Sleepyhead tt-1

by Mark Billingham

  Thorne had an idea or two about who, but was at a loss to explain how or why. The press getting hold of stuff, which now they had, was never a mystery. The solution was always there, lurking inside the bank balance of a constable with a gambling problem or some sergeant with too much alimony to pay. But this was something else entirely. This leak had led a killer back to Margaret Byrne's door with an iron bar and a scalpel. This was something infinitely more sinister and something to be guarded much more fiercely. Ranks were swiftly closed. Eyes turned outwards, fingers pointing. And now, for Thorne, everything was in the balance. Keable had just told him to sit and wait. Thorne had little argument. He was in trouble and decisions needed to be made at a higher level. It sounded good, k sounded like a plan of action, but Thorne knew that really Keable just had no idea what to do with him. And Thorne was already sick of sitting and waiting. The nagging headache was starting to scream. He stood and walked towards the bathroom in search of aspirin, but his eye was taken by the small red light winking at him from the table near the front door. Messages on his answering-machine.

  'It's only Dad. Call me when you get a minute…"

  ' Tom… it's Anne. I'll call back.'

  Then a voice he didn't recognise. A woman's voice. Quiet. Reluctant. A catch in the throat…

  'Hello, we've never met. My name's Leonie Holden and I was murdered a week or so ago. I would have been twenty-four next week and now I'm alone and I'm cold and frankly I don't give a fuck about who told who what, or your career, or matching carpet fibres and I'd be grateful if you could try and sort all this out, you know… '

  He opened his eyes.

  A cold shower. And hot coffee. And real messages on a real answering-machine.

  Time to stop hiding.

  Voices, all of them anxious. His father, twice. Anne, twice. Phil Hendricks, needing to talk. Keable, still trying to save his career, or something. Sally Byrne to check on the cat. Dave Holland…

  And Thorne needed to get out of his flat and talk to all of them, but in the spaces between the messages was a silence that spoke in a voice more insistent than any other. Murmuring the words that had exploded in his head a week or so before and now buzzed around his brain night and day, like aftershocks. He still heard them as they had been spoken to him, announced to him, with undisguised triumph, in Tughan's cold and oddly characterless accent. Words that still numbed him and would force their way, unspoken or otherwise, into any conversation with Anne Coburn or Phil Hendricks or Frank Keable or Dave Holland or anybody else for that matter.

  Jeremy Bishop has a cast-iron alibi.

  Jeremy Bishop could not possibly have killed Margaret Byrne.

  Lunchtime. A sandwich and an energy drink from a nice deli and a stroll around the choking streets of Bloomsbury to stare at the dying.

  He could still feel the shockwave up his arm as Margaret Byrne's skull had cracked. He'd felt it shatter like mint cracknel beneath the blow from the bar. That had shut her up. Silly mare had been squealing and running from room to room from the moment he'd kicked open the flimsy back door. It had only been a few seconds but still he wondered, as he followed her into the bedroom and moved towards her from behind, if the neighbours would be able to hear. As he locked his left arm beneath her chin to keep her upright, and his right hand reached into his pocket for the scalpel, he decided it would be all right. Probably just the TV up too loud. Nothing to get excited about. He might have been seen too. There had been a noticeable bit of curtain-twitching as he'd walked past the house earlier, but it was all a bonus in the long run, despite the confusion it was bound to cause in some quarters. The jewelry on the floor would probably have troubled them a little as well. They could hardly have thought it was a bungled burglary, but perhaps there'd been a struggle?

  Perhaps the poor thing had thought he was going to rob her. It didn't really matter.

  Whatever they were thinking was wrong.

  He could still feel the rush as the blade moved across her windpipe. As the blood spurted and sprayed, soundlessly, on to the thick, ugly. carpet, he'd jammed a knee into the small of her back and begun hoisting her towards the bed, wishing he'd had the time to do it all properly. He could still hear the purring of the cats, the only noise that disturbed the silence as he stood watching the life run out of her. Given the time, he'd have liked to make it look like suicide. That way there would have been no confusion. No problems with the timing of events.

