Death Message

by Mark Billingham

  ‘You must have influential friends in here,’ Nicklin said.

  ‘Not really. Just a lot of people who like you about as much as I do.’

  ‘Well, be quick, will you? I don’t want to miss the EastEnders omnibus.’

  ‘This won’t take long.’

  Nicklin knew, of course, that it was unorthodox for inmates to receive private phone calls, even from police officers. Thorne had spent fifteen minutes earlier in the day on the phone to Long Lartin, crawling as far up the arse of the police liaison officer as he could manage. Eventually, the man had agreed to find a nice quiet office and bring the prisoner down at a prearranged time.

  ‘Sorry about your friend,’ Nicklin said.

  Thorne had already decided not to tell Nicklin that his scheme had come to nothing; that Hendricks was alive and well. He’d find out eventually. For now, even though Brooks had agreed to leave Hendricks alone, Thorne thought it best to take no chances, to let Nicklin think he was raging and grief-stricken. Nicklin was every bit as stubborn, as persistent, as Thorne himself.

  The rage was certainly genuine enough. ‘You will be,’ he said.

  Thorne had been struck immediately by how different the attack on Hendricks had been from the others Brooks had perpetrated. He knew that the information had been passed on to him, and had quickly recognised the fingerprints all over it. Knowing something of Stuart Nicklin’s past, he guessed who had done the planning; imagined that Nicklin had used contacts from a previous life to find the boy who had picked up Hendricks in the club.

  ‘You wouldn’t be calling if you had a single piece of evidence.’ Nicklin’s tone was that of a man who felt himself to be bullet-proof whatever happened, certainly as far as the law was concerned. Two life sentences were much the same as one, after all. ‘Still, whatever you think is best. I’d quite enjoy another few weeks in court.’

  ‘There are better ways,’ Thorne said. ‘Cheaper ways.’ He could hear the smile.

  ‘Your friend will have gone out with a bang at any rate.’

  ‘How would you like to go out?’

  ‘This the “long arm of the law” routine, is it?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘So, what’s at the end of it, then?’ Nicklin asked. ‘An iron bar? A sharpened spoon?’

  ‘I warned you. When we were sitting in the Seg Unit.’

  ‘Careful what you say, Tom. You should know that all my phone calls are routinely monitored. This is probably being recorded.’

  ‘I’m getting used to it,’ Thorne said. ‘I really don’t give a fuck.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  It might well have been a good film; Thorne had no idea. After nearly two hours he couldn’t even have told anyone what it was about. George Clooney, some stolen money, a decent sex scene halfway through with that fit woman who used to be in CSI.

  He guessed that Louise wouldn’t have been able to do much better. The pair of them sitting and thinking about other things; getting on with it, like everything was going to be fine. Trying to put the previous twenty-four hours behind them, when time together felt like something they were wading through.

  ‘I thought it was pretty good,’ Louise said, as they pushed through the doors on to Camden Parkway. They’d chosen an early showing. It wasn’t quite nine o’clock.

  Thorne shrugged. ‘I couldn’t really follow it.’

  They decided to walk back to Thorne’s place in Kentish Town. It was a cold, clear evening, and they were both bundled up in scarves and heavy coats.

  As the High Street turned into Chalk Farm Road, they just avoided colliding with a group of women coming out of a restaurant. Thorne moved to step around, but one of the women reached for his arm.

  ‘Tom…’

  Thorne stared at his ex-wife.

  Jan had called when his father had died, but they hadn’t seen each other in eight or nine years. It wasn’t that she’d changed that much – less than he had, almost certainly – but that he simply hadn’t expected to see her here. It didn’t make sense.

  He said her name as he reached for Louise’s hand.

  ‘I was just having a meal with a couple of mates,’ Jan said. She looked around to the two other women, who were walking slowly away towards Camden Tube station. She turned back, reddened as she saw Thorne staring at her belly; the bump clearly visible, even through an overcoat. ‘I was going to call you, matter of fact…’

  She’d changed rather more than Thorne had first thought.

