TT03 - Lazybones

by Mark Billingham

  'Council got them for a song,' Brian said. 'When the swimming pool down the road was knocked down. Same week they got this place off Mecca...'

  Holland looked down at the floor as he walked. Shoes under many of the beds, trainers, mostly. The occasional tarry suitcase. Dozens of plastic bags. :

  Stone took off his jacket. 'Dossers by and large, is it?'

  Brian looked back over his shoulder. Holland thought he looked powerful, like he could handle himself. He probably needed to on occasion. 'All sorts. Long-term homeless, runaways, addicts. The odd ex-con like Welch...'

  'Where do they go during the day?' Holland asked. The big man slowed, let Holland and Stone draw level with him.

  'Wandering about. Begging. Trying to find somewhere to sleep.' He smiled when Holland looked confused. 'This place is warm and they can get something to eat, but there's not a lot of sleeping goes on. Most of them are scared of getting stuff nicked. Even if they do want a kip, a hundred blokes coughing and shifting around on creaky bedsprings is worse than a neighbour with a drum kit...'

  'My ex-girlfriend kept me awake half the night,' Stone said. 'Talking in her sleep, grinding her teeth...'

  Brian smiled thinly. 'It's quiet enough in here now, but you won't be able to hear yourself think by dinnertime. They'll start drifting back as soon as it starts to get dark. Be rammed in here by nine o'clock.'

  Holland looked at the lines of beds, three and four deep. Imagined it.

  Eyes down for a full house.

  The supervisor stopped. He tapped on the open door of a locker and immediately began moving away again. 'This was Mr. Welch's. I'll be in the front office if you need anything...'

  They both pulled on gloves. While Stone went through the locker, Holland got down on his hands and knees and, for the second time in a little over a fortnight, went rummaging under the bed of a recently murdered rapist.

  It took less than two minutes to gather together Welch's worldly goods: a battered green holdall full of clothes which smelled of Oxfam; a plastic bag of dirty pants and socks; a radio spattered with white paint; an electric razor; a couple of tatty paperbacks... At the back of the locker, between the pages of one of the books, the photographs of Jane Foley.

  'Here she is,' Stone said, holding one of the pictures up between his fingertips. 'Lovelier than ever.' ?

  Holland got to his feet, moved across to take a look. 'How many?'

  'Half a dozen. Can't see any letters. Must have chucked them...'

  Stone slid the photos into an evidence bag, popped it into an inside pocket. Holland shoved everything else into a black bin-liner. When he'd finished he picked the bag up. It wasn't heavy.

  'Not a lot, is it?' he said.

  Stone pushed the locker door closed and shrugged. 'That's what you get.'

  It was nearly midday and starting to get really warm. Holland rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck. He thought about what he guessed was going through Stone's mind. 'Do you not give a shit because Welch was an ex-con?' he said. 'Or because he was an ex-con who was also a rapist? Honestly, I'm interested...'

  Stone thought about it. Holland bounced the bin-bag against his knees.

  'I suppose I'd give a bit more of a shit if he'd been a forger,' Stone said. 'Less if he'd murdered half a dozen schoolgirls...'

  Holland looked at the expression on Stone's face. He couldn't help but laugh as they began to move away, back towards the entrance. 'I don't believe it. You've actually got a fucking sliding scale...'

  They walked up Parkway towards the pay and display bay where Stone had parked the Cougar. At regular intervals, rubbish bags like the one Holland was carrying were piled high on the pavement. After Madame Tussaud's, Camden's Sunday market was now the second most popular tourist attraction in the city, and cleaning up after it was becoming a little like painting the Forth Bridge.

  'So, what is it now? Couple of months till the baby?' Stone asked. Holland swung the bin-bag from one hand to the other. 'Ten weeks.'

  'Sophie must be the size of a house...'

  Holland smiled, turned to look into the window of a Japanese restaurant. The plates of plastic sushi, red and yellow and pink. He promised himself that one of these days he'd try some. They turned left and Stone unlocked the car with a remote. 'So?

  Excited then?'

  'Yeah, she's very excited.'

