Scaredy Cat

by Mark Billingham

  A hundred yards behind the car was a fence maybe six or seven feet high. Up onto the telephone junction box there and over. Away into the building site.

  Piece of piss. Could he climb the fence with cuffs on? Probably. Taken the key anyway. Away and gone . . .

  Thorne opened the door and all but fell out onto the road. He stood up and stumbled a few feet forward. He raised an arm and waved at the oncoming traffic.

  Nobody stopped.

  Nobody gives a fuck. No trust in anyone these days. Six days a week, for the past eighteen months in that shop. Maybe if I produced my warrant card, showed them I was a policeman . . .

  The Mondeo’s headlights were still on. Thorne winced as he brought a hand to his shattered nose and stepped into their beam. The car that rushed past him blared its horn as Thorne staggered across the carriageway through a tunnel of light, towards the prison.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Jesus, Tom. Do you feel OK?’ Brigstocke looked shocked and concerned.

  The nose had swelled grotesquely almost immediately, and now, two days later, the rest of Thorne’s face had caught up. He had huge dark rings under his eyes and blue-black bruises along each cheekbone.

  ‘I feel fine,’ Thorne said. ‘I look like a fucking panda, but I feel fine . . .’

  The concern vanished from Brigstocke’s face. ‘That’s very fitting, because pandas are an endangered species as well, aren’t they? What the fuck did you think you were doing?’

  There had been occasions in the past when Tom Thorne would have fought his corner a little at this point. Stood his ground and made a speech about ends and means. Today, he couldn’t be arsed.

  ‘I fucked up.’

  Brigstocke had stood up on Thorne’s appearance in the doorway. Now, he slumped back down behind his desk. ‘Listen, I’ve got to serve you with this.’ He handed Thorne a piece of paper. ‘It’s a Regulation 7 notice. The DPS want to see you . . .’

  Thorne had expected nothing less. The Directorate of Professional Standards – another stupid American name for what had used to be the CIB, the Complaints Investigation Bureau: the team that was there to root out corruption, to weed out the bad apples. The same organisation that had recently been involved in a well-publicised operation to deal with officers moonlighting as extras on The Bill, and were currently investigating a complaint that an officer had broken wind during a raid and failed to apologise.

  ‘I can’t wait,’ Thorne said.

  ‘What about the nose?’

  ‘No picking, no sneezing. I go back in a week or so when the swelling’s gone down. Depending on how it looks, they either do nothing, or break it again, re-set it.’

  ‘Do they need volunteers?’

  Thorne crossed to the other desk and sat down. ‘What are you doing about Palmer?’

  ‘What are we doing? You’re priceless . . .’

  ‘Sorry. I know that sounded . . .’

  ‘We’re doing what you’d expect, which is more than you did, isn’t it? The media are all over this and we’ll have to play along a bit if we want to use them. Somebody knows where Palmer’s gone and the only way we’re going to find them is through the papers, the TV . . .’

  As if on cue, Steve Norman strolled into the office.

  ‘Russell . . . DI Thorne . . .’

  Brigstocke stood up. Thorne, for no good reason, found himself wearily doing the same. ‘I’m going to get coffees,’ Brigstocke said, moving to the door. ‘Everybody want one?’

  Thorne nodded. Norman grunted his assent as he dropped a pile of newspapers onto the desk. He picked off the top one and turned to Thorne, holding it up.

  ‘You certainly know how to generate a good story, Thorne.’

  The front page of the tabloid was almost filled with a photo of Martin Palmer. The headline was simple and dramatic. What the Americans called a ‘scarehead’ . . .

  killer on the run.

  Thorne stepped around the desk. He was tired, in pain and in no mood for another shouting match. ‘Listen, Norman . . .’

  Norman raised a hand to stop him and looked surprised when it did the trick. ‘Look, before this kicks off, I want to apologise for the argument the other week. I was being an arsehole, OK? I’ve been meaning to come in and sort it out, but work’s been piling up.’

