The Killing Habit

by Mark Billingham

  He began to cut, and Thorne watched as Tanner flinched with every snap of the scissors.

  She winced and grunted behind the tape.

  Her fists clenched and the muscles tensed in her neck, but her eyes stayed locked on Thorne’s.

  ‘Better,’ French muttered. ‘Much better…’

  He bent even lower, his mouth close to her ear as he whispered and snipped. Thorne looked fast at where the scissors were, then turned his eyes back to Tanner’s. He gave a small nod, and Tanner screwed her eyes shut and threw her head back hard into French’s face.

  Thorne launched himself across the space between them.

  Tanner’s head did not quite make the full-on contact she had intended, but it was enough to send French reeling backwards, to make him bring the hand clutching the scissors up to his face.

  It was all the time Thorne needed.

  While Tanner tried to rock the chair away, Thorne grabbed French’s wrist and twisted until the scissors fell to the floor. He smashed his own head down on to the bridge of French’s nose, took a firm hold of the man’s jacket and threw him across the room. He was on him again almost immediately as French struggled to sit up, kneeling across the man’s chest and using one hand to push his head against a radiator then the other to punch him until he was unconscious.

  It might have been seconds or it might have been minutes after Thorne crawled away before he felt as though he could get to his feet without falling over. He shivered and spat. The pain in his hand was excruciating and he’d torn a muscle at the top of his leg.

  He thought he was going to be sick.

  Tanner cried out and cursed when he tore the duct tape from her mouth.

  ‘Sorry,’ Thorne said. He picked up the scissors and began to cut away the tape around her arms and legs.

  ‘Have you got handcuffs in your car?’ Tanner asked.

  ‘Yeah, but —’

  She nodded towards French’s body. Said, ‘Get them.’

  Thorne handed her the scissors then ran outside to fetch the set of cuffs he carried in the glove compartment. By the time he returned, Tanner was out of the chair, just a few shreds of duct tape still clinging to her clothes. She stood, a little unsteady on her feet, staring down at the clumps of hair on the polished wooden floor. Thick brown hanks, some streaked with silver, lying like fake extensions on display, a few with small gobbets of flesh still attached.

  She had begun to cry again.

  Thorne went to the kitchen and fetched a cloth, which he gave her to wipe away the blood from her face and the top of her head. Then he walked across to where French lay, heaved the man up to a sitting position and handcuffed him to the radiator pipe.

  ‘We should call this in,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I suppose,’ Tanner said.

  He took his mobile phone from his pocket. ‘And we should get you an ambulance.’

  ‘I don’t need an ambulance,’ Tanner said. Her voice was small and she spoke in a cracked monotone Thorne did not like the sound of. ‘But you should probably call one anyway.’ She nodded towards the bathroom. ‘In there.’

  Thorne ran to the bathroom, pushed the door open and found the estate agent lying in the bath. He knelt down and removed the tape from the man’s mouth. The man moaned and tried to turn over, and despite a nasty-looking head wound, Thorne could see that he seemed to be breathing easily enough.

  He called an ambulance, told the man that help was on its way. He was about to call for police back-up when he heard a noise from the living room. Not quite a bang… more like someone stamping on a box of eggs.

  He ran back into the living room and saw immediately what the noise had been. French was now lying slumped, his head at an awkward angle against the base of the radiator.

  What was left of his head.

  There was blood spattered against the radiator and leaking from his ear. Thorne turned to see a fat drop fall from the poker in Nicola Tanner’s hand.

  Her face was grey, immobile.

  ‘Jesus…’ Thorne looked around to see where Tanner had acquired the weapon, saw the set of decorative irons beside the fireplace, the gap next to the brush and shovel where the poker had been standing. He rushed across to feel for a pulse in French’s neck, knowing even before he’d failed to find one that there was little point. ‘The hell have you done?’

  Tanner dropped the poker.

  She walked slowly across to the chair and sat back down; knees together, arms by her sides.

  Thorne got to his feet.

  He knew it was only a matter of minutes until the ambulance arrived.

  He tried to control the panic, to think.

  ‘Call it in,’ Tanner said.

  Thorne looked at her. ‘Seriously?’ He pointed at French’s body, the blood still running down his white shirt. ‘You’ve just bludgeoned a man to death while he was handcuffed to a radiator. While he was unconscious, for Christ’s sake.’

  Tanner said nothing.

  ‘That’s not just suspension, it’s not just your career fucked here, you’re looking at a murder charge… involuntary manslaughter if you’re lucky.’ He stepped quickly across and crouched down next to the chair, took hold of Tanner’s arms and shook. ‘We’re talking about prison, Nic…’

  She turned her eyes to his, flat, unblinking, and shrugged as if it were no more than a triviality. But Thorne knew exactly what was at stake, and that, as things stood, Tanner had a damn sight more to lose than he did.

  Thorne stood up. He had made the decision and now he was thinking through the first and easiest option. ‘Did anyone know you were going to be here?’ He waited. ‘Nicola?’

