Lazybones

by Mark Billingham

  Brigstocke nodded. “How secure anything is!”

  Thorne was tuning it out. Thinking about those jungle drums…

  “The fact is, the whole system’s a mess,” Jesmond said. “There is no single strategy for managing and sharing sex offender information, either with other agencies or with one another. Some believe that general access to local officers is vital to obtain the full intelligence benefit. Other areas, other stations, simply have a nominated officer who gets informed whenever the Register is updated…”

  Thorne could smell another turd in his bed…

  The way it was being laid out, the killer could have found his rapists almost anywhere. On the Internet or in a wastepaper basket. It was clear that if they had ten or a hundred times as many officers working on this, tracking down the man they were after the way he’d been hoping to was a nonstarter.

  “It isn’t just us, either,” Brigstocke said. “The courts are supposed to notify us when there’s a need for an individual to register, and for how long, and it should be confirmed by the prison or the hospital or wherever when he gets released. Well, that’s the bloody theory, anyway. Sometimes the first you hear about a sex offender on your block is when they tell you themselves, for fuck’s sake…”

  Jesmond leaned back in his chair and smiled. Eyes closed. “So, when I say you’d better find us another decent avenue of investigation, I’m simply being practical. I’m thinking of the best way, the fastest way, to catch this man…”

  Thorne nodded. Said it under his breath…

  “Ooh! Whay-hay! Clack!”

  In the Major Incident Room, business carried on as usual, but each officer was keenly aware that things might be about to change. Each man or woman on the end of a phone or hunched over their paperwork glanced across occasionally in the direction of Brigstocke’s office, knowing that behind its closed door, decisions were being made that would affect them all.

  Each casual conversation full of unspoken concerns. Some less to do with overtime than others. Some, at bottom, fuck all to do with work at all…

  “Jesmond had a face like fourpence when he marched through here,” Kitson said.

  Holland glanced up from his computer screen. “Looked much the same as he always does, if you ask me…”

  “I know what you mean,” Kitson said. “He’s a miserable sod. Still, I think we must be doing something wrong. They’ve been in there awhile.” She looked across to where the Incident Room led out onto the corridor that housed the small suite of offices—Brigstocke’s, the one she shared with Tom Thorne, Holland and Stone’s…

  Kitson sat down on the edge of the desk. She placed a hand on top of the computer Holland was working at. “Can’t you do this in your office?”

  Holland peered at his screen. “Andy’s working in there…”

  There was grime on the top of the computer. Kitson took out a tissue, spat on a corner, and began rubbing at the heel of her hand. “Not a problem, is there?”

  Now Holland looked up at her. “No, it’s fine. Just easier to concentrate in here sometimes…”

  Kitson nodded, carried on rubbing, though her hand was clean. “Sam Karim tells me you’ve been putting yourself up for quite a bit of overtime lately. Working all sorts of hours…”

  Holland clicked furiously at his mouse. “Shit!” He looked up, blinked. “Sorry…?”

  “It’s a good idea. Trying to stash a bit of money away before the baby arrives.”

  Holland’s face darkened for a second. The smile he conjured didn’t altogether chase the shadows from around his eyes.

  “Right,” he said. “I mean, they’re expensive, aren’t they?”

  “You think nappies are a price, mate, wait until he wants CDs and the latest trainers. Is it a he or a she? Do you know…?”

  Holland shook his head, his eyes meeting Kitson’s for half a second and then sliding away to her chin. “Sophie doesn’t want to know.”

  “I did.” Kitson’s voice dropped down a tone. She opened up the tissue and began to tear it into small pieces. “My other half wanted to wait and see, but I’ve never really liked surprises. I sent him out of the room after we’d had the scan so they could tell me. Did it with all the kids. Managed to keep it secret right up until the births…”

  Holland smiled. Kitson crushed the pieces of tissue into her fist and stood up. “Are you going to take any time off afterward?”

  “Afterward?”