  Thorne was aware that he was nodding like an idiot, so stopped and tried to smile. ‘Right. Bloody hell.’

  ‘Don’t know what the hell I’m doing, to be honest. My time of life.’

  It took Thorne a second or two to work out how old she was. Forty. No, forty-one. He was nodding again. ‘Is it…?’

  She tucked a pale pashmina into the collar of her coat. ‘Patrick’s.’ She faked a laugh, as though Thorne had been joking. ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Great.’ The teacher she’d buggered off with.

  ‘He’s at home, getting stuck into essays.’

  Thorne wondered why she’d felt the need to explain where her boyfriend was. If he was still her boyfriend; maybe she’d married him. He pictured a scrawny, ginger-ish article; pigeon-chested with curly hair and bum-fluff. Remembered him flying out of bed like a scalded cat when Thorne had caught the pair of them at it one afternoon.

  For the third or fourth time, Jan’s eyes flicked across to Louise; the glance as fleeting as the smile that went with it.

  ‘Sorry, this is Louise,’ Thorne said. ‘Jan…’

  Louise leaned in to shake hands. ‘So, when’s it due?’

  ‘Six weeks.’ She took a step forward. ‘Can’t bloody wait. Look at the size of me already. I’ll be waddling around right through Christmas.’

  ‘Better then than summer though, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Be a nice way to start the new year,’ Louise said.

  The three of them took a few steps towards the kerb as another group came out of the restaurant.

  Jan turned back to Thorne. ‘So, you well?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m good.’

  ‘Still in the same place?’

  ‘We were just… heading back.’ Thorne looked at Louise, who nodded to confirm the simple fact.

  Jan looked past them to her friends, who had now stopped a hundred yards away and were looking at something in a shop window.

  ‘You said you were going to call,’ Thorne said. He nodded towards Jan’s stomach. ‘Was that to tell me, you know…?’

  ‘Well… just to catch up, really. So, this has been good, actually.’

  ‘OK.’

  Just as the pause was becoming horribly awkward, Louise leaned against Thorne and said, ‘I’m cold.’ She smiled at Jan. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to be standing around.’

  Then it was just a few noises of goodbye, and Jan saying once again how good it had been that they’d run into each other. How weird, and what a small world it was. She kissed Thorne on the cheek, did the same to Louise and walked away to join her friends.

  Thorne and Louise carried on up Chalk Farm Road and cut beneath the railway line towards Kentish Town. They walked quickly, not saying a great deal, with such conversation as there was initiated by Louise. She told Thorne that his ex-wife hadn’t looked the way she’d imagined. That Jan looked well and had seemed friendly enough. Thorne did little but grunt his agreement; tried to think of something to say about the movie.

  Having switched her phone to silent in the cinema, Louise checked it for messages. She listened, then called Hendricks. As she and Thorne walked, a few feet apart, she told Hendricks that the movie had been decent enough, asked him what he’d been doing. She laughed at something and said she’d call him again in the morning.

  ‘He’s doing OK,’ was all she said as she put the phone away.

  When they reached Thorne’s street, Louise announced that she was going to carry on up to the T
ube station and head home. She said that she was tired and had an early start the next day.

  ‘That makes two of us,’ Thorne said.

  ‘OK, then.’

  ‘No, I meant so you might as well stay.’

  She hoisted her bag a little higher on her shoulder, looked at Thorne as though she wanted to say something. She stepped up to kiss him, in much the same way as Jan had done.

  Said: ‘Let’s talk tomorrow.’

  For the third or fourth time, a car slowed, then blared its horn when the driver saw that the man waiting at the side of the road had no intention of using the zebra crossing.

  Brooks didn’t even look up.

  He’d thought about bringing some flowers, but knew they wouldn’t have lasted long. That was something else that had changed since he’d been inside: bouquets and teddies tied to lamp posts and benches, right, left and centre. He’d seen several of them walking about the last few weeks. He wondered if anyone had left tributes to Tucker or Hodson. A nice wreath in the shape of a motorbike by the side of the canal for Martin Cowans.

