Lazybones

by Mark Billingham

  Whatever the hell an armed robber looked like…

  Thorne put the photo together with the other paperwork he had been studying, and handed the lot across to where Stone and Holland were sitting in the backseat. Stone looked at the photo. “Christ, he’s not what I expected,” he said.

  Thorne said nothing, stared out of the passenger window.

  Brigstocke flashed the lights and put his foot down. The car in front of them pulled across to let the unmarked Volvo pass. “I know what you mean,” he said. “Looks like the sort who might bear a grudge, though, doesn’t he?”

  Thorne couldn’t argue with that. He watched, slightly dizzy, as the wheat fields that bordered the M4 flew past at ninety miles an hour. He made himself belch; reading had made him feel a little sick…

  Brigstocke spoke up to get everybody’s attention. “Right, you should all have had a chance to look at the notes by the time we get there…” Thorne wound down his window an inch. Brigstocke glanced across at him, carried on. “This is a bit last minute, but we didn’t have a lot of choice. We’re doing this in a hurry, but let’s all make sure we do it right, shall we?” There were grunts from the two in the back. Thorne turned to look at him. “Gribbin’s got a history of violence, and if Remfry’s story is to be believed, that’s the only time Gribbin’s come off worse. He’s been picked up with knives on him before, so we’re taking no chances…”

  Stone leaned forward, an arm on each headrest and his face pushed between the seats. “How many going in?”

  “Probably be the four of us, plus a couple of the local boys…”

  Stone nodded, carried on speed-reading the notes.

  “Watch out for the woman as well,” Brigstocke said. “Sandra Cook’s got a decent-size criminal record. Drug abuse, theft, prostitution. She did three months in Holloway for taking half a DC’s face off with her nails…”

  Holland shuffled forward. If Brigstocke had so much as touched the brakes, Holland would have smashed into the back of his head. “Patricia Cook’s the woman who called up about Gribbin, right?”

  Stone glanced at him. “Sandra’s sister…”

  Thorne took a gulp of cold air and shut his window.

  “So why does she rat on her sister’s boyfriend?” Holland asked.

  Brigstocke tried to catch Holland’s eye in the mirror. “That’s the other reason we’re not fucking around this morning,” he said. “Nonattendance is not Gribbin’s only violation of his parole conditions.”

  “Shit…” Stone had seen it. He held the notes out for Holland to take.

  Thorne turned his head, looked at Holland. “There’s three people in the house, Dave. Gribbin, Cook, and Cook’s eleven-year-old daughter…”

  Thorne swiveled around again, pulled his seat belt taut. Beneath it, he could feel his heart start to thump that little bit faster and louder. Around the nape of his neck he could sense the smallest tingle beginning to build. He caught his breath as an insect hit the windshield in a mess of blood and wings.

  It was a horseshoe-shaped cul-de-sac in a modern housing development and the property they were interested in was at the far end…

  Thorne looked at the houses as the van slowly made its way past them up the drive. Taking in the detail, the attempts to personalize and gentrify. The bright, differently colored front doors; the hanging baskets overflowing with geraniums; the wooden signs for The Elms and The Thistles. Most of the houses and garages were empty, the occupants having left for work hours earlier, but still the occasional curtain twitched. This was probably as exciting as it would ever get.

  It was one of those funny towns on the outskirts of the city that couldn’t quite make its mind up if it was urban or rural. Twenty-odd miles to the west of central London, it lay uncomfortably between the M25 and the Chilterns. For its population of commuters, the proximity to rolling hills and quaintly named villages probably made the daily slog up the motorway worthwhile, but it was a different story for their teenage children. No amount of fresh air could make the place any less boring. Antique shops would not prevent them pissing it up the wall on a Friday night and cutting up rough in the center of town…

  Thorne saw a woman staring down at him from an upstairs window. He read the alarm on her face and watched her back away quickly, almost certainly heading for the phone. It was understandable. Those who peeped from behind curtains on one side of the drive saw a blue Transit van. Those like her, in houses on the other side, could see the four men in jackets, jeans, and trainers, who crept slowly alongside it, moving at the same speed, the van’s progress masking theirs.

  When the van began a long, slow sweep around the curve of the horseshoe, the police officers behind it moved in a similar arc. As it slowed right down, they did the same, and when it stopped and the engine was switched off, the four men gathered into a tight huddle and waited.

  Five hundred yards away, at the other end of the drive, two police vans had sealed off the entrance. Traffic police kept the vehicles moving as drivers slowed down to gawk. Half a dozen uniformed officers in shirtsleeves moved curious pedestrians along.

  Behind the Transit, Thorne listened. He could hear the distant squawk of a two-way. The drone of traffic from the other side of the field behind the houses. Somewhere nearby there was a radio playing. He tuned the sounds out and tried to concentrate on what Brigstocke was saying…

  “Are we clear?” Brigstocke asked. He looked hard at Thorne, Holland, and Stone. Thorne knew he was looking for focus. Nods all around. This was probably going to be straightforward enough, but it only took a second for something run-of-the-mill to go very wrong.