  “All this overtime you’re piling up now, you can probably afford a break, spend a bit of time at home with Sophie and the baby. Mind you, the Federation’s still fighting to get paternity leave up from two days. Two days! It’s a bloody disgrace…”

  “We haven’t really talked about it…”

  “I bet she’d like you to, though.” Kitson saw something in Holland’s eyes, nodded sympathetically. “She must hate all this extra work you’re having to do…”

  Holland shrugged. Let his head drop back to his computer screen. “Oh, you know…”

  Kitson took a step away from the desk. She opened her hand above a wastepaper bin and sprinkled the pieces of dirty tissue into it.

  Holland watched her go, thinking, Actually, you probably don’t.

  Thorne stuck his head around the door of the Incident Room, tried not to gag on a breath of late afternoon hot air and fermenting aftershave. He waved to Yvonne Kitson. She clocked him and walked quickly across.

  “Get everyone together at the far end,” Thorne said. “Briefing in fifteen minutes.”

  Without waiting for a response, Thorne turned and moved away, back up the corridor toward his office…

  Sensing that Jesmond was probably right. Knowing that he was right about the Register, but that even if the killer was a social worker or a probation officer or a copper, they were going to have to get him some other way.

  He threw his jacket across the desk, dropped down into the chair. There was a small pile of mail he hadn’t dealt with. He began to sort through it…

  If he was a copper?

  Thorne would not have bet on it. In all his years he’d known plenty of bad apples, worked with his fair share of shitbags, but never a killer. It was an interesting idea, a seductive one even, but beyond being convenient in TV shows, it was not much use to him.

  He dropped a bunch of envelopes into the bin, those that obviously contained circulars or dreary internal memos going in unopened. He always saved the interesting-looking ones until last…

  There were still aspects of the case that bothered him, that he’d flag up at the briefing. The bedding that had been removed for starters. And the other thing. The thought he couldn’t articulate, couldn’t shape and snap up.

  Something he’d read and something he hadn’t…

  It pretty much amounted to less than fuck all. Not a decent lead, not a bit of luck. He could only hope that some bright spark came up with something useful at the briefing.

  When the photographs tumbled out of the white envelope, it took Thorne a few seconds to understand what he was looking at. Then he saw it. Then his heart lurched inside him and began to gallop.

  As an athlete’s heart rate recovers more and more quickly as his fitness increases, so Thorne reacted less and less, physically at least, to images like those that would soon be scattered across his desk. The thumping in his chest was already slowing when he reached into a drawer, took out a pair of scissors, and snipped away the elastic band that held the bundle of pictures together. The breaths were coming more easily as he used the tip of a pencil to separate them. By the time he’d decided that he wanted a closer look, remembered where he could find the gloves he needed, his heartbeat was slow and steady again.

  There was no longer any visible movement, no judder of the flesh where his shirt stuck damp against his chest…

  Thorne stood, moved out into the corridor, and turned toward the Incident Room. As he walked, he felt amazingly calm and clearheaded. Coming to shocking conclusions and making trivial decisions.

/>   The killer was even more cold-blooded than he had imagined…

  He was supposed to be seeing Eve later on. Obviously, he would have to call and cancel. Perhaps she would be free tomorrow…

  Into the Incident Room, and Kitson was moving across from the right of him, eager to talk about something. He held up a hand, waved her away. The box stood, a little incongruously, on a filing cabinet in the far corner of the room, exactly where he’d remembered seeing it. He pulled out the plastic gloves, like snatching tissues from a cardboard dispenser, revealing the transparent fingers of the next pair.

  Holland was behind him, saying something he didn’t catch as he turned to walk back…

  The briefing, whenever they had it, would certainly be a bit more lively. Whatever Jesmond thought about the route the investigation was taking, it had definitely become heavy going. Those photos, what was in them, would get it started again.

  Jump leads.

