Scaredy Cat

by Mark Billingham

  Safe from everything.

  A few minutes later outside the tent, Thorne dropped a hand on to Phil Hendricks’s shoulder. ‘Don’t get big-headed, but it’s a treat to talk about death with someone who doesn’t behave like he’s suffering from it . . .’

  ‘Wish he was,’ Holland muttered. ‘Miserable sod.’

  Hendricks grinned. ‘He was hard work, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Like I don’t know what fucking creosote is!’ Thorne shook his head, the wounded expression just what was needed to set them off. They all laughed then, as they desperately needed to. They laughed and shook their heads as they stepped clumsily out of their bodysuits. McEvoy lost her footing and her hand reached out to Holland for support. The laughter stopped quickly after that, and they all stood in silence for a few moments, taking in lungfuls of wonderful dirty London air.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Hendricks said, looking around. ‘He obviously didn’t want her disturbed, you know, by animals . . .’

  Holland nodded. ‘Must have taken him ages to find all those rocks. There’s not many of them anywhere round here.’

  ‘. . . but he didn’t seem to much care where he buried her. She wasn’t very well hidden.’

  ‘She wasn’t hidden at all,’ Holland said. ‘She wasn’t hard to find. Nobody’d ever bothered to look for her, that’s all.’

  McEvoy lit a cigarette, spoke as she exhaled. ‘Obviously he didn’t think anyone would look for her.’

  ‘Oh, he knew they wouldn’t,’ Thorne said. ‘He made sure of it.’

  She got into a blue car, sir. A Cavalier I think they’re called . . .

  ‘He did this when he was fourteen,’ McEvoy said. ‘Then he disappears, and pops up again over fifteen years later. Fifteen years.’

  Thorne nodded. He knew what was coming. He asked the question out loud, the one he’d asked himself as he’d stared down at Karen McMahon’s remains. ‘How many more bodies are there out there?’

  It was warming up. There was no wind at all where they stood at the foot of the embankment and the smoke from McEvoy’s cigarette rose straight up, blue against the concrete-coloured sky.

  ‘No chance on the DNA then?’ she asked.

  Thorne shook his head.

  ‘I told you,’ Hendricks said.

  Thorne shrugged. Worth a try. It was all academic anyway. They knew who it was lying back there inside the tent, in a hole they dignified with the word grave, and they knew who had put her there. There would be nothing in the way of concrete evidence on the Palmer–Nicklin case, on the Garner case, to present to anybody. But they had found a body. Bullseye. Thorne had a corpse to offer up to his superiors. He saw himself rather like a cat, dropping a dead bird at the foot of its master. Stroke me. See? Look at how clever I am.

  Thorne had never felt less clever in his life.

  They turned at a rustle of canvas from behind them, and saw Pettet emerge from the tent carrying a small plastic evidence bag. He pulled down his mask and strolled across to them. Thorne was pleased to see that he had been right about the bad skin.

  ‘I thought you might want to see this.’

  He held out the bag, and Thorne and the others clustered around, staring at what was inside. Whatever it was had once been a bright colour, but was now faded and thick with black mud. It was Holland who first made sense of the broken down and barely legible lettering.

  ‘Bloody hell, I used to love those. Can you still get them?’

  Hendricks leaned in a little closer, peering at the plastic bag. Its sides were streaked with muck. The bottom filled with dirty water, gritty with tiny stones and traces of bone marrow. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the wrapper off a chocolate bar,’ Thorne said. ‘And no, I don’t think you can get them any more.’ He guessed not anyway, unless Nicklin’s tastes had changed. It wasn’t the same brand as the one they’d found licked clean and clutched in Charlie Garner’s hand, but its presence chilled him every bit as much.

  Thorne took a few steps up the slope of the embankment towards the cars, stopped and looked back. He spoke to Pettet, staring over his head at the small white tent. ‘Be careful taking her out of there, will you?’

