you understand that I can’t comment on an active investigation.”

  “Of course. But I’m seriously intrigued…”

  Ward laughed then, and so did Thorne.

  “While you were out in the Gulf, did you ever hear anything about war crimes or atrocities?”

  “Atrocities?”

  “On our side…”

  Another pause.

  “There was some stuff that came out a few years ago,” Ward said. “In an American magazine—The New Yorker, I think. There was an incident, an alleged incident, on the road from Kuwait to Basra a few days after the cease-fire, when retreating Iraqi columns were attacked by Apaches and tanks. They called it the Battle of Rumailah, but it was just a massacre, by all accounts. A ‘turkey shoot,’ the magazine said. There were civilians in trucks, there was supposedly a bus filled with schoolkids…”

  “Jesus…”

  “There was another one just before the cease-fire, when four hundred Iraqi troops surrendered to a U.S. scout platoon. Some of them were wounded, bandaged up, in clearly marked hospital trucks. They were gathered together, fed and what have you, then, according to reports, another unit turned up in Bradley Armored Vehicles and just shot the lot of them. Opened up with machine guns. This is supposedly based on evidence given by soldiers who were there at the time, but having said all that, I don’t think anybody’s ever been prosecuted.”

  Thorne moved into sunlight again. He looked up as a jet roared overhead. From where he was standing, the plane appeared and disappeared between the tower blocks before emerging into a muddy sky and banking toward City Airport.

  “What about U.K. troops?” Thorne asked.

  “In terms of war crimes, you mean?”

  “Did you ever hear anything?”

  “Stuff goes on,” Ward said. “It always does. Some of the troops were based in Dubai for a lot of the time. I was there myself later on. You could buy sets of photos in corner shops, you know? Soldiers posing with bodies; with arms and legs. Trophies…”

  “But you were never aware of any specific incidents?”

  Ward suddenly sounded a little wary. There was an amused caution in his voice, as if Thorne had changed the steps to the dance they were performing. “I think you’re going to have to be a bit more specific yourself…”

  Thorne had known he might have to venture into this kind of territory, and he wondered for a second or two if it was worth plunging into the murk. He hardly knew Alan Ward, and couldn’t be certain that anything valuable would be gained from talking to him.

  But he was equally unsure there was a great deal to lose…

  “Did you ever hear of anything involving a British tank crew?” Thorne said. While he waited Thorne watched a couple on a walkway ahead of him. They seemed to be arguing.

  When Ward finally answered, his voice was close to a whisper, and Thorne could hear the excitement in it.

  “What have you found?”

  “Like I said before, I can’t—”

  “Okay, I get it. Look, there were one or two rumors about something. No more than that, as far as I can remember.”

  “About a tank crew?”

  “Yeah…I think so.”

  “So, here’s the thing,” Thorne said. “If someone else was involved, someone apart from the four men in a tank crew, who might it be?” He glanced up again. The couple on the walkway were now embracing.

  “I’m not with you,” Ward said. “It could be virtually anybody. You’re not really giving me a great deal to go on.”

  “Another individual. A fifth man, present when this incident took place.”

  “A fifth soldier, you mean?”

  “I suppose so…”

  “Where precisely are we talking about?”

  “I don’t really know. We have to presume it’s somewhere off the beaten track.”

  “Everywhere was off the beaten track, mate,” Ward said. “You just mean that geographically, the incident happened in isolation, right?”

  That much, Thorne could be fairly certain of. “Yes.”

  “So we’re talking about someone with access to a vehicle, then. An officer, perhaps?”

  Perhaps, thought Thorne. They were certainly talking about someone who’d had no problem telling the four crewmen what to do. Someone whose orders had been followed.

  Perhaps…

  It was as positive as they were going to get.

  “I have to make a small professional plea at this point,” Ward said. “Can you make sure I’m first in line if this ever comes out?”

  Thorne was slightly nonplussed. Ward was clearly every bit as ambitious as he was sharp. Still, bearing in mind that Thorne had called him, it was a reasonable enough request. “I’m not sure I’ll have a lot of say in it, to be honest…”

  “This is what I do, Tom. Seriously, if there does come a time when whatever this is can be made public, I hope to hell you’ll come to me. Like I said before, I’m seriously bloody intrigued.”

  “Right…”

  “Whenever you like, Tom. And it goes without saying that my sources always remain confidential. No names, no pack drill.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “And there are perks, of course.”

  “Are there?”

  “Do you want to see the game next week or not?”

  Thorne could think of nothing he’d like more. Cursing bad luck and worse timing, he explained to Ward that, much as he’d love the tickets, he’d be far too busy to use them.

  Russell Brigstocke viewed the prospect of a conversation with Steve Norman in much the same way as a trip to the dentist: it was something necessary but usually unpleasant. You could put it off and put it off, but you always had to go through with the bloody thing in the end.

  And you had to wash your mouth out afterward…

  The nature of the investigation meant Brigstocke had been forced to endure a good deal more contact with the Press Office than would normally have been the case. The media had been all over them since Jesmond’s first press conference, and Norman—what-ever anyone thought of him personally—had proved extremely adept at his job. He’d kept the media’s appetite for information sated, and had called in favors from reporters when they were needed. And one was very definitely needed now.