  She'd needed dealing with quickly, however, and he'd done what was necessary. He now realised that the rushing, and the way his timetable had become compromised, had probably been responsible for the failure with the girl on the bus.

  Leonie, the newspaper said her name was. They hadn't had time, of course, to get to know each other properly. It hadn't helped, that much was certain. He had not been calm enough during the procedure. The excitement of the earlier events had made him clumsy and thrown his timing. He'd have done it carefully, of course, the suicide. The layman's way. The slash horizontal across the wrist, as opposed to the vertical cut, wrist to elbow along the radial artery, which is far more efficient but hugely suspicious. Mind you, they might not even have spotted that. Everything else was taking in her an age.

  But then there was Tom Thorne to consider. There was always him. He hadn't known exactly when Thorne was planning to visit Margaret Byrne, but he doubted she had many visitors, so there was a pretty good chance he'd get lucky. When the papers confirmed the name of the officer who'd discovered the body of 'Mrs. Byrne – 43' he'd whooped with joy. The one good thing that had come out of all this was Thorne's.. marginalisation. Looked at that way, he supposed that the timing could not have been any better. Now Thorne was more isolated than ever. An isolated Tom Thorne, he guessed, was a very dangerous one.

  And that was just how he wanted him.

  It was a twenty-minute stroll to Waterlow Park. Thorne had toyed with the idea of meeting at Highgate cemetery, but that was his and Jan's place. Or had been. It was a nice spot in which to waste a Sunday morning. She, desperate to feel like the heroine in some arty black-and-white film, and he, happy to kill an hour or two before a boozy lunch in the Old Crown or the Flask. Both content to spend time doing very little, and laugh every single time at the grave of the unknown Mr. Spencer that sat opposite that of the far more famous Marx.

  Adjoining the cemetery at its north end was Waterlow Park, a small but much loved green space, which those who frequented it never tired of describing as a 'hidden treasure'. The clientele here was odd to say the least: a mixture of the chattering classes, drugged-up layabouts and community-care cases with a smattering of hugely pregnant women sent here from the Whittington hospital to walk about in the hope of bringing on labour. Thorne was fond of it, not least because of Lauderdale House, the sixteenth-century stately home at its entrance. Now it housed kids' puppet shows, antiques fairs and exhibitions of hideous modern art. It had a decent restaurant and a nice, if overpriced, coffee bar. But four hundred years earlier Nell Gwynne had stayed there as mistress to Charles II. A snotty woman had once told Thorne that Lauderdale House was where Ms Gwynne had 'received her King'. He told her that it was as good a euphemism as he'd ever heard, but the snotty woman had failed to see the funny side. Thorne decided she could have done with receiving a bit of King herself.

  Now the place could always raise his spirits. This lovely listed building had basically been a top-of-the-range knocking shop. For this reason alone, the park had become a favourite place for sitting and thinking, with soundtrack courtesy of Gram or Hank on a CD Walkman, an unexpected gift from Jan for his fortieth birthday.

  He walked along the huge curving path that ran towards a pair of ropey tennis courts. Every hundred yards or so he came across a figure made of grass, or carved from a dead tree. Organic sculptures. It was probably some Millennium project. What a waste of time and money that had been. He'd spent 31 December 1999 with Phil Hendricks, a chicken vindaloo and an obscene amount of lager. They were both asleep before
midnight.

  It was as good a place as any for a meeting. Thorne took off his leather jacket and sat on a bench, bolted on to the concrete pathway. He stared across the park at the huge green dome of St Joseph's. The weather was warm, considering that October was just round the corner.

  A couple walked towards him hand in hand. They were young, in their early thirties, loose-limbed and straight backed. He wore baggy-fitting beige trousers and a white sweater. She wore tight white jeans and a cream fleecy top. They walked easily together in step, smiling at something said earlier.

  As the pair came nearer to him, brash and bulletproof, Thorne felt envy burn though his body like caustic soda dissolving the fat in a drain. They were somehow so light and so immaculate, the two of them. An advertiser's dream couple, walking off the coffee and croissants enjoyed in some beautifully converted warehouse. Thorne knew that they had good jobs and cooked exotic meals for perfect friends and had great sex. They enjoyed everything and doubted nothing.