  Stone opened the car door. Looked at Holland across the roof. 'I meant you...'

  'Get your arse up. Right up in the air, that's it. Now, let your fingers do the walking...'

  Charlie Dodd was making himself useful. The place had been hired out for a web-cam session and he'd thrown in his services, gratis. He was cheerfully relaying on-screen instructions to the bored-looking girl on the bed when the phone rang.

  'Just do some moaning for a minute, sweetheart...'

  His hand was slippery against the receiver as he mumbled a greeting and waited.

  'I got your message...'

  Dodd recognised the voice straight away. Without looking round he used his hand to indicate to the girl on the bed that she should carry on, then brought it to his mouth and took out the cigarette.

  'I was wondering when I was going to hear back from you.'

  'I've had a busy weekend.'

  Dodd reached for a plastic cup, flicked fag-ash into the inch of cold tea at the bottom. 'Anything interesting?'

  For a few seconds there was nothing but the crackle of static. 'You said something about doing me a favour.'

  'Done you a favour, mate,' Dodd said. 'Already did it. A big favour.'

  'Go on...'

  Dodd thought that the man on the other end of the phone sounded relaxed. He was probably putting it on, of course, trying to sound cool because he could guess what was coming. Because he knew he might have to part with some money and wanted to be in control in case there was haggling to do. It was a pretty convincing act though. Sounded like he knew what Dodd was going to say...

  'The police were here with one of the photos you did. A photo of the girl with the hood on.' Dodd waited for a reaction. Didn't get it. 'I got asked a lot of questions...'

  'And did you tell any lies, Mr. Dodd?'

  Dodd pinched the cigarette between thumb and forefinger, took a final drag. 'A couple of little white ones, yeah. And one dirty, big fucker.' He dropped the nub-end into the plastic cup, turned and watched the girl on the bed. 'I told them I never saw your face. Said you never took the crash helmet off...'

  The girl's rear end bobbed and swayed. Dodd thought the moaning was a bit over the top - silly cow sounded like she had food poisoning. There were red blotches at the top of her legs. Finally, the man on the other end of the phone spoke...

  'Come on, Mr. Dodd, spit it out. Don't be shy.'

  Dodd reached into the top pocket of his shirt for another cigarette.

  'I'm not fucking shy, mate...'

  'Good, because there's really no need to be...'

  'Not about money, anyway.'

  The man laughed. 'There we are. No point in going round the houses. Now, if I remember rightly, there's a cashpoint just round the corner from your studio, isn't there...?'

  Thorne was somewhere between Brent Cross and Golders Green when he began finding it hard to stay awake... He had been as good as the promise he'd made to himself and Holland that morning, having left the Royal Oak in time to make the last tube going south. He was tired and there was still plenty to sort out back at the flat, so it was no great wrench to walk out of the pub before closing time.

  He'd left just as Phil Hendricks was starting to let rip. He'd made his feelings about the Sexual Offences Act clear plenty of times before. In the pub, once the subject of the Register had come up, there was no stopping him...

  'Don't forget the gay men,' Hendricks had said. 'Those evil bastards who are twisted enough to enjoy loving, consensual sex with their seventeen-year-old boyfriends.' The words were spat out, the flat Mancunian vowels lending an edge of real anger to the irony. Thorne knew t
hat Hendricks had every right to be pissed off. It was ridiculous that men convicted of what was still termed 'gross indecency'

  should be lumped together with child abusers and rapists. Even when the age of consent for gay men was lowered to sixteen, as one day it would be, Thorne knew that those convicted prior to its equalisation would remain on the Register.

  Thorne could only agree with his friend's pithy assessment, the last words he'd caught as he walked out of the pub.

  'It's a queer-basher's charter,' Hendricks had said. Eve had called to wish him a happy birthday as he was heading for the tube station at Colindale. As they talked, Thorne walked past the KFC, the chippy, more than one kebab shop. His stomach urged him to go in, then changed its mind as he told Eve about the burglary, and the little gift that had been left for him.

  'Well, it's certainly original,' Eve had said. Thorne laughed. 'Right, and a home-made present's so much more thoughtful, isn't it?'

