Scaredy Cat

by Mark Billingham

  Later, outside the church, people watched the coffin being loaded into the back of the hearse. With McEvoy away somewhere re-applying make-up, Thorne was joined by Malcolm Jay and Derek Lickwood. They both lit cigarettes hungrily and the three of them stood around, not knowing what to do with their hands and trying not to look too much like police officers.

  ‘Inspector Thorne . . . ?’

  Thorne turned at the familiar voice and found himself face to face with a smiling Andrew Cookson, the teacher who’d shown him around the school. The teacher who, two weeks earlier, Thorne had mistakenly assumed to have been the body they had today come to bury.

  ‘Here mob-handed then?’ Cookson said, laughing.

  Thorne nodded and turned to his colleagues. They had obviously not been doing a great job of blending in. ‘DS Jay, DCI Lickwood . . .’

  ‘Andrew Cookson. I worked with Ken.’

  While handshakes were exchanged, Thorne looked at the man who was hovering at Cookson’s shoulder. His head was completely bald and spotted with brown patches. He leaned on a walking stick and stared at something in the distance, his lower jaw moving constantly, as if he were chewing something everlasting.

  He turned his head suddenly, looked at Thorne. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your son,’ Thorne said.

  Cookson stepped back and took the old man by the elbow. ‘This is Leslie Bowles, Ken’s father.’

  Thorne saw Jay and Lickwood exchange an uneasy glance. Before they had a chance to mumble an awkward response, the old man spoke.

  ‘Very kind of Andrew here, to look after me . . .’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Cookson said.

  ‘Doesn’t know me from Adam.’

  ‘I knew Ken . . .’

  ‘Not as well as some.’

  Cookson shrugged and shook his head. Bowles took a slight step towards Thorne and the others. ‘It’s supposed to stop isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Everybody says it switches around when you get old and they have to look after you. The parent becomes the child . . .’ He sounded well educated. The voice was surprisingly strong and deep. Thorne knew that the old man was a lot tougher than he looked. ‘It’s nonsense though, it really is. Even when they’re cooking for you and getting your shopping in, you know? Even when they’re doing up the buttons on your pyjamas and pretending to listen to your stupid stories, even . . .’ His eyes twinkled and he lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘. . . Even when they’re wiping your arse, you’re still the father—’ His voice faltered suddenly. He swallowed, took a breath and continued, the sentences now shorter, the words spoken between gulps of air. ‘It never stops, never. You’re still the father and he’s still the son. Still the son . . .’ He turned his head away from them. His jaw began its chewing movement again.

  ‘Dad. They’re ready . . .’ Leslie Bowles’s daughter appeared behind him. Thorne watched them move slowly away towards the line of cars, and saw McEvoy pass them on the narrow gravel path, walking towards him.

  ‘He’s amazing,’ Cookson said, looking towards the old man. ‘He must be pushing ninety.’

  McEvoy arrived. She nodded to Lickwood and Jay, stepped in close to Thorne. ‘Lippy re-applied. All’s right with the world. What’s happening?’

  Thorne caught a look from Cookson and made the introduction. ‘Andrew Cookson, he teaches at King Edward’s. This is Detective Sergeant McEvoy . . .’

  McEvoy and Cookson shook hands. ‘I was wrong,’ Cookson said. ‘You don’t all look alike.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve noticed that, then?’ McEvoy said, smiling sarcastically. ‘And you’re a teacher, are you?’

  The cars were rolling sedately away from the church. The mourners began to drift after them, putting up umbrellas as a light rain began to fall. Thorne was pleased. He was still damp anyway from tramping about on the railway embankment and his feet were freezing, but he thought that, all things considered, it should rain at a man’s funeral. There should be flurries of black umbrellas and rain hammering down on to the lid of the coffin, and a mysterious woman who nobody can identify, weeping . . . and a dirty great shitload of alcohol.

  Maybe he was just thinking about his own funeral . . .

