Death Message

by Mark Billingham

  ‘I’m serious.’

  Louise explained that despite what had happened in bed that night, she really did not want to get pregnant. That wasn’t to say she wouldn’t want to have a child one day, but she had a career to put first for a few more years.

  ‘I look at someone like Yvonne Kitson,’ she said, ‘see her trying to juggle work around three kids, and I’m not sure I’d ever be able to do it.’

  Thorne thought about Louise’s reaction when they’d talked about Kitson and he’d accused her of being jealous. He wondered if he’d touched even more of a nerve than he’d realised.

  ‘I’d be stupid to have a kid now.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Thorne repeated.

  ‘You keep saying that, but I don’t think it is. I’m worried that you think I’m desperate for you to knock me up or something. That I’m some sort of nutter who’s going to stick pins in all your condoms or nick a pram from outside Tesco’s. Really, I’m happy with the way things are.’

  ‘Good. So am I,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Great. So that’s fine then.’

  They moved from the table to the sofa, and when the album had finished they put the TV on and tried to lose themselves in something mindless. After fifteen minutes of saying nothing, though, Thorne wasn’t convinced that Louise was succeeding any more than he was.

  She hit the mute button on the remote and was about to say something when the phone rang.

  Thorne recognised the voice immediately.

  ‘How did you get my home number?’ he said. He pictured a glorified cupboard stuffed with recording equipment. A bored technician wearing headphones, ears pricking up on hearing his question.

  ‘Come on,’ Rawlings said. ‘If you wanted to get mine, how long would it take you?’

  ‘What do you want?’ Next to him, Louise was mouthing, Who is it? ‘I’m in the middle of something.’

  ‘I could do with a chat. Just five minutes.’

  ‘Fine, but not this five.’

  There was a pause. Thorne could hear Rawlings blowing out smoke; knew that he was swearing silently.

  ‘What about tomorrow?’

  ‘Fine. Call me then.’

  ‘Can we meet up?’

  Louise was still asking. Thorne shook his head; he’d tell her in a minute. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. A lot of stuff happened today, and-’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Right, you’ve had your chat…’

  ‘Come on. We can meet wherever’s easiest for you, all right? Five fucking minutes…’

  Later, when Thorne was in the kitchen making tea, Louise shouted through from the living room: ‘What about you? Did you never think about kids?’

  Thorne almost scalded himself. ‘Thought about it, yeah. Not for a while, though.’

  ‘Why did you and Jan never have them?’

  Thorne had split from his ex-wife twelve years before, after ten years of marriage. They hadn’t spoken in a long while, and as far as he knew she was still living with the teacher she’d left him for. ‘We didn’t decide not to. It just never happened.’

  There was a pause from the living room.

  ‘Did you try to find out why it wasn’t happening?’

  Thorne took his time stirring the tea. ‘No, we didn’t talk about it.’ He shrugged as he said it, asking himself, as he had when Jan had left, if it might have been one of the reasons why she’d gone. The not having kids. The not talking about not having kids. Both.

  ‘It’s crazy how some couples bottle shit up,’ Louise said.

  Thorne carried the drinks through, settled down next to her. ‘Stupid,’ he said.

  She looked at him. ‘It’s important we don’t do that. That we talk about things.’

  ‘We are talking about things.’

  ‘Right.’ She flicked the TV on again. ‘It’s just a conversation, that’s all. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be able to talk about it. Isn’t it part of getting to know the other person?’

  ‘I think we know each other pretty well,’ Thorne said.

  ‘I’m just saying it should be like finding out all the other stuff, likes and dislikes, whatever. Where did you go to school? Where do you like to go on holiday? Do you think you might want to have kids one day?’

  ‘The first two are easier to answer.’

  ‘One day.’ She squeezed his arm and said it nice and slow, making sure he got the point. ‘At some point in the future, maybe, so don’t panic, OK? I don’t even mean with me, necessarily. I’ll almost certainly have got pissed off with you and buggered off with someone else by then. It’s hypothetical, that’s all.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘We’re just talking about the idea of kids, Tom. Why should that be scary?’