  Pettet opened his mouth to reply, but Thorne was already turning and climbing away up the hill. He clutched the white plastic bodysuit in his fist, wondering just how much protection it provided against what Hendricks had called the little pieces of death. Back in that tent, there would have been millions of them floating around, settling unseen against the bright white material. Some would have got through and ended up sitting on the skin, nestling in the cuffs and trapped on the soles of shoes. Waiting to sparkle when the time was right.

  When it was dark enough.

  Thorne took a breath and started to climb faster. He was starting to feel the ache in his thighs as he took out his phone and dialled Vic Perks’s number.

  He would have liked to have stayed and waited until they brought her out. That would have been interesting. He wondered how she would look. Probably just one more stain on that manky old carpet he’d wrapped her up in and tossed across his shoulder. The outline of her reduced down and imprinted on it. Bodily fluids marking out her skinny frame in the cheap nylon pile.

  He would have liked to have stayed, but he needed to get to work.

  He was annoyed but he was not letting it get to him. He was angry that his past was being disturbed, examined, when he had taken such great care, always, to ensure that to all intents and purposes, it had never really existed. He was in control of what lay behind him, every bit as much as he was of what lay ahead. It wound him up to see them taking a little of that control away. He felt usurped.

  But he wasn’t going to let it spoil things.

  Let them uncover a small piece of who he used to be. It wouldn’t do them any good at all. He was about to take another leap into the future.

  He’d felt close to it the night before. It had been there, almost within his reach when Caroline had been going on about kids. Then afterwards, as she had sobbed and shouted, as he’d reached out to draw her into an embrace, it had come to him.

  The way forward.

  Two major changes to the way he was going to go about things, now that he was working alone again. Two. And each on its own enough to ratchet up the excitement, to get whatever it was that spewed out adrenaline working overtime. Even as he considered what he had decided to do, his exhilaration was tempered by the thought that he would never be able to top it. How could he?

  He was being far too modest, of course. Hadn’t he thought the same thing with his hands around a woman’s neck, imagining Palmer’s hands around another doing as he’d been instructed? When he’d put the gun to that young girl’s head and pictured another gun being raised? A gun, as it turned out, in somewhat shakier hands.

  Now, things were about to change. He had his new motor.

  Never stay still and never go back.

  This time, the victim would not be chosen at random. She, and it would be a she, would not be plucked from the crowd. She would be carefully selected.

  The second change was the breathtaking one – the part of his plan that really raised the stakes. It was so beautifully brazen.

  The woman who he was going to kill next would be invited to die.

  Now it was just a question of deciding on a guest list.

  Sarah McEvoy slammed the door behind her with such force that Holland braced himself, waiting for the sound of shattering glass, which thankfully never came. The windows were equally lucky to survive the onslaught of McEvoy’s fury, which moved in front of her like a swinging bludgeon as she stomped across the office.

  ‘You wanker! You self-righteous, tight-arsed little wanker!’

  ‘Listen . . .’

  ‘What was it? WD40? Motor oil?’

 
Holland felt like he’d been punched in the stomach, winded by the force of her anger, sick because of what had caused it. Gutted that what he’d done had been proved to be necessary. ‘It was cooking oil. Just cooking oil . . .’

  A thin layer across the top of the cistern in the Ladies, invisible unless you were looking for it. The cocaine gone in a second. A trick they used in some of the more drugs-conscious clubs. He’d picked up the oil on the way to work. He hadn’t wanted to be seen taking the bottle from the cupboard at home . . .

  ‘Think you’re clever, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any idea what it costs? Come on smartarse, you’ve got your finger on the pulse, haven’t you? Any idea how much it is a gram?’

  Holland had had quite enough of being lectured at. He stood up, took a step towards her. ‘Listen to yourself . . .’

  ‘I can’t afford to waste it . . .’

  ‘I don’t think you can afford not to.’

  McEvoy laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘Which fucking seminar did you pick that one up at?’

