Lifeless

by Mark Billingham

  “More than a few, mate…”

  “Don’t try to be clever.” It was a simple directive. Spoken quietly, with the cold confidence that comes from being used to having such instructions followed.

  “Look…I was fucked off with him,” Spike said. “For bullshitting me all that time. For making me and my girlfriend and all the rest of us look like idiots. It was a good way to get my own back.”

  The man looked unconvinced. “It was a good way to make some money.”

  “Yeah, all right. ’Course it was. Obviously, after what he told me, I knew that the tape was valuable. That you’d probably pay a fair bit to get it back. When he said he had the tape on him, I started to think about it, you know? I was thinking about a shedload of smack and that. And a flat for me and my girlfriend.” Spike grinned, bounced a fist against his leg, as he thought about those things again. “She wants us to get a place together, you know?”

  “You just took it?”

  “When he was asleep, I grabbed his stuff and fucked off. I know he’s looking for me, but I’m pretty good at keeping out of people’s way, you know?”

  “He said this was the only copy?”

  Spike widened his eyes. “Thorne’s fucking mental. I told you. I reckon being on the street has made him go funny, made him see things a bit twisted, like. He more or less nicked it, from what he was saying. Got some other copper he knew to hand it over to him on the quiet.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Don’t ask me. He was ranting about showing it to somebody. About using it for something.”

  The man seemed to think about this.

  “Listen,” Spike said. “I don’t really want to know about any of it, all right? Like you said, I’m just doing this for the money.”

  “Now, that I do understand,” the man said. “It’s what started all this in the first place.”

  Spike lifted a sleeve and rubbed the sweat away. “Starts everything, mate. Only some of us need it a bit more than others…”

  The man peered at Spike with curiosity and disgust, as though the wreckage of an accident had been taken away and he was staring at a bloodstain on the road. “My good fortune in this case,” he said.

  Spike reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out a plastic carrier bag, and wrapped it around whatever was inside. “Tape’s in here,” he said.

  The man made no move to take it. “You know that if you’re fucking me about, I’ll find you,” he said. “However good you think you are at keeping out of people’s way. I’ll pay someone to find you.”

  “Thorne told me what’s on here.” Spike shook the package. The tape rattled inside. “I haven’t watched it, but I know what you did. I know what happened back then, and what happened later on with cars and tablets and with army boots, so I know what you’re capable of.” He looked across at the man and held his stare. “I’m a junkie, and a liar, and a fucking thief. But I’m not stupid…”

  The man seemed impressed by this. When his hand came out of his pocket it was holding a bulging, brown A3 envelope.

  “How do we do this, then?” Spike held out the plastic bag at arm’s length. It shook in his hand. He dropped the arm and took a breath; tried to sound casual. “You want me to chuck it over or what?”

  The man stepped forward suddenly, and kept coming as Spike moved backward away from him. When Spike was against the wall, the man gently lifted the package from his hand. Six inches taller than Spike, he looked down and pressed the envelope against the boy’s chest. “Quite a bit in here,” he said. “Quite a lot of shit to put in your arm…”

  The man’s eyes swiveled in an instant to the cardboard box and at the same moment he took a step back. At the sudden noise; at the movement…

  A week before, back at the Lift, when they’d been playing pool and talking about how it might work, this had been the moment that had caused Spike to laugh out loud. Back before Thorne had gone to Brigstocke or Brigstocke to Jesmond. Before Jesmond had gone higher to wherever the buck stopped. This had been what they’d called the “rat” moment.

  “He’ll probably think it’s a rat,” Spike had said. “A fucking big one, like. He’ll probably shit himself…”

  The man’s reaction when Thorne appeared from inside the box—sitting and then standing up in one smooth movement—was less dramatic than Spike had predicted, but Thorne could certainly see that he’d sprung a powerful surprise. “I’m guessing those football tickets are out of the question now,” he said.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Alan Ward nudged his glasses, then reached to grab a handful of hair at the back of his head, as if that might be the only way to stop himself shaking it. He’d carried on moving backward as the sides and lid of the box had burst outward and upward, and now he stared at Thorne and Spike across the eight or so feet that separated one wall of the tunnel from the other.