  Thorne knew that she was right, in theory, but also knew it was not quite as simple as she was making out.

  He wasn’t scared of vampires or zombies, in theory, but a well-made horror movie could still scare the shit out of him.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Davey Tindall looked up from his paper and eyed the two men at his window above off-the-shelf reading glasses.

  ‘Eight quid,’ he said, tearing off two tickets. He sighed when he saw the warrant cards; tossed the tickets into the bin and nodded towards the door that led through to the auditorium. ‘In you go then. Film’s already started, mind you.’

  ‘Does that really matter?’ Thorne asked. He peered at the poster taped below the box-office window. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Shy and Shaven has too much in the way of plot.’

  Holland thanked Tindall for the offer, explaining that they weren’t from Clubs and Vice, looking for a freebie. Thorne told him where they were from and that they needed a word.

  ‘I was in with your lot the other day,’ Tindall said. ‘DC Stone and the other bloke, Asian…’

  ‘That was the other day. With two other officers. And before you spoke to Marcus Brooks.’

  Tindall puffed out his cheeks, folded his paper.

  ‘Let’s go through to the back and put the kettle on,’ Thorne said.

  The cinema was one of a string in Soho, all managed by a south London family who also owned clubs and massage parlours and ran a network of girls in and out of several of the city’s top hotels. Tindall had been on the payroll for years, doing a variety of jobs. He worked the box office, ferried girls around, collected the takings. He also passed a tip or two on to DCI Keith Bannard every once in a while, in exchange for cash and a Get Out of Jail Free card.

  Tindall locked up the ticket booth and led Thorne and Holland to a small office that doubled as a storeroom. His skin looked as grey as it had on the tape Karim had shown to Thorne, although the eyes were blacker, darting around behind his glasses, as if desperately looking for a friend, or an exit. He had to be pushing sixty; short and whippet-thin, with hair that was silver, yellowing at the temples. He wore new-looking jeans with a sharp crease ironed down the legs, his top half lost inside a thin green cardigan.

  ‘No tea,’ he said.

  ‘It was just an expression,’ Thorne said. ‘We’re not stopping.’

  There were newspapers and magazines scattered across what passed for a desk and piles of videotapes on the floor. A Jenna Jameson poster was stuck to the back of the door, and a calendar with a picture of a golden retriever was pinned to a cork board, surrounded by cards for cab firms and call girls. The place smelled of booze and bleach.

  ‘When did you talk to Brooks?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Who says I did?’

  ‘We got some of his stuff. We found your phone number.’

  ‘So? I’ve got lots of people’s numbers. Doesn’t mean I ring them all up every day.’

  The Scottish accent was stronger than Thorne remembered from the tape. He wondered if Tindall thickened it when he didn’t feel like communicating; when it might be costly.

  ‘We can go through your phone records easily enough,’ Holland said. ‘We can go through all sorts of stuff; dredge
up all manner of crap you’d rather we didn’t know about. That you’d rather the bloke you work for didn’t know about.’

  Thorne flicked through the calendar. ‘He’s not talking about DCI Bannard, either.’ There was a different breed of dog for every month.

  ‘I hadn’t spoken to him when I came in on Sunday, I swear.’

  ‘So, when did you speak to him?’ Thorne said.

  Tindall thought about it. ‘He called up the next day. I was here.’

  ‘And you never thought to tell us?’

  ‘Slipped my mind,’ Tindall said. He began digging around in drawers and cupboards. He asked Thorne and Holland if either of them had a cigarette. Holland had a packet of ten for emergencies, but kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ Holland asked.

  Tindall shook his head. ‘I have not.’

  ‘You sure?’ Thorne shoved some papers aside and leaned back against the edge of the table. ‘Think really hard.’

  ‘He wanted a car, OK? Asked if I knew someone who could get him something quickly, for cash.’

  Thorne and Holland exchanged a glance. Tindall was talking about the day before Cowans was killed. Thorne wondered if that was why Brooks had wanted the car. He would certainly have needed it to follow Cowans, if the biker had driven around in search of a hooker and headed down to the canal once he’d found one he liked the look of.