  Thorne was walking slowly, absorbed in the conversation but keenly aware, as always, of exactly where he was and what he was doing. Keeping track of any movement on the other side of the street, at the corners up ahead, behind parked cars. This wasn't Tottenham or Hackney, but still, there was no point in being stupid when people were getting shot for PS9.99 handsets...

  'So... when are you going to replace that bed?' Eve had asked.

  'Oh, I suppose I'll get round to it eventually...'

  'I sincerely hope so.'

  They were joking, but suddenly Thorne sensed a real shift. A hint of impatience. Like she was making the running and wanted him to do some catching up.

  'Well, we can always go to your place, can't we?' Thorne said. There was a pause. Then: 'It's a bit tricky. Denise can be funny about that sort of thing...'

  'About you having men over?'

  'About men staying over...'

  Thorne heard Eve sigh, as if this was a conversation she'd had before. With Denise herself, most probably. 'Hang on, she has Ben round, doesn't she?'

  'I know, it's mad. But trust me, it isn't worth going into...'

  Then, Thorne had arrived at the station and they'd wound it up. While he fed coins into the ticket machine they'd made a hasty arrangement to meet the following week. She'd said goodbye as he went down on the escalator and he lost the signal before he could say it back.

  The train was all but deserted. A teenage couple sat at the far end of the carriage, the girl's head on her boyfriend's shoulder. He was stroking her hair and muttering things which made her smile. Thorne took a deep breath. His brain felt fuzzed up. He'd only had a couple of pints but his head was thickening, getting heavier with every lurch and sway of the train. He needed to stay awake. Tempting as it was to close his eyes, to let his head drop back, the last thing he wanted to do was to nod off and wake up in Morden. He thought about the conversation with Eve. When they'd arranged to meet, why hadn't he pushed to make it sooner? Was that panic he'd felt when she'd been talking about the bed? Maybe with the case and his old man and the burglary there was too much other stuff going on. Maybe he was just subconsciously prioritising. He was definitely feeling far too fucked to think straight about anything... At Hampstead, a man got on through the doors to Thorne's right, and despite the availability of seats chose to stand at the end of the carriage, clutching on to the rail above his head. Thorne looked at the man. He was very tall and thin with chiseled features and a frenzy of graying hair and a battery of bizarre visual tics from which Thorne found it impossible to avert his gaze...

  It quickly became clear that the tic, which Thorne guessed to be Tourette's syndrome, was in three parts. First the man would raise his eyebrows theatrically and his chin would jerk up. A second later the entire head would be wrenched round to the side, and finally, the jaws would snap noisily together, the teeth clacking like castanets. Thorne watched guilty and mesmerised as this three-part pattern repeated itself over and over, and he found himself assigning a word, a sound effect, to each, distinct spasm. The eyebrows, the wrench of the neck, the snap of the jaws. Three movements that in rapid succession seemed to display surprise, interest and then ultimately, a bitter disappointment. Movements which sounded to Thorne like 'Ooh! Whay-hay! Clack!'

  Oh really? Sounds interesting! Ah, fuck it...

  After a minute or two the man seemed to be bringing the seizure under control and Thorne finally dragged his own head around and his eyes away. The young couple in the left-hand carriage had got off and had been replaced by a pair who were a good deal older and less tactile. The woman caught Thorne's eye and dropped her gaze to the carriage floor like a piece of litter.

  When Thorne turned back and looked to his right, the man who was holding on to the rail was now still, and staring straight at him. Thorne leaned back until he felt his head, big and wobbly as a baby's, hit the window. The glass was cool against his scalp. He closed his eyes.

  He was only a couple of stations away from where he'd need to change at Camden. He could afford to spend just a minute or two drifting, wide awake and counting the stops, and floating towards his hillside...

  Almost as soon as Thorne had completed the thought, he was asleep.

  He had plenty of stuff to do, a few more images to download from the camera and print, but he thought he deserved a quick break. Ten or fifteen minutes messing about on the Net wouldn't hurt and then he'd get back to business. Put all the pictures together and stick them in the post... He enjoyed working at the computer, now that he felt like he'd mastered it. He'd needed to learn, so he'd learned. In just a couple of years he'd gone from being a novice to being more than comfortable with pretty much any machine.

