Sleepyhead Thorne 1

by Mark Billingham

  He walked up and down in straight lines. Up one board and down the other. Moving slowly across the room in vertical lines. Up one, his bare feet cool against the bleached floorboards. Down the other, his toes caressing each knot and whorl of the beautifully smooth wood. Up and down, his fingers stroking the straight, puckered lines that ran across his stomach.

  Up and down, his breathing slowing, the white walls soothing...

  He could roll with the punches. He was adaptable, wasn't he? Champagne or IV. His place or theirs,. Hen nights or night buses. Whatever was necessary. This would not be the perfect way to end it but it would certainly do the trick. His plan, of course, the magic-island scenario, the beautiful by-product of his medical work, had involved a little suffering spread out over a very long time. A lot of suffering, quickly, might prove just as enjoyable. He picked up the phone to call her back. She'd be happy he'd called. She'd be thrilled with the invitation. Excited at the hint of what the evening might hold in store. Not as excited as he was, obviously, but then he knew just how good it was really going to be.

  Time to get proactive.

  Time to find a different way of hurting.

  Anne managed to get away from Queen Square even earlier than she'd thought, but by the time she got to the flat, around four, Thorne had already spent the best part of six hours bouncing off the walls.

  He'd tried going to bed but it was pointless. Every muscle screamed out for sleep but his brain wasn't listening. There was a force in him that was now directionless, an energy desperately seeking an outlet. Though his body felt as weary as it had ever felt, his mind was racing. It roared and rumbled and skidded and slipped from its track, then spun around and roared away again. He could confront Bishop with the ring.

  Tell him that they'd found incriminating evidence. Plant the fucking evidence...

  He could beat a confession out of him. Christ, it would be good to feel the bones in that face shatter beneath his pounding fists and not stop hitting until Bishop hovered somewhere between life and death and felt what it was like to be Alison Willetts...

  ' Whatever it takes, Tommy.'

  'Helen, I'm so sorry about...'

  'It's all right, Tommy. Just get him. You can still get him, can't you?'

  Part of him imagined that Anne would come and kiss it all away, fuck it all away, and he would go to sleep and wake up cleansed.

  And that was almost how it happened.

  She bounded into his living room like a teenager, and the first smile of his day made his face ache. She told him to lie down and went to make them both tea. He'd told her once that he didn't want a mother. Right now he wasn't arguing.

  She brought the drinks through to the living room. 'You sounded a bit manic when you called.'

  He grunted. When she pulled away the cushion he was holding across his face, she was relieved to see that he was grinning.

  'How do you feel?'

  'Like I've taken uppers and downers, hundreds of them.'

  She handed him his tea. 'Have you ever?'

  Thorne shook his head. 'Booze and fags. Honest working-class drugs.'

  'The most dangerous of them all.'

  He sipped his tea, staring at the ceiling. 'What I need, I reckon, is about six weeks in one of those nice, cosy rooms you've got on ITU. Just drug me up and lay on some nice, sexy doctor to minister to my needs. Is the room next to Alison available? Do they have Sky? I'll pay, obviously...'

  Anne laughed and lowered herself into the armchair.

  'I'll let you know when we've got one free.'

  'How is she? I didn't know she was back on the ventilator.'

  Anne looked at him questioningly. 'I went in to see her the other day. You were in a meeting, I think.'

  'I know. She seemed a little distracted afterwards...'

  He ignored the implied question. 'Is she any better?'

  Anne shook her head, and for the first time felt tired herself. 'She's always going to be prone to infections of this sort. Two steps forward...'

  A dance with which Thorne was all too familiar. Anne raised an eyebrow. 'What did you say to Alison?'

  Remembering the last time. The photograph he'd kept hidden.

  Thorne laughed. A splutter of self-disgust. 'I went to let her know I was about to arrest Jeremy Bishop.'

  The small-talk had lasted about as long as the tea. The silence that fell between them was in danger of becoming terminal when Anne spoke quietly, not looking at him: 'Why did you think it was him, Tom?'

  Did? Past tense. Not for Thorne.

