Lifeless

by Mark Billingham

  Thorne shouted Spike’s name.

  Holland bellowed a warning.

  The rest of the team were no more than thirty feet away, and approaching fast…

  It was a toss-up as to whether Thorne or one of the others would get there first, but before any of them had a chance, Spike had fired a fine jet of blood into Ward’s eyes, and, with the smallest movement of his wrist, directed it down, across Ward’s lips, and into the mouth that had opened to scream.

  “That’s for Terry,” he said. “For Bob and all the rest…”

  The second Spike had tossed the syringe and begun to move, Ward was seized and turned back onto his belly. An officer ran around and made a grab for Spike, but Thorne stepped quickly across and ushered the boy away. Led him down the tunnel and pressed him hard into the wall. “Jesus…What d’you think you’re doing?”

  Spike said nothing. Regaining his breath, looking back down the tunnel to where Ward was being pulled to his feet. His hands cuffed behind him. Unable to wipe away the blood that was running down his face and chin.

  Thorne was looking, too. He nodded toward Ward. “What you threatened him with…Are you—?”

  “’Course I’m fucking not,” Spike said. “We get tested every month, me and Caroline. But he doesn’t know that, does he?”

  Thorne watched, listened as Ward begged the officers around him for a tissue, a rag, a scrap of paper. Anything. “Not unless somebody tells him,” he said.

  Spike was calm again.

  That grin.

  “We’ve been scared to death for weeks. Now it’s his turn to see what that’s like. Let the bastard sweat for a while…”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  If the sea down below him wasn’t quite as smooth as glass, it was still blue. It sounded good, like a hush, and the sun was hot and Ryan Eales was happy enough. He lay and soaked it all in. Feeling, for the third or fourth day on the trot, that he was finally starting to get his breath back. It was a fortnight since he’d been forced to cut and run, which was longer than it would normally have taken him to recover and relax, but then it had been a kick-bollock-scramble.

  Cut and run…

  He’d had to think so fast when he’d come strolling up and seen the car outside the house, and right until the moment when he’d pictured the bayonet under the bed and had the idea, he hadn’t been sure if admitting who he was and bringing him inside had been the cleverest decision of his life or the most stupid. Even when it was done, when the copper had slid back off the blade, he’d known that the other one was on his way. That he had to move double bloody quick.

  It had taken him only minutes to get packed up and out of there, and he was proud of the way he’d done it: moving through the place at speed, but taking everything in; taking a mental inventory as he’d walked around the bedroom, gathering up only what was essential. Passports and papers; a few clothes and all the cash. As long as he had money, he was always able to pick up the pieces.

  It hadn’t been the first thing he’d done, of course. He’d realized straightaway that he needed to get the car out of sight; how important it would be in buying him a little time. He’d dug around in the copper’s pocket for the keys; dropped the Volvo off in a side street and walked back to the flat. He’d still been in there getting his things together when the second copper had come knocking. He’d frozen then; crept to the front door and stood there until he’d heard the footsteps going back down the stairs.

  “Be careful with that…”

  A family with small children was arranged on the other side of the pool. He heard a ball bouncing toward him and the feet of one of the kids slapping on the tiles as he ran to retrieve it. Eales raised his head, reached for the ball and threw it back. The boy smiled at him. Said, “Thank you,” when prompted by his mother.

  “You’re very welcome,” Eales said.

  Definitely starting to relax…

  He felt a tickle, and looked to see sweat rolling across the indigo letters on his shoulder. He thought, as he did often—as he did long before Ward had contacted him with the offer of a job—of the other three men whose bodies bore the same design. They could not have known, on the drunken evening they’d all stumbled into that tattoo parlor and gone under the needle, anesthetized by strong German lager, how bound to one another they were destined to become.

  They would live and die as a crew.

  All those years before in the desert, there’d been a couple who hadn’t wanted things to go as far as they ultimately had. But it never mattered. It was ironic really, he reckoned, and maybe even a bit sad, because the ones who didn’t fire a shot that day ended up paying the same price anyway, thanks to one person being stupid and greedy.

  It just proved, he thought, how some decisions were best taken for you by others…

  Ryan Eales lay back down and tried to sleep.

  A white spot—the retinal memory of the sun, high above him—darted behind his lids like a tracer bullet; like the point of light he’d seen two weeks earlier in the police officer’s eyes, bright before shrinking.

  He rolled his eyeballs, and watched as the pinprick danced across the black.

  The lift carried him up toward the top floor of Colindale police station. The CID and the Burglary Squad were on the first floor, the Criminal Justice Unit and CPS offices on the second, but Thorne was heading for none of these.

  He let the empty cardboard box he was carrying bounce off his knee; pictured Spike slapping out a rhythm against his legs or drumming his fingers on a tabletop in McDonald’s…

  Though it was far from official policy of any sort, Thorne had persuaded Brigstocke to dig up some money for Spike. There was a fund to pay informants, to cover the expenses of those who gave their time to help police operations, so it seemed reasonable to reward Spike for his efforts. He’d certainly earned it in that subway.

