Lifeless tt-5

by Mark Billingham

  “Two months…

  “You still owe money on your cutup credit cards, and you lose the car sharpish because you can’t make the payments on that, and it’s weeks before the DSS gives you anything. So, bit by bit, you lose everything: job, car, house, credit rating. Wife and kids, if it all goes really tits up. It all just slips away; or it’s taken away by force. If you’ve got good friends or close family who are there for you when this happens, then fine. Likely as not, you’ll be all right. You might not fall too far or too hard. But if you haven’t…

  “I’ve met people, Phil… Most of them haven’t finished falling yet.

  “You’d be amazed how quickly good friends can become distant acquaintances. How fast close family just become people with the same surname. If you’re unlucky, you find that blood means fuck-all when you’re in the shit. When you stink of failure…”

  Hearing footsteps, Thorne looked up and saw a young man walking past on the far side of the street, swinging an orange-striped traffic cone at his side. He watched as the man leaned against a shopfront, heaved the cone up to his mouth, and made his own Friday-night entertainment by blowing trumpet noises through it.

  Thorne looked to his right and saw that Hendricks’s eyes were closed. “Are you tired or am I boring?” he said.

  A smile spread slowly across Hendricks’s face, then, with one of those sudden bursts of energy unique to men under the influence, he climbed rapidly to his feet and slapped his hands together. “Right. I’m away…”

  “How you getting back?” Thorne asked.

  “I’ll pick up a cab.” Hendricks squinted across the street at the cone trumpeter.

  “He’s great, isn’t he?”

  Hendricks turned back to Thorne. “We must do this again. Well, not this, but when you’re back, you know, let’s have a proper night out. The four of us maybe. You, me, Brendan, and Dave. Brendan likes Dave. Actually, I think he fancies him a bit, but he always denies it.”

  “That would be good,” Thorne said.

  Hendricks was ready to go. He looked from one end of the street to the other.

  Thorne pointed to the right. “Kingsway.”

  “Kingsway,” Hendricks repeated. He turned and pointed himself toward the main road. Walking quickly, like someone trying too hard to look sober.

  Thorne shouted after him. “Cheers, Phil…”

  Hendricks raised a thumb, without turning round.

  The drunk with the traffic cone was now playing something vaguely recognizable, though Thorne couldn’t put a name to it. Wondering if the man did requests, Thorne toyed with shouting across; asking if he knew the horn part to “Ring of Fire.”

  He took out his sleeping bag and tried to get settled for the night. Opposite, the man with the cone grew in confidence and technique. He played “Mack the Knife” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

  After five minutes, Thorne stood up and shouted at him to piss off.

  ***

  His eyes snapped open and he stared at the figure standing above him: a shape stooping out of shadow. Thorne cried out and kicked his legs forward, pushing himself away from danger, driving himself back against the wall.

  “What’s the matter with you, you daft fucker?” the man said.

  Thorne gulped up his heart. Felt it thump against his teeth.

  “For fuck’s sake, you silly twat!”

  The breath he’d been holding exploded from Thorne’s mouth. “Oh Christ, it’s you.”

  Jim Thorne chuckled. “You thought I was the killer, didn’t you?”

  “What am I supposed to think?” Thorne gestured angrily at his father. “Standing there in the dark…”

  “Standing in the dark and pissing myself laughing, watching you scuttle away like a fucking girl.”

  Thorne was still breathing heavily. He shuffled forward and moved to one side. His father stepped forward and sat beside him, groaning with the effort as he lowered himself onto the concrete.

  “Anyway, son, I’m the one person you can be pretty sure isn’t the killer, right? You’ve not sussed much of anything out so far, but I should hope you’ve worked that much out at least. Yes?”

  Feeling like a kid, answering the question quietly, the sarcasm sounding childish and petulant as he spoke. “Yes. I know that much.. .”

  “You know all sorts of things. All sorts. You know who the killer really is, for a kickoff.”

  Thorne stared. His father’s face was expressionless. “You’ve got worse since you died.”

  “You know his name, son.”

  “Tell me…”

  “Hold your horses. Let’s have some fun with it.”

  Thorne saw where it was going. “Oh, please God, no. Not a fucking quiz.”

  “Don’t be so boring. Right, list all the people who it might be.” He leaned over and tapped at the side of his son’s head. “You’ve got all the names up there.”

  “I’m tired,” Thorne said.

  “Come on, I’ll give you the first couple to start…”

  Thorne listened as his father gave him the first name, paused, and then gave him a second. Thorne was impatient. He couldn’t help asking, though he knew his father would say nothing until he was good and ready. “Is either of those the man behind the camera? Is one of them the killer, Dad?”

  The old man smiled, enjoying his secret. He began to list more names, and with each one Thorne felt himself drifting further toward sleep…

  Then back toward consciousness. And by the time he’d woken up, thickheaded and shivering, Thorne couldn’t remember a single name.

  THIRTY

  There was nothing like a grisly death or two for putting things into perspective.