  'It started with the drugs theft obviously. Then the connection to Alison and lack of an alibi for the other killings. The physical description, and the car...' He sighed heavily, pushing finger and thumb hard into his eyes and rubbing. 'It's all academic. I've got no evidence and no warrant to go and get any.'

  'What did you think you'd find?'

  'Typewriter maybe. The drugs probably. Unless he kept them at the hospital, which...'

  Anne was suddenly on her feet, pacing around the room. 'You keep going on about these drugs but it just doesn't make any sense. Why the hell would he need to steal drugs in those quantities, Tom? Jeremy works with this stuff every day of his life. If he'd wanted to, he could have taken as much as he liked without anyone ever getting suspicious. He could pocket an ampoule, even a couple, every day for six months and nobody would ever notice. So why draw attention to himself by stealing a huge quantity all in one go? It's only when drugs go missing in those amounts that it's even registered. Jeremy would not have needed to do that, Tom.'

  And boom! There it was. The tune he'd been unable to place. That had been what was bothering him all along, lurking at the back of his brain, slippery and elusive. She was right, of course. Why had none of them ever really sat down and spoken to a fucking doctor? How could they have missed it? How could he have missed it?

  Easy: he hadn't wanted it to be there.

  Hendricks: You've got blinkers on and I'm fucking sick of it.

  He felt like the breath had been taken from him. Beaten out of his body. Christ, it was all coming apart in front of him.

  'I'm sorry, Tom.'

  He closed his eyes. Screwed them shut. He knew it wasn't Anne who should be apologising. There were people he needed to say sorry to.

  The first time he'd laid eyes on him, he thought he'd looked like the doctor from The Fugitive. That doctor had been innocent as well.

  'I got thinking it was him and wanting it to be him mixed up, I think...'

  'Ssssh...' She was kneeling beside the settee, stroking his hair.

  'It got too personal. There wasn't enough distance.'

  'Tom, it doesn't matter now. Nobody was hurt.'

  'I was so sure, Anne. So sure Calvert was the killer...'

  He felt her hand stop moving. Shook his head. Tried to laugh it off.

  Slip of the tongue. 'Bishop, I mean. Bishop.'

  'Who's Calvert?'

  Whisky, piss and gunpowder. And freshly washed nightdresses. Oh, luck, no...

  'Tom, who's Calvert?'

  Then the tears came. And he dredged it all up, every heart stopping, malodorous moment of it. For the first time in fifteen years he took himself back completely. Jan never had the time or the stomach for all of it but now he was going to skip nothing. No edited highlights with a warning for those of a sensitive nature.

  Thorne fought to bring the sobbing under control. Then he told her.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Friday, 15 June 1985. Nearly going-home time. It's a big one. The biggest since the Ripper. Fifteen thousand interviews in eighteen months and they've got nothing. The press are going mental, but not that mental, obviously. It's not like he's killing women or straight blokes, after all. Just the right amount of moral outrage with a smattering of self-righteousness and occasional comments about 'the risks inherent in choosing that kind of lifestyle'.

  No lurid nicknames, though if the Sun could have got away with 'Poof Killer' they would certai
nly have used it. Just 'Johnny Boy'.

  The fourth victim had told a friend he was meeting a man called John for a drink. This was an hour or so before his heart was cut out and his genitals were removed. An approximation of what might be Johnny Boy's face stares down from the wall of every nick in the country. He's got dirty-blond hair and a sallow complexion. His eyes are blue and very, very cold.

  It's a big one.

  Detective Constable Thomas Thorne leans against the wall of the interview room at Paddington station and stares at a man with dirty-blond hair and blue eyes.

  Francis John Calvert. Thirty-four. Self-employed builder from North London.

  'Any chance of a fag? I'm fucking gasping...' Calvert smiles. A winning smile. Perfect teeth.

  Thorne says nothing. Just watching him until DI Duffy comes back.

  'Surely I'm allowed one poxy fag?' The film-star smile fading just a little.

  'Shut up.'

  Then the door opens and Duffy comes back in. The interview resumes and Tom Thorne doesn't say another word.

  None of it is riveting stuff. Duffy is way past his best. It's purely routine anyway. Calvert is only there because of what he does.

