Sleepyhead Thorne 1

by Mark Billingham

  In my dream I'm running.

  It's nowhere dramatic. Not across a cornfield or through the surf on a storm-lashed beach or anything. And I'm not running towards anybody. There's nobody in the distance with arms thrown wide, aching to kiss me. Not a soldier returned from the war or a film star. Not Tim. It's just me.

  Just running.

  It's funny because I've always hated running, always done whatever [ could to avoid it. Skinny little legs and knock knees.

  I was always rubbish at any kind of sport and I'm totally unfit. Running for the bus, if I absolutely have to, is about my limit, and that will fuck me up for the rest of the day. But here I am...

  I'm running, sprinting, and it feels easy.

  I don't know what I'm wearing or what the weather's like. None of that seems important. I suppose the wind must be blowing in my hair but, to be honest, I don't really notice. What I do notice is the wind rushing into my open mouth and inflating my lungs. I notice my lungs pushing the air back out through my mouth.

  I'm running.

  I notice my legs moving me along and my arms pumping, and I notice that the muscles in my mouth are working overtime, every last fucking gorgeous one of them. Each muscle working in harmony with the others. Meshing perfectly with its neighbour. Forcing my lips to part, raising the corners of my mouth up, pushing my tongue out slightly against my top teeth. Making me smile.

  I'm running away.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  It was a narrow green door without a window. Easy to miss between a greengrocer's and a shoe shop in a small street behind the busy Brixton Road. Thorne couldn't see the Volvo anywhere. Maybe there was another way to get in. That would make sense, after all. A back entrance that was easier to carry bodies into unseen. Yes, and maybe he was wrong about the whole thing. Maybe it had just been coincidence that they'd seemed headed for this address and even now as Thorne was standing in the rain, staring at a narrow green door without a window, Bishop was spiriting Anne away to a place where he would never find her.

  Was all this just to hurt him?

  Thorne put his ear against the door and listened. Not a sound.

  He was certain that Bishop had known he was being followed. Thorne had half expected the door to be open. Six inches ajar, tempting him inside. Not a trap, nothing so vulgar.

  More like an invitation.

  He pressed his hand against the door. It was locked. Back off now and wait for Holland to arrive with troops. It wouldn't be long, presuming those idiots in the Traffic car had done as they'd been told. Get back into his car and sit tight, that would be best.

  He put the side of his head to the door again and this time added the heft of his shoulder. Not a violent movement. Just a sustained pressure, using his weight. The door gave as easily as if he'd used a key. There was barely any noise.

  Ahead of him, by the light from a shop front opposite, Thorne could see a long straight hallway leading to a staircase that climbed away into darkness. Everything else looked to be on the upper levels, above the greengrocer's. He stepped smartly inside and tried to shut the door behind him. The lock wouldn't catch against the jamb where he'd forced it, so he just pushed it to. Then he turned inside and listened.

  Nothing but the sound of his own breathing and the rain outside and the rumble of the traffic from the main road. He felt for a light switch and found one of those press-in jobs designed to save money. He started up the stairs.

  The place was messy. Scattered about on the torn stair carpet were various bits of junk mail and unopened letters. He could smell fast food of some kind, Chinese maybe. At the top of the stairs was the kitchen. He found the light switch just as the one on the sirs popped out and the light went off.

  It was poky and squalid. The brown vinyl flooring was cracked and greasy, the walls grubby and sweating. Days' worth of used tea-bags squatted in the sink like turds, and a ketchup stain ran down the side of the once white plastic swing-bin. Fast food would certainly be preferable to anything prepared in here.

  Thorne backed out of the room. Another half-dozen stairs led up to the second floor. He could see a door ahead of him and two more off to the left. He moved on slowly towards the rooms on the next level, stopping and listening for a few seconds at every step. His doubts outside the front door had given way to a cold, clammy certainty that he was not alone.

  It was ending. He could feel it. Somewhere in this building was the wall he would back himself against. Thorne moved forward and upward, knowing he must be getting closer to where Helen Doyle and Leonie Holden were killed. The walls of the hallway were bare and dusty, the paper peeling and dry as dead leaves. The carpet was stained and gritty. He imagined he felt it moving beneath his feet.

