Sleepyhead Thorne 1

by Mark Billingham

  'Well?'

  'Because it's only me that' sure.'

  'Fair enough, and when they do match up what does that tell you? Fuck all. We're pretty, sure the killer drives a Volvo and I don't think the carpet in the back of each one is individually produced. I know they're nice cars, but come on...'

  'Tickets to Spurs-Arsenal, on me.'

  Hendricks took a long slow drink of Guinness. 'I want a box.'

  'How am I supposed to do that?'

  'How am I supposed to march into the forensics lab with a plastic bag full of carpet fibres I've produced out of the sodding ether?'

  'I'll see what I can do. Listen, Phil, you know that lot, they won't ask questions. They're scientists not taxmen. Just tell them you're trying to help and you've got a mate who drives a Volvo. In fact, take in some other fibres from the back of your car or something - you know, like a comparison.'

  'I don't recall a single witness seeing a beige Nissan Micra, do you?'

  Hendricks had a point. He did perhaps own the single most repellent vehicle on the road in Greater London.

  'Thanks, Phil.'

  'Remember, a box!'

  'Yeah, yeah...'

  'Did you know that the Volvo is the only commercially produced car you can't kill yourself in? I mean, obviously you can drive one into a wall if you fancy it, but it has a cut-out device, you know, so that you can't tie a hose to the exhaust, and sit inside and asphyxiate yourself.'

  Thorne grunted. 'Pity.'

  Thorne had left the pub twenty+-five pounds poorer but without the plastic bag that had been burning a hole in his pocket. He'd had a good night.

  He hadn't drunk a thing.

  Ten minutes after he got in, Holland rang. The DC spoke quietly, almost in a whisper. He told Thorne that Sophie was asleep in the next room and he didn't want to wake her.

  He didn't want her to know who he was calling. Thorne listened as Holland told him about Margaret Byrne. She might have been his first victim if the killer hadn't panicked for some reason. He told him what she'd said about the killer's voice. Nice, she thought. Posh. And soothing, probably, thought Thorne. Gentle. When he heard about the phone call, Thorne pressed the receiver against his ear so hard that it hurt. Bishop bleeping himself?. He dismissed the idea. It didn't make any sense. It was possible, he knew that, but what was the point? There was no record anyway, so why go through the motions?

  Dave Holland shrugged off Thorne's question about how he'd got on with Tughan. A flippant remark did the job. He had been trying to forget the discomfort, the unease that had permeated every corner of Margaret Byrne's front room whenever the Irishman had opened his mouth. He wasn't sure whether the unease had been his or Margaret's, but it was stifling. It had stayed with him, following him around for the rest of the day like something rank. Thorne didn't seem particularly interested in Margaret Byrne herself. When he announced that he'd phoned and arranged to see her the following morning, Holland understood why. He tried to dissuade him. What was the point?

  They'd already spoken to her and she was coming in anyway to knock up an e-fit. '

  Thorne was well aware that they'd already seen her. But they hadn't got a picture of Jeremy Bishop in their pocket.

  Anne enjoyed the drive home in the dark. There was usually a play on the radio or a short story or something.

  Often, in the forty-five minutes or so from Queen Square to Muswell Hill, she'd become so engrossed that she'd have to sit in the car outside the house and wait for it to finish.

  She kept the radio off tonight. She had enough to think about.

  That morning, in Alison's room, she'd found the photograph of Jeremy. It was lying on the small table in the corner of the room, probably put there by a nurse. It was obvious to her what Thorne had been doing in Alison's room the day before while she was fetching them coffee and she couldn't bring herself to think about what it might mean. She knew somewhere, of course, what it might mean. It could hardly mean very much else, but she couldn't bring herself to even try to deal with it.

  Not now.