  A week before he died, the third victim told a flat mate that he'd met a man in a club. The man had said he was a builder. The flat mate made a joke about tool-kits and builders' bumcrack. Seven days and one body later, the joke wasn't funny any more but the flat mate remembered what his dead friend had said.

  Thousands and thousands of builders to be interviewed. Some are seen at their home. Some are questioned at their place of work. Calvert gets a phone call and comes into Paddington for a chat.

  Later, of course, it will emerge that he'd been chatted to before.

  Duffy and Calvert get on like a house on fire. Duffy gives Calvert his fag.

  He wants to get home.

  Thorne wants to get home too, he's been married less than a year. He's only got one ear on the answers Calvert reels off.

  At home with his wife.., three little girls are a right handful.., wishes he could go out at night gallivanting about... not to those sort of places obviously. Another flash of that smile. He's helpful, concerned. Wife only too happy to talk to you if you want. He hopes they find this nutter and string him tp. It doesn't matter what these pervs get up to in their private lives, what this killer's doing's disgusting... Duffy hands Calvert the short statement to sign and that's that. Another one crossed off the list. He thanks him. One of these days they'll strike it lucky.

  Duffy stands and heads for the door. 'Show Mr. Calvert out, would you, Thorne?' The DI leaves to begin the tedious process of writing it all up. The investigation is awash with paperwork. There are distant rumblings about the arrival of computers that, one day, will simplify all this. But that's all they are. Distant rumblings. Thorne holds open the door and Calvert steps out into the corridor. He strolls casually past more interview rooms, hands in pockets, whistling. Thorne follows. He can hear a distant radio, probably in the locker room, playing one of his favourite songs - 'There Must Be An Angel' by the Eurythmics. Jan bought the record for him last week. He wonders what she'll have organised for dinner. Maybe he can go and get a takeaway.

  Through the first set of swing doors and a left turn along another corridor, which sweeps round towards main reception. Calvert waits, allowing Thorne to catch up. He holds the doors for him. 'Bet you lot are making a fucking mint in overtime.'

  Thorne says nothing. He can't wait to see the back of the cocky little fucker. Past another Johnny Boy poster. Somebody's drawn a speech bubble. It says, 'Hello, sailor.' Thorne's humming the Eurythmics song as he walks.

  Then the final set of doors. The desk sergeant gives Thorne a nod. Thorne steps ahead of Calvert, pushes open the doors and stops. This is as far as he goes. This isn't a hotel and he isn't a fucking concierge. Calvert steps through the doors, stops and turns. 'Cheers, then...'

  'Thanks for your help, Mr. Calvert. We'll be in touch if we need anything else.'

  Thorne holds out his hand without thinking about it. He's looking towards the desk sergeant, who's trying to catch his eye and mouthing something about a party for one of the secretaries who's leaving. Thorne feels the large, callused hand take his and turns to look at Francis John Calvert.

  And everything changes.

  It isn't the resemblance to the photo fit. He'd registered that the instant he'd clapped eyes on Calvert and forgotten it again moments later. It isn't the resemblance but it is the face.

  Thorne looks at Calvert's face and knows.

  He knows.

  It lasts no more than a second or two but it's enough. He can see through to what lies behind those deep, blue eyes, and what he sees terrifies him.

  He sees boozing, yes, and football on a Saturday and wolf-whistles with the lads and an incandescent rage that is barely kept in check inside the cosy conformity of a loveless, sexless marriage.

  He sees something deep and dark and rotting. Something fetid. Something spilling into the earth and bubbling with blood.

  He cannot explain it but he knows beyond a shadow of the smallest doubt that Francis John Calvert is Johnny Boy. He knows that the man in front of him, the man shaking his hand, is responsible for stalking and slaughtering half a dozen gay men in the last year and a half.

  Thorne is all but frozen to the spot, not sure how he will ever be able to move. He is rigid with fear. He is going to piss in his trousers any second. Then he sees the most terrifying thing of all.

  Calvert knows that he knows.