  Holland sat at his computer, logged on, and cast an eye across the daily bulletin. Each morning he did the same thing: scanning the reports on serious crimes that had come in overnight. It was useful to see what other teams were doing of course; to get a sneak preview at what might be coming his own team’s way. And to get a graphic reminder-good and early in the day-that, all things considered, life could be a hell of a lot worse…

  Sometimes, if it had been a slow night, there was little to get excited about. But usually there was something: a body more often than not, or a missing person who would soon become a body. Something to take Dave Holland’s mind off the fact that he was putting on a bit of weight, or to push some imagined slight to the back of his mind, or to make him forget about the row he’d had with Sophie the night before.

  Saturday morning’s bulletin was usually the best, or worst, of the week. Depending on whether you wanted to be seriously distracted or were just interested in keeping your breakfast down.

  It had been a vintage Friday night…

  A man, age and ethnicity impossible to determine: hog-tied and barbecued in the back of a burned-out Nissan Micra in Walthamstow Forest.

  Two teenage boys, one white, one Asian: the first killed, the second fighting for his life in a hospital after a stabbing outside a club in Wood Green.

  A woman, thirty-four: found at home by her boyfriend after gaffer-taping a twelve-inch Sabatier carving knife to the edge of a table, and pushing her neck against it.

  Two murders, perhaps three; possibly even four. The Homicide Assessment Team would already have signed the Walthamstow killing over to an MIT. They would be waiting to see if the boy carved up in Wood Green recovered. They would certainly be taking a good, long look at the man whose girlfriend had supposedly killed herself so inventively

  …

  DS Samir Karim walked past Holland’s desk and held up a coffee. “Ready to get going as soon as I’ve got this down me…”

  Holland nodded. He went back to the computer, pulled up the list of visits he’d been allocated to make later that morning, and printed them out. While he waited for hard copy to appear he looked at the details. He studied the names, addresses, and comments attached; aware all the time of those other details, still there in the bulletin window, inactive and partiall
y hidden on the screen.

  While some had spent their Friday night busy with gaffer tape, washing blood from their hands or disposing of petrol cans, others had been safe at home in front of the television, disgusted and entertained by Crimewatch ’s crime-lite version of such events, before picking up the phone-four hundred and twelve of them-to do their bit. ..

  “How come we never get any of the overnighters?” Andy Stone was pulling on his jacket and moving toward him.

  Holland thought that Stone had good reason to be pissed off. Obviously, a great many of the calls that had come in after the program had been made from outside London, so while those in the office liaised with the relevant local forces, members of the team had been dispatched bright and early. Officers were already on their way to Exeter, Aberdeen, Birmingham, and half a dozen other cities. Such interviews were coveted, and with good reason. Holland was one of those who would not have said no to a night away from home; getting a little time to himself and giving his expenses a hammering in the restaurant of a decent hotel.

  “Luck of the draw, mate,” he said.

  “Couldn’t you have swung something with the DCI?”

  Holland thought that he probably could have. He wondered why, in spite of fancying the time away, he hadn’t even bothered to try. Chances are, Sophie would have offered to pack for him…

  “So who are you heading out with?”

  “I’ve got Mackillop,” Stone said. He brandished a piece of paper with his own list of names and addresses. “Me and Wonderbollocks are off to waste our time in Hounslow, Lewisham, Finchley. All the glamour locations…”

  “We’ve got to check out every possible sighting,

  Andy.”

  “I know,” Stone said. “I’m kidding. Yourself?” Holland pointed across to Karim, who waved back and dropped what was left of his coffee into a wastepaper bin. “Me and Sam are going slightly more upmarket.”

  “Eales hiding out in Mayfair, is he?”

  “Well, we’ve got a woman reckons she’s seen him walking a dog on Hampstead High Street.” “Why are so many of these calls always from women?” Stone asked before wandering away. Holland thought it was likely to be something to do with women being more observant, and more likely to respond to appeals for help. More inclined, when it came down to it, to get off their arses and make an effort. They wouldn’t even have Eales’s name if it hadn’t been for that female assistant adjutant going the extra yard.

  Seeing Karim heading over, looking ready for the off, Holland began gathering his things together. He guessed that he would be spending much of his day thinking about Lieutenant Sarah Cheshire, and nights away in posh hotels.

  “I’ve put him in one of the rooms upstairs,” Maxwell said.

  Thorne nodded. “I’ll follow you…”

  Maxwell had collared Thorne in the cafe, explained that Lawrence Healey had found Spike passed out on the steps when he’d arrived to open up. “Not that unusual,” Maxwell said as he led Thorne toward the offices. “Their sense of time gets totally screwed. Sometimes they turn up in the middle of the night expecting to get breakfast and just nod off.”

  They walked up the winding stone staircase. Thorne stared at the face of the boy on a drugawareness poster; the blackness of the mouth inside the smile. He could see that the resilience he’d described to Hendricks was only as temporary as the high.

  “Healey actually thought Spike had OD’d,” Maxwell continued. “He spent twenty minutes walking him around, slapping some life into him.” Maxwell grinned. “Got a decent slap back for his trouble.”

  “Sounds like Spike.”

  “Looking at the state of him, though, I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time…”

  They arrived at a door marked private. counseling in session. Maxwell knocked and pushed it open. “I’ll leave you to it. Give me a shout when you’re done.”