  They were undamaged.

  He thought of himself and Anne, and wondered if the two of them were not just being utterly stupid. Why was he finding it so hard to call her?

  He'd left a message the day after he'd found Maggie Byrne's body, saying that something had come up, but since then he'd ignored her calls. It wasn't just about the connection with Bishop. It was about keeping something of himself back – that shadowy and indefinable part of himself that he'd need if he was going to get through this in one piece and stop the killing. He was willing to risk everything for that, and he knew that if things with Anne Coburn got any more serious, pieces might start to come away. It was armour and it was also camouflage, and he knew that the smallest crack might render it useless. Given time it would probably renew itself. It would harden eventually, but this was still not a good time to be… vulnerable. Yet still he wanted her close. He wanted her closeness. He watched the young couple strolling away from him towards the pagoda, much favoured by those keen on exchanging bodily fluids in the open air. He decided that he was being an idiot. He'd call Anne as soon as he got back to the flat. What the hell was he thinking of, anyway?

  He was just a copper, at least in theory.

  Cracks in armour? Jesus…

  He imagined himself briefly as a boxer, unable to fuck before a big fight. It was a ludicrous analogy, but the pictures in his head amused him so much that he was still smiling five minutes later when his date arrived. There were times when it seemed that a woman deprived of the power of speech was the only person Anne Coburn could really talk to.

  Sitting alone in the hospital canteen and pushing a tasteless bit of salad around a paper plate, she contemplated her failings as a professional. The sessions with Alison were going well, but Anne knew that if she wasn't careful there was a danger that they would become fully fledged therapy sessions.

  And not for Alison.

  Alison was having problems with her boyfriend and things were coming to a head, yet Anne had spent the large part of their last session together bitching about her own problems.

  Problems with her daughter. And her ex-husband. And her lover.

  Things with Rachel were not getting any better. At least they were talking but they weren't saying anything. There was an element of walking on eggshells on both their parts, the two of them well aware that the smallest comment could blow up into a major row. It was the work she wasn't doing for the resits and the early nights she wasn't getting and the truth she almost certainly wasn't telling. It was, Anne had begun to suspect – no, to be certain the boy she was seeing.

  Anne had brought it UP once, casually, but Rachel's reaction, tight-mouthed and defiant, had left her in no doubt that the subject was off limits. It was so stupid. Anne would have no problems with a boyfriend. Why should she? There had been boyfriends before. It was just the timing that was so bloody silly. Important exams were only weeks away and Rachel was in danger of making a mess of everything and Anne couldn't do a thing about it. Rachel was stubborn, like her father, and now he wasn't speaking to Anne either. Relations between her and David had been distinctly frosty, bordering on downright venomous, for a while, but since she'd told him about Thorne, things had worsened rapidly. He'd seemingly broken off communication altogether, and at a time when a united front, as far as Rachel was concerned, would have been a nice idea.

  What was so strange was that he'd seemed to know about the relationship with Thorne even before it happened. She thought back to the confrontation in the lift. He had been making comments about it even then. That was why she'd told him. She wasn't trying to score points well, maybe just one or two – but his suspicion was already providing him with ample bile to spit in her direction, so why not simply congratulate him on his prescience? But since she'd confirmed her involvement.., was it an involvement?.., with Thorne, he'd turned really nasty. Steve Clark walked past and smiled, and she smiled back and wondered if part of this business with Rachel might not have something to do with Thorne as well. Was Rachel jealous? Anne had made an effort to talk to her about Thorne. Since the big flare-up a few weeks earlier she'd tried to be more open. She'd told Rachel about the case and about her connection with it. She'd left out some of the more grisly details and skirted around Jeremy's… involvement, as much for her own peace of mind as anything. She'd kept her up-to-date with Alison's progress and, in general, had made a real effort to build bridges. But perhaps she hadn't explained to Rachel how she felt about Thorne.

  Anne pushed away the plate of untouched salad and decided that it was because she hadn't actually worked it out herself.