  Thorne thinks his face is frozen, expressionless. Dead. Obviously he's wrong. He can see the change in Calvert's eyes as they meet his own. Just a slight flicker. The tiniest twitch...

  And the smile that is beginning to die a little. Then it's over. The grip is released and Calvert is moving away through the lobby towards the main station doors. He stops for a second and turns, and now the smile is gone completely. The sergeant is wittering at him about this party but Thorne is watching Calvert walk out of the doors. The look he sees on his face is something like fear. Or perhaps hate.

  And, somewhere in the distance, a sweet, high voice is still singing about imaginary angels.

  He tells nobody. Not Duffy. None of his mates or fellow officers. What's he supposed to tell them? Certainly not Jan. Her mind's on other things, anyway. They're trying for a baby.

  At home with her that weekend, he knows he's distant. On Saturday afternoon as they stroll around Chapel Market she asks if there's anything wrong. He says nothing..

  On Sunday night she's keen to make love, but every time he shuts his eyes he sees Francis Calvert, one arm round the neck of the young boy he's kissing deeply, pulling at him, holding the soft mouth against his own. As he groans, and comes inside his young wife, he sees Calvert's other hand, strong and callused, reaching for the eight-inch serrated knife in his pocket.

  While Jan sleeps soundly next to him, he lies awake all night. By morning he's convinced himself that he's being stupid and within an hour he's sitting in his car in a small street off Kilburn High Road. Watching Francis Calvert's flat.

  Monday 18 June 1985.

  He just needs to look at him again, that's all. Once he watches him step out of that front door he'll see him for what he really is. A nasty piece of pond life for sure, but that's about all. A slimy little shit who's probably been done for driving without insurance, almost certainly doesn't have a TV licence and maybe slaps his wife around. Not a killer.

  One more look and Thorne will know he was being stupid. He'll know that what happened in that corridor was an aberration. What Jan likes to call a mind fuck. He's here in plenty of time. People in the street haven't started leaving for work yet. Calvert's white Astra van is parked outside his flat.

  For the next hour he sits and watches them leave. He watches front doors open up and down the street, spitting out men and women with bags and briefcases. They climb into cars or hop on to bikes or stride away towards buses and tub
es.

  Calvert's door stays resolutely shut.

  Thorne sits and stares at the dirty white van. Letters on the side: E J. CALVERT BUTCHER.

  Butcher...

  Stupid! He's being so stupid. He needs to start his car and get himself to work, and have a laugh with some of the other lads and maybe help to organise this leaving party and forget he ever met Francis John Calvert, and instead he finds himself walking across the street. He finds himself knocking on a dirty green front door. He finds himself starting to sweat when he gets no answer.

  In the respectfully muted euphoria of the days to come, before the astonishing truth that Calvert had been interviewed on four separate occasions emerges, before the resignations, before the national scandal.., there will be words of praise for Detective Constable Thomas Thorne. A young officer using his initiative. Doing his job. Putting any thoughts for his own safety out of his mind. Out of his mind...

  It is as if he is watching himself, like a nosy bystander. He has no idea why he tries the front door. Why he leans against it. Why he runs back to his car and takes a truncheon from the boot.

  Calvert's wife looks surprised to see him. Her eyes are wide as he walks into her kitchen, breath held, heart thumping. She lies on the floor, her head against the dirty white door of the cupboard underneath the sink. The bruise around her neck is beginning to turn black. She still has a wooden spoon in her hand.

  She was the first to die. She had to be. The children would tell him that much.

  Denise Calvert. 32. Strangled.

  Thorne moves through the flat like a deep-sea diver exploring a wreck. The silence is pounding in his ears. His movements feel slow and oddly graceful, and there are ghosts in the water all around him...

  He finds them in the small bedroom at the back of the flat. They are laid out next to each other on the floor, between the bunk beds and the small, single mattress. He cannot take his eyes off the six tiny white feet. Unable to fill his lungs, he drops to his knees and crawls across the floor. He takes in what he is seeing but there is a blunt refusal to process the information correctly. Grabbing at a breath he lets out a scream. He screams at the dead girls. He pleads with them. Please... you'll be late for school He is actually begging them to save him.