  This was not a place anyone should be brought to die. The first door on the left opened on to a bathroom no bigger than a large cupboard. Thorne put his head round the door for a few seconds. It was enough. No fripperies. Just grimy white fittings and a bad smell.

  Then a bedroom. Maybe a little cleaner but stuffed and cluttered and stinking of stale sweat. There were shoes lined up along a mantelpiece. An ironing-board stood in the corner next to a full-length mirror. Piles of magazines spilled out on to the faded cork floor tiles from beneath the unmade bed and cardboard boxes were piled high against the far wall.

  Not in here.

  As he stepped back on to the landing he heard a noise from somewhere above him. He froze. The lazy creak of a floorboard underfoot.

  Underfoot.

  Whether or not he'd heard the noise, Thorne would still have skipped the final room. As he stepped towards it and glanced to his right, he could see the way he needed to go. The stairs leading up to what must be the top floor had been stripped and scrubbed. Each tread, along with the handrail, had been meticulously covered in thick, clear polythene.

  Sterile.

  Thorne looked up. The stairs climbed steeply, at least twenty feet into what had to be an attic or roof conversion. Straight up and into it. Above him, all he could see was a square of light, a hole in the floor of the room above his head. He weighed it up quickly. He knew that he'd be going in blind. He would be able to see nothing of what was in the room above him until the moment his head came up through the floor.

  There was nowhere else to go.

  'It always comes down to the final door, Tommy...'

  Above his head he heard a floorboard moan quietly. A second later, he heard a small human voice do the same. Anne...

  Thorne raised his head and began to climb.

  Despite the attack in his flat and the fact that the man had killed at least six women, Thorne didn't think instinctively of Bishop as somebody violent. As he climbed slowly up, one step at a time, towards whatever awaited him in the attic, he never for a second thought it might be something that could hurt him physically. Bishop would have the advantage of surprise and geography, but Thorne guessed that he would not be waiting for him as his head appeared, inch by inch, above the floor of the attic, with a foot drawn back to kick him in the teeth or an iron bar in his hand.

  He was nearing the top now. Just a few more feet. He felt no real sense of physical danger and yet he was as frightened as he'd ever been in his life. The last couple of steps.

  He was not worried about what he was going to feel... He put his foot on the last tread and pushed his body upwards.

  He was terrified of what he was going to see. His head moved up, through the hole and into bright white light. He blinked quickly to adjust then opened his eyes. Thorne's last thought, before his body turned ice cold and he began to shake quietly, was that he'd been right to be afraid.

  He hauled himself up on to floor level, like a drowning man clambering aboard a lifeboat full of holes, and stared in disbelief.

  White, white walls and smooth, shining floorboards. The light from a row of wall-mounted halogen Damps bounced off the gleaming metal of the sharps bin and the instruments trolley. An elegant chrome mixer tap fed two highly polished white basins. To one side a
simple black chair, the only piece of furniture in the room. Everything else, cold and functional. Necessary to the procedure.

  Bishop was standing in the very middle of the room. He was busy. He raised his head and smiled at Thorne a little sadly.

  Thorne was staring at the girl's eyes, bulging as she fought the movements of his fingers on her neck with every ounce of strength she had and without the slightest success. The drug that was coursing through Rachel Higgins had made her limbs as useless and uncooperative as they would become permanently, if the procedure Bishop was about to perform was successful.

  From his left Thorne heard a grunt. He turned. Anne lay motionless against the wall, her eyes wide open, drool spilling from her mouth, the Midazolam doing its work on her too, so that she could do nothing but stare helplessly at the hands working on her daughter.

  The voice brought Thorne's head whipping back round. Bishop was caressing the back of the girl's neck.

  'Hello, Tom. Come to spoil our party, have you?'

  Thorne stood completely still, staring at Bishop. Not wanting to move and Spock him. Unable to move even if he'd wanted to. His mouth utterly dry. Voice no better than a whisper.