  Not a bit of luck, exactly, but fuck it, close enough…

  Thorne walked into his office and straight across to his desk. He knew even as he was doing it, even as he pulled on the gloves and delicately picked up a photo by its edge, that he was probably wasting his time. He had to go through the motions, of course, but the gloves were almost certainly unnecessary. Though he knew the surface of a photograph was as good as any at holding a fingerprint, he also knew that the man who had taken it was extremely cautious. Aside from the prints of postal workers and prison officers, or the hair and dead skin of the victims themselves, they’d got nothing from any of the photos or letters thus far. This was, after all, a killer who removed the bedding from his murder scenes.

  Still, everybody made mistakes now and again…

  Thorne flicked quickly through the photos. The closeups of the battered and bloodied face, those thin lips thickened, then burst. The movement in the full-length pictures captured in a sickening blur. Pictures taken, unbelievably, while the victim was still alive. Thrashing…

  He pushed aside the interior shots and lowered his head, checking to see if the killer had made one mistake in particular. He stared closely at the photo that had been very deliberately placed on the top of the pile. The first picture he had been intended to see. The window of the shop next door…

  A killer’s little joke.

  Thorne was dimly aware of the figures of Holland and Kitson, watching him from the doorway as he squinted at the picture. Hoping to see a distorted image that would probably be worse than useless, but would show him that he was dealing with fallible flesh and blood. Searching in vain for a reflection of the cameraman in a tiny black mirror.

  Looking for the killer’s face in the eye of a dead fish.

  He was pretty sure he’d picked a good one.

  The list had to be looked at carefully. He couldn’t just print off a copy and stick a pin in. Not that there was that much time to look at it when he had the chance, but he was getting better at selecting the likely candidates quickly. With the previous two he’d chosen a couple of decent-looking ones and gone through the details more carefully later, when he could take his time. He’d done the same thing with this one, rejecting a couple of names for various practical reasons—location, domestic setup, and so on—and coming up with a winner.

  Christ, though, there were plenty to choose from. The serious cases, the ones he was interested in, would be on the Register indefinitely, and those that did eventually come off the list, after five, or seven or ten years, had been replaced a hundredfold by the time their names were removed.

  It was a growth industry…

  This one would shape up very nicely, by the look of it. He lived alone in a nice, quiet street. Friends were an unknown quantity as yet, but it didn’t look like there was any family around. It might even be possible to avoid using a hotel altogether…

  He was ambivalent about that. Doing it in a house or flat would be simpler, but there was an unpredictability that made him uncomfortable. It would be tricky to get inside in advance and look at the layout of the place. He couldn’t count on the place being as forensically friendly as the average hotel room. An unexpected visit from a neighbor couldn’t be prevented with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.

  He hadn’t had the choice with Remfry or Welch, but using hotels had worked out well so far and he was somewhat reluctant to change a winning formula. Hotels did mean a lot more possible witnesses and a security system to get around but that wasn’t too much of a problem. He’d learned that people saw fuck all when they weren’t really looking, and cameras saw even less if you knew how to avoid them.

  He’d avoided being seen, being really seen, for a very long time.

  THIRTEEN

  “I was wondering how much it would cost to send a bouquet of flowers…”

  “Well, we charge five pounds fifty for delivery, and the bouquets start at thirty pounds.”

  “Christ, I don’t want to spend that much. I haven’t even kissed her yet…”

  Eve laughed. “Are you sure kissing is likely?”

  “Definitely,” Thorne said. “She’s well up for it…”

  “Shit, I’ve got a customer. Better go…”

  “Listen, I’m sorry about canceling last night. I couldn’t—”

  “It’s fine. Hold that thought, all right? The kissing, I mean. I’ll see you later.”

  “Yeah…I can’t say what time, though.”

  “Call me when you’re about to leave. We can just grab a quick drink or something…”

  “Right…”

  “Seriously, if you are ever tempted, flowers wouldn’t guarantee kissing. Chocolates, on the other hand, will get you just about anything…”

  She hung up.