  “Right…”

  A beat, then Brigstocke hammered with his fist on the side of the van and two more officers jumped immediately from the front. The van doors still swinging, they began sprinting toward the house, the biggest one lugging a heavy, metal door ram.

  Thorne and the others came around from the far side of the van, running. Brigstocke and Stone went immediately left toward the gate at the side, making for the back of the house. Thorne and Holland veered away from them, following in the wake of the two from the front of the van…

  Grunts, and short breaths, and the pounding of rubber soles across tarmac and pavement and grass, and still the sound of the radio coming from somewhere…

  Thorne came up next to the officers at the front door. He crouched down, ready to spring forward, and nodded. A couple of deep breaths. The big officer gritted his teeth and swung the battering ram.

  “Police…!”

  Thorne could hear shouting from inside the house and from around the back. The door hadn’t given. He began kicking at the lock, then moved quickly as the ram was swung into the door again. This time it crashed open and, leading with his forearm, Thorne rushed in.

  “Police! Everybody in the property show themselves now…”

  From behind him, Thorne heard the clang of the battering ram as it was dropped on to the doorstep. From somewhere up ahead he could hear a thump and, upstairs, a woman screaming…

  A woman, Thorne thought. Not a child…

  “Anybody here, show yourself!”

  He saw a long hallway ahead of him. Two, three doors off to his right…

  “In there!”

  He glanced left at the big officer coming past him, at the bulk of his wide back moving beneath his car coat as he charged up the stairs two at a time.

  At the other end of the hall was a kitchen, and through it he could see Brigstocke and Stone outside the back door. Holland pushed past him, ran to open it.

  The doors clattered open, smashed in ahead of him. In the first room, nothing…He stepped back out into the hall, turned to see Brigstocke and Stone running toward him.

  From the second room, a shout…

  “Here…”

  Thorne shoved his way past the officer in the doorway and burst into the room. It was small—a sofa, an armchair, a wide-screen TV still on. At the other end was an archway leading off right to anoth
er room, a dining room, Thorne guessed.

  Gribbin stood next to the armchair, his hands above his head. His face showed nothing. His eyes moved from Thorne’s to the doorway through which Sandra Cook was being propelled by one of the local CID boys. She pushed her way past Brigstocke and Stone, all but dragged Holland out of the way.

  “What the fuck do you want?” she shouted.

  Thorne ignored her, turned to look at Gribbin. “Raymond Gribbin, I’m arresting you in connection with breach of parole conditions, which—”

  He stopped and looked toward the archway in the right-hand corner as a figure stepped cautiously through it. One by one the heads of the other seven people crowded into the small room turned, until everyone was looking at the girl.

  “Is everything going to be okay, Ray? I’m scared…”

  Gribbin took his hands from above his head, opening his arms as he stepped toward her. “It’s all right, sweetheart…”

  It all happened in a few seconds. It was a testament to Andy Stone’s speed and strength that he was able to do so much before being dragged away by Thorne, Holland, and a screaming Sandra Cook.

  “Don’t fucking touch her…”

  As Gribbin’s hands slid across the girl’s shoulders, Stone was halfway across the room. He was on him by the time Gribbin was reaching to pull the small blond head to his barrel chest, the girl squealing as he pushed her away and turned to defend himself…

  Gribbin reached up and grabbed Stone around the collar, staggering back into the television, which tipped against the wall. Stone brought both fists up fast into the thick, tattooed forearms and pulled them back down hard as he dropped his head into Gribbin’s face. It was then that three pairs of hands grabbed Stone, around collar, belt, and sleeve, yanking him backward across the armchair as Gribbin dropped to his knees and the girl ran sobbing to her mother.

  Stone tried to stand up, to tell those around him that he was calm, that they could get their bloody hands off him…

  Thorne stepped across and knelt down next to Gribbin.

  His head had fallen back against the television, one hand scrabbling at the carpet, balling itself into a fist. Blood dripped through the fingers of the other hand. On the screen behind Gribbin’s head, there was applause as a woman welcomed viewers to her show and invited the studio audience to share their holiday nightmares.

  Twenty minutes later, with the inhabitants of the quiet cul-de-sac pressed against their windows, Gribbin was led out, a bloody handkerchief pressed to what was left of his nose.

  By teatime, the initial interviews had been completed. Heads were starting to hang. Though there were still a few things to check out, it was pretty clear, to Thorne at least, that Gribbin had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Douglas Remfry.

  The phone rang just before eleven. The voice could have belonged to only one person.

  “I think you might have had a bit of luck, Mr. Thorne.”

  “I’m listening, Kodak.”

  “Well, don’t get too excited, because whatever happens we’ve got to wait a few days, but it looks good. Remember me joking about doing your job for you…”

  Thorne listened. It did sound very promising, but after the fiasco with Gribbin he found it difficult to get excited. It was hard to see anything as more than just another straw to be clutched at.

  He went into the bedroom and lay down.

  It was starting to get cooler.

  Beneath him, the bracken felt sodden, and above, the sky was darkening.

  August 3, 1976

  “You smell. You smell like death. You fucking stink…”

  Her eyes showed nothing. Not hurt at the accusation, not denial, not pain at the weight of him pressed down onto her arms, his face inches from her own.