  Holland looked at her. She was shaking her head, breathing heavily. Her speech had been machine-gun fast. Though the oil had stopped her, it clearly hadn’t held her up for very long. She’d probably just done a line off the back of her hand.

  ‘You said you didn’t do it at work.’

  ‘You really think I’ve got a problem, don’t you?’ She was laughing again, looking anywhere but at him. ‘You go on like I’m some fucking junkie. It’s just an occasional thing. Just now and again, Jesus . . .’

  ‘You said you didn’t do it at work, Sarah.’

  She coughed, wincing a little as something came up into her mouth. ‘Yes, well, it hasn’t exactly been a normal sort of day, has it?’ She pushed past him and dropped into the chair behind her desk. ‘I needed something after spending all morning staring into that hole, all right with you?’

  Holland realised that at that moment there was almost nothing about this woman, whose body he knew intimately, that he recognised. ‘No. It isn’t all right.’

  She glanced up, threw him a twisted smile. ‘Are you still here?’

  ‘That is the sickest piece of self-justification . . .’

  ‘Bollocks! I don’t need to justify what I do to you.’

  ‘No, but you obviously need to justify it to yourself . . .’

  McEvoy picked up a sheet of paper and studied it. ‘The gun that Palmer failed to shoot Jacqui Kaye with. He says that Nicklin delivered it, left it outside his door. The boss thinks that’s bullshit, reckons Palmer’s lying for some reason . . .’

  ‘I know. Sarah—’

  ‘So we don’t know why Palmer’s not telling us, but he must have got the gun from somewhere. From somebody who made it very clear that he better keep the whos and wheres to himself.’

  Holland wasn’t listening. He wasn’t sure she was. ‘This is stupid—’

  ‘If there’s a connection to Nicklin we’ve got to start chasing it, so this is a list of known, or suspected dealers which I’ve divided up, A, because it’s depressingly long, and B, because we should probably work separately, I mean, I wouldn’t want to compromise you . . .’

  ‘You need to talk to somebody.’

  Her look was one he would remember. ‘Or you will?’

  There was a small knock and Paul Moorhead, a trainee detective, poked his head round the door. His expression said that he knew full well it was about to be bitten off.

  ‘Sorry . . .’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘DCI Lickwood on the phone for you. Do you want me to put it through?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’

  McEvoy put her hand on the phone, picked it up the instant it began to ring.

  ‘Derek.’

  She laughed at whatever it was Lickwood said, placed a hand across the mouthpiece and stared at Dave Holland until he left.

  ‘There’s something else I want to tell you.’

  On TV, half a dozen dull, unattractive people sat about in a house, each trying to avoid being voted out. Thorne bit unenthusiastically into a sandwich and prayed for something interesting to happen. Like a meteor striking the house, or maybe a knife fight. He thought it was ironic that this was called fly-on-the-wall television. The morons that enjoyed it would have got as much entertainment out of capturing a real bluebottle in a jam jar; watching it smack into the glass over and over again.

  The sound was turned down. Folsom Prison Blues provided the soundtrack.

  Thorne was almost certain that there would be nothing jaunty about Belmarsh Prison Blues. No boom-chicka-boom two-beat. Just feedback. A tuneless dirge screamed over the monotonous thumping of boots on stairs and heads against walls. Martin Palmer had walked into the visiting area a few hours earlier looking like it was a song he’d been hearing a lot in the last week.

  Thorne had said nothing. He’d put the plastic bag down on the table, slid it across. Palmer had leaned forward and stared at the wrapper, much as Hendricks and the others had done earlier. Palmer had seen what it was straight away. He’d recognised it.

  ‘Nicklin killed Karen, Martin. He killed her and buried her in a ditch, then told everyone she’d been abducted.’ Thorne had only glanced away for a second but when he’d looked back, Palmer’s face had been wet. ‘Come on, did you never even consider it?’