  Thorne glanced to his left. “All right?”

  Spike nodded, without taking his eyes off Ward.

  “This is…interesting,” Ward said, finally. He looked both ways along the length of the tunnel.

  “No point in going anywhere,” Thorne said.

  “Because…?”

  “Because there are police officers at every exit. Why did you think it was so quiet down here tonight?”

  “Stupid bastard,” Spike said.

  The slow shake of Ward’s head became a nod of acceptance, and as Thorne watched, an excitement of sorts came into the journalist’s eyes. Though he was clearly anxious—the muscles in his face and neck singing with it—there was also a calmness in his voice and in his manner, as though he were somehow relaxed by the tension.

  He glared at Spike. “That little fucker wired up, is he?”

  Spike just smiled.

  “Or have you got something set up in the box?”

  Thorne nodded up at the roof of the tunnel, toward one of the small, metal PA speakers that was now more or less directly above Ward’s head. “The mike’s in there,” he said. “And the camera. Seemed appropriate to get it all on film as well.”

  “You haven’t got anything.”

  “You know we’ve got plenty…”

  Ward cocked his head as if he were weighing it up. Then he casually dropped the package he was carrying to the ground and began to stamp on it. The noise, as the tape’s plastic housing first cracked and then shattered, echoed back along the tunnel from left and right.

  Thorne waited for a couple of seconds. “Well done,” he said. “You’ve just stomped the shit out of a Jim Carrey movie.”

  “I don’t believe you…”

  “Not that we couldn’t have tied you to these latest killings without the tape anyway, but did you really think we’d only have one copy?”

  Ward turned angrily to Spike.

  “Since when do junkies tell the truth?” Spike asked.

  Ward’s unsettling calmness had all but vanished now. Thorne was aware only of the adrenaline, of a readiness, in the man opposite him. And something else at the furthest edge of the rush: Ward’s barely concealed fury at the hopelessness of his situation.

  There was nothing practical to be gained by it, but still there were many reasons why Thorne felt the need to push and to bait. To glory, and to let Ward see him glory at his impotence.

  “So, lucky or unlucky, then?” Thorne said. “The day you came across that tank crew. What d’you reckon, Alan?”

  Ward seemed to find the question funny. Asked one in return: “For me or those Iraqis?”

  Thorne answered with a look.

  “Lucky for me, definitely,” Ward said. “Very lucky. And you can make your own luck up to a point, but it’s what you do with it that makes the difference.”

  “What were you doing there?” Thorne asked.

  “I was driving around, monitoring radio transmissions, and I heard Callsign 40 radio through that they’d thrown a track.” Ward leaned back against the wall and looked hard at Thorne. This wasn’t reminiscence. It was edu
cation. “I heard REME telling them that the engineers couldn’t get out there for a couple of hours, and I was nearby, so I thought I’d head across and see what was happening. By the time I’d got there, the men in the Iraqi tank had just driven up and surrendered. Popped their lids waving fucking white flags…”

  “Very stupid of them.”

  “See, I had my nice bit of luck right there, and ordinarily that’s all it would have been. If all I’d wanted was to point my little camera and watch a few of our boys capturing a few of theirs, that would have been handy. But it was much more than that. Because I wanted much more than some boring bit of footage that might or might not have given me a bit of clout next time I was negotiating a pay rise.”

  “So you…encouraged them.”

  Ward was still, and focused, his eyes unblinking in the artificial light. When he spoke, it was clear to Thorne that what he said was deeply felt. The frigidity and scorn for life that Thorne knew to be at the core of this man were belied by the twisted passion of the words.

