Their Little Secret

by Mark Billingham

  She is remembering a morning many years before.

  The excitement, and what the excitement became.

  The girl she had been back then and the man her father showed himself to be …

  He is already grinning when she charges down the stairs as soon as the sun is up, a grin almost as wide as hers, as any good girl would have on a special morning like this. The card he produces with a flourish says MY BIRTHDAY GIRL and she tries to look pleased when she opens it and reads the funny poem inside, but they both know that she’s only really thinking about one thing.

  The special present he promised her.

  He smiles, like he’s made her wait long enough, then nods towards the back door. She throws it open and tears out into the garden where she knows her new bike will be waiting, and she sees it straight away.

  It takes a moment for her to fully understand, because it looks so … stupid, and she turns round to see her father watching from the doorway. She looks back, but it still doesn’t make any sense. The only part of her new bike that is visible are the handlebars.

  Just the handlebars, sticking up from the ground, because the rest of the bike has been buried.

  Sarah wraps her arms around herself. She is starting to get cold.

  Nobody plays with those toys …

  Lying there next to Conrad, she had felt herself freeze when he had said what he had, but it had been no more than