  Palmer had reached forward and put his hand over the plastic bag. Obscured it.

  ‘Karen was his first,’ Thorne had said. ‘At least, I think so. There isn’t much of her left to test, so we’ll never know for sure, but I’d guess he assaulted her as well. Some kind of sexual activity before he killed her . . .’

  Palmer had looked away, poking two fingers behind his glasses to wipe his eyes. ‘How did he do it?’

  ‘He strangled her. Wrapped a rope around her neck. Stuart, who you loved.’

  ‘I don’t believe he did anything to her like that. Anything sexual, I mean.’

  Thorne had scoffed. ‘You’re right, I’m only guessing. We’ll just stick with murder and dumping the body in a shallow grave, shall we? Did you ever ask yourself how many more he might have killed, Martin? How many more Karens there might be?’

  Palmer had turned back to him suddenly. ‘I want to see where she was.’

  ‘You know where she was. At the embankment. I told you, we found the body in a drainage ditch . . .’

  ‘I want to see exactly. I’d like to see exactly where he put Karen.’

  Thorne had heard similar requests before from friends and relatives of victims. Show me where he died. Take me to the spot they killed her. Where did the accident happen? Location was important to people. Somewhere to leave a marker, to visit. Increasingly, thanks to Diana and the emergence of a shrine culture, a place for complete strangers to leave bunches of flowers or teddy bears.

  Palmer was not a victim though. Palmer was on remand, charged with murder.

  ‘Sorry, no. What’s the point, anyway? They’ve taken the body away, she’s not there any more. There’s nothing there any more . . .’ Thorne said this, but didn’t know for sure. The body would probably have been removed by now, but he didn’t know what else might be happening at the site.

  ‘I don’t care. I want to see.’

  ‘Forget it.’ Thorne stood up, took a few steps in no particular direction. ‘Before, you were helping us locate the body, fair enough, but this is pointless. Even if I was in favour of it, which I’m not, I couldn’t get it authorised.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Shut up.’ With Palmer, it always seemed to go the same way. He made Thorne feel something that was almost like sympathy, whatever it was turning quickly to something that was definitely anger. ‘Why the fuck should I try to . . . ?’

  Palmer shoved back his chair and
stood up fast. Through the window at the far end of the room, Thorne could see one of the prison officers moving to check that everything was all right. He had been about to signal that there was no problem when Palmer had said what Thorne had been desperate to hear since those first few days after he’d handed himself in.

  ‘There’s something else I want to tell you . . .’

  Now, in his flat, the phone was ringing.

  Thorne got up, turned off the television and stereo en route and fetched the phone from the table by the front door. Stepping sideways to avoid the unfinished sandwich on a plate on the floor, he dropped backwards over the arm of the chair leaving his legs dangling, and hit the button.

  It was his dad. They hadn’t spoken for a week or so.

  ‘Tom . . .’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Fine, you know.’

  ‘Gags tonight, or quizzes?’

  ‘Tom, it’s Dad.’

  ‘I know.’ Thorne laughed. ‘You all right?’ His dad breathed heavily down the phone at him. ‘Listen, you never told me how it went down the Legion.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The trick you were going to pull. You called me and asked me about the worst killers.’

  There was a pause. ‘I didn’t . . .’

  ‘That smallpox thing. It was a joke to play on your mates. Remember? It was a couple of weeks ago, I think.’

  ‘No. Sorry. No idea what you’re on about. Smallpox?’

  ‘Come on, yes you do. You asked me for the names of the worst killers . . .’

  ‘What, you mean diseases?’

  ‘Yeah, that was the point, I think. Forget it. Wasn’t one of your best anyway.’

  ‘Is this a wind-up?’

  Thorne laughed again, pulled a face. ‘Well if it is, it’s not me that’s doing it . . .’

  ‘Just piss off, all right . . .’

  ‘Dad . . . ?’ Thorne swung his legs over the arm of the chair, sat up straight.