  “Have you ever thought you were about to die?” Ward asked. “Or even that you were about to be the one to take a life? Have you ever really experienced that sort of excitement?”

  Thorne had little intention of answering, and Ward had even less of giving him the opportunity.

  “I suppose, because of what you do, that you’ve felt it more keenly than most, and let me say straightaway that I admire what you do. Really. Perhaps you have been in the sort of situation I describe, but can you even begin to imagine feeling those things for days, for weeks, on end? Constantly. Can you imagine it becoming something that you live with?” He flicked his eyes to Spike, spat the words out at him. “That…heightened feeling in the body becomes something that’s more powerful than any drug. And when you come down from it, you fall a very long way and you fall very hard.”

  “What the fuck do you know about it?” Spike said.

  Ward just smiled and turned his attention back to Thorne. “Those boys were trained for it…And they were boys, emotionally at any rate. They were taught to expect it, whipped up into a state every day until eventually, not seeing combat became far worse than seeing it. They needed the high, can you understand that? They were sent over there to do a job and then some of them didn’t get a chance to do it. There were lads out there turning on each other. Shooting fucking camels. Anything to get close to that buzz.”

  “You wanted it, too, though, didn’t you?”

  Ward’s eyes widened. “I was…frustrated, yes,” he said. “And me and that situation were just fucking perfect for each other. They thought it was about to happen, Hadingham and Eales and the others. They’d been told that the enemy was close, that there was every chance of engaging at any fucking moment. Then the machine lets them down and they can do nothing but watch their mates disappear into the distance. Feel that buzz disappear with them.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I hardly had to do anything,” Ward said. “I was the catalyst, if you like; that’s all. They just needed someone to give them a nudge in the right direction, to tell them that what they were thinking about doing, what they wanted to do, was absolutely understandable. That it was all right.” His voice had become quieter, more intense, and when he paused there was a rattle in his breath. He nodded toward the plastic bag at Thorne’s feet, to the remains of the video inside. “I don’t know what you think you’ve seen on the tape, but I promise you that even the ones that weren’t so keen to begin with, the ones that needed a bit of persuading, they got the biggest thrill of their lives that day. Ryan Eales, for one, spent the rest of his life trying to recapture it.”

  “By killing for you?”

  “For me, among others. He was a professional.”

  “Usually…”

  Ward nodded his agreement. “Yes, you’re quite right, of course. Usually.”

  Thorne could sense Spike bristling next to him.

  “He did rather fuck things up,” Ward said. “When it came to getting you out of the picture…”

  Now this was practical. This was not about poking at the corpse of the case for personal gratification. This was something Thorne very much wanted to know.

  “How did you get my name?” he asked.

  Ward stared back at him.

  “Like that then, is it?” Thorne said. “No names, no pack drill. Right?”

  Thorne watched, enjoying it, as realization passed like a shadow across the face of the man opposite him.

  No names, no pack drill.

  The five words that Thorne had read on the transcript of the videotape. The same phrase that Ward had used when they’d spoken on the phone.

  That had told Thorne all he needed to know.

  “How did you get my name?” Thorne asked again.

  Ward said nothing, but in the smirk that transformed his features, Thorne suddenly saw exactly where the man standing opposite him had got his name. The source of the leak became obvious. Thorne filed the information away. He would deal with it when he had the chance.

  Spike’s reaction to Ward’s knowing smile was altogether different, and more dramatic. He pushed himself away from the wall, the growled mutterings turning to something almost feral as he launched himself across the width of the tunnel.

  It all happened before Thorne had the chance to do much more than cry out: “Spike…”

  Spike was off balance and throwing punches before he’d even reached his target, and by the time his hands, and Ward’s, had stopped moving, the two were locked clumsily together, side on to the tunnel wall.

  And there was a knife at Spike’s throat.