  Thorne was completely on the back foot. ‘Right . . .’

  ‘Things had been a bit tricky at home to tell you the truth, and I was just on a short fuse. It was out of order, and I know we’re not going to be best mates but there’s no point us being at loggerheads, is there? Especially not now. Fair enough?’

  Thorne nodded, wondering if he was suffering with delayed concussion.

  Norman thrust a finger at the front of the paper. ‘Actually, this is exactly what we need. The phones have been ringing all morning. We’ll probably have him back in custody by tea time.’ Norman’s expression darkened a little as he pulled out another paper from further down the pile. ‘Did you see yesterday’s?’

  Thorne shook his head. He’d been lying in a darkened room most of the day, waiting to stop feeling like somebody had their boot on his face. This time the picture on the front page of the paper was far more indistinct. Two figures, shot with a zoom probably, from hundreds of feet away, like one of those blurry photos of Bigfoot or the Beast of Bodmin.

  Thorne and Palmer at Karen McMahon’s grave.

  ‘This one we didn’t give them,’ Norman said. ‘Somebody did though. Somebody who’s getting a bit too pally with the press.’

  Distasteful as it was, Thorne had to agree. Bracher was probably responsible for the early stuff the papers had got hold of, but this had to be down to someone on the team. ‘I’ll find out who it is.’

  ‘Good. I have to say, though, that it’s doing us more good than anything else at the moment. We’ve actually started feeding them a bit more on Karen McMahon.’ Thorne looked slightly confused. ‘They formally identified her thirty-six hours ago. Around the time this was taken.’

  Thorne needed to catch up fast. He’d been out of the loop since he’d put Palmer in the back of the Mondeo on Thursday afternoon and driven him back to the railway embankment.

  ‘I think he might be a police officer . . .’

  ‘There’s a lot of human interest there,’ Norman said. ‘Which they love of course. Fifteen years of torment for the parents, all that. Plus, the simple fact that a murder’s been solved. Finding that body has done everybody a lot of favours. We can claw back a bit of lost ground.’

  The stabbing pain that ran across Thorne’s face cranked up a notch. He reached into his jacket pocket for the painkillers. ‘I found one body, then lost another.’

  Norman laughed, a wheezy snicker. ‘Right. But they kind of cancel each other out.’ Norman had a newspaper in each hand. He held them up in turn to illustrate his argument. ‘Thanks to the brownie points we earn for finding Karen McMahon, we can let them go to town with Palmer’s escape, and hopefully we can keep one or two of the less impressive procedural details out of it.’

  Less impressive procedural details?

  ‘Right,’ Thorne said. ‘Obviously I’d be grateful . . .’

  Thorne poured himself a glass of water. He needed it to swallow the pills and to take a very unpleasant taste out of his mouth. As he threw his head back, he caught sight of Brigstocke heading towards them across the incident room with three plastic cups.

  ‘Coffee’s here . . .’

  ‘Great.’ Norman’s mobile rang. He looked at the screen. ‘Excuse me, I need to take this . . .’

  Thorne watched as Norman took the call, turning away and murmuring into his phone. He was finding it hard to distinguish between the pain and disorder colliding in his head like a pair of very long trains, ploughing endlessly into each other. Norman apologising . . . one b
ody lost, one body found . . . a leak on the investigation . . . the DPS . . . Palmer’s tone of voice in the car when he said what he said about Nicklin.

  Then, there was the one less-than-impressive procedural detail he hadn’t told them about at all . . .

  McEvoy was logged on to the Internet. Holland hadn’t recognised the page she’d had up on screen, but the glimpse he’d caught before she saw him and quit, gave him the idea it might be a mail server. They were not supposed to use the system to send or receive personal emails, but Holland said nothing. In the scheme of things it was pretty trivial, and besides, he knew how any comment of that sort would be taken.

  ‘At least you’re not leaving when I come into the office. We must be making progress.’

  McEvoy shrugged, not looking up. ‘Can’t let you accuse me of not doing my job properly.’