  ‘Come on,’ Thorne said, and he and the others began to move towards where the cars were parked. It was three or four miles to the cemetery. Graveyard of course, never crematorium. Always burial, in case the body should ever need to be exhumed and looked at again.

  ‘I mean what about afterwards? The actual searching. The digging.’

  He remembered what he’d been doing that morning, thought about the dogs again. Barking, howling, pawing at the ground, sniffing out the stench of something long-dead below the Coke cans and the fag ends and the weeds.

  The rain was really starting to come down by the time they reached the cars. Thorne and McEvoy climbed into the Mondeo. He started the engine, remembered that he still hadn’t got the heater fixed, flicked on the squeaky wipers. He pulled the car out on to the main road and followed the line of bigger, blacker cars up ahead.

  I got Ken Bowles killed.

  And Thorne knew that he had – that he would always be sorry for it, that he would catch the man who had done the killing. He knew that standing at the graveside, he would feel his guilt, hot and heavy inside him, curling round his innards and settling down to sleep fitfully in his gut.

  He also knew that as he watched the coffin going down into its grave, he would be thinking about Charlie Garner’s mother Carol, in hers. About Katie Choi and Miriam Vincent in theirs. As they lowered Ken Bowles down, he would be thinking about Karen McMahon, in a grave as yet unknown and never tended.

  A grave a good deal shallower.

  He sat there shaking. Across the table from him, Caroline was crying, and in truth he wasn’t far away from it himself . . .

  She had cooked pasta. They’d been sitting and talking about their respective days, neither of which had been particularly easy, and suddenly, she’d brought up the subject of kids again. It surfaced every few months, and for him, it was usually just a question of making the right noises. He’d nod and smile, and point out how far she could still go career-wise. He’d question whether now might be exactly the right time and squeeze her hand, and assure her that yes, of course he wanted children too, but that they needed to be sure. They needed to decide together . . .

  Tonight he’d been unable to conjure up even that piss-easy piece of flannel.

  His mind was racing, as it was every second of the day. There was so much to consider, so many avenues to explore. He was still searching for the idea that would excite him, that would fire his imagination. He knew what he had to do, but he had yet to succeed in visualising it. The big idea. The concept that would replace the short-lived adventure with Palmer.

  Caroline was talking about crèches and maternity leave . . .

  It would involve creating a new scenario. A new backdrop to the act itself, which after all was the easy bit, the unsophisticated part. He had toyed with juicing up the killing. He’d visualised new and interesting ways of doing it, but it ended up like the script to an old Hammer movie, with Vincent Price knocking off people who’d upset him in the manner of Egyptian plagues or Shakespearean tragedies.

  No, he needed to mould the context, to shape his environment in a way that would stimulate and spark, that would challenge and charge him.

  Above all, he needed to keep moving forward. Never still and never back.

  This was what should be occupying him, but there was anger in the way. He couldn’t think creatively while that was clouding his thoughts, preventing any real focus.

  He was furious that they were looking for Karen.

  Caroline leaned across the table and took his hand. Would there be a better time than this? Their jobs were secure, there was enough money coming in. I
t wouldn’t be plain sailing, of course not, there was bound to be a period of adjustment, but they could make it work . . .

  He’d watched Thorne and Palmer down by the railway line. Thorne cajoling, suggesting, Palmer looking forlorn in his handcuffs. He’d watched them strolling along the embankment like a pair of old poofs with a taste for S & M. What the fuck did Thorne think he was going to gain, even if he did find her?

  Her family would help. Giving them stuff, babysitting. They would still be able to go out, have their own lives . . .

  It was his past and he wouldn’t have it messed with. He didn’t want it altered. When, if, he wanted things discovered, he was the one who would lead them to discovery. He was the one that controlled things.

  It was about working together, supporting each other . . .

  He needed to put the anger aside, in one part of his brain. Yes, that might do it. Let the other side concentrate on the ­future – on finding a new motor.

  Caroline didn’t want to leave it too late. She wanted to enjoy being a mother while she was still young . . .