  She casually waved a hand in the direction of the bathroom. ‘I sent Simon an email to confirm the time.’ Another wave towards French. ‘It’s how he knew I’d be here, I suppose.’

  ‘OK, so we can’t just take our chances and leave.’

  Thorne was on his feet and moving around; talking the scene through, working through the necessary steps.

  ‘Right. The first thing we need to do is get rid of these.’

  He knelt down and removed the handcuffs, stuffed them in his jacket pocket. He checked to make sure that there were no marks around French’s wrists, which there would have been had he struggled, had he been conscious when Thorne had put them on.

  ‘Now… the blood spatter’s here and there’s nothing we can do about that, so this is where it happened, OK?’

  ‘Where what happened?’ Tanner still spoke as if she were just waking up.

  ‘Where you did what you had to. Where you took appropriate action to prevent me getting seriously injured or killed.’

  ‘That’s not how it was,’ Tanner said.

  ‘You just need to shut up now and listen. OK, Nic?’

  He looked hard at her until she nodded. She looked scared, suddenly; staring at the poker, then at the body on the other side of the room, as though she had only just realised what one thing had to do with the other. That she had been responsible. Seeing the shock start to break across her face, Thorne began to understand why she had done what she did. Why she had snapped. It hadn’t been about Graham French, at least not completely. It had also been about Susan and about the fire that had destroyed so much of what had been left after Susan.

  In his painful humiliation of her, Graham French had unlocked a rage that Thorne guessed neither of them could have imagined was in there.

  ‘It’s going to be fine, all right? We just need to cover the basics.’ Thorne was pacing, working out relative positions. ‘I thought French was unconscious, OK, but he clearly wasn’t… I didn’t pick up the scissors which he dropped on the floor here after we struggled.’ He walked across to Tanner. ‘I should have picked them up, but instead I came straight over to see if you were all right and helped you get free… which is when he picked up the scissors and I went back to try and disarm him.’ He turned and pointed. ‘We struggled again and you thought I was in danger of being stabbed, so you grabbed the poker.�
�� He picked up the scissors from behind the chair and went back across to the radiator. He sat down next to French’s body. ‘Prints aren’t a problem because all three of us touched the scissors at some point, right? You picked them up after it happened.’

  Tanner stood up, still looking dazed and wobbly, and followed Thorne across. ‘After what happened?’

  ‘After he attacked me with the scissors and you hit him.’ He looked down at the scissors in his hand, the fine hairs still clinging to the blades. ‘It’s not going to be good enough, though.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘You took aggressive action against the suspect because you genuinely believed I was going to be seriously hurt, that I was going to be killed. You understand what I’m saying? You didn’t mean to kill him, but your first thought was to save a fellow officer’s life, and that’s… understandable.’ Thorne was sucking in breaths fast, gearing himself up, because he had already decided what needed to be done. ‘They need to see that…’

  He turned the scissors around in his hand and held them towards Tanner.

  She shook her head.

  ‘There’s an ambulance that’s going to be here any minute.’ He forced the scissors into her hand. ‘This is what’s going to clinch it, all right?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Thorne held up his right hand, palm towards her. ‘A defensive wound, that’s all. It happened when I put my hand up to shield my face, when he was on top of me. That’s when you grabbed the poker.’ He watched her kneel in front of him then stared, waiting. ‘Hurry up.’

  ‘How can I —’

  ‘Just fucking do it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s no time to worry about that, there just needs to be some blood —’

  Tanner stabbed him.

  ‘Jesus… fuck.’

  Tanner dropped the scissors, got up and bolted into the kitchen. Thorne was still shouting as he leaned across and transferred a convincing amount of his blood on to Graham French’s neck, the collar of his shirt. He put his hands around the back of his head, rubbed his bloody palm against the man’s thick black hair.

  For the second time in five minutes he fought the urge to throw up.

  Tanner came back with a tea towel which Thorne took and wrapped around his injured hand. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Of course it fucking hurts.’

  Tanner sank down next to Thorne and took his other hand in hers. She leaned against him and closed her eyes, the two of them bleeding and shaking.

  ‘Now we can call it in,’ Thorne said.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  A fine morning in late June and the sunshine was soft against the house’s crooked, honey-coloured walls. With a huge variety of plants and shrubs now providing a riot of colour, the carefully tended gardens of Long Barrow Manor looked lovelier than they had at any point since he had arrived more than two months before.

  Andrew Evans stepped out through the French windows and stared at the lush lawns and the line of flowering horse chestnuts beyond. The squared-off banks of marigolds and the rainbow of hydrangeas on three sides of the fountain.

  He might as well have been looking at paint-daubed metal shutters.

  ‘I know there’s been a setback,’ Call Me Rob had told him. ‘But it’s important to get past that.’

  ‘A setback?’ He had no idea how much the counsellor knew, the investigation that was now going backwards, but he was certain that, despite the suit and the framed certificates on his desk, the man had little idea about what his longest-serving patient was now going through. The crash and the emptiness.

  ‘Especially when you’ve already come such a long way.’

