TT03 - Lazybones

by Mark Billingham

  Sophie had come through in her dressing gown. One hand cradling her stomach and the other holding a mug of tea. She'd put it down in front of Holland and stood looking over his shoulder at the paperwork on the tabletop, her hand resting on the top of his head. She'd laughed softly. 'Little sod's been kicking the shit out of me all day . . .'

  When Holland had looked up half a minute later, she'd been standing in the doorway. He'd picked up his tea, smiled a thank-you at her.

  'I know you think I want you to choose,' she'd said. 'And I really don't. Yes, I sometimes hate what you do, and I get pissed off at your pig-headed boss and the fact that you worship the ground he walks on, but you know all that. Yes, I would be happy if you took some time off and, no, I don't want you doing anything stupid. Not now. I wouldn't ask you to make a choice though, Dave.' Then she'd turned to stare out of the window for a moment. 'I'd be too scared...'

  For a few seconds there had been only the sound of the traffic rumbling up the Old Kent Road, and a radio from the flat downstairs. Holland had picked up the phone from its cradle, reached for his pen.

  'Can we talk about it later?' He'd looked down at the papers on the desk, at the pointless list of names. 'This is really important...'

  Thorne watched his team going through the motions. Holland, Stone, Kitson...

  He saw dozens of other officers and civilian staff talking and writing and thinking - the impetus running out. As if the heat had thickened the air, made it a little harder to move through. Thorne stood watching from the doorway of the Incident Room, thinking about the thrashing limbs of a body near to death... It was always the same pattern. In the days that followed the discovery of a murder victim, the activity was frantic. An urgency seized the team, the knowledge that the hours, the days immediately following, would be when they had their best chance. After Dodd, they'd run around like blue-arsed flies, checking records and tracing contacts and taking statements and chasing couriers. Waiting for anything. And, gradually, as always, the flurry of activity on the case had slowed, like the movements of the victim himself as death had approached. The frenzy became drudgery. The phone was picked up and the statement taken reflexively, the small spark of hope fizzling to nothing, until the body of the investigation itself began to stiffen and cool, to swing aimlessly...

  Something would be needed. The case, and those working it, needed a jolt to kick some life back into them. An external force, like the passing train that had given movement to Charlie Dodd's corpse. Thorne had no idea what it was, or where it might come from.

  'Paul Baxter...'

  'Am I speaking to Paul Baxter?'

  'Yes, who's this?'

  Carol felt a little of the tension in her back and neck begin to ease.

  'My name's Carol Chamberlain, from the Metropolitan Police Area Major Review Unit. You would not believe the trouble I've had trying to get hold of you...'

  'Get hold of me...?'

  'You, your company...'

  'We're in the phone book...'

  'Right, but I was looking for Baxters.'

  There was a pause. Carol could hear Baxter taking a drink of something, swallowing. 'Blimey, that was a long time ago. My dad got bought out in... '82, I think. I stayed on as head of sales when we moved up here, that was part of the deal...'

  'Anyway...'

  'So how can I help you?' Paul Baxter laughed. He had a low, sexy voice. Smooth, like a DJ. 'Does the Met need some new headed notepaper?'

  'Do you remember an employee called Alan Franklin? He would have left in...'

  Baxter cut her off. 'God, yes, of course I do. I was helping out in the warehouse when all that happened, working for my old man. Run-up to Christmas, I think...'

  'When all what happened?'

  She could hear confusion, suspicion even, in Baxter's voice as he answered. 'Well, I don't suppose we'll ever know for sure, but I remember the court case obviously. God, and all that dreadful stuff afterwards '

  Carol realised suddenly that she was on her feet, leaning on her desk. In the mirror she saw the face of a woman who, for the first time in three long years, was feeling the buzz. Feeling it across her chest like a heart attack. In her head like a hole that sucked away the breath in a second. Rushing through her blood and bone like light. Like a lease of life.

  'Hello...?'

  She became dimly aware of Baxter's voice on the other end of the phone. She lowered herself into the chair, took just another second before moving on.