  She stood up and moved quickly to the rear of the canteen and out through the swing doors to the fire escape, where she lit a cigarette and took in the view of large steel bins and heaps of polystyrene packaging.

  Thorne…

  He seemed fairly central to all her problematic relationships. Not least the one with Jeremy Bishop.

  She'd barely spoken to Jeremy since the night she and Thorne had ended up in bed. This… cooling off had been her decision, but she sensed that he was keeping his distance as well. She couldn't deny the possibility that Jeremy was jealous, and that an element of that jealousy might be sexual, but she also suspected that he was becoming involved with somebody himself. He'd made one or two typically oblique comments in the days before they'd stopped seeing each other. He'd seemed distracted and by something other than work. She hoped that it was a woman. She wished Jeremy happy as much as she wished anything.

  She missed him.

  But she wouldn't pick up the phone. She'd known this man for more than twenty-five years and despite the stupidity of Thorne's suspicions, to do so would have felt vaguely disloyal to the man she'd known for five minutes. She resented having her loyalty tested. To anybody and by anybody. And why the hell-wasn't Thorne calling anyway?

  He'd rung to tell her there had been some sort of serious development on the case. Serious, to her, had sounded like another word for 'death', and two days later she'd read all about it. Then the other stuff. No mention of Alison, thank heavens, but plenty of gory grist to the media mill. The press blackout that Thorne had seemed so anxious about early on was well and truly ended. Outraged leader columns and pictures of five dead women.

  She'd stopped looking at the newspapers now. She was living with enough sickness already.

  Anne didn't want any involvement in this hideous case bar the one she had already through Alison. She didn't want to know anything else.

  Until they caught him.

  Thorne and Holland had walked down to the pond next to the park's southernmost exit. They leaned against the railings and talked, occasionally needing to raise their voices above the shouts from the children's playground only a few feet away. A father smoked and read a paper, while two children tried unsuccessfully to clamber up a slide and a third stood on a swing, demanding to be looked at. While Holland stared out across the water, Thorne watched a large brown rat scuttling about in the dust beneath the low hedge that s
kirted the pond. There were always a few here, on the lookout for badly thrown bits of bread and Thorne was always excited to spot one. It wasn't a beautiful creature, but while Holland's eye was taken by the variety of ducks and geese on display, Thorne's was naturally drawn to the rat. The scavenger, the chancer, the survivor. The villain.

  This city could have no more perfect symbol.

  'I hadn't got you pegged for a messenger boy, Holland.'

  Holland could feel the redness rising up his neck as he turned to look at him. 'That's because I'm not, sir.'

  Thorne instantly regretted his tone. It had been an attempt at dark humour but had just sounded sarcastic.

  Holland was already past it. 'DCI Keable thought that we might run into each other, that's all. He had tried to phone you himself…'

  Thorne nodded. Lots of people had tried to phone him. Letting Holland convey this somewhat bizarre offer was a shrewd move. Frank Keable was not the most inspired or inspiring of officers, but he knew what was going on around him. He could read the troops. He always got a sense of the currents within an operation, which went way beyond who had the hump or who might fancy who. The rat was standing on its hind legs now, sniffing at a litter-bin attached to the railings. Thorne looked across at Holland. 'So, what do you think?'

  Holland smiled, part of him flattered at being asked but the greater part well aware that his opinion would probably be worth less than nothing. 'I think it's a good offer, as a matter of fact. Sounds to me like you'll be pretty much a free agent and as long as you don't get into too much trouble…'

  'Or mention Jeremy Bishop?'

  Holland saw no point in sugaring the pill. 'It could be a lot worse.'

  Thorne knew that he was right. Keable had hinted at disciplinary action after the discovery of Margaret Byrne's body, but with that and the Leonie Holden killing, castigating a rogue detective inspector with an overactive imagination had become something of a low priority. That's what Keable had said anyway. Either that or he'd had his own reasons for not wanting to make it official just yet and was giving himself time to think of exactly what best to do with Thorne. Either way, at the end of it all there was probably no more than a wrist-slapping in it.