  'Hello, James...'

  There would be a hundred difficult questions to come, and a complex knot of motivation and psychosis to unravel eventually, but just for a few seconds, in the stark and horrifying tableau in front of him, Thorne saw it all perfectly. Just briefly, for a heartbeat or two, there was clarity, and he knew exactly what and why and who. He saw how he'd been manipulated, how he'd been used. How James Bishop had played him and prodded him and nudged him, exploiting his weak spots and playing to his strengths. How he'd been completely right and horribly wrong. Why Margaret Byrne died and why she might still be alive, were it not for him. How he'd been led by the fucking nose.

  Outclassed.

  James Bishop was naked from the waist up. Crisscrossing his stomach were half a dozen straight pink puckered scars, like giant worms beneath his skin. Knife wounds, Thorne thought. Self-inflicted.

  Anne : '... he was a bit screwed up about it: Rebecca : '... James went off the rails a little: The scars were the least remarkable thing. The short hair was graying. Spray on dye was the easiest explanation.

  'Tried being an actor. Anything that pays the rent: He was wearing identical glasses and it was easy to see it, even here in a brightly lit room from a few feet away. At night, outside with only the light from a streetlamp, or no light at all, nobody could be blamed for seeing a man ten years older than he really was.

  It was Thorne who had seen Jeremy Bishop.

  Thorne looked at Rachel and at Anne. 'What's the point of this, though, James? What's this got to do with anything?'

  Bishop chuckled. Wasn't it obvious? 'Well, as you've so brilliantly failed in your efforts to arrest and convict the wrong man...'

  'Your father.'

  'My father, yes. I'm having to finish things off a little quicker. With a little less subtlety. It isn't what I wanted but it will have the desired effect.'

  'Which is?'

  Bishop shook his head. 'You're really not the man I thought you were, are you, Tom?'

  'I could say the same for you, James...'

  'Anne's daughter becoming one of her own patients is pretty tidy, though, isn't it? He may not even be able to live with that.' He was running his thumbs-slowly up and down the base of Rachel's skull. 'Mind you, he's lived with himself long enough...'

  Thorne's eyes didn't move from the long, thin fingers. From the hands encased in the tight surgical gloves. Skilled hands.

  James in his flat. Cocky, immature and so easy to read. "I wasted a couple of years at college, yeah. I'm not the ivory tower type.

  The question Thorne had never thought to ask. Four stupid little words.

  What did you study?

  It was important to keep him talking...

  'Is that all this has been about, James? Hurting your father? Getting your own back?'

  Bishop glared at him. The mask of civility slipping.

  'Don't be fucking stupid, Thorne. All this is about?' He looked disgusted at the suggestion. Then his voice softened and changed, becoming almost gentle, concerned, yet with the strength that came from conviction. 'This is about aiming for something like perfection. It's about taking something flawed and weak and rotten and removing the need for it. Eliminating the reliance on it. Letting the brain, which is the only part that's worth anything at all, flourish without the handicap of the body. It's about freedom.'

  Thorne threw a quick look to Anne. A look to tell her it would be all right. He put his hands in his pockets, trying to appear relaxed as he turned slowly back to Bishop. Casual, enquiring. 'The frailty of the human body. Something your father taught you?'

  'One of many things...' The voice had changed again. Casual, disinterested.

  'And framing him for it?'

  Bishop removed a hand from Rachel's head and ran it slowly across the noughts and crosses scar tissue on his stomach. The other hand stayed where it was, kneading the muscles at the back of her neck. Thorne considered running at him - he could be on him in a second. But a second was all Bishop would need to hurt Rachel. Instead Thorne offered him an answer to the question: 'Killing two birds with one stone.'

  'Close enough. Except for the killing bit, obviously. Not very appropriate.'

  Thorne disagreed. 'You did plenty of killing, James.'

  Bishop shrugged.

  A weapon would even things up a little. Thorne's eyes flashed to the instrument trolley, to the gleaming tools lined up in a row. Clamps, forceps, a scalpel.