  'OK, Mr. Baxter, when can I come and see you?'

  Done and dusted...

  The suggestion had come from Southern himself. How brilliant was that?! An invitation back to Southern's small flat in Leytonstone had been politely declined. He'd already decided that he would be sticking with the hotel. Southern had gone for that idea straight away - same as the others had. There was something about a hotel that gave the rendezvous an excitement for them. It was the same for him as well, of course, but then he knew just how exciting it was really going to be... The hotels he'd chosen, on each occasion so far, had suited the mood of the event, and the character of the individual concerned, perfectly. He always gave some thought to that, as well as to the necessary issues of security. Remfry, if he'd had the chance, would have done it up a back-alley, acro a rusty oil drum. The place in Paddington had the seediness that got him off,, the squalor that turned him on. Welch, on the other hand, had wanted somewhere a bit nicer. He was clearly a man with aspirations, ideas above his station. The Greenwood had fitted the bill nicely.

  The place that he'd found for Howard Southern would be ideal. It was a small, country-house-type hotel in leafy Roehampton. On the outskirts of Richmond Park, there was a romantic, woodland view from some of the bedrooms.

  He was sure that it would go down well. Howard Southern loved the countryside. Hadn't he brutally beaten and raped his first victim on a disused bridle path in Epping Forest?

  Done and dusted.

  SIXTEEN

  Two Bs and a C. Two Bs and a C...

  The results she needed to see when she opened that envelope at the end of August. The offer from the 'university she wanted. The grades that she had to get if she was going to take up her place on the drama course in Manchester. Two Bs and a C. It had become Fiona Meek's mantra in the weeks since her final paper.

  Most of her friends were still celebrating the end of the exams. One or two of those with parents richer than her own were away travelling, and the rest were pissing it up the wall in one way or another. There were only a couple, like her, who had decided to put a bit of money away and take summer jobs. She knew she could be a bit too sensible sometimes, but she didn't mind missing out. She didn't care if her friends took the mickey. They wouldn't be laughing when their student loans ran out halfway through the first term. It was the perfect job, and plenty of people wanted it. A friend of her dad's was the corporate hospitality manager and had put in a good word. Working the two shifts suited her. It was an early start, but she was finished mid-morning and not on again until teatime, so she had her days to herself.

  Fiona waved as, further up the corridor, she saw one of the other girls coming out of a room, dumping dirty towels into the laundry hamper. She parked her own trolley, began loading soap and shampoo into a small basket. The smell was familiar from the mountain of stuff she now had in her own bathroom at home.

  The seven-to-ten bedroom shift was the hardest. She'd been amazed these last couple of weeks to see just what pigs some people lived like when they weren't at home. She hadn't had any really bad ones yet - no used condoms, or what have you - but still, some people behaved like animals. Equally weird were the rooms that barely looked lived-in at all. Towels neatly folded and beds made. These were the sort of people, Fiona supposed, who tidied their houses before their cleaners came round. Either way, as she moved around the bedrooms, replenishing toiletries and coffee sachets, smoothing sheets and checking mini bars, she tried to get inside the heads of these people whom she rarely ever met. She tr
ied to flesh out lives she could only guess at by the labels .

  strangers' shoes, the smells in their bathrooms and the paperbacks by the sides of their beds.

  It was all good practice, she reckoned, for being an actress. If she ever got the chance. Two Bs and a C. Two Bs and a C... She slid the plastic pass-key into the lock and shoved open a bedroom door.

  A lot of murders went unsolved, but compared to the clean-up rates for burglary, Thorne reckoned that he, and others like him, were doing pretty bloody well.

  'For fuck's sake, Chris, it's been nearly three weeks. You must know most of the likely lads in the area...'

  On the other end of the phone, Chris Barratt laughed like a drain. It sounded to Thorne as if this conversation was making the Kentish Town crime-desk sergeant's day.

  'You're not a punter, Tom,' Barratt said. 'You know what it's like. This early on a Saturday morning, you want to count yourself lucky there was anybody here to answer the bleeding phone...'

