Lifeless tt-5

by Mark Billingham

  “Basic stuff?”

  “Individual pictures of the soldiers, and maybe some of the details that are in their records: height, weight, color of hair, blood group with a bit of luck. Hopefully, we should be able to figure out which one our mystery corpse is.”

  “Hopefully.” Brigstocke was thinking that they’d need more than a photo. The killer hadn’t left any of the victims in a state that was particularly recognizable. “He reckons he can do that, does he, this Major Brereton?”

  “He sounded like there was every chance, yeah. I think they respond better when requests for information come from other soldiers.”

  Brigstocke picked up the phone. “Not like the way most people on the Job respond to each other, then?”

  “Guv…?”

  “You’ll know what I’m on about soon enough.” Brigstocke dialed a number, pointed toward the piece of paper. “Well done on this, Jason. Your luck was in, no question…”

  “Oh, it was pure bloody jam, guv, I know that.”

  “Luck’s no use to anybody unless they use it. It sounds like you dealt with this Brereton bloke very well.”

  Mackillop handled the praise like someone with far greater experience. Just a small nod. But Brigstocke caught the spasm of delight on his face, like a stifled sneeze, in the second or two before the TDC turned to walk toward the door.

  Brigstocke leaned back in his chair and listened to the phone ringing on the other end of the line. He was as absurdly excited as Mackillop had been by the prospect of giving Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Jesmond the first piece of genuinely good news in a while.

  The four of them-Thorne, Spike, Caroline, and Terry T-sat around a table in a grotty cafe behind the Charing Cross Road. Terry had returned from his travels with a few extra quid in his pocket and had insisted on shelling out on tea and doughnuts for everyone. This, and the fact that he was able to make the word cunt sound like a term of endearment, made Thorne take to him straightaway.

  “You the cunt who’s been sleeping in my pitch?” Terry had said on being introduced. The voice was high and hoarse, ripening a thick London accent.

  Thorne had thought about it for a few seconds. “Yeah, I think that’ll be me. Just keeping it warm for you, obviously.”

  “Fair play, mate…”

  Terry T was every bit as tall as Spike had described, but he was also spookily thin. He was, Thorne guessed, somewhere in his late thirties, but he looked a damn sight older, with sunken cheeks, very few teeth, and what appeared to be no hair at all beneath a floppy green hat. Like a cross between Nosferatu and the King of the Gypsies. A feather dangled from one ear and he’d taken off his scarf to reveal a heavy-looking, tarnished padlock on a chain around his neck, which had turned the skin beneath it distinctly green.

  Terry had seen Thorne staring and reached up to finger the chain. “Lost the fuckin’ key, didn’t I?”

  “So where you been then, Tel? What you been doing…?”

  Spike was buzzing, and for more than just the usual reason. He was excited to have his friend back. Thorne felt a peculiar twinge of something that might have been jealousy, though it was probably no more than a sugar rush from the doughnuts.

  “Been all over,” Terry T said. “Up north to Birmingham and Liverpool, then even further, mate. Up with the chilly Jockos.”

  Spike dipped a doughnut into a glass of Coke, let the drips fall off. “I thought most of them were here in London.”

  “Plenty more where they came from,” Terry said.

  Spike rolled his eyes, put on a cod-Scottish accent, and mumbled something incomprehensible. “It’s fucking disgusting,” he said. “They come down here, they beg on our street corners, they drink our Special Brew…”

  Terry and Caroline laughed.

  “How d’you get around?” Thorne asked.

  “Hitching, mostly. Got a couple of free trains by keeping an eye out for the ticket collector and spending a lot of time in the bog.”

  “I bet it’s a bit colder on the streets up there.”

  “I was indoors, mate. Sofa-surfing…”

  Instinctively, Thorne looked to Spike for an explanation.