  ‘Did you help him?’

  ‘I had a few contacts in the motor trade years ago,’ Tindall said. ‘Back when I got to know the lad, when we were hanging about with some of the same people. But not any more. I told him he’d have to try someone else.’

  ‘And that was it?’

  ‘That was it, aye. Just a couple of minutes. A cough and a spit.’

  ‘You didn’t suggest anyone in particular?’ Holland said.

  ‘Told you, I’ve been out of that game a long time.’

  ‘No offence, Davey,’ Thorne said, ‘but you’re full of it.’

  ‘I swear-’

  ‘Swear all you like. I reckon you helped “the lad” out; for old time’s sake, because you feel sorry for him, who knows? Maybe you’ve been helping him ever since he came out of prison. Fixing him up with the right people…’

  ‘Have I fuck.’

  ‘None of your friends on the force can help you with this one. Not if you’ve been aiding and abetting a murderer, mate. Especially one who’s taken to killing coppers.’

  ‘Look, he called again yesterday, all right?’ Tindall looked quickly from one to the other; checking to see he’d provoked a reaction. ‘Late last night. Got me out of fucking bed, matter of fact.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He needs somewhere to stay,’ Tindall said. Thorne looked across at Holland again. Tindall had to be telling the truth. There was no way he could have known about the raid in Hammersmith. ‘Wanted to know if I could think of anywhere he could crash for a few days. Someone who’d put him up and leave him alone.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We talked about one or two people he could try.’

  ‘Such as?’ Thorne asked.

  Tindall looked pained. ‘Come on, you know the sort of people I’m talking about…’

  Thorne grabbed a ballpoint from the table, tore a strip of newspaper off and passed them both across. ‘Write the names down.’

  Tindall was starting to look like he needed that cigarette very badly. He cursed under his breath as he scribbled down a few names, pretending to dredge them up. From the cinema on the other side of the wall, the soundtrack of the main feature was all too audible.

  ‘Someone sounds out of breath,’ Holland said. He listened for a few more seconds. ‘That’s top-quality grunting.’

  ‘How many’s in there?’ Thorne asked.

  Tindall sniffed. ‘Half a dozen…’

  Thorne was amazed there were even that many enjoying Shy and Shaven at eleven o’clock in the morning. Why hadn’t they just stayed at home and watched something on DVD? With whatever kind of stuff you were into now available on disc or download, Thorne couldn’t understand why anyone went to porno cinemas any more, or picked magazines off the top shelf while pretending they were looking at What Hi-Fi? He could only presume they enjoyed the sleazy thrill of it; like movie stars getting caught with fifty-dollar whores when they could sleep with any woman they wanted.

  Thorne took the piece of paper that Tindall thrust gracelessly at him. ‘Thanks, Davey,’ he said. ‘We’d best let you get back to work. Now, you will let us know if he calls again, won’t you?’

  Tindall scoffed: ‘You think I need more of this shite?’

  Thorne walked slowly past him towards the door. ‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘I hope nothing else slips your mind. You know what Bannard’s like when you try to take him for an idiot?’ Thorne guessed that the S &O man could get fairly heavy, and the look on Davey Tindall’s face confirmed it. ‘Well, I’m a lot worse.’

  Tindall blocked their way as they tried to leave. ‘Am I not getting something for this?’

  Thorne just stared at him, waited for him to move.

  ‘I’m serious.’ The voice was thin and desperate. ‘Fifty notes, say, just for my time.’

  Thorne took one more second of Tindall’s time, to tell him to fuck off.

  Over the years, there had been periodic attempts to gentrify the Holloway Road. Delicatessens had come and gone. Idiots had opened antiquarian bookshops and sold their stock on a year later. As a hugely busy main road – the major route north out of the city – it was never going to be Highgate Hill or Hampstead High Street. But Yvonne Kitson thought it was the better for it: brash and unpretentious, with lively bars and restaurants, a few decent places to dance and hear music if you could be bothered to look. Certainly a place she wouldn’t have minded going to college.