  Thorne knew how stretched things were in many areas. Violent street-crime was, quite rightly, being targeted, and uniformed manpower was being taken away from such everyday London trivialities as common housebreaking. He was aware that because he was on the job, they were probably making twice the effort they would normally be making to lay hands on whoever had turned his flat over. He also knew that twice nothing was pretty much fuck all.

  'Three weeks, though, Chris ...'

  'We found your car.'

  'Yeah, and got nothing off it...'

  'It was burnt out...'

  'Only on the inside.'

  The Mondeo had been found on an estate behind Euston Station. The inside had been torched, the wheels nicked and the words POLICE WANKERS spray-painted or the roof. Yet more cause for amusement around the Incident Room at Beck House...

  'What about fences?' Thorne asked. 'The bastard should have got something for my CD system...'

  'Duh! We never thought about that...'

  Thorne sighed. He took the gum he'd been chewing out of his mouth and lobbed it out of the open window. 'Sorry, Chris. Any kind of fucking result would be good at the minute, you know?'

  'You're sorted with the insurance, aren't you?' Barratt said.

  'Yeah, fine.' Thorne was still waiting for the money to come through, car and contents, but there was no reason why it shouldn't...

  'So are you really that bothered?'

  A clammy Saturday morning. Working up a sweat in slow motion. The arse-end of a week that felt like a tight space he was too big to squeeze through.

  'Yes, I'm bothered,' Thorne said. 'So should you be. And when you eventually catch the little toe-rag who used my bedroom as a khazi, he's going to be very fucking bothered...'

  A guest in a smart suit hurried past her towards the lift. Fiona said good morning and put the back of a rubber-gloved hand across her mouth to stifle a yawn. She moved up the corridor towards the next bedroom, thinking about what she might do later on. The early evening shift was usually a bit of a doddle. A chance to flirt with her favourite waiter as she cleaned the tables in the bar, or to gossip with the girls in reception while she hoovered. A couple of times she'd managed to finish all her jobs double-quick and find a quiet corner, somewhere out of sight, where she could sit and open a book. If she wasn't too knackered, she might go out for a couple of drinks, catch up with some of her mates. Maybe she could slip away from work a few minutes early...

  No such luck the evening before. There was a dose of summer flu going around and the place was short-staffed. She'd had to do the whole of main reception herself and was just thinking she might finely be able to get away when she'd been roped into lending a hand up in the Conference Room, laying the table for a Saturday-morning business breakfast the following day.

  She'd wheeled the trolley laden with cutlery and table linen into the lift and pressed the button for the top floor. Just as the doors were closing, a couple had stepped in. She was attractive, wearing a smart skirt and silk blouse. He was very attractive, and dressed a little more casually. On the first floor, the woman got out. They hadn't been a couple after all. As the doors closed, the man turned to her and smiled. Feeling herself redden, Fiona looked down and began to count the knives and forks.

  The bell rang as the lift reached the top floor and she straightened her wheels, nudged them towards the door. The man took a step forward to hold the door for her. He gave her another smile as she pushed the trolley out, the cutlery clattering noisily as she moved past him.

  A few feet up the corridor, she'd turned and looked at him, a little confused that he hadn't stepped out of the lift himself. Just as the doors began to shut, the man in the leather biker's jacket had caught her 'looking at him. He turned his palms upwards and shook his head at his own stupidity.

  'Miles away. Missed my floor...'

  There were times when investigations seemed shrouded in darkness.

  When the light, no matter the season or time of day, seemed to have faded away in those rooms where a case was worked, where progress in catching a killer was discussed and evaluated. For those groping around in the dark, there was always the frustrating feeling that if someone could just point a torch in the right direction, something important would be revealed. Then the shadows would shorten and slip away, but nobody knew where to shine the light. The day was getting off to a slow start, but Brigstocke seemed in no mood to crack the whip. It was fine with Thorne. He sensed that an extra ten minutes or so spent sitting around together, talking about nothing much for a while before they got down to it, might do everybody some good.

  Might shorten a few shadows...