  There had, of course, been the business with the blood, and once the scene in the tunnel had been cleared, it had required a major effort to keep Spike from being arrested. Thorne had worked hard to convince the team that Spike had been provoked, while at the same time admitting that the boy had exceeded the boundaries that had been laid down…

  “I can’t think where he gets that from,” Brigstocke had said.

  It was hardly a fortune, but the money Thorne had wangled might pay for the deposit and first month’s rent on a flat. He wasn’t naive enough to believe that it would stop Spike’s feeling guilty about his sister’s death, or help get Caroline’s son back, and he was even less starry-eyed after a lesson from someone who knew how it worked far better than he did.

  “It’s a big step,” Maxwell had said. “People can go from sleeping rough to getting their own flat and fuck it up straightaway. They invite all their mates round for parties, let junkies and boozers trash the place, find themselves chucked back out on the street within a few weeks.”

  Thorne could do no more than hope that Spike and One-Day Caroline got their big American fridge, and held on to it for a little while longer than that…

  The lift doors opened and a man in a sharp gray suit stood aside to let Thorne and his cardboard box out.

  The office was near the end of the carpeted corridor, and Thorne didn’t bother to knock.

  “Thorne…”

  Though this was Steve Norman’s only word on looking up from his desk, his face said an awful lot more: expletives mostly; the sort people blurted out when they were particularly worried.

  Thorne walked toward the desk, tossing the empty cardboard box at Norman from several feet away.

  Norman stood up, fumbling clumsily for the box as it knocked a photo frame and pen set flying. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?”

  “That should be big enough,” Thorne said. “And it’s strictly for personal items only. I don’t want to see any Metropolitan Police Press Office staplers going in there, all right?”

  “I don’t know what it is you want, but—”

  “I want you to hurry up. You can
write your resignation letter later on.”

  Norman shook his head, squeezed out half a very thin smile. “I’d heard rumors,” he said. “People were saying you’d lost it.”

  Thorne moved toward him quickly enough to make Norman take a step back and find himself against the wall.

  “Alan Ward hasn’t really started talking,” Thorne said. “Not about some things, anyway. I reckon it’s probably just because he hasn’t been asked the right questions yet. What do you think?”

  Norman looked like he was thinking about a lot of things, but he said nothing.

  “I mean, obviously, they want to put the murder investigation to bed first.” Thorne leaned against the wall, his face a foot or so away and level with Norman’s. “That’s fair enough, wouldn’t you say? It’s understandable if inquiries as to where Ward may have got certain bits of information from aren’t exactly top of the list. There’s even a chance that they might never come up…”

  “Are you trying to threaten me?”

  “Trying?”

  “I wish you’d get on with it…”

  Thorne’s eyes flicked to the cardboard box and then back to Norman. “Empty your fucking desk…”

  Norman looked over to where a pattern of colored rings was snaking its way across his computer screen, then down at his highly polished brogues for a few seconds. He sighed, irritated, as though the whole affair were some trifling inconvenience, then stepped forward and began throwing open drawers.

  Thorne walked across to the window and took in the view across the RAF Museum to the M1 beyond. He spoke to Norman without turning round.

  “If I thought you’d done it for money, you’d be the one going in a box, do you understand? But I think you were just trying to impress him.” He pointed out of the window. “I could see that when I met the pair of you in the car park down there. You were like a kid who doesn’t have many friends, making sure everybody knows you’ve got a new best mate. I’m guessing that after you’d leaked the story about there being an undercover copper out there, Ward came to you sniffing around for more information. Trying to find out exactly how much you knew. So you thought you’d show off a little…”

  “I thought he was after a story,” Norman said. “That’s all. I thought he was angling for an exclusive. I couldn’t have known what he really wanted, for Christ’s sake…”

  “He probably flattered you, right? Told you what a valuable source you were; said that the two of you worked well together. Made you think you were important. Gave you a hard-on, right?”

  “He said he’d do nothing with it until after it had all come out…”

  “So you gave him my name?”

  Thorne saw the movement in the glass: a small nod.

  “It was only to be used as part of a bigger story, once the investigation had been completed. Look, I fucked up, fair enough? Thorne…?”

  Thorne turned, pointed to the files that Norman had taken from the drawers and dropped onto the desk. “Into the box. You’ve got five minutes.”

  Norman did as he was told.

  “I suppose I should be grateful that you fucking up didn’t get me killed. It was my good luck that it wasn’t me who got kicked to death. Very bad luck for you though, because now I’m still here to make sure you answer for the man who was killed.”

  “Terry Turner.”

  “Knowing his name won’t convince me that you give a shit…”

  Norman started to move faster, his face for the first time betraying the fear that Thorne might actually do something physical. He used the edge of his hand to drag pens and paper clips from the desktop into the box, then paused to look up. “You were wrong about one thing,” he said. “It wasn’t me who went to the papers with the undercover story in the first place. I can’t make those decisions; you know that. It came from higher up, from an officer on your side of things…”

  Thorne knew Norman was telling the truth. It made sense. There would have been those who believed, once Thorne himself had been arrested and shot his mouth off, that the operation had been fatally compromised. That one more leak couldn’t hurt.