  Spike held out his arms as if riding a surfboard, repeated the phrase in a silly American accent. “Sofasurfing. Moving around, like. Dossing down on people’s floors, sofas, what-ever…”

  “Loads of people do it,” Caroline said. She’d poured a small mound of sugar onto the tabletop and had been absently toying with it: drawing patterns in the grains with her finger. All at once she chopped the edge of her hand onto the table and swept the sugar onto the floor. “You think there’s a lot of people sleeping on the street and in the hostels, you can multiply that by tens of thousands…”

  More of those who, conveniently, could never be counted when the official figures were being produced; more of the so-called hidden homeless. Thorne suddenly wondered if Terry T knew what had been going on while he was traveling. What had happened to some of those who had been unable to hide.

  “So how long have you been away, Terry?”

  Caroline flashed Thorne a look. He could see that she knew what was going through his mind, but he couldn’t be sure what she was trying to tell him.

  “Christ… it was a few days after that poor bastard got his head kicked in round Golden Square. When was that?”

  “A couple of months ago,” Spike said.

  “Did they ever catch the bloke who did it?”

  Terry couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a paper or watched the news; he knew nothing of those who had died after that first victim. Caroline brought him up to date: she told him about the murders of Ray Mannion and Paddy Hayes; she leaned across to grab one of Terry T’s long, bony hands and told him what had happened to Radio Bob.

  Spike edged toward Thorne. “Terry and Bob were mates,” he said. Like it wasn’t obvious enough…

  “Do they know why?” Terry asked eventually.

  Spike snorted. “Not got a clue, if you ask me, like.”

  “There’s supposedly an undercover copper sleeping rough,” Caroline said. “To try and catch him.”

  “They reckon the killer might be a copper,” Thorne said.

  There was a small bowl on the table filled with sachets and sealed tubes: sugar, vinegar, mustard, mayonnaise. Caroline grabbed a handful and dropped them into her bag. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against Spike. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, whistling something between his teeth.

  Terry took out a plastic wallet and shook some money onto the table to settle the bill. “He’ll be a dead copper if I get hold of him

  …”

  They walked up to Centre Point, then stopped and stood about for a quarter of an hour. For a few, strange minutes Thorne felt like a teenager again; content to hang around with friends, not doing anything in particular. Just talking bollocks and winding one another up. Happy enough to say nothing at all if the mood wasn’t right.

  The feeling passed quickly enough. This was not about relishing space and free time and the absence of responsibility. It was about being lost.

  They moved off again, crossing Oxford Street and heading north. “I can’t fucking believe I wasn’t here,” Terry said. “I can’t believe I missed Bob’s funeral.”

  Caroline caught up with him. “Listen, I’m sure you and some of the other lads can get together later and have a few drinks for him, eh?”

  “More than a few,” Terry said.

  Caroline looked at Thorne. “You up for that?” “Better watch him, though, Tel.” Spike pointed at

  Thorne and began to shadowbox. “After a couple of cans he thinks he’s Lennox Lewis…”

  “I don’t really know what I’m doing later,” Thorne said. “I’ve got to find a decent place to get some kip.”

  Terry turned to him. “I was only joking about my pitch, mate. Plenty of room in there for two if you want to stick around for a bit.”

  Spike whistled. “You on the turn, Tel?”<
br />
  “I’ll see…” Thorne said.

  Caroline punched him on the shoulder. “Tonight’s sorted, so don’t bother arguing. It’s going to piss down later, so you’re coming underground with us…”

  Major Stephen Brereton had been as good as his word. By mid-afternoon, photos and descriptions of the four men in the tank crew were being faxed through to the incident room. Holland and Kitson had stood over the machine as the information came through, inch by inch. They cleared a desk, laid it all out, and looked for the answer that they hoped would be somewhere in front of them. Brigstocke had been right in guessing that the photos would not do the job on their own. They were simple head-and-shoulder shots of the four men in uniform, taken shortly after each had enlisted, but enough was likely to have happened since then to change the way each of the men looked.

  They studied the information sheets on Hadingham, Bonser, and Eales: dates of birth and of enlistment; potted service histories; basic physical details.