  They sat on and around three different desks in the Incident Room. The coffees and teas were being eked out. Magazines and papers were being flicked through, space stared into, clocks glanced at.

  'Anybody have a decent Friday night?' Thorne said. Nobody seemed awfully keen on answering one way or the other. Thorne laughed. 'Fuck me, what a bunch of party animals!' He turned to look at Stone. 'Come on, Andy, you're young and single...'

  Stone looked up, but only for a second. 'Too knackered...'

  Holland laughed. 'You big girl...'

  'You won't be laughing once your missus sprogs,' Brigstocke said.

  'Right.' Kitson walked across to the recently installed water cooler.

  'You should be making the most of your Friday nights, Dave. Soon be a thing of the past...'

  Holland grunted, turned his attention back to the sports page of the Daily Mirror. Thorne craned his head to look at the headline. The latest on a story that Spurs were about to sign some temperamental Italian midfielder.

  'What about the rest of the weekend, then?' Thorne threw the question open to any of them. 'Any plans?'

  The reaction - a lot of non-committal shrugging - was much the same as before. Thorne began to think that his own social life, such as it was, looked pretty bloody exciting by comparison. Mind you, it had picked up a lot lately...

  'Sundays in the Brigstocke household are sacred and unchanging.'

  The DCI picked up his briefcase, moved away in the direction of his office. 'Dog-walking, laundry, the bloodbath of Sunday lunch with one set of parents or another. Oh, and a trip to the garden centre, or maybe B & Q if I'm really lucky...'

  Thorne laughed, looking around, sharing it. He thought about e last Sunday he'd spent. Something' Brigstocke had said sparked another memory and Thorne turned to watch Yvonne Kitson heading back across the room, drinking from a paper cone filled with cold water.

  'Did you get my message last Sunday?' She swallowed, looked at him blankly. 'I called. Late morning, I think...'

  Kitson dropped the empty cone into a wastepaper basket. 'Any particular reason?'

  'Well, if there was, I'm buggered if I can remember it,' Thorne said. Kitson looked at him for a second or two, her face showing nothing.

  'I didn't get the message.'

  Thorne shrugged. 'Doesn't matter.' He nodded towards where Brigstocke had been jus
t a minute before. 'I'd thought it would be a good time to catch you, you know? Reckoned you'd be another one with a family routine on a Sunday.'

  Kitson moved past him, picked up the magazine she'd been reading and dropped it into her bag. She took a step towards the toilets, then turned to Thorne, nodding as though she'd just remembered something.

  'I was at the gym...'

  The Incident Room was coming to life, starting to fill with noise and movement. Holland walked across it, evidently catching the tail-end of Thorne and Kitson's conversation.

  'You should get together with Stoney,' he said. 'He's well into weights and all that.' Holland looked over to where Andy Stone was sitting on the edge of a desk, chatting to a trainee detective. 'He might be a lanky streak of piss, but he looks like a light-heavyweight with his shirt off...'

  Kitson looked at Thorne and raised her eyebrows. Her face was open and relaxed again. Her tone, when she spoke to Holland, was matey and suggestive. 'Easy, tiger,' she said. Holland started to say something else, but Thorne was already moving away from them. He knew that by the end of the day the heat and the frustrations of the case would combine to leave him as tightly wound as the E-string on a pedal-steel guitar. He wanted to get into his office, call Eve and organise something that would help lessen that tension just a little.

  'Christ, you sound even more harassed than I am...'

  'I told you, Saturdays are the busiest day.'

  'Keith's mum still no better, then?'

  'Sorry?'

  'Keith not around to help out?'

  'Oh. No ...'

  Thorne looked up as Kitson walked in and moved across to her desk. Her look told him that she knew exactly who he was talking to. Thorne lowered his voice...

  'Fancy going to see a film tonight?'

  'Yeah, why not. There's a copy of Time Out in the flat, I'll see what's on...

  From nowhere, and for no immediately obvious reason, the case burst its way into their conversation. Into Thorne's head. The image that would not focus. The thought that would not reveal itself. Something he'd read and something he hadn't...