  Holland saw no point in pussyfooting around the issue. He opened his mouth and said it. ‘I think one of us needs to transfer off this team.’ Her face told him that he’d shaken her. ‘Come on, you must have been thinking about it, it’s—’

  She cut him off. ‘Well I’m not fucking going.’

  ‘Sarah . . .’

  ‘Right, course. By one of us, you mean me. Well?’

  Now would be the time to walk away if he was going to; to forget he’d brought it up and make the best of it. He hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘You’re the one with the problem, not me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Don’t psychoanalyse me. I’m not the one snorting away my wages, fucking everything up, putting the lives of my colleagues at risk . . .’

  The colour sprang into McEvoy’s face. She could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. ‘When? Tell me when?’

  ‘Maybe never. Maybe half an hour from now . . .’ Holland wanted so much to cross the five feet of space between them, right then, and take hold of her. He couldn’t.

  ‘Nobody else knows about this, Dave.’ McEvoy watched herself, feeling like a ditzy blonde trying to avoid a speeding ticket. Loathing it. ‘Let’s just forget all the shit that’s happened. Dave . . . ?’

  ‘Nobody else knows for now. I don’t think you’re doing a very good job of hiding it.’

  McEvoy changed tack in a second. ‘You go to Brigstocke and I’ll be right behind you. I’ll tell him you’ve been harassing me. They’ll think you’re making it up because I wouldn’t fuck you . . .’

  Holland could see that she was desperate, backed into a corner. He knew that she was clinging to the ledge by her fingernails, saying things she didn’t mean and would never carry through, but still his temper got the better of him. He marched across the office, picked up the newspaper from the top of a filing cabinet and threw it down in front of her.

  McEvoy stared down at the picture of Thorne and Palmer at the drainage ditch.

  ‘You talk to anybody,’ Holland said, ‘and you’ll be opening a major can of fucking worms.’

  McEvoy looked up at him, confused. ‘You think I’m the leak?’

  ‘I can’t afford to waste it, you said.’ Holland snatched up the paper, screwed it into a ball. ‘Shit, this is easy money, isn’t it? A tip here, a photo opportunity there, that’s you sorted for the week. For all I know, they probably fix you up with the coke themselves, save messing about with cash.’

  ‘Dave . . .’

  ‘Just admit it, you did, didn’t you? Just fucking well admit it . . .’

  Holland saw McEvoy’s eyes flicker, saw her body tense. He turned to see Thorne standing in the doorway. There was no awkward pause, no meaningful silence. McEvoy was up and moving towards the door, wisecracking to Thorne on her way out as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Some people around here are obviously feeling as shitty as you look . . .’

  Then there was a silence.

  Thorne closed the door, moved into the room. ‘Dave, is there a problem between you and Sarah?’ Holland said nothing. Thorne felt hot and hassled. He did not want any more uncertainty, any more disorder. ‘DC Holland, is there a problem between yourself and Detective Sergeant McEvoy?’

  Holland looked at Thorne. Later, standing at bars or staring up at a striplight, he would remember this moment. In the months and the years to come, sitting on the side of the bed in the middle of the night, Sophie stirring next to him, he would look back and picture this instant. He would recall every detail of Thorne’s bruised face, every nuance of his bruising voice. He would remember, and wish to God that he’d told the truth.

  Holland looked at Thorne. ‘No, sir.’

  Thorne let out a long slow breath and moved across to the window. He looked down, hoping to see something that might raise his spirits. Some cadets marching badly would do the trick. Better yet, a group of them forming a human pyramid, mounted on the back of two motorbikes like they used to do on those displays when he was a kid . . .

  There was just a pair of civilian staff smoking in a doorway.

  Thorne turned and walked back across the room. He was feeling aimless, untrusted, unnecessary. He opened the door of the office, looked out across the incident room. In the far corner he saw Norman standing over McEvoy’s desk. She said something that made him laugh.