  Feelings for two men. For one man those feelings had been shifting, settling into something else over a period of time. For the other they'd changed overnight. Her relationship with Jeremy had not been the same since Sarah was killed. They'd always shared everything, which she knew had been the cause of so much tension between herself and David, but since the accident Jeremy had become reserved. His aloofness could be amusing, but had begun to wear her down a little. And recently he had become arrogant.., more arrogant, and occasionally unpleasant. The work seemed a chore to him. He was going through the motions. He would always be a fixture in her life, she knew that, and so would the children, but there was no joy in it any more. She felt.., dutiful. Even so, the things Thorne must be thinking were so shocking. They were unimaginable.

  She drove along Camden High Street. She was five minutes from his flat.

  If she'd found that photograph twelve hours earlier there would have been a confrontation. She would have demanded to know the answers to questions she could no longer ask. And she would not have slept with him. Might not. The sex had changed everything. She knew it was a horribly old-fashioned outlook on things but it was hers. It always had been and it had cost her too many years of unhappiness to remember.

  Now she had to... compartmentalise. She needed to ignore a side of the man she was sharing a bed with. It seemed to threaten everything. Her feelings for Thorne gave her little option and those she was losing for Jeremy might just make it possible. For the time being at least she had to make a choice. She could not think about a future with Thorne while having to reconcile herself to the damage he seemed determined to do to her past. And a future with him, however short, was what she felt she should go for.

  She would put her fingers in her ears and scream. She had no choice.

  She thought about Alison, so removed from everything. More than anything she wanted to bring her back. But with the fear and hate and mistrust that seemed to be so much part and parcel of everything, she couldn't help but wonder if Alison might be better off where she was. She turned the radio on. There was nothing worth listening to, but she was nearly home anyway.

  The bath was starting to get cold.

  Thorne sat up and looked at his watch, which was lying next to his mobile phone on the toilet lid. Nearly one o'clock in the morning.

  He'd been lying, completely still, with his head under the water. His eyes were open and he stared up at the ceiling swimming above him, waiting for the water to stop moving around him and seeing how long he could hold his breath. It was a game he had played as a kid, lying in a steaming bath in that big old, echoey bathroom, pretending to be dead. He had stopped the night his grandmother came in, saw him, and took a bit of a turn. He'd sat bolt upright the second she screamed, but he would never forget that look on her face. It was a look he'd seen many times since.

  He'd usually have a glass of wine in the bath, but tonight he had thought better of it. It wasn't that he was or the wagon. He'd clambered aboard that particular vehicle a couple of times and it was a very dull ride. He just didn't think he should have a drink.

  Not on a Tuesday night.

  It felt, in so many ways, like the beginning of something. Since last night he'd thought about Jan a few times, but not in a maudlin or sentimental way. Being with Anne hadn't made him think about what he was missing. On the contrary, he realised finally that he hadn't been missing it. Missing Jan. And it might be the beginning of the end of the sweat stained nightmare that was this case. He thought about Holland and Hendricks out on a limb for him and hoped that what might happen the next day would save them the trouble. It could all be that easy, He wouldn't march back into Keable's office like Charlie Big Potatoes, full of himself, but it would be close.

  Thorne got out of the bath, toweled himself off and threw on his dressing-gown. Ignoring the plastic Thresher's bag in the kitchen, he walked across to the stereo and stuck on Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons.
Now, there was a man who couldn't say no to a drink.

  'You can, though, Tommy.'

  'Best not tonight, eh?'

  'Please, not tonight...'

  He lay down on the sofa, thoughts buzzing around in his head like a swarm of fat black flies.

  He wanted to ring Anne but thought she'd be in bed by now. His dad would still be up. Or was Anne working late?

  He couldn't remember. Had James run home and told Daddy all about their little chat? Probably. Had Alison overheard the phone call in her room? Holland's girlfriend didn't like him, that was obvious. How the luck was he going to organise a box at White Hart Lane?

  What would the eldest Calvert girl have been now?

  Twenty-four? Twenty-five?

  The wine would fuzzy up his thinking a little for sure, but it might at least slow things down. He stayed on the sofa and the wine stayed in the bottle. Tomorrow, who could say? There might be cause to celebrate. Tonight Jeremy Bishop was on call.

