Sleepyhead

by Mark Billingham

  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 skirted 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 over-active 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.

  Holland hadn’t told him everything.

  ‘They know about the fibres from Bishop’s car boot.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Thorne kicked at the ground, the dust and grit sending the rat darting momentarily for cover. Somebody in Forensics with a very big mouth. That would explain the call from Hendricks. He needed to talk to him.

  ‘So I’m in a bit of bother, which, if I accept this offer to become some sort of consultant or whatever bollocks title Frank Keable’s come up with, might go away. Is that it?’

  ‘He didn’t exactly say that, sir.’

  Consultant. He wondered what the catches were. Beyond the obvious one.

  Leonie Holden was last seen on a night bus bound for Ealing and her body was discovered four hours later on wasteground in Tufnell Park.

  Less than a quarter of a mile from Thorne’s flat.

  The significance of this latest message from the killer to his favourite detective inspector was not lost on anybody.

  Consultant? A better word might have been ‘bait’.

  ‘What do you think about Jeremy Bishop?’

  Holland phrased his answer carefully. ‘I don’t think he killed Margaret Byrne, sir.’

  ‘He was supposed to have had a cast-iron alibi for Alison Willetts as well, and we found holes in it.’

  ‘I still don’t understand any of it, though. I still can’t figure out how he could have done what he did to Alison and got her to the hospital in the time. Not to mention why. Why did he go to all that trouble just to give himself an alibi that didn’t hold water?’

  ‘I’ll work it out, Holland. And I’ll work out how he killed Margaret Byrne as well.’

  ‘He didn’t, sir.’

  ‘A man fitting his description was seen acting suspiciously outside her flat earlier in the day.’

  ‘Coincidence. Got to be. Besides, that woman opposite is a nutter. She thought I was suspicious.’ Holland spoke calmly, no element of letting Thorne down gently, just stating the facts. ‘I’ve been to the Royal London and spoken to everybody except the patients in deep comas. She was killed sometime mid- to late-afternoon, and Bishop was at the hospital, working through a routine theatre list. There’s dozens of witnesses. Whitechapel to Tulse Hill and back without being missed is impossible.’

  Thorne was grateful to Holland for having made the effort. He’d almost certainly done it in his own time, and in the knowledge that if Tughan had found out he’d have been in deep shit.

  ‘No alibi for Leonie Holden.’ Thorne was thinking aloud now.

  ‘Sir . . .’

  No alibi for Leonie Holden. Because he killed her. The fucker killed her and dumped her on my doorstep.

  ‘So you think I’m barking up the wrong tree as well, then, Holland? Or maybe that should just be barking?’

  Holland sighed. The questions just kept getting harder. ‘I had been sort of coming round to the idea of Bishop as a prime suspect, sir. There’s certainly nobody else in the frame, and even though it’s all circumstantial I was willing to . . . go with it as an avenue of inquiry. But Maggie Byrne – her and Leonie Holden had to have been killed by the same man.’

  They stood in silence. Thorne had nothing to say. Holland had plenty, but thought most was better kept to himself. Behind them, a child tumbled from the roundabout and began to scream.

  Holland cleared his throat. ‘All the same, as a theory it does have one thing going for it, sir.’

  ‘Yeah?’ mumbled Thorne. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s yours.’

  Thorne couldn’t look at him. He clenched his jaw. He was scared for a second or two that if he looked at Holland his face would show far too much gratitude. It would be shining and desperate and pathetic.

  The face that showed too much of everything.

  He turned and began to walk towards the gate. His sudden movement caused the rat to bolt again with a small squeal of alarm. The cheeky little bastard had been sitting on its haunches and cleaning its whiskers. They were so unafraid. Thorne had stood there before now and watched one scamper across his shoes.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Holland was half a dozen paces behind him.

  Whatever journey was ahead, Thorne had no intention of slowing down but sensed that Holland might be the sort of man, the sort of copper, who would close the gap and walk alongside him.

  And perhaps, together, they would bring down Jeremy Bishop.

  They reckoned that, in London, you were never more than six feet away from a rat. Thorne knew that you weren’t a whole lot further from an altogether nastier breed of vermin.

  More diseased. More human.

  There is definitely no God. Or if there is, he, she or it is a right sick bastard. Like this isn’t bad enough!

&
nbsp; The way Anne explained it to me is like this.

