Lazybones Thorne 3

by Mark Billingham

  "The law, of course, is quite clear about reasonable doubt. I feel sure that this being the case, doubting as you must, you will do the right thing. You will do the just thing. You will do as His Honour must instruct you so to do, and acquit my client...'

  FIVE

  Another hot, humid evening. The air outside heavy with the taste of a storm on the way. Tantalising snippets of conversation from people walking past drifted into the living room through the opgn windows.

  Thorne had sat eating in T-shirt and shorts, listening to the noise from a party on the other side of the road. He didn't know what annoyed him more - the raised voices and the cranked-up sound system, or the good time that some people he didn't know were clearly having.

  His plate licked clean by Elvis, Thorne had opened a can of cheap lager, tuned out the sounds of music and laughter and spent a couple of hours reading. A summer's evening absorbed in violent death. These were the reports based on searches of CRIMINT - the Criminal Intelligence database - looking for any cases whose parameters might overlap with the Remfry killing...

  Holland and Stone had been thorough. It was largely about trial and error, about narrowing the search down and coming up with hits that might be significant. Keywords were entered. Matches were sifted and examined in relation to those from other searches. Rape murder produced few cases where the victim was male, but the results were still cross-referenced with those that came up when other, more specific keywords were punched into the system.

  Sodomy. Strangulation. Ligature. Washing line. And up they'd come...

  A series of unsolved murders going back five years. Eight young boys brutally abused and strangled, their bodies dumped in woods, gravel pits and recreation grounds. A paedophile ring that was too well organised or too well connected. Uncatchable. A man attacked in his own home. Tied up with washing line while his home was ransacked, then kicked to death for no good reason. Thorne thought about Darren Ellis, the old couple he'd tied up and robbed...

  A catalogue of vicious sexual assaults and murders, many still unsolved. The grim details now little more than entries in a uniquely disturbing reference library. A resource to be accessed, in the hope that a past horror might shed light on a present one. Not this time.

  Holland had actually pulled the files on two cold murder cases: a young man, thirty or so, found in the boot of a car in 2002. Raped and choked to death with an unidentified ligature. A man in his sixties, attacked in a multi-storey car park and strangled with washing line in 1996.

  Thorne had agreed both with Holland's initial assessment and his final conclusion. Both files had been worth a closer look. Both had been put back.

  Once he'd stuffed the report away in his briefcase, Thorne went over and stood by the open window. For ten minutes or so he'd stared across at the house where the party was, trying and failing to identify a song from its annoyingly familiar bass-line. Trying and failing to stop thinking about bodies years dead and a body as yet unburied and the photograph he'd given Dennis Bethell...

  Then he'd called his father.

  After he'd hung up, twenty frustrating minutes later, Thorne stood, holding the phone, and tried to imagine the synapses in his father's brain misfiring, the thoughts exploding in a shower of tangential sparks..

  The cascade of colour blackened. It became the dark hood that covered the head of a naked woman and masked the terror on the face of a pale, stiffening corpse. Life choked off and arse exposed and a thin line of brown blood on rusty bedsprings. Thorne took off what few clothes he still had on, walked through to the bedroom and dropped down on to the mattress. He lay there in the semi-darkness, staring up at the outline of the lampshade that had cost a pound from IKEA, realising that it was cheap because it was also nasty. The bed felt as if it were full of grit.

  He could feel the dreadful, delicate weight of the case upon him. Like the dark tickle of something unwanted crawling across his body. The sharp, spindly legs of it picking their way across the sheen of sweat on his chest.

  Thorne closed his eyes, remembering a moment of calm and contentment on a bracken-covered hillside.