  Right. One step forward and God only knew how many back. Back to uncertainty that made him feel like he was drifting through the days and to nights that had become sleepless again. Back to a prison where the food was slightly better and those you loved were always absent. A wife who needed him and a baby he would not see born.

  He had let everyone down so badly. He could not forgive himself, so could easily understand how they might feel the same, should feel the same.

  ‘You need to man up, Andrew. I’m sure you’ve been in worse places than this. In every sense.’

  He walked down to the fountain because he could think of nothing better to do; taking little in, until he spotted a new girl sitting on one of the benches. She had a book on her lap, but her head was thrown back, her face to the sun.

  She jumped when he sat down next to her and reached to stop the book tumbling from her lap.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘No worries,’ she said.

  God almighty, she looked a state. Probably worse than he had when he’d first arrived. She’d piled her hair up like she was Amy Winehouse or something, but it just looked ratty and was thick with grease. There were whiteheads clustered at the corners of her mouth and he’d seen more black holes than teeth when she’d tried to smile.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  Evans said nothing. He stared at the ornamental fountain and thought how good it would feel to take a sledgehammer to it, to climb in afterwards and lie down in the water.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘We’re not supposed to talk.’

  ‘Yeah, they said.’ The girl took out a tobacco tin, opened it and began to roll a cigarette. ‘But, you know, balls to that.’

  Evans looked across and saw the police officer, Barrett, watching from beneath a tree. He waved and Barrett waved back, before walking away along the perimeter. ‘I’m Andrew.’

  The girl nodded, but seemed too engrossed in her roll-up to bother reciprocating.

  ‘Just got here?’

  She nodded. ‘Seems all right.’

  Paula would be getting big now, Evans thought. He remembered what she’d been like with Sean, the fun and games when the hormone fairy arrived.

  ‘A lot posher than what I’m used to, anyway.’

  He wished they’d let him have his phone back, just for five minutes so he could look at those pictures. The ones his mum had taken after Sean had come along. The three of them squeezed on to that bed, him messing about with the gas and air…

  ‘Hoping I won’t have to be here that long.’ She looked at him. ‘Fuck you crying about?’

  Evans shook his head; wiped his eyes and watched as the girl took a good look around, then pulled a small bottle with a dropper top from her jacket pocket. He knew exactly what was in it.

  ‘How the hell did you get that in here?’

  ‘How do you think?’

  ‘Jesus…’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve given it a good wipe.’

  Evans’s mouth had gone dry and he could feel a sheen of sweat on the back of his neck that had nothing to do with the sunshine. He watched her transfer the liquid into the roll-up; just half a dozen drops evenly spread, but it was more than enough. His blood was jumping, sensing it, and he was rooted to his seat.

  The girl licked and rolled expertly, checked again to see that nobody was watching as she took out a lighter. She looked at Evans, then nodded and held out the joint. ‘Here you go, mate. I reckon you need this more than I do.’

  Evans stared; could barely breathe. He knew that he should walk away, that he should alert one of the officers then go and tell Rob all about it.

  ‘Come on, you want first crack or not?’

  I promise, everything’s going to be fine.

  You swear?

  He knew exactly what he should do.

  I’ll be home soon and I’m going to be different.

  He snatched the joint, jabbed it between his lips and leaned towards the flame.

  Then he stopped, because something in the girl’s expression was not quite right. A hunger he’d not seen before, certainly not when someone else was about to get all the benefit. A junkie letting someone else have first hit was weird enough, especially a complete stranger, but she looked… desperate for him to get into the stuff. Far
too desperate.

  He leaned away, breaths coming faster. He took the unlit joint from his mouth and held it towards her. He said, ‘No, you.’

  She shook her head, irritated. ‘Just fucking light it, will you?’

  ‘I don’t think so —’

  And the girl was on him immediately, throwing her weight, such as it was, across his chest and pinning him to the bench, spitting and clawing at his face. Turning his face away as blows rained down on his head and neck, Evans saw the copper, Barrett, running up the slope towards them.

  ‘My name’s Nathalie and this is for my mother, you prick.’

  The girl might have been skinny as a stick, but her fury had given her far more strength than she looked capable of. Evans could only shout and struggle, eyes squeezed shut as she reached for them, blood running into his mouth.

  ‘This is for Frances Coombs —’

  Then suddenly it was Barrett she was lashing out at, when the police officer heaved her off the bench and manhandled her on to the grass.

  ‘I paid you, you fucker.’

  ‘Not for this.’ Barrett pushed her away, raised his arms to shield his face when she flew straight back at him.

  ‘I paid you…’

  Pushed back even harder, she ran back towards him and aimed a kick which only half connected. She immediately tried again and roared in frustration when the officer stepped back to avoid it, a hand held towards her in warning. Breathing heavily, she turned for a few seconds to glare at Evans, who was sitting up, fingers dabbing at the wounds on his face, before she wheeled away and sprinted towards the treeline.

  Evans and Barrett said nothing as they watched her go.

  She ran screaming and weeping into the trees, then crawled through the hole that had been cut in the perimeter fence and out on to the single-lane track where the car was waiting.

  SEVENTY-FOUR