  He would find it, course he would, if he just had some space to work it out, but Thorne and the rest of them were really starting to needle him.

  A child would bring them close, bring them closer . . .

  He could see it in his mind’s eye, almost – unformed and not quite reachable.

  Didn’t he want a child? He’d said he did.

  Like something on the tip of his tongue, nearly there, nearly . . . but what the fuck did Thorne think he was up to?

  Didn’t he love her any more . . . ?

  He leaned forward and slapped her.

  It wasn’t his fault. She wouldn’t shut up, wouldn’t be quiet for just a few seconds so that he could compartmentalise. Probably not her fault either, course not, she didn’t know, did she? She couldn’t see past the smile, the face that gave nothing away, but even so, I mean bloody hell . . .

  He just needed a bit of space to deal with things. To separate the anger from the creativity.

  He looked at her. The handprint was clear, a livid scarlet across her jaw and the top of her neck.

  Silly bitch. Waffling on about babies. When he needed a bit of peace and quiet so that he could think about death.

  For Thorne, the mug of tea before bed had become something of a ritual. The stroll down to the late-night grocers, after discovering he’d run out of milk, was not uncommon either.

  He was in this shop half a dozen times a week, minimum. The three brothers that ran it were Turkish, he thought, maybe Cypriot. He didn’t know any of their names. They smiled, sometimes, when he bought his bread, paper and beer, but they didn’t seem that interested in getting to know him.

  As Thorne reached into his pocket to pay for the milk, he imagined finding that he’d left his wallet at home. He wondered if they’d let him owe them the money until next time. Seeing as he’d been in their shop six times a week for the past eighteen months. Would they? Probably not. Maybe if he produced his warrant card, showed them he was a policeman.

  Outside the shop, Thorne stood waiting for the lights at the pelican crossing to change, studying the adverts in the window. The one that caught his eye was scribbled in red felt-tip on the back of a postcard. It was misspelled, but the services offered were plain enough.

  It had been a long time.

  Thorne took out a pen and scribbled down the number on the side of the milk carton.

  TWENTY-ONE

  They’d found Karen McMahon within twelve hours.

  From the top of the embankment it was obvious where the team was working. The white tented-off area around the grave stood out starkly against the browns and dark greens of the long grasses and tangles of fern. A white square billowing above the bones.

  Holland began to move down the hill towards the site, ­McEvoy ten feet or so away. The two of them had driven there together, along with another DC and a trainee detective. The conversation in the car had been sparse and far from sparkling. Now they moved slowly down the slope, their white plastic bodysuits rustling. Aliens descending, unsure of their footing.

  The grave had been found in one of the drainage ditches that ran alongside the embankment at the foot of each slope. Once the overgrown and overhanging greenery had been cut back, it had not been hard to see or to reach. The ditch was about four feet wide but movement was restricted. The sides were muddy and in danger of collapse, and hours of hard work which had revealed the remains of Karen McMahon could be undone by one clumsy step.

  Holland and McEvoy pulled up their masks and ducked down inside the tent. It was cramped and crowded. There were already half a dozen people in there, crouched or stooping, the tent not high enough to stand up straight in. The sun had not been up long and the morning wasn’t warm, but the heat beneath the canvas was stifling. Though the lamps had been turned off outside the tent, there were still two power­ful ones inside and the temperature was climbing all the time. Inside the bodysuit, Holland could already feel the sweat trickling down his back as he stepped carefully past Phil Hendricks who was on his haunches at the graveside, and moved towards where Thorne was deep in conversation with Doctor James Pettet.

  Thorne glanced towards Holland and McEvoy as they entered the tent. Instantly, and for a second or two, he wondered if something might be going on between them. There was an atmosphere . . .

  He dismissed the thought, and returned to a conversation about death and decay.

  As forensic archaeologists went, James Pettet was probably as good as they came, but he was no great shakes as a human being. If Thorne never saw him again, he wouldn’t lose a great deal of sleep.