  They have to keep pulling me about every ten bloody minutes so I don’t get pressure sores, even on my lovely vibrating bed. So one of the nurses, don’t know which one but my money’s on Martina as revenge for the neck-coughing incident, accidentally dislodges the nasogastric feed, that’s ‘tube up nose’ to you and me, as she’s moving me. Just an inch or two, but that’s all it takes. What happens then is that the feed, which is this tasteless white shite that’s supposedly full of proteins and other great stuff, instead of going where it’s supposed to go, pours into my chest. Loads of it. Now, you and other people who can cough and splutter, just cough and splutter this crap back up and pull a face, and a few days later you might develop a mild chest infection.

  Not me, though. Oh, no.

  This feed is like nectar to fucking bacteria. They love it. They swarm all over it and, hey presto, I get bastard pneumonia. This sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m prone to infection apparently. Well, isn’t that just marvellous?

  So, here I am back on the ventilator. Big mechanical bellows doing my breathing and I feel like I did when I’d just come in here.

  Everything else stops now until I recover. Occupational therapy gets put on hold. The communication was going pretty well, it has to be said. We’d worked out a pretty good system using an alphabet that’s based on how many times a certain letter is likely to be used. So it doesn’t go A, B, C, D, E. It’s not an A–Z so much as an E–X. We’ve also got shortcuts for going back, for skipping forward, to repeat words, and Anne has become the human equivalent of that thing on my mobile phone that guesses what I’m going to say. She finishes words for me and most of the time she’s spot on. She’s just about got used to my swearing as well.

  Now all that’s got to stop until I’m a bit stronger. Until I’m better.

  Yeah, well, when you’re like this, better is a relative term.

  The blackboard’s gone from the end of the bed. I am so fucking frustrated.

  To be honest, I say the communication was going well and it was compared to a few weeks ago but it didn’t make things any easier with Tim. All the things I’d planned to say went out of the window once we got down to it.

  He just stood there with the pointer in his hand, looking lost.

  Even if you can spell the most complicated words in the world as fast as anything, they’re just words, aren’t they? You can’t spell out feelings with an eyelid and a pointer. I couldn’t really make him understand.

  In the end all I could do was spell out the one word and say it over and over again.

  G.O.O.D.B.Y.E.

  Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye . . .

  FIFTEEN

  ‘I shall be glad to have you around, Tom, but having said that . . .’

  Keable was behind his desk making a speech. Tughan leaned against the wall, greasy-haired and gimlet-eyed. Ostensibly ­Keable was welcoming Thorne back to Operation Backhand, albeit in an unorthodox and somewhat undefined role, but in reality he was laying down ground rules. What those rules were, Thorne would need to clarify later. Now he had one eye on his old friend the Exmoor stag.

  He saw new things in this dreary piece of ersatz West Country dross each time he looked at it. Today he glanced up from his chair and was drawn by something in the set of the animal’s jaw that seemed overtly aggressive. It was probably just fear, or the readiness to charge the photographer at any moment, but Thorne was mentally adding a thought bubble to the side of the stag’s head which read, ‘We don’t like your sort round here.’ It was only a matter of days now until the stunning view that encapsulated October would be unveiled. He was sure that Keable looked forward to this moment every month. What riveting image might Thorne find himself staring at next week? ‘Badger At Dusk’, perhaps. He wondered if he’d be here long enough to see it.

  Keable had finished. ‘Well?’

  Thorne gave Keable his full attention. The DCI’s expression seemed open and amenable. So far this had gone a lot better than might have been expected.

  ‘We should make it clear,’ chipped in Tughan, ‘that nobody’s asking if you’re interested in accepting this offer, because it isn’t really an offer. You don’t have any choice.’

  Thorne knew he was hooked and landed, but he still wanted to struggle a little. He ignored Tughan and spoke directly to Keable. ‘I appreciate you keeping the disciplinary side of recent events low-key, Frank, but I’m still a bit confused as to exactly what you want me to do in return.’ Because I wasn’t really listening. Sorry. ‘Consultant . . . secret weapon . . . supersub, whatever you choose to call it, I’ll still be the one DI too many. Brewer’s still around, I don’t think Nick’s planning on going anywhere . . .’

  He smiled at Tughan. The Irishman smiled back, his face blank.

  ‘. . . so what am I actually going to be doing day to day, Frank?’