  Smiling, Thorne reached inside the bodysuit, dropped the phone into his jacket pocket. He took a long swig from a bottle of mineral water and turned, to find himself confronted by a family of backpackers. Mum, Dad, and two blond children were all sporting backpacks of decreasing size, and staring at him expectantly from the other side of the cordon. Thorne stared back at them until eventually, having decided that nothing much was going to happen, they wandered away.

  Six hours earlier, when there had been something they might have been able to tell their friends back home about, the onlookers had been a little harder to dissuade. With the nightclubs emptying and the streets buzzing, a sizable crowd had quickly gathered and gawked from behind the lines of police tape. A hundred yards back toward Wardour Street one way and Regent Street the other, they had stood and watched excitedly. The drunks heckled and the tourists took pictures as the body of Charles Dodd was carried out.

  Once the body had been loaded up and taken away, the cordon had been relaxed a little. Now there was just a square of blue tape running from the narrow doorway leading up to Dodd’s studio, around to the farthest side of the fishmonger’s shop next door. Fluttering ever so gently…

  “What’s going on in there, mate?”

  Thorne looked up at a small, skinny individual with birdshit highlights and an improbable amount of jewelry, nodding at him from behind the tape. The man, who was wearing satin tracksuit bottoms and a sleeveless camouflage vest, took three drags of a cigarette in quick succession, then flicked it into the gutter.

  “It’s a raid,” Thorne said. “Fashion Police. I’d be on my way, if I were you…”

  The man bounced twice on the balls of his feet, grimaced, and jogged away. On the other side of the narrow street, a girl in a tiny leather skirt and crop top was leaning against the kiosk of a peep show, eating a bacon sandwich. She grinned over at Thorne, having clearly heard the exchange. Thorne smiled back at her. It was a little after nine in the morning but evidently not too early to try to get something going inside the shorts of the passing male trade. Already warm enough for the tables of a pavement café to be filled with customers downing cappuccino and munching on pastries. Pretending they were somewhere more exotic.

  Thorne watched them. Wishing he was somewhere else. Thinking of things tha
t would put anybody off their breakfast…

  When they’d battered down the door early the previous evening, Thorne had known exactly what they would find. The smell, thick against his face mask, would have told him anyway, but as he’d climbed the narrow staircase, Thorne had been very well aware of what was waiting for him at the top. He’d already seen the pictures.

  The real thing, several long, hot days after the event, was a whole lot worse.

  The body had been strung up. The washing line had been tied in a makeshift noose around Dodd’s neck and thrown over one of the lighting bars above the studio floor. It was tied off around the foot of the bed, the weight of the body lifting one end of the bed twelve inches off the ground. The pictures, taken while Dodd was still alive, had shown the spasms, the desperate clawing at the neck and kicking of the legs. Several days dead, the corpse hung, stiff and still. It was only the rumble of the tube trains passing beneath them on the Bakerloo Line that caused the slightest tremor, that made the body start to swing just a little…

  Each time, Thorne had fought a bizarre urge to stop the movement. To step across and grasp the legs that protruded from dirty shorts like bloated blood sausages. To clutch the feet, purple with lividity, straining against the straps of the plastic sandals.

  Thorne had stood by the bed in the middle of the studio, remembering a pair of pale girls, writhing on nylon sheets.

  He had watched a scene-of-crime officer leaning across the mattress, scraping at whatever had dripped down from the body that dangled above it.

  He had looked up at the tongue that stuck out from Dodd’s mouth. Blue, and big as a man’s hand. Telling him to fuck off.

  Once it had been cut down and loaded up, Thorne had been only too grateful to do precisely as Dodd’s corpse had seemed to be requesting. Home for a change of clothes, and food he couldn’t finish. Four hours not sleeping, and then back to the murder scene.

  Opposite him, the girl finished the last mouthful of her sandwich. She wiped the back of a hand across her mouth, reached down behind the kiosk for her handbag. She shrugged at Thorne and began to apply lipstick.