  Using the press had brought them, circuitously, to Chris Jago. Now, as the hunt for Ryan Eales ran out of steam, using it again might be the team’s last hope of a result. They had already run a fifteen-year-old picture of Eales in the Standard—inside the issue with the photo of Terry Turner on the front—describing the soldier as someone whom “the police would very much like to talk to in connection with…”

  The calls were coming in, but they needed more, and they needed them faster.

  “I think I can swing Crimewatch again,” Norman had said.

  “Tonight?”

  Over the phone, the senior press officer’s voice had sounded even more nasal, more irritating, than it did face-to-face. “This is still a major inquiry, Russell, so I think it should be doable. They’ll bump something else off until next week…”

  They’d broadcast a reconstruction of Paddy Hayes’s killing on the show—which BBC1 put out live on a Friday evening—a month or so before, and there had been a further appeal for information after Robert Asker’s murder. In itself, this had gone down as something of a coup. The program makers were notoriously squeamish, with a distaste for anything overtly graphic. The sensitivities of the viewers had to be their primary concern. Murder was acceptable, but only if it was tastefully done, and not too scary.

  Taking the case onto such a show was usually a last resort, but most senior officers still considered it worth doing. It was television, so when they were asked for help, peopl
e reacted in much the same way as they would to a phone-in question on a quiz show: the answer might not be the right one, but there was always a healthy response.

  “So what do we think?”

  “That’s great, Steve,” Brigstocke had said. “Thanks.” The platitude had screamed inside his skull like the squeal of a dentist’s drill.

  “Just a quick update, yes? Something in the ‘urgently need to trace’ roundup toward the end of the show.”

  “That’s all we need.”

  “We’ll get Eales’s picture in vision for as long as possible. Wait for the phone lines to light up.”

  “Let’s hope so…”

  “Well, even if nothing concrete comes of it, it’s as much about being seen to do something a lot of the time, right?”

  Brigstocke had been desperate to hang up by this point. To rinse and spit. “I’d better go and talk to the chief superintendent,” he’d said. “We probably need to put our heads together…”

  “How clean is your suit?” Norman had asked.

  Brigstocke had spoken to Trevor Jesmond after that, talked about tone and message and budget. Then he’d phoned home and asked his wife to set the video. Now he stepped into the incident room and called for hush. The TV appeal would generate a lot of calls. A fair few nutters would come crawling out of the woodwork, but they would all have to be listened to, their information transcribed as if it were the Word of God, and every lead, no matter how iffy it sounded, would need chasing up.

  “Usual good news, bad news routine,” he said. “Most of you can forget about your weekend. Fishing, football, feet up, trip to B and Q with the missus. Not going to happen…”

  A voice from the back of the room: “Is this the good news or the bad news?”

  Brigstocke shouted above the laughter. “But the overtime’s been approved…”

  Thorne felt happier, more sure of himself and his surroundings, as the noise of traffic began to grow louder; as people moved around him in all directions and he could taste the fumes. Moving away from the Barbican’s eerie sprawl, he walked up what had once been Grub Street, and thought about his conversation with a man whose profession, in its worst excesses, had come to be associated with the name.

  There’d been no thunderbolts of insight, of course; nothing to quicken the pulse overmuch. But there was enough to think about. Thorne had already considered the possibility that the man behind the video camera had been an officer. It was a reasonable enough supposition, but it was still interesting to hear it from Ward; to have the notion validated by someone who’d actually been there. There was no room for more than four men in a Challenger tank. The fifth man had to have got there under his own steam. If Brigstocke could eke any more information out of the army, it might be worth asking which ranks would have routinely had access to vehicles back then.

  And there was something else to interest the DCI: There were one or two rumors about something…

  If rumors of an atrocity had reached the press at the time, then it was safe to assume that the army would have been fully aware of them. Thorne felt pretty sure that they were every bit as aware fifteen years on. If the army knew at least something of what might have gone on on February 26, 1991, that would certainly explain the call from the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police.

  He would enjoy telling Russell Brigstocke that he wasn’t completely paranoid…

  The light changed on the pavement ahead of him, and Thorne looked up to see the sky darkening rapidly. He watched a ragged finger of cloud point its way behind a glass high-rise on Farringdon Road, and he followed it back toward the West End.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Good of you to have made an effort,” Thorne said.

  “Eh?”

  Thorne looked over at Hendricks, straight-faced. “The dosser’s outfit…”

  “Cheeky fucker.”

  “Honestly, it’s nice of you to try and blend in. Maybe you should knock all this medical stuff on the head and try working undercover yourself. You’ve obviously got a gift.”

  “I’m glad one of us has,” Hendricks said.

  Save for the metallic aftertaste of bargain burgers, they might have been relaxing over a takeaway from the Bengal Lancer. Were it not for the rain, and the view of huddled bin bags, they might have been watching TV in Thorne’s front room; arguing about football like a grossly unfit Gary Lineker and a shaven-headed, multipierced Alan Hansen.