  “There was a lot of criticism,” Norman said. “A hell of a lot of pressure. The body count was going up and it looked like we were getting nowhere. Someone decided it would be a good idea to let people know that the Met was actually doing something.”

  Someone decided. Jesmond…

  Thorne turned back to the window, saw the mid-October afternoon turn a little brighter, and decided after a minute or two that he wanted to get out and enjoy some of it. At the door he turned and watched as Norman dropped the photo frame and pen set into the box and sat down heavily in his chair.

  “This might well be it,” Thorne said. “I haven’t really made my mind up. I might leave things as they are. Then again, I might go official with it if I wake up tomorrow in a pissy mood. We’ll have to see how I feel, Steve. There’s always a chance that I might decide to wait awhile, a few weeks or a couple of months say, then turn up unannounced one night. Just pop by, somewhere you aren’t expecting me, with a lump hammer or a cricket bat. See how you’re getting on…”

  He didn’t wait around for Norman’s reaction. He walked back down the corridor, thinking about what Spike had said in the tunnel.

  Let the bastard sweat for a while…

  Thorne stared at himself, blurry and distorted in the dull metal of the lift doors. The beard was gone. Not just the extra growth from his days on the streets, but the whole thing, revealing the straight, white scar that ran across his chin. His hair was shorter than it had been in a long time. He’d lost a little weight, too, he thought.

  He’d had his old man’s overcoat dry-cleaned, which had got rid of the smells he’d wanted rid of. And though he’d normally have preferred something a little shorter, and perhaps not as heavy, he thought it looked pretty good. They reckoned there was a cold snap on the way, so he guessed he might have to wear it a good deal from now on, and probably right through the winter. He’d need it most days, like as not.

  It would go back in the wardrobe after that, as soon as the weather picked up. He’d hang it up, then maybe look at it again next time the temperature dropped; think about bringing it out next year. It wasn’t really his style, after all. But he’d wait and see how he felt.

  He’d wait and see how he felt about a lot of things…

  The lift stopped at the first floor and an officer Thorne recognized got in. They’d worked together five, maybe seven, years before, on a case he could barely remember.

  The man looked pleased to see him. Nodded as he reached for the button, then turned with a smile as the doors closed.

  “Tom. You look well…”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I began work on this book in September 2003, eight months before the publication of certain photographs, the sacking of a Fleet Street editor, and the scandal surrounding the treatment of Iraqi prisoners. Truth is not always stranger than fiction, but sometimes it’s pretty bloody close…

  Current research by organizations such as Crisis and the Ex-Services Action Group suggests that between one in three and one in five homeless people have spent some time in the armed forces. The most recent study revealed that up to 30 percent of those in hostels, day centers, and soup runs, and 22 percent of homeless people surveyed in London on a single night, were ex-services. Despite the best efforts of those working on behalf of the homeless community and the increased awareness and activity of the services themselves, there is little to suggest that these figures are much different today.

  There are, of course, many people without whom this book could never have been written. Without whose time, trouble, expertise, and good advice it would have would been lifeless…

  Terry Walker, Gulf War veteran and author of The Mother of All Battles; Michael Hill; Rick Brunwen of the Ex-Service Action Group (ESAG); Sinead Hanks and Scott Ballantyne, coauthors of Lest We Forget, the Crisis report into ex-servicemen and homelessness. Above all, I want to th
ank Neil and Anna and the young people on the street who were willing to speak to me.

  From the British army I am hugely grateful to: Simon Saunders and Lieutenant Colonel Peter Dick-Peter at G3 Media Operations, London; Major Alex Leslie (RTR); Major Ian Clooney (RTR); Major Tim David (Directorate of Corporate Communications) and all at the 1st Royal Tank Regiment in Warminster.

  The support group: Sarah, Susannah, Alice, Paul, Wendy, Peter, Mike, Hilary.

  And Claire. Above and beyond as always.

  About the Author

  MARK BILLINGHAM is the author of the London Times bestsellers The Burning Girl, Scaredy Cat, and Sleepyhead. His book Lazybones won the United Kingdom’s 2005 Crime Novel of the Year Award, and Lifeless has been nominated for Crime Thriller of the Year at the 2006 British Book Awards. Billingham writes for the BBC and ITV, where he has twice been nominated for Royal Television Society awards. He 0lives in London with his wife and two children. Visit his website at www.markbillingham.com.

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  Enthusiastic praise for

  MARK BILLINGHAM

  “Mark Billingham is the new-wave leader…. Like the best of British and American crime writing rolled up together and delivered with the kind of punch you don’t see coming.”

  Lee Child

  “…among the upper echelon of his country’s most talented crime novelists.”

  Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and

  LIFELESS

  “Billingham has such a command of his craft and his characters.”

  Chicago Tribune

  “Billingham adds a welcome bit of depth to the genre…. [He] knows what he’s doing.”

  Detroit Free Press

  “Lifeless is moving, chilling, exciting, and brilliantly atmospheric.”

  The Times of London

  “Excellent—gritty, realistic, and fascinating…. Lifeless is full of action and is overflowing with compassion.”