  “Blood group doesn’t help us,” Kitson said, reading. “Eales and Hadingham are both O-positive…”

  Holland was the one who spotted it. “Found him…”

  “Show me.”

  Kitson looked over Holland’s shoulder and Holland pointed to the description of Trooper Alec Bonser. The driver.

  “He was five feet nine, look, same as our John Doe. Eales and Hadingham were both six-footers. The body in Westminster Morgue has got to be Alec Bonser.”

  Kitson carried on staring at the sheet of paper.

  “It’s got to be,” Holland said. “I don’t see any other-”

  “You’re right, I know.” Kitson pointed to another line of type. “I was looking for something else. This is good news for us, maybe…”

  Holland saw that Kitson was pointing to the entry under Next of Kin: Barbara Bonser (Mother).

  Holland let out a long, slow breath and looked around. He could see that Andy Stone, Jason Mackillop, and others had been earwigging; that they were hanging on every word. “What about the death message?” Holland asked.

  “I’ll sort it.” Kitson gathered up the sheets of paper. “I’ll go and fill the DCI in and get the sayso…”

  “So we should start looking for Eales and Hadingham, then?”

  “Looks like it.” She pulled out one of the sheets, glanced at it, and thrust it back at Holland. “You can make a start on our tank commander while I’m gone.”

  As he watched Kitson walk toward Brigstocke’s office, Holland wondered what he would say to Barbara Bonser if he were in the same position. What his own mother would say if it were his death message that was being delivered. He started to sweat, and to feel like he needed to sit down, when he began to wonder how he would react-how he would really react-were he ever to be told that anything had happened to Chloe…

  An hour later the whiteboard had been updated. Blown-up pictures of Jago, Hadingham, Bonser, and Eales had been added. The question marks had been removed. They had the names of the two soldiers who might still be alive and, finally, they had the names of both of those who were dead. Now, well into the locate/trace on Ian Hadingham, Holland had come up with nothing. The usual calls and searches to DSS and the National Voters’ Register had failed to turn his man up, and though he hadn’t expected it to be simple, he was wondering where to go next.

  This is good news for us, maybe…

  It suddenly struck him that he hadn’t once put Sophie into any of those painful next-of-kin scenarios that had occupied his thoughts earlier. The realization came like a fist in the gut; it winded him, and he knew he would be feeling its effects for a while. But at the same time it gave him an idea. A change of direction.

  He looked again at Ian Hadingham’s information sheet and turned back to his computer.

  Brigstocke should have known better. All his years of experience should have told him there were only two chances the day would finish up as well as it had started.

  Slim and none.

  When he answered the phone and the caller introduced himself by stating his rank, Brigstocke presumed it was the Army Personnel Centre, or perhaps someone from the regimental HQ in Somerset. He was about to pass on his gratitude for their sterling work in getting the details sent across so quickly.

  But he was not speaking to an ordinary soldier.

  The Special Investigations Branch of the Royal Military Police was the army’s equivalent of the CID. It was their job to investigate the more serious offenses committed against army personnel and their families. An elite force of fewer than two hundred plainclothes detectives selected from RMP ranks, they had teams in constant readiness to be deployed anywhere in the world. But they were also there to investigate serious crimes committed by soldiers; policing their own, in much the same way as the bunch who might well be hauling Tom Thorne across the coals when all this was over. In Brigstocke’s mind, this made them spooks; “rubber-heelers,” because you could never hear the buggers coming. If the ordinary squaddie felt the same way about them as the ordinary copper felt about the DPS, Brigstocke guessed they were as popular as turds in a sandpit.

  Brigstocke was rarely quick to judge-and was certainly not in Tom Thorne’s league-but the SIB man got up his nose from the off. He was a major, which, as far as Brigstocke knew, may well have equated in army terms with his own rank, but there was no reference to it. And certainly no bloody def erence. He spoke to Brigstocke as if they were colleagues, which, considering he’d never so much as heard of the bloke before, was hugely irritating.