  She watched Harika Kemal coming out through the doors of the student union with two friends and digging into her bag for a scarf. Kitson saw the girl’s face fall when she caught sight of her approaching.

  ‘Can I just have five minutes, Harika?’

  She shook her head. ‘Please…’

  The man and the woman who had come out with Kemal were clearly a couple. The man took a step towards Kitson. ‘Is there a problem?’ Kitson thought he might be Turkish. Greek, maybe. He wore a shiny anorak with a fur-trimmed hood and glasses with thin, rectangular lenses.

  Kitson reached into her bag for her warrant card.

  ‘Can’t you just leave her in peace for a bit?’ the student said.

  His girlfriend was Asian; plump, with short hair and a nose-stud. ‘Maybe do something useful,’ she said. ‘Like trying to catch the animal that murdered her boyfriend?’ She spoke with the same mid-Atlantic sarcasm Kitson was already hearing from her nine-year-old daughter.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Kemal said to her friends. ‘I’ll catch you up.’

  ‘Is there somewhere we could go and grab a sandwich or something?’ Kitson asked.

  The girl patted the bag that was slung across her shoulder. ‘I’ve got my lunch.’

  They crossed the road and walked just a little way up the side street opposite. Found a bench on a small patch of muddied grass next to an Irish pub. Looking back, Kitson could see that the two students hadn’t moved; were staring from the doorway of the union building. Turning back to Kemal, she watched the girl take a plastic box from her bag. ‘What your friend said. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do.’

  ‘I know.’ Kemal peeled back tinfoil from her sandwiches.

  ‘And there’s no point bullshitting you: we’re getting nowhere. We’ve done all the things we’re supposed to do, you know? Everything we can think of. Spoken to everyone we could, put out an appeal on TV. I know you saw that.’

  The girl said nothing. A cement lorry rumbled slowly past them, waited to turn left on to the main road.

  ‘The only lead we’ve got is you,’ Kitson said.

  Kemal shook her head, but to Kitson it seemed more about resign
ation than denial. ‘It’s so hard,’ she said.

  ‘Of course it is.’ It was a knee-jerk response, but Kitson truly believed that it was difficult for the girl. Dealing with the loss of her boyfriend. With whatever knowledge she had, much as she might wish to be ignorant.

  ‘How can I face the family?’

  Kitson leaned forward on the bench so she could look at the girl square on. ‘Whose family? Deniz’s?’

  Another shake of the head, its meaning even more ambiguous than the last.

  ‘It’s OK, Harika. Really.’ Kitson watched the girl turning the sandwich over and over in her hand without taking a bite. Looking at her, Kitson found it hard to imagine how she’d become involved with a man like Deniz Sedat. She did not seem the type to be impressed by money and flash cars, and she was certainly sharp enough to have known where that money had come from. Kitson wondered if she was reading Harika Kemal all wrong. Or perhaps there had simply been a physical attraction between her and Sedat that had transcended everything else.

  ‘I would have nobody.’

  Kitson nodded back towards the university. ‘You’ve got good friends, that’s obvious. People who care about you a lot. And I told you before, we’ll make sure that you’re protected. You and the people close to you.’

  Kemal raised her head suddenly. ‘What if it’s the people I’m close to who I need to be protected from?’ There was anger and impatience in her face, but her voice had broken before she’d finished speaking.

  Kitson reached for a tissue. She passed it across, but the girl had already found one of her own. Had been keeping them handy.

  ‘Whatever you need.’

  ‘I need Deniz to be alive.’

  ‘And I need to find the man who killed him,’ Kitson said. She thought about taking the girl’s hand but decided that would be too much. ‘Tell me who it was, Harika.’

  The girl sniffed and wiped her eyes, then stuffed the tissue back into her pocket. ‘Hakan Kemal,’ she said.

  ‘Kemal?’

  ‘My older brother. My brother killed Deniz.’

  Kitson nodded, as though she understood, but her mind was starting to race. She had many more questions. She wanted to tear back to the office and get things moving. But she knew that, for a few minutes at least, she needed to stay on the bench with Harika Kemal.