  It occurred to him that he didn’t know what time it had happened. As Angie and Robbie were together, they were probably walking back from school. Heading to the sweet-shop on the way home, maybe. It would still have been light then. Nice and easy for the driver to see them both; and for them to see that the car wasn’t going to stop.

  He wondered if there’d been any skid marks on the road. Bloodstains to scrub off the crossing. ‘Joy-riders’, that copper had said, when they’d come to give him the news. He remembered the male one with the dirty collar breathing heavily, saying, ‘We were able to get a paint sample.’

  He hadn’t seen their bodies.

  At the time he’d felt relieved; uncertain he’d have been able to cope with seeing them like that. Now, standing in the cold, a few feet from where it had happened, he wished he’d had the chance. He would have closed his eyes and kissed them. Said something.

  A woman arrived next to him and stood waiting. Told him they reckoned there might be snow on the way. When a car stopped she ambled across, turning to look back at him when she reached the other side of the road.

  The funeral hadn’t given him the chance to say goodbye, not really. He’d stood sweating in a borrowed suit, avoiding people’s eyes and moving away whenever the whispering had started. Sitting in one of the cars with cousins and uncles; relatives Angie had had no time for. The priest had said, ‘May you have an abundant life’ when he’d stepped dutifully up to kiss the icon in front of their coffins. Placed a manicured hand on each ornate casket and said, ‘May their memory be eternal.’

  A few minutes later, he’d watched the coffins disappear, like props in some dark magic trick, still unable to believe that Angie and Robbie could possibly be in there.

  Angie’s parents had refused to speak to him the whole time.

  Another car sounded its horn, and this time Brooks reacted. He stepped quickly out on to the crossing, then stopped; turned and stared at the driver like a mad person. He watched the woman raise a hand, saw her check to see that her door was locked.

  Brooks walked the rest of the way across, and kept going without looking back. There was nothing for him there.

  Nothing of them.

  He turned into the side street where the Mondeo was parked. Thought about the quickest way to go. With any luck he’d be able to get another picture tonight, maybe a video.

  Then he could put Tom Thorne out of his misery.

  … And tell Robbie that he’s going to have to prove it! I want to see that he’s just as good as he tells me he is when he visits. We’ll get straight over the park as soon as I’m back and I’ll put him through his paces. Both feet, tell him. I want to see him shooting with both feet. He’ll have to, if he’s ever going to get that trial at West Ham he’s always on about. And I’ll start taking him to see a few games as well, tell him that.

  Christ, I can’t wait…

  When I say ‘as soon as I’m back’, obviously there’s one or two other things I’d like to do first, if you get my drift! Actually, between bed and home cooking, I can’t see Rob dragging me out of the house for at least a week.

  Fifteen fucking days, angel, that’s all. Thirteen probably, by the time this gets to you. That’s nothing. It’s less than the average holiday, but the stupid thing is it’s going to feel like ten times as long. It’s the hardest part, the end of it, everyone knows that. When a lot of blokes inside start to go mental…

  Talking of holidays, though, we should get away, soon as we can. Where d’you fancy? Somewhere hot with a fuck-off big pool. Why don’t you look into it, and see what’s around? Only thing is, I’m not sure when Rob’s on holiday from school.

  I don’t care where we go to be honest, so you decide. It’s all going to feel like a holiday from now on…

  Thorne laid the photocopied sheet down on the table. The letter that had never been sent; that had been written the day before Marcus Brooks had received the death message.

  He walked across to the computer. The game was running, but he’d sat out half an hour earlier. He’d logged on when he had arrived back at the flat, hoping that a few hands might take his mind off things a little, but it would have taken a damn sight more than poker. He watched for five minutes, then sat down again.

  Unusually, Johnny Cash wasn’t helping: ‘I See a Darkness’ torn from him; that ragged voice imploring his friend to pull the smiles inside and save him from death.