  He pushed himself off her, moved down to the end of the bed to where the tray had been left untouched.

  “I’m fucking sick of this,” he said. “You want to starve yourself, that’s up to you, but don’t make me cook the shit for you, all right?”

  She raised herself up on the pillow, stared past him.

  “What?” he said, shouted. “What?”

  He looked at her for a minute or more. Her face was, as always, blank enough for him to imagine it changing, to create the expression that he knew should be there as large as life. To picture the eyes dropping, the tightness around the lips, and the clenching of the jaw. To see shame.

  He grabbed the plate and hurled it against the wall above her head. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink.

  He stopped in the doorway, turned, and stared at her. Her eyes flat as glass. Beans running down the wall behind her.

  “In court they tried to make out that if you had been raped it was like you were asking for it anyway. The dress, other things. They just meant the way you behaved, like you were flirting, coming on to him. They didn’t know the half of it, did they? You did ask for it. I know what you did. You literally asked him for it. Took him, dragged him into that fucking stockroom, and asked him. Told him what you wanted…”

  As he closed the bedroom door behind him, he could hear her saying the word over and over again.

  “If…if…if…”

  She could not hear herself saying it. The sound of the screaming inside her head was all she’d been able to hear for a while.

  EIGHT

  Thorne turned right off the Charing Cross Road. Eleven o’clock in the morning or thereabouts and baking hot. He took off his jacket, threw it across his arm as he began walking up Old Compton Street.

  Soho was a difficult area to categorize at the best of times, which had probably been its trouble down the years. Was it bohemian or squalid? Characterful or seedy? Thorne knew that today it was all these things and probably the better for it, but it had been a struggle. Four decades on and the villains that had run Soho in the fifties and sixties had become trendy. Thanks to the new wave of British gangster films, Billy Hill, Jack Spot, and their boys, with their sharp suits and slicked-back hair, were now officially iconic. For all their newfound sexiness, it was these men and those who followed in the seventies who had driven the resident population of the area away, who had silenced the noisy heart of it.

  It was thanks mainly to the gay population that Soho’s heart had begun to beat again. Now it was one of the few areas in the center of the city with a real sense of community; a sense that the horrific bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub a few years earlier had only strengthened. Though Thorne had not felt totally comfortable on the few occasions Phil Hendricks had brought him down here drinking, he couldn’t deny that there was a good atmosphere to the place.

  Thorne walked past Greek Street, Frith Street. The Prince Edward Theatre and the awning of Ronnie Scott’s off to his right. Young men sat outside cafés, enjoying the hot weather, the chance to show off well-developed bodies. Soho was still a great place to eat and drink, but for every Bar Italia there was a Starbucks or a Costa Coffee; for every family-run deli, two branches of Pret A Manger…

  Thorne suddenly felt hungry and realized that he had a problem. He knew that he didn’t have time to grab an early lunch, but he also knew that if he ate any later he would run the risk of spoiling dinner, and he was really looking forward to that…

  “Well, we might as well,” Eve had said when he’d called. “We’ve already had breakfast and lunch…”

  On the corner of Dean Street was a shop selling fetish wear. Thorne stopped and looked at the garish window display. A dummy was clad in rubber. A spiked dog collar around the neck and a gas mask obscuring the face. He thought about the photographs of Jane Foley; the reason he was here.

  He looked at his watch. He was going to be late…

  “Did you really look at this photo?” Bethell had asked on the phone.

  “What?”

  Bethell sounded cocky, pleased with himself. “Study it, you know…”

  Thorne was not in the best of humors. “I’m tired and I’ve had a shit day, so get on with it, will you…?”r />
  “I mean really look at it, Mr. Thorne. In one of your labs or whatever. Get it onto some state-of-the-art magnifying equipment, break it down into pixels…”

  “This is the Met, Kodak. I haven’t even got a fan in my fucking office…”

  “I’ve got some good gear indoors. I use it for airbrushing, you know? Stuck it on there and bingo!”

  “What…?”

  “The picture’s shot against a plain white backdrop, all right? Sheet on a roller, usual kind of thing. Now, there’s a small mark bottom right-hand corner, looks like a smudge, remember?”

  “No, I don’t…”

  Thorne turned right, then immediately left into Brewer Street. This, more than anywhere in Soho, was where you could see the sleazy and the sophisticated cheek by jowl. The peep show next door to the sushi bar. A place that offered shiatsu massage opposite premises delivering an altogether more intimate type of service.

  A bored blonde in a cubicle beckoned him, inviting him into a show that promised a “live double act.” Thorne wondered if there were any shows that offered dead ones.

  “Come on in, love,” the woman said. Thorne smiled and shook his head. She looked like she didn’t give a damn. Of course, the sex industry had always been just that, had always been about the money, but Thorne had known hookers who did a better job of disguising it. He’d only ever read about his favorite hooker of all time, but he would have liked to have met her. A legendary whore called Miss Corbett who’d worked these streets in the eighteenth century, and had taxed her gentlemen an extra guinea for every inch that their “maypole” fell below the nine inches she deemed satisfactory.