  ‘McEvoy and Norman are getting friendly, aren’t they?’

  ‘He’s probably trying to talk her into going on to the next press conference,’ Holland said. ‘He’s been telling her she should get some media training. Says he thinks she’d come across well on camera.’

  Thorne turned back into the room. ‘What about me? How camera-friendly am I looking?’ Holland said nothing, trying to decide how diplomatic to be. ‘Does it really look bad?’

  ‘Once the bruising’s gone it’ll be fine. A broken nose is quite cool actually. Women go for that sort of thing . . .’

  ‘Please, God . . .’

  ‘I should look on the bright side,’ Holland said. ‘Fact is, with all due respect, sir, you were quite an ugly fucker before.’

  No picking, no sneezing. The pain told Thorne that they defi­nitely needed to add laughing to the list.

  Thorne waited until the office was quiet before making the call.

  His heart was pounding as he dialled, as it had each time he’d tried the number from home. A dozen times or more since ­getting back from the hospital. A dozen times or more, he’d got the answering machine.

  He waited for the connection.

  He should have told them about this, there were things they could have done – traces – but he felt instinctively that their efforts would be fruitless, that this was the right thing to do.

  The phone rang.

  This was the way he might make up for his mistake . . .

  Ten, twelve rings as usual, then the familiar message. ‘Shit . . .’

  ‘This is Tom Thorne. Leave a message or try my home number, which is . . .’

  Then suddenly Thorne remembered the call he’d seen Steve Norman take earlier. He pictured the press officer as his phone was ringing. Looking at the screen before answering.

  Caller ID . . .

  This number, the office number, was withheld, as was his own at home. Both would show up on the screen as private numbers. The calls would go unanswered. He needed a number which was registered, which would show up and give the man who had his phone a good idea who was calling.

  Thorne opened the door, scanned the incident room, hoping that Dave Holland hadn’t left yet.

  Minutes later he was dialling the number again on Holland’s borrowed mobile. The name would show up on his phone. He had programmed it in himself.

  The phone began to ring . . .

  Whoever was holding it would be seeing holland mob come up on the small screen and would surely be able to guess who was calling. Would perhaps risk t
aking the call.

  The phone was answered.

  ‘Palmer. This is Thorne.’

  Fifteen seconds. Thorne was starting to wonder if maybe it wasn’t Palmer on the other end. Then that voice, the nasal tones even more pronounced over the phone. ‘I’m really sorry, Mr Thorne . . .’

  ‘You broke my fucking nose . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.’

  Thorne moved across to the window, stared out at the lights of Hendon, the cars speeding north on the M1. ‘Why did you take my phone?’

  ‘I won’t be on long enough for you to trace this. I presume you’re tracing this . . .’

  ‘Did you take it to give yourself more time to get away, or because you knew I’d call?’

  Thorne could hear Palmer breathing, considering the question. ‘A little of both, probably.’

  ‘This is so stupid you know. We’ll find you. You’ve given yourself up once, you should do it again.’

  Palmer laughed, but it sounded desperate. ‘Why? Is it going to make a difference to my sentence?’

  ‘Why should you care about that? You wanted to be locked up for life anyway. What’s changed, Martin? Why are you doing this?’

  ‘I should go . . .’

  ‘Is it because of what I said about what might happen to you in prison?’

  ‘Not really. Yes, sort of . . .’

  Thorne looked at himself reflected in the blackness of the window, the bruises dark shadows across his face. For half a second he forgot that he was chatting to a murderer. He felt like a character in some noirish pop video, his mouth miming these disconnected sentences – strange snippets of conversation dropped into a dark ballad about loss or the impossibility of forgiveness.

  ‘What did you mean in the car? What did you mean about Nicklin being a policeman?’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything. I was just saying it. I needed to distract you . . .’

  ‘That’s bollocks, Martin. You could have done anything, said anything. Why did you say that?’

  ‘I had a feeling, that’s all. It was just an impression, like he was used to people doing what he told them . . .’