  There was no way he was going to sleep without calling, so he did. Bishop picked up almost immediately. As the smooth tones gave way quickly to impatience then anger, Thorne flicked the switch that terminated the call, and lay there, relieved, holding the phone. The tension eased in an instant and an overwhelming tide of fatigue began to creep over him. He crossed his arms over the phone on his chest and closed his eyes.

  He got into the car and sat for a moment, steadying himself. He'd had a tough day. Things had come up that needed dealing with and had almost upset his plans for the evening. It was going to be OK, though.

  The courtesy light faded away and he began to relax, satisfied that he'd left everything ready at home, should he be lucky enough to bring a guest back. He placed the things he would need on the passenger seat. All could be easily hidden in his pocket when the time came. He was sad that he'd had to dispense with the champagne, but she might have seen that stupid reconstruction. There was no need for it now anyway, but there had been something stylish about it. He'd never skimped: it had always been Taittinger. He'd believed in making their last taste a good one - their last taste in any conventional sense. The conversations while he'd been waiting for the drug to kick in, though tedious in the main, had at least given him a sense of who he was treating. That was important. The thirty minutes with Alison had made him feel even better about the new life he'd given her. In that half an hour or so of drunken drivel, he'd come to understand the old life he'd be saving her from. From now on it was something of a lottery in that respect.

  He smiled. It could be you!

  He hoped that the police would be able to see past what were purely practical reasons for this change in his working methods. He didn't want time wasted on irrelevancies. Champagne last time, needle this time, it didn't really matter. Thorne would understand. He might not be involved officially any longer, but that was neither here nor there.

  He turned the ignition and switched on his headlights. He felt confident and capable. Once he was back at home and performing the procedure he would not consider the possibility of failure. With the others, it had only been when the light had finally died in their eyes that the word had even entered his head.

  He took out his glasses and began to clean the lenses, setting his mind to the immediate task of preparing a new patient. There would need to be some force, unfortunately, as there had been with Thorne, but once he'd found the vein it would be over quickly. Then he just had to keep her quiet for a few minutes and there were ways of doing that. Something sharp would do it nicely. Once the drug began its work she would not be able to cry out anyway, so he shouldn't have too many problems.

  The car pulled away and he thought for a while about what he might do when it was all over. There were so many ways that it might end but he wondered how he might look back on what he was doing now. What he'd been forced to do. It would be strange, beginning again, but he would be able to remember certain things with fondness. There would always be Alison and however many other successes time allowed him. He could revel in that. And he would certainly remember and enjoy the symmetry of a punishment justly meted out. Such a fitting punishment. He grinned and began to hum the tune. Someone would certainly wish they'd never dragged him along to Gilbert and Sullivan...

  He pointed the Volvo towards the West End and leaned back in his seat, feeling as good as he had in a long time.

  He'd accomplished so much with skill and rage. Like I said, some days are a lot better than others... This is the first joke I'm going to tell,4nne. There's this really tasty and sexy young potato and she's walking home from the disco one night, after a top night out with her best friends the parsnip and the runner bean, when she's attacked by this mad carrot. The carrot does all sorts of horrible stuff to her and she winds up in hospital. All her skin's been peeled off and she's been all mashed up and she's just lying there and the only thing that's undamaged are her eyes. The eyes of this potato. So the next day this potato's boyfriend, who's a tall, good-looking Swede, comes to the hospital and talks to the doctor and, with tears in his eye, he says, "What are her chances, Doc?" The doctor looks down at the poor, sad potato lying in the bed and says to him, 'I'm sorry.., but she's going to be a vegetable for the rest of her life:

  THIRTEEN

  Brigstocke had presumed it was a hangover. 'Sleep it off' was not the traditional response to somebody phoning in sick but Thorne couldn't really argue. Brigstocke had worked with him before and it was a reasonable assumption. It wouldn't be too long before his patience gave out, though, and he went higher up. Thorne knew he didn't have much time. He didn't think he'd need much. One look at the good weather had made up his mind. He decided to take the Thames link over ground from Kentish Town to Tulse Hill. It was direct, and an attractive alternative to sitting in the car for as long as it might otherwise take him to drive to Birmingham, or getting tense and sweaty on the underground. He'd never seen the attraction of the tube. For Thorne it inevitably meant the Northern line - interestingly the line of choice for most people who chose to jump in front of a tube train. He guessed that they were probably choosing to think of others in their own moment of deepest despair. If you're going to fuck up commuters, then why not fuck up those to whom chaos and delay are barely noticeable any more?