  As it was, they were leaning against a wall on Great Queen Street, beneath a covered walkway that ran alongside the Freemasons’ Hall. They traded digs and shared silences, and drank the beer Hendricks had brought with him.

  Hendricks tapped his beer can against the building, the frontage of which was decorated with Masonic symbols. “Probably a fair few coppers hang about in there, don’t you reckon? Pissing about with goatskin aprons and rolling up their trousers…”

  “Talking of which, did you see Brigstocke on the box earlier?”

  “Is he a Mason?”

  Thorne shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me. I know Jesmond is…”

  “Brigstocke came across very well I thought,” Hendricks said. “Relaxed, you know? He’s obviously in charge, but he looks friendly. You want to do whatever you can to help him.”

  “He’s good at all that stuff. He’s been on courses.”

  “I don’t know what the response has been like.”

  “Pretty good, I think,” Thorne said.

  Holland had called Thorne within an hour of the broadcast. The program had shown the original photo of Ryan Eales, together with a digitally aged image of the soldier’s face, to give Crimewatch viewers an idea of what he might look like so many years on. Calls had begun coming in immediately.

  “I wonder if the killer was watching,” Hendricks said. “Maybe by showing that picture of how Eales might look now, we’re helping him.”

  “I shouldn’t worry. He hasn’t needed anybody’s help so far.”

  Hendricks grunted his agreement and took a drink. “I was thinking about the tape…Do you reckon Hadingham had it with him when he was killed?”

  “Definitely,” Thorne said. “That tape was Hadingham’s leverage. He wouldn’t have let it out of his sight. The killer took it after he’d forced pills down the poor bastard’s throat; and I think he took Bonser’s, too, after he’d kicked him to death. It certainly never showed up in any of his belongings or with any of his family after we’d identified him.”

  “And the only reason he never got Jago’s was that he’d left it with his sister.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that maybe Chris Jago wanted to leave that part of his life behind, you know?” Hendricks pressed on, though Thorne was already starting to shake his head. “Perhaps Susan Jago wasn’t bullshitting. Perhaps her brother was the one who wanted nothing to do with what happened; the one who was arguing with the others.”

  It may or may not have been true, but Thorne wasn’t sure it made any difference. “They each took a copy of that tape, Phil, each of them, because no matter who did the shooting, they were all part of it. The fact that they all had the tape was the insurance. It’s what kept all of them quiet.”

  “Until Hadingham broke rank, and it got all of them killed.”

  “Right.” Thorne held up his can, swilled the last of the beer around in the bottom as though it were fine brandy in a crystal snifter. “And we can only presume that Ryan Eales has got the last copy…”

  Nothing but the occasional car or pedestrian passed them in either direction. Those on foot moved quicker than normal while the cars drifted, sluggish as hearses, through the rain. The two of them were sitting close enough to hear the rumble and hiss of the traffic on Kingsway, still heavy in the early hours of Saturday morning; vehicles moving south toward Aldwych and the river, or north toward Holborn, Bloomsbury, and beyond.

  “So, what are you going to do about Spike and his girlfriend?” Hendricks asked.

  Thorne had already to
ld Hendricks that he was worried about them; that he still hadn’t seen either of them since Terry T had been killed. He’d asked around and had found out nothing that he hadn’t known already. Spike and One-Day Caroline had both been very upset by Terry’s death. It had hit them hard, Holy Joe had said. A strange and morbid thought had crossed Thorne’s mind then. Would it have hit them as hard if it had been him that had been killed?

  “I’ll just have to wait for them to turn up,” Thorne said.

  “I’m sure they will.”

  Thorne knew that they would, but he also knew just how addicts could react when bad things happened, things that disturbed their routine or threw them off-kilter. He could only hope that when Spike and Caroline did show up, it wasn’t as two more names on a long list of drug fatalities.

  You do me first, yeah? Piss off, I’ll do myself, then I’ll do you.

  Vinegar and plastic lemons and one dose too many, in a box that looked enough like a coffin to begin with…

  “Tom?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I said, ‘I’m sure they will.’”

  Thorne looked up and smiled. “I know.”

  “It’s…impressive that people in their situation can be so affected by losing someone, you know?” The beer was starting to make itself heard in Hendricks’s voice. “That these relationships can run so deep, I mean. Brendan’s always on about this, but I could never really see it until these murders started. How the homeless are a community.”

  “Brendan’s right,” Thorne said. “A small and very fucking weird one, that’s for sure, but a community same as any other.”

  “Will it survive this, d’you think? I mean, I know that people are supposed to bond during times of adversity…”

  “It’s the adversity that glues everyone together in the first place.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “They’ll get through this.” As he spoke Thorne felt a certainty that would not have been there a few weeks before. He pictured the faces of those he’d met since he’d been on the streets. He’d seen shame sometimes, and anger, in those faces. He’d seen disease and despair and a hunger for any number of things that could be dangerous to be around. But he’d also seen resilience, or at least the strength that can come through resignation. “A lot of these people are being killed every day,” he said. “Little by little…”