  Thorne reached across to rub a finger under the cat’s chin and thought about the look on his friend’s face when Hendricks had walked away from him outside the club the night before. Louise’s face, too, pale and tight, across the breakfast table.

  Christ, and seeing Jan…

  Would she really have called him to tell him about the baby? It must at least have crossed her mind that he deserved to know. Or maybe just that he would think he deserved it. Now he did know, he felt all sorts of emotions, and he felt bad because pleasure wasn’t among them.

  He looked back at the letter on the table. He imagined Marcus Brooks walking back to his cell, having been told about his girlfriend and son; putting the envelope away in a drawer. It must have felt like he’d been hit by that car. He probably wished he had been.

  It wasn’t as though Thorne usually had any problem with hate, and it should have been easy to hate Marcus Brooks for what he’d been about to do to Hendricks. But pity came easier.

  The same went for himself, this time of night, with a can of beer in his hand and Cash on the stereo.

  So much easier to feel got-at and ganged-up-on than ashamed.

  He moved quickly when the doorbell went, Elvis half a second behind him, jumping down and tearing under the TV, like she thought there was nothing good coming.

  Louise walked in without a word, without looking at Thorne, and stopped in the middle of the living room.

  Thorne closed the door and followed. ‘What?’

  She dropped her bag and started to take off her coat.

  ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘I had a question,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t understand. Did you get all the way home?’

  ‘You squeezed my hand.’ Now she looked at him. ‘When you were talking to Jan. When we were standing around on the pavement.’

  ‘Did I?’

  Louise nodded, tossed her coat on to the sofa.

  ‘OK…’ Thorne just stood, no idea where this might be going.

  ‘Did you think I might be upset?’ she said. ‘Because it was your ex-wife; because I might feel embarrassed, or awkward, or whatever?’ She took a breath. Tried to smile, or tried not to, Thorne couldn’t tell. ‘Or because she was pregnant?’

  Thorne stepped across and turned down the stereo. He was flustered; felt instinctively that a lot depended on his answer. He pushed fingers through his hair, laced them together on top of his head. ‘I don’t know. I just… squeezed your hand.’

  When Louise fina
lly looked up at him, the smile was there. Shaky and uncertain of itself. Pushed out of shape by the tremble in her bottom lip.

  ‘It was nice,’ she said.

  Afterwards, Thorne went to the bathroom to flush away the condom, and brought back some toilet paper so that Louise could wipe herself.

  ‘That was nice,’ he said.

  They talked for a while about Brooks and the letters. Louise said she was always amazed that more people who had lost loved ones violently didn’t wreak violence in return; those who had lost children especially. Said she couldn’t imagine…

  Thorne told her about his trip to Holland’s place. That Holland was thinking about getting out of the city. ‘Maybe even the Job,’ he said.

  ‘You ever thought about it?’ Louise asked. It was something they’d joked about before; that every copper joked about. She stopped him before he could come back with a flippant remark. ‘Really, I mean.’

  ‘I’ve wished that there was something else I could do,’ Thorne said. ‘Anything else.’

  ‘We all hate what we do from time to time.’

  ‘It’s what we can’t do.’

  Louise raised her head, eased herself on to her belly and looked down at him. ‘Was it one case?’

  There were a few; names and cases that prompted something more than a wink or a war story. That pressed ice against his skin still, and fluttered in the gut. A list of dangerous men and women; and of dead ones. He guessed that Marcus Brooks would take his place on one list or another.

  Names, cases.

  But it was none of them…

  ‘Twenty-odd years ago,’ Thorne said. ‘I was a baby copper working out of Brixton nick. We got called out to a council flat in Thornton Heath, one of those crappy sixties blocks on three or four levels; an old guy, in his mid-seventies. He’d come back one afternoon and found a couple of kids turning the place over. They were never going to find anything worth having, so they were just making a mess of the place, and when this old man turned up, they started taking it out on him.’

  ‘Did you find them?’