  Thorne had decided long ago that, should he ever feel the need, he would be a handful of pills, bottle of red wine, lie on the bed and drift away to Hank Williams kind of bloke. Anything else was just showing off. Though it had to be said, a gun in the mouth looked good on some people.

  He looked out of the window as the train rumbled across the Blackfriars rail bridge. If it was a different world south of the river, it was one with its own dividing line. South-west was definitely the more gentrified, Clapham and Richmond and, of course, Battersea. There were nice areas of South-east London he was fond of Greenwich and Blackheath - but, on the whole, that part of the city! I was as close as London got to a war-zone. Southeast...London didn't need coppers, it needed United Nations peacekeepers. At that very minute in Bermondsey and New Cross there were characters propping up bars in dodgy boozers that would have made Slobodan Milosevic shit himself.

  He opened his case and looked at the pictures again.

  They looked like stills captured in any undercover police I operation. A career opportunity for Bethell should he ever decide to hang up his dirty mac for good. Bishop was photogenic.

  Thorne had known he would be, though when the smile he wore in company was absent, the face was considerably harder, severe even.

  Thorne went through the pictures one by one. There was the photo of James walking back towards the house after the confrontation with Bethell. He was glancing back over his shoulder, trying to look tough. He hadn't imagined it. Thorne wondered if he had a girlfriend. Probably some horsy type called Charlotte, who called herself Charlie, wore black and hung about in Camden Lock on a Sunday afternoon popping pills. He was looking for the best photo - the one in which Bishop was looking virtually straight at the camera. Perhaps
he'd heard Bethell moving about or caught a glimpse of bleached hair bobbing about in the bushes. The photo wasn't there and Thorne realised where he'd left it. The phone call he'd taken in Alison's room had thrown him so completely that he'd all but forgotten why he was there in the first place. Maybe a nurse had found it and thrown it away. Unlikely. Anne had almost certainly come across it by now, which meant that he'd have some explaining to do. By then, of course, it would all have been worth it and she'd realise he'd been right. Who was he kidding? Right or wrong, the deceit involved would probably ensure that what had happened between them two nights earlier would turn out to have been a one-night stand.

  The old man next to him had been pretending to be reading his newspaper but had been sneaking furtive looks at the photos on Thorne's lap at every opportunity. Maybe he thought Thorne was some kind of spy or sleazy paparazzo. Maybe he thought Thorne had killed his Princess. Either way he was becoming annoying. Thorne turned one of the photos round and held it up so that the old man could have a good look. He quickly glanced back down at his newspaper. Thorne leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, 'It's all right, he's a doctor.'

  The old man didn't look up from his paper for the rest of the journey.

  Margaret Byrne's house was a five-minute walk from the station. He didn't know the area well but it seemed amazingly calm and suburban, considering that Brixton was two minutes away. Thorne had been on the streets there in 1981. He had never felt so hated. He and many fellow officers had comforted themselves with the thought that it was no more than police bashing. An excuse to torch some flash cars and nick a few TVs. Events since then had made him realise he'd been wrong. And Stephen Lawrence had changed everything.

  Thorne rang the doorbell and waited. The curtains in the front bay windows were drawn. The bedroom, he guessed. He looked at his watch; he was ten minutes or so late. He rang the doorbell again. He looked around in the hope of seeing a woman hurrying up the road, having popped out to grab a pint of milk, but saw only a woman in the house opposite, eyeing him suspiciously. He eyed her back. Thorne pressed himself against the window and peered through a small crack in the green curtains but the room was dark. He turned to see the woman across the road still staring at him. He began to feel uneasy.