  He opened the bookmark, drummed his finger against the mouse as he waited for the page to appear...

  Once you became skilled at something, it was easy to enjoy it. Like the work he did on those fuckers" with the knife and the washing line. He was certainly enjoying that. It was funny, he thought, that the word 'skilled' had 'kill' sitting right there in the middle of it. He'd first found the site when he was looking for inspiration, for help with the photos of Jane. Now he just popped back every now and then to keep abreast of it all. Just to see...

  It had been a strange week, all in all. By rights he should have been doing other stuff, but he'd been forced to tweak the schedule, to rearrange things a bit in view of the hiccough with Dodd. That's all it had been. It was easily fixed.

  There were several new links from the site since the last time he'd been here. One or two were begging to be checked out. He pointed and clicked, held his breath...

  He was itching to get back to the serious work. In part from anything else there was the challenge of a change in routine. Now that the prisons had been warned, there couldn't be any more letters.

  Jesus . . ,

  The woman's head was shaved and she had been hog-tied. A chain ran from a ring in her collar down to the leather strap between her ankles. The buckled harness snaked across her face like a spider's web, her mouth at its centre, filled by a large, red ball-gag...

  It was a shame. If he was going to use more pictures, this was just the sort of thing he might have gone for, but now it was academic, With Remfry and Welch it had been a lovely, long, slow tease. With the next one things would have to be simple and direct. A bit more 'in your face'. He hoped it would be as much fun as wooing.

  TWELVE

  Carol Chamberlain felt twenty years younger. Every thought and sensation was coming that bit quicker, feeling that bit stronger. She felt hungrier, more awake. The night before in bed, she'd leaned across and 'helped herself', for heaven's sake, which had certainly surprised and delighted her old man. Maybe the battered green folder on her lap would prove to be the saving of both of them... Jack was still smiling twelve hours later, as he brought a plate of toast through to her. She blew him a kiss. He took his anorak from the stand in the corner, off to pick up a paper.

  Carol had been fifty-two, a DCI for a decade, when the Met's ludicrous policy of compulsory retirement aft
er thirty years had pushed her out of the force. That had been three years ago. It had rankled, for each day of those three years, right up to the moment when that phone call had come out of the blue.

  Carol had been amazed, and not a little relieved... She knew how much she had to offer, still had to offer, but she also knew that this chance had come along at the very last moment. If she was being honest, she would have to admit that recently she'd felt her self slowly giving in, throwing in the towel in much the same way that her husband had.

  She heard the gate creak shut. Turned to watch Jack walking away up the road. An old man at fifty-seven...

  Carol picked up the folder from her knees. Her first cold case. A sticker on the top right-hand corner read 'AMRU'. The Area Major Review Unit was what it said at the top of the notepaper. The Cold Case Team was how they thought of themselves. In the canteen they were just called the Crinkly Squad. They could call her what they sodding-well liked, but she'd do the same bloody good job she'd always done...

  The day before at Victoria, when she'd collected the file from the General Registry, she'd noticed straight away that it had been pulled only three weeks earlier by a DC from the Serious Crime Group. That was interesting. She'd scribbled down the officer's name, made a mental note to give him a call and find out what he'd been looking for...

  Three years away from it. Three years of reading all those books she'd never got round to, and cooking, and gardening, and catching up with friends she'd lost touch with for perfectly good reasons, and feeling slightly sick when Crimewatch came on. Three years out of it, but the flutter in her stomach was still there. The butterflies that shook the dust from their wings and began to flap around as she opened the folder and started to read.

  A man throttled to death in an empty car park, seven years earlier...

  A week into his forty-fourth year. The discovery of his burnt-out car being far from the low point, Tom Thorne was already pretty sure that the year was not going to be a vintage one. Seven days since he'd rushed back from a wedding to attend a post-mortem. Seven days during which the only developments on the case had been about as welcome as the turd he'd found waiting for him in his bed.