  “Thanks, Bren.”

  Maxwell took a step away, then turned, smiling. “Oh, I couldn’t get much sense out of Phil this morning. He had a bit of a headache for some strange reason. But he did manage to tell me about the two of us going out on a double date with you and Dave. Sounds like fun.. .”

  Spike’s head was drooping, and the smoke from a cigarette rose straight up into his face. He was sitting on a dirty cream sofa, similar to the one Thorne remembered from the room where he and the others had watched the videotape. Looking around, Thorne realized that this room was virtually identical to that one, save for the absence of a VCR, and the fact that there were AIDS information leaflets on the coffee table rather than the Radio Times and TV Quick.

  “Thought I’d got rid of you,” Thorne said. He flopped into an armchair, leaned forward, and began to drum his fingers on the edge of the table.

  Spike raised his head, grinned, and spread out his arms; croaked a cheer that quickly ran out of steam. He was wearing cammies and his cracked, vinyl bomber jacket. The T-shirt underneath was stained, dark at the neck, and when he let his head fall back, Thorne could see the small, square wad of bandage and the plaster.

  Thorne stroked the side of his own neck. “What happened here?”

  “Abscess burst,” Spike said. “Stunk the fucking place out…”

  The worst detective in the world could have seen that Spike was a long way gone. Thorne could only presume that he was carrying his works with him; that he’d managed to fix up somewhere, since Healey had found him outside the Lift and brought him indoors. Thorne guessed that Spike had spent every waking hour since he’d last seen him as fucked up as he was now.

  “Where’ve you been?” Thorne asked.

  Spike raised his hands to the hair that lay damplooking against his head. He gathered it between his fingers and tried in vain to push it up into the trademark spikes. “Around. Where have you been?”

  “I knew you were upset about what happened…”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened to Terry,” Thorne said. “I knew the pair of you were upset.”

  “I went to see my sister.”

  “It doesn’t matter where you were. I’m happy you’re still in one piece.”

  “She gave me some cash money…”

  It was like talking to someone who was underwater, suspended beneath the surface of a liquid that thickened as they tried to speak. That was setting above them.

  “Actually, in a way, Terry helped out a bit,” Spike said.

  “How’s that?”

  “I needed gear, ’course I did, loads of it. Both of us did. Most of these cocksuckers are hard as nails, like; wouldn’t matter what you said to ’em. But there’s a couple of dealers who’ve sussed that it’s always going to be good for business in the long run. They do me a favor one time, they know damn well I’ll be back tomorrow…

  “So I lay it on a bit thick, right? I tell ’em that my mate’s been killed, for Christ’s sake, and I need to get more stuff. I tell ’em I really need a bit extra, you know, because of how horribly fucking upset I am. See? Simple…”

  Thorne just listened, unable to fill the pauses that grew longer between sentences. He watched as Spike raised an arm up and pointed a finger. Spun it around, making a small circle in the air.

  “So, Terry dies, and I need the stuff… and I get the stuff because I tell everyone how upset I am… Then I work out what a sick bastard I am for doing that to get the stuff… And I hate myself.” He screwed up his face, put inverted commas round hate with his fingers. “So then I need even more stuff… and round and fucking round…”

  Thorne waited until he was fairly sure there was nothing else. He had no way of knowing if Spike was aware of the tears, any more than he was of the cigarette that was no more than ash and filter between his fingers. “Where’s Caroline?” he asked.

  “Will that bloke call the police ’cause I clocked him?”

  “Healey, you mean?”

  “She’s in Camden…”

  Thorne laughed. “I feel like the quizmaster on that Two Ronnies sketch.” />
  Spike looked blank.

  It had been Thorne’s father’s favorite: Ronnie Barker as the man on a quiz show whose specialist subject was answering the previous question.

  “What is the last letter on the top line of a typewriter keyboard?”

  “The Battle of Hastings.”

  “Hosting a dance or enjoying yourself might be described as having a…?”

  “P.”

  “What’s in Camden?” Thorne asked.

  Spike began pulling at a loose thread on the cushion next to him. “Dealer’s place.”

  “How long’s she been there?”

  “A couple of days.” He pulled the cushion to him, folded his arms tight across it. “I took her round…”

  Round and fucking round…

  Thorne understood that Spike and Caroline had both been desperate. That each had found their own way of getting as much as they needed. “Let’s go and see her,” he said.

  Spike moaned and shook his head.

  Thorne stood and stepped across to him. He raised Spike’s hand, lifted it until it was over the table, and squeezed until the burned-out nub end dropped into an ashtray.

  “Where exactly are you from?” Stone asked.

  The barman turned from restocking an optic. “Wellington.”

  “Have you got some identification on you?”

  The barman sighed, started rooting around for his wallet. “I’ve got credit cards…”

  Stone took another glance at the photo he was carrying with him, a composite of the original Ryan Eales photo and the digitally aged version. He looked back at the man behind the bar. “Forget it, mate. It’s okay…”

  He walked back to where Mackillop was sitting. The woman next to him, who’d called to say that the man behind the bar of her local pub might well be the one they were after, looked up eagerly.