  Now Thorne could see real desperation, real danger in Ward’s eyes. His situation was hopeless, so there was little else for Ward to lose. Thorne knew that moments such as these were when lives were most easily, and most pointlessly, lost.

  “You know you have to put that down,” Thorne said. His eyes never left the blade. He watched it pressing against Spike’s neck and wondered if Ward was thinking about what lay ahead; about slaughtering a boy who meant less than nothing and seizing this one last chance to feel that buzz.

  “I can’t see that I have to do anything.”

  “Let me just get some officers in right now and they can take you out of here without any more fuss or any fucking about. Fair enough? Alan?” Thorne took a tentative half step toward them. “You know that’s the clever thing to do, right?”

  But Ward was not the next one to speak…

  As Spike began to talk Thorne became aware of the one element in the bizarre tableau facing him that he had not taken in. The most crucial detail. Down at his side, poised delicately in his right hand, Spike was holding a blood-filled syringe.

  I’ve always got a weapon! Thorne had presumed Spike had been talking about a knife…

  Spike eased the flap of the long, leather coat aside and brushed the tip of the needle against Ward’s thigh. Scraped it across the material of the trousers. “This’ll go deep into your muscle every bit as quick as you can move that knife, like.” Spike’s mouth was pressed close to Ward’s cheek as he spoke. “I don’t give a fuck, really. It’s completely up to you, mate. Do you want dirty, junkie blood running around in there? Mucking you up inside? How much of a fucking buzz would that be?”

  With Ward’s focus now down to where he could feel the needle, Thorne inched closer. “Get rid of the knife and we can sort this out.”

  “Do you want AIDS?” Spike whispered.

  “For Christ’s sake, take it easy,” Thorne said. “Both of you.”

  “How d’you fancy that?”

  “Shut up, Spike…”

  Without moving the knife, Ward leaned his head as far away as he was able from Spike’s. “Please. Keep still…”

  “I think that should be exciting enough for you,” Spike said. “And it’ll certainly be something you’ll live with every day. Though not for very long, like.”

  “Don’t…”

  “What? Don’t �
��cause you’ll kill me if I do? Or don’t ’cause you’re shitting yourself?”

  “Drop the knife and let me bring officers in here,” Thorne shouted.

  “Bring ’em in now. You can bring ’em in right now and he’ll do fuck-all.” Spike was gabbling, loud and high-pitched; his eyes fixed on Ward, rattling out the words on fractured breaths. “He’ll do jack-shit, I swear, whatever happens, because he’s fucking terrified. Because he’s a coward. He’s a fucking coward who lets someone else clear up his mess, who pays somebody to kick men to death when they’re asleep. He’ll do nothing because he’s all talk. Because he wants the high, but he hasn’t got the bottle to do what it takes to get it. I’ve met his sort loads of times, like. They love to be around it, they fucking love the idea of it, but when it comes to shooting up, they’re afraid of the needle. They’re shit scared of it. Like he’s afraid of this one. So bring the others in. He’ll do nothing.” Spike leaned in to Ward, yelled up into his face. “Bring them in!”

  Within a few moments of the echo dying, Thorne had made his decision. He knew that they’d be hanging on every word. That, were it not for the layout of the tunnels, which made it impossible to get close without being seen, they would have been all over Ward already. He knew that there’d be armed officers standing by. That nobody would need asking twice…

  He looked up at the speaker and gave the order, not needing to raise his voice very much. “Get down here…”

  Immediately there were distant voices raised, then footsteps, and Thorne turned to see Holland, Stone, and half a dozen other officers tearing along the tunnel toward them. They shouted as they ran. Making sure Ward knew they were there, telling him to drop the knife and to lie down on the floor.

  Ward did exactly as he was told, as Spike had predicted he would. He dropped the knife and threw himself to the floor the instant that Spike stepped away from him. But almost as soon as his face hit the concrete, Spike was on him again, flipping him over, kneeling across his chest, and holding the tip of the needle an inch from his eye.