  Keable took a few seconds to formulate a response. When it came it was spoken gently but the steel was barely hidden. ‘It was you who wanted out in the first place, Thorne, and you got what you wanted. You made a bloody mess of it and here you are again. You’re not in any position to be questioning anything.’

  Thorne nodded. He needed to be careful. ‘Yes, sir.’ He glanced across at Tughan. This time the bastard’s smile was genuine.

  Keable stood and walked round his desk. There was a small mirror on top of the filing cabinet in the corner and he crouched to catch his reflection and adjust his tie. ‘I want you as an unofficial part of this operation. I know that you’re anything but stupid and you realise that while you’re here the killer knows where to find you.’

  He’d know where to find me wherever I was. He’s watching.

  ‘This seems important to him and what’s important to him is important to me. There’s not a great deal we’re sure of, as far as this case goes, but the killer has some . . . affinity with you, which I intend to take full advantage of. If you’re unhappy about that, tough.’ Keable stood up. His tie was perfect. ‘Are you?’

  Thorne shook his head. He was anything but unhappy about it. Not that he intended to sit about and wait for the killer to pop by and say hello. The initiative, which he’d had at one point, had slipped away. He’d allowed it to slip away. He wanted it back.

  Keable was moving past Tughan, back towards his chair. ‘Plus, if you’re here, we know where to find you as well.’

  Thorne almost smiled. ‘One question, sir . . .’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Jeremy Bishop. Off limits?’

  Thorne saw the look pass between Keable and Tughan. He could almost have sworn that he heard the temperature drop.

  ‘I was getting to that. Dr Bishop is quite aware that you turning up at his house a fortnight ago was a charade of some sort. Be thankful he doesn’t know that you were illegally gathering carpet fibres from the boot of his car.’

  He still hadn’t spoken to Phil Hendricks. He’d call him later.

  ‘They got stuck to my briefcase, which he offered to put in the boot.’

  ‘Of course they did,’ scoffed Tughan.

  ‘Do they match?’

  Keable’s mouth actually dropped open.

  Tughan pushed himself away from the wall. ‘I think people are right, Thorne. I think you’ve fucking lost it. Yes, they match, but so would fibres taken from any Volvo of that colour and mode made since 1994. Do you not think we checked those things? Have you any idea how many cars that is?’

  Thorne hadn’t and didn’t much care.

  Keable picked up the baton. ‘Dr Bishop has rung several times to complain about anonymous phone calls. He’s making accusations.’

  Thorne met his gaze, unblinking. Keable was the first to look away.

  ‘These calls are becoming more and more frequent.’

 
How many times had he called Bishop since the funeral? He could barely remember. They seemed like things he was doing in his sleep.

  ‘Dr Bishop is predictably angry and upset, as is his son, who has been in to complain, and now his daughter is jumping on the bandwagon. She rang yesterday to ask what was being done.’

  The daughter rallying to the cause. That was interesting.

  ‘If I ever get confirmation that you know more about this than you’re saying, Tom, I won’t be able to save you. I won’t want to save you.’

  Thorne tried to look suitably chastened. Then a smile. Needing to lighten it. ‘You’ve still not answered the question, Frank. Is he off limits or not?’

  Things got no lighter.

  ‘Detective Inspector Thorne, are you in any doubt that the person who killed Margaret Byrne is also responsible for the deaths of Helen Doyle, Leonie Holden and the others?’

  Thorne thought for a second or two. ‘I’m in no doubt that the person who killed Leonie, Helen and the others was responsible for the death of Margaret Byrne.’

  Keable stared at him. His thick, unruly eyebrows knotted in confusion. Then he saw the subtle difference. His face reddened in an instant and his voice dropped to a threatening whisper. ‘Don’t play fucking silly games with me, Thorne.’

  ‘I’m not playing games . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to listen to this rubbish again. Psychopaths do not hire hitmen.’

  Jeremy Bishop was no ordinary psychopath, but deep down Thorne knew that Keable was right. The alibi had to be flawed. Else?

  He didn’t know what else.

  ‘So I’m not even allowed to mention his name?’

  ‘You’re being childish. If you want to waste your time you can think what you like, but don’t waste mine, or this operation’s. Tom . . .’ Thorne looked up. Keable was leaning forward and staring deep into his eyes. ‘It’s been four weeks since Helen Doyle was killed, two months since he attacked Alison Willetts, six months or more since Christine Owen was killed, and Christ knows when he began planning the whole, sick bloody thing.’