  Except that he was unsure it zvas a memory. If it had ever happened, the details had slipped away over time. Perhaps it was the memory of a dream he'd once had, or a fantasy of some sort. Maybe it was a scene from a long-forgotten film or TV show he'd once watched and into which he'd projected himself... Wherever it came from, two others were always there with him, lying on the hillside among the bracken. A man and a woman, or perhaps a girl and a boy. Their ages were as unclear as their relationship to him or each other, but all three of them were happy. Where they actually were never seemed to matter. The geography of the place was changeable. Sometimes he was sure there was a rive down below them. At other times it was a road, the hum of insects becoming the distant drone of traffic.

  The only constants were the bracken and the presence of the pair lying just a few feet away, the ground beneath and the sky above the three of them.

  I seemed as if they'd eaten something, a picnic maybe. Thorne felt full, lying there, his arms spread out wide, six inches off the ground, moving lazily back and forth through the bracken. He had a smile on his face and his stomach still jumped and fluttered with the final bursts of laughter. He could never be sure who or what had caused them all to laugh such a lot. He could never be sure of much beyond the fine, unfamiliar feeling that surged through him as he remembered. As he imagined. As he lay on that hillside.

  Blurred as the edges of Thorne's reality on that hillside were - the whys and whens and whos so indistinct as to be virtually nonexistent - it still seemed, at moments such as these, ankle-deep in madness and butchery, a pretty good place to be. With the first, fat raindrops beginning to fall outside, he pressed his head back into the pillow and imagined the fronds of bracken, feathery against his neck.

  As the headlights from passing Cars played across the bedroom window, Thorne felt only the sunlight on his face.

  12 JUNE, 1976

  They moved through the shopping centre, almost touching, their faces blank, each carrying a bag. A couple walking around the shops together. Seeing them, no one could ever have known.

  The enormity of the space between them.

  The pain that grew to fill it.

  How little time they had left...

  They touched things in shops, picked up items to get a closer look, occasionally made the same banal comments they might have made six months before. "We could put that in the kitchen." 'Do you think one of those would look nice in the bedroom?" "That colour really suits you: They walked into a shop which sold ugly ornaments, useless knit;k knacks, like two people in a dream...

  Since the day the trial had ended, they had been going through the motions. Shopping, eating, tidying toys away. Sitting on the settee together and watching It's a Knockout and George and Mildred. Getting through the days. The only obvious change being that she hadn't gone back to work. Unlike Franklin. He'd been welcomed back with apologies and open arms.

  Out of one shop and into another. They strolled through a department store, taking care, of course, to avoid the cosmetics department. The perfumes, and especially the aftershave. These days, the great smell of Brut was liable to make her throw up all over the place. They were almost perfect, like the victims of bodysnatchers. They were a

  'Spot the Difference' competition that was unwinnable. The 'before' and 'after' were, to all intents and purposes, identical, but what was in their heads and their hearts would never be seen, could never be imagined. Least of all by them.

  She had retreated into herself and he had become unbearably buoyant.

  Around the house their bodies did the normal things, while her silence and his false cheer chased each other from room to room. While the mania and the 'suspicion festered and matured.

  It was my fault...

  Why didn't she struggle... ?

  He was looking at picture frames, remembering the face of the jury foreman. A few feet away, she stoo
d, spinning a display of postcards, seeing only stubby fingers reaching into trousers, scrabbling at her crotch. He caught her eye but she looked away before he could smile. The next second, Franklin's wife had stepped from behind a glass display case and was standing in front of her.

  He took a step towards them, then stopped as his wife raised a hand, reached towards this woman who had looked down on her, at her, every day from the public gallery. He watched as Franklin's wife ignored the hand that reached out to her, pulled back her head and snapped it forward, releasing a thick gobbet of spittle into his wife's face. There was a gasp from a'woman nearby. Another stepped back, openmouthed, and knocked a glass decantOr crashing to the floor. He stepped in front of his wife then, and guided her gently but firmly towards the exit. As they left she never took her eyes from the woman who had spat at her. She never made a move to wipe the spit away. She didn't speak a word, as she was taken back to a house she would never leave again.

  SIX

  From Kentish Town, Thorne took every rat-run he knew, cutting through side streets until he reached Highbury Corner and then heading east along the Balls Pond Road towards Hackney. Thorne took a quick glance at his A-Z. The florist's was tucked away somewhere behind Mare Street, a stone's throw from London Fields. This area of parkland stood alone in the midst of one of the most depressed areas in the city. It was once grazed by sheep, and prowled by highwaymen. Now, up-and-comers who directed videos or worked in advertising sat on benches sipping their skinny lattes, or walked their whippets across the green, doing their best to convince as geezers.

  Thorne drove along streets bustling with Saturday morning shoppers. Noisy with the cries of greeting, the shouts of traders in the markets. And every few hundred yards, a look on a face or a hand thrust into a pocket that Thorne recognised as the signs of an altogether different kind of business.

  Here, as in a dozen other boroughs, street-crime was out of control. Phone-jacking was virtually a form of social interaction and if you walked around with a personal stereo, you were a tourist who couldn't read a street map.

  These days, the highwaymen prowled in gangs.

  So the powers-that-be, in their infinite wisdom and desire for good press, were targeting areas like Hackney, piloting schemes that would involve the youth of an area. Thorne had read a report of one such scheme involving a couple of earnest young officers trading in the blue serge for hooded tops, and getting down with the kids in a local community centre. One had asked a thirteen-year-old gang member if he could think of ways he might avoid getting into trouble with the police. The kid had answered without a trace of irony. 'Wear a balaclava.'

  It was a small place, sitting between a minicab firm and a locksmith's. The shop front was pleasingly old fashioned; the window display minimalist, the name painted in a green, creeping ivy design on a plain cream background.

  BLOOMS.

  Inside, the shop was lit by candles. There was classical music playing quietly in the background. There wasn't a single flower Thorne recognised...

  'Are you looking for something in particular?' A man, thirty or so, with a paperback in his hand, stood behind a small wooden counter. Thorne moved towards him, smiling. 'Do people not buy daffs any more? Roses, chrysanthemums...?'

  A woman carrying an enormous assortment of flowers stepped through a door at the back of the shop. She looked to be in her mid thirties. As soon as she spoke, Thorne recognised the voice - gabbling, confident, amused. It was clear that Eve Bloom had recognised him as well.

  'Well, we can get that sort of specialised stuff in if you want, Mr. Thorne, but it will be very expensive ...'

  He laughed, sizing her up in a few seconds. Though her hands stayed busy among the stems she was carrying, he could tell that she was doing the same.

  She was short, maybe five feet two, with blond hair held up by a large wooden clip. She wore a brown apron over jeans and a sweatshirt. Her face was dotted with freckles, and the smile revealed a gap between her two top teeth.

  Thorne fancied the pants off her on sight.

  The man behind the counter had picked up a notepad. 'Shall I put in an order, Eve? For the roses and those other things...?'

  She put down the arrangement, lifted the apron over her head, smiled gently at him. 'No, I don't think so, Keith.' She turned to Thorne. 'I thought we could go to this great little tea-room just around the corner. Cream teas to die for. What do you think? We've got the weather for it after all. We can pretend we're in Devon or somewhere...'

  As they strolled, she talked virtually constantly. 'Keith helps me out on a Saturday morning. He's fantastic with flowers, and the customers are very fond of him. Rest of the week I can manage the place on my own, but Saturday, early, that's when I have to make up most of the wedding arrangements, get ahead on the paperwork, accounts and what have you. Anyway, sod it! Today, Keith can keep an eye on things for an hour or so while we pig out. He's not a genius, bless him, but he works his socks off for.., well, for bugger all, if I'm honest.'

  'What does Keith do the rest of the time?' Thorne said. 'When you're not exploiting him.'

  Eve smiled and shrugged. 'Don't really know, to be honest. I think he has to look after his mother a lot. Maybe she's well off, because he never seems to be short. He's certainly not working in my shop for the money, not on what I can afford to pay him. God, I am so gasping for a cup of tea...'