  As they were talking-or rather as Brigstocke was listening -he kept wondering if he was on the phone to a copper or a soldier; or some bizarre hybrid of the two. The man certainly had twice the arrogance of either…

  And to begin with, at least, he insisted on trying to be jokey. “It’s sod all like they make out on Red Cap, ” he said. “The women aren’t nearly so attractive, for a start…”

  “I’ve never watched it,” Brigstocke said.

  The major then went round the houses for a while, chatting about this, that, and every other thing: asking Brigstocke how busy he was and comparing caseloads; no rest for the wicked, no thanks for a job well done, and you didn’t have to be mad to work here but…

  It took maybe ten minutes before he got to the point: “So, this business with the tank crew…”

  Brigstocke repeated what Kitson and Holland had said that first time to Rutherford and Spiby at Media Ops; what they’d said a few days after that when they’d been down to the regiment’s HQ in Somerset. He talked about a complex and consuming murder case: two vagrants who, it transpired, had been exservicemen, and two others whom they’d been trying to trace. They were trying to catch a killer; there was no more to it than that.

  “So, how’s it going?”

  “We’re getting there, slowly. You know how it is…”

  “You’ve traced the crew, though. You’ve got all four names now, yes?”

  He’d have got that from the AP Centre. Maybe from Stephen Brereton. It didn’t much matter.

  “Yes, they came through this afternoon.” Thinking: You fuckers don’t hang about, do you? “The army’s been very helpful…”

  “Well, of course, why wouldn’t we be?”

  Brigstocke manufactured a laugh. “No reason,” he said. “But if it’s anything like the Met, sometimes it’s got sod all to do with a desire to help and everything to do with red tape, you know…?”

  There was a pause then. Brigstocke thought he could hear, through the faint hiss on the line, the sound of pages being turned.

  “So, nothing you think we should know about?”

  If Brigstocke were the paranoid kind, he might have heard that as nothing you’re not telling us? If he were really going to town, it might even have been nothing you’re not telling us that we might know already?

  “If I think of anything, I’ll get back to you…”

  Of course, Brigstocke had said nothing at all about the video. He’d been delighted, if a lit
tle surprised, that Jesmond, who was normally circumspect about such things, had backed his judgment and authorized him to keep quiet about it.

  “I’m sure we’ll speak again,” the major said, before hanging up.

  They would be told about the videotape at some point. Once it ceased being active evidence, it would be handed quietly over, and then it would be up to the Redcaps what they did about it. Then, Brigstocke felt sure, the man he’d just spoken to would be back on the phone. Only this time, he wouldn’t be quite as matey…

  He was still thinking about these conversations, past and future, while Holland was speaking. He’d come into Brigstocke’s office and begun to talk about the locate/trace he’d set up on Ian Hadingham.

  Brigstocke pushed thoughts of the SIB major to the back of his mind and concentrated on what Dave Holland was telling him.

  “… so I went after his wife instead,” Holland said. “Shireen Hadingham was listed as his next of kin. Not much more bloody luck with her until I started using her maiden name. She’s gone back to calling herself ‘Shireen Collins’…”

  “Her and Hadingham split up?”

  “Not long after he came out of the army.”

  “Did you find her?”

  “Yeah. Five minutes. I spoke to her.”

  “She confirm the tattoo?” Brigstocke asked.

  Holland nodded. “He was very proud of it, by all accounts…”

  On the ceiling, a strip light that was on its way out buzzed and flickered. Brigstocke could feel the day grinding toward its arse end. He was aching to get out of the building; to get home and collapse onto a sofa. He wanted nothing more than to open a bottle and let a few children clamber over him for a while. “Does she know where her ex-old man is?” he asked.

  “Oh yes, and she’s pretty sure he isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Get on with it, Dave…”

  “He’s in Denstone Cemetery, just outside Salford.”

  Brigstocke stared at Holland. He guessed he wouldn’t be opening that bottle for a while yet.

  “That’s the thing,” Holland said. “Ian Hadingham killed himself just under a year ago.”