  ‘. . . moisture is the enemy of composition. Moisture and heat together is just about as bad as it gets. Or good of course, depending on which way you look at it.’

  Behind his mask, Thorne let out a long slow breath and very quickly took another one in. Which way you look at it?

  ‘Buried in a drainage ditch, as you say, at the height of summer, it’s remarkable we have anything at all.’ Pettet’s voice was deep and he spoke as if he was constantly on the verge of nodding off, worn out by the effort of explaining things to idiots. ‘There is a complete absence of fleshy matter and you can see that the bones themselves are mushy.’

  Thorne had never met Pettet before and could only guess at what lay beneath the plastic hood wrapped tightly around the face and the mask that covered the nose and mouth.

  ‘The non-organic material has been better preserved of course.’ As Pettet catalogued it, an assistant moved carefully around the grave, occasionally dropping to his knees or onto his chest to gather up a fragment with long forceps and drop it into a plastic evidence bag. ‘The material of the dress, the refuse bags, what’s left of the carpet she was wrapped up in. The rope, or cord, around the neck remains remarkably intact . . .’

  Thorne imagined Pettet to be balding, perhaps with a Bobby Charlton comb-over and very bad skin.

  Thorne turned away and looked down into the grave, the buzzing arc lights casting a harsh and unforgiving light across its grisly contents.

  Mushy was about right. Tea-coloured bones sunk down into mud and slime. Tattered remnants of a blue dress, not white, thank heavens, and matted clumps of carpet, all floating in a brown soup. Tufts of hair, plastered to the bobbing skull like worms.

  The white bleached bones of the human skeleton existed nowhere but under the skin, where they belonged, and in the imaginations of television scriptwriters. Dem bones dem bones, hanging, grinning and unreal in doctor’s surgery sketches.

  Not like this. This human stew.

  At the foot of the grave, Hendricks stood back to let one of the team come in close, to stoop down and pluck something long and greasy from the mud. Thorne caught his eye. Hendricks winked at him. He turned back to Pettet.

 
‘What about DNA?’

  The archaeologist puffed out his cheeks. ‘Don’t hold your breath.’

  Thorne grunted – as close as it was possible to get to a laugh. The smell inside the tent was overpowering, and, masks or not, holding their breath was exactly what everybody around the grave was trying to do. Everybody but Pettet, anyway. The archaeologist failed to see any irony in what he’d said. ‘The victim’s DNA, yes, perhaps. Get me some comparable ­material – hairs, fingernail clippings. Sometimes the parents hang on to those things for sentimental reasons.’

  Of course they’d go through the motions, run the tests, but Thorne knew he was looking at what was left of Karen McMahon. ‘Any chance of anything from the killer?’

  Pettet almost managed a smile. ‘Always a chance. There’s a chance you’ll win the lottery isn’t there? Only possibility is the rope. Bits of skin caught in there, perhaps, but any cellular material will have been destroyed by the creosote.’

  Thorne turned, raised his eyebrows.

  Pettet explained, slowly. ‘Creosote is used to weatherproof the railway ties. Same stuff you put on your garden fence. Over the years it’s leached into the water running along these ditches. Ironically, if she’d been buried on higher ground, somewhere drier, the creosote in the soil might have acted as a preservative and we might have had a lot more of her left.’

  To Thorne, the disappointment in Pettet’s voice sounded strictly professional. Not sentimental like those silly parents with their jewellery boxes full of hair and fingernails . . .

  Thorne glanced over to the other side of the tent where a small pile of dirty rocks stood in the corner. Pettet caught Thorne’s look. ‘At least all the bones are there. The killer took the trouble to make sure the foxes didn’t get at them.’

  A layer of rocks laid carefully on top of the grave. Rocks too heavy to be shifted by the snout of something hungry. Rocks, then a layer of mud two feet or so thick and underneath it all, the body of a 14-year-old girl shrouded in bin-liners, rotting beneath an old carpet. Safe from foxes.