  Bishop caught the look. 'Please don't compromise this procedure, Thorne.' He smiled, glancing at the scalpel. 'I think I could reach it before you.'

  Thorne nodded slowly. He could feel Anne's eyes on him. Begging.

  Bishop stroked the muscle at the base of Rachel's skull.

  'The sternocleidomastoid, Tom. Are you familiar with it?'

  Thorne was familiar enough. He knew what Bishop was looking for. Feeling for. 'Why the attack on me, though, James? I still don't really understand that.'

  'I knew you'd think it was my father. I knew you'd be sure. It was easy. Your relationship with Anne came in very handy. Perhaps your dick clouded your judgment a little. You were so easy to ginger Up, Tom, so easy to goad.'

  Thorne winced a little at the truth of it: seizing hungrily on every clue Bishop had dropped in front of him; clutching at every straw that had been so deliberately scattered in his path - the drugs, the timing of the killings, the car...

  'The Volvo?'

  'The old man swears by them. When he bought his new one I persuaded him to let me have the cast-off. I gave him a hundred pounds for it, I think, which is obviously less than he'd have got part-ex from a garage but, well.., he is my father.'

  That was the key, Thorne realised. Nobody knew Jeremy Bishop better. His son knew his movements, his whereabouts, the words he used. He knew everything his father knew about Alison, about the case. He knew how to steal his wedding ring.

  'Sorry it didn't work out with the ring, James. Forensically compromised, I'm afraid.'

  'These things happen. I'm sorry about the Byrne woman. I'm sorry about all the ones who died, sincerely I am, but I've told you that, haven't I? Of course, she would not have needed to die were you not planning to go charging in there waving your stupid photographs. Have you thought about that, Tom?'

  James in his flat. Seeing Margaret Byrne's address on a piece of paper next to the phone ....

  Thorne had got it so completely wrong. Margaret Byrne hadn't died because she could identify Jeremy Bishop. She had died precisely because she could say for certain that Jeremy Bishop wasn't the killer.

  They stared at each other, across six yawning feet of gleaming white space, the rain hammering on the roof above their heads.

  Thorne jumped, and they both turned their heads when the bleeper went off.

  He remembered that Anne was
on call. The bleeper was inside her handbag, dumped on the floor next to her. By the time the bleeping had stopped Thorne had worked something else out. The phone call that Margaret Byrne had seen him make: Bishop had been calling his father, to see if he'd been called in to work. Checking his availability. 'You bleeped your father on the way to the hospital. That night with Alison. You were probably sitting outside, waiting for him to arrive, giving him an alibi that was almost watertight, putting his name on a list.' Bishop smiled modestly. 'Same with the drugs in Leicester--'

  Bishop cut him off. 'Yes, a mistake of a sort, obviously. Had you even worked that out?'

  Thorne looked across at Anne. Everything was going to be fine. 'Anne worked it out.'

  Bishop smiled. 'I'm impressed. But it did, as you say, put my father's name on a list. That was the hook. It got you interested...'

  It had certainly done that.

  'But it would never have worked, James. It was all circumstantial. There wasn't any real evidence.'

  'That never seemed to bother you, though, did it, Tom?'

  Thorne could say nothing, his tongue sticky against the roof of his mouth.

  Suddenly Bishop grinned. Thorne could see that his fingers were locked in position, as was the look of something approaching rapture on his face.

  'This is my favourite part, Tom. It all begins here.'

  The muscles in Bishop's chest flexed as he began to squeeze Rachel's carotid artery. Thorne remembered Hendricks with his hands on his neck, taking him through it. They had about two minutes until she stopped breathing. Thorne glanced at Anne. The look on her face was desperate. A snarl came from somewhere deep down inside her.

  Save my daughter.

  Thorne had no idea how. Bishop killed when he needed to, that much was obvious. The hands that were squeezing away Rachel's life in front of them were as dangerous as any weapon. He could snap her neck in a heartbeat...

  Thorne felt leaden, useless. Mummified.

  Ten seconds gone already. Her tongue lolling out.

  'How does this hurt him, James? How does this make him suffer?'