  The tea-room was kitsch beyond belief, with check tablecloths, art deco tea-sets and Bakelite radios dotted around on shelves and window ledges. The cream tea for two arrived almost instantly. ' Eve poured Earl Grey for herself, monkey tea for Thorne. She lathered jam and clotted cream on to her scone, grinned across the table.

  'Listen, when I'm eating is probably the best chance you'll have to get a word in, so I should take your chance if I were you. I know I talk way too much...'

  'The man who left the message on your answering machine, has he been in touch with you again?' She looked at him, confused. 'Follow up question,' Thorne explained. 'Justify the expenses claim, like you suggested. Bit of a long shot, but it seemed as good a question as any...

  She cleared her throat. 'No, Detective Inspector, I'm afraid that I never heard from the man again.'

  'Thank you. If you think of anything else you will get in touch, won't you? And I needn't tell you that we'd prefer it if you didn't leave the country...'

  She laughed and pushed the last piece of a scone into her mouth. When she'd finished it she looked straight at him, raising a hand to shield her eyes against the sunlight that streamed in through the picture window. 'I take it you haven't caught him yet?' Thorne looked back at her, still eating. 'Did he kill somebody?'

  Thorne swallowed. 'I'm sorry, I shouldn't...'

  'I'm just putting two and two together, really.' She leaned back in her chair. 'I know it's a man, because I've heard his voice, and you told me you were with the Serious Crime Group, so I'm guessing that you're not after this bloke because he hasn't taken his library books back.'

  Thorne poured himself another cup of tea. 'Yes, he did kill some body. No, we haven't caught him yet.'

  'Are you going to?'

  Thorne poured her a cup...

  'Why me?' she said. 'Why did he pick me to order the wreath from?'

  'I think he picked a name at random,' Thorne said. They'd found a tattered Yellow Pages in the cupboard beneath the bedside table. It had been covered in fingerprints. Thorne doubted any belonged to the killer. 'He just let his fingers do the walking.'

  She pulled a face. 'I knew I shouldn't have stumped up for that bloody box-ad...'

  Though she talked twice as much, and ten times as quickly as he did, Thorne still talked more, and more easily, in the hour or so that followed than he could remember doing to almost anybody for a long time. To any woman, certainly...

  'When's the wedding?' Eve asked, as their plates were cleared away. Thorne was struck then by how much ground they'd covered and how quickly. 'A week today. God, I'd rather stick needles i
n my eyes...

  'Do you not get on with your cousin?'

  Thorne smiled at the waitress as she popped the bill down on the table. 'I barely know him. Probably wouldn't recognise him if he walked in here. Just family dos, you know...'

  'Right. You choose your friends, but you can't choose your relatives.'

  'Yours as bad as mine, then?' '

  She brushed a few stray crumbs from the tabletop into her hand, emptied it on to the floor. 'Is he the same sort of age as you? Your cousin?'

  'No, Eileen's a lot younger than my dad, and she had Trevor pretty late. He's still only early thirties, I think...'

  'What are you?'

  'How old, you mean?' She nodded. Thorne opened his wallet, dropped fifteen pounds on top of the bill. 'Forty-two. Forty-three in... fuck, in ten days.'

  She clipped up a few stray hairs that had tumbled loose. 'I won't say that you don't look it, because that always sounds so false, but looking at you, I'd say that they were forty-three pretty interesting years.'

  Thorne nodded. 'I'm not going to argue, but just so you know... I don't mind about the sounding-false thing.'

  She smiled, put on a pair of small, almond-shaped sunglasses.

  'Forty then. Late thirties at a push.'

  Thorne stood up, pulling his leather jacket from the chair behind him. 'I'll settle for that...'

  Back at the shop they swapped business cards, shook hands and stood together, a little awkwardly, in the doorway. Thorne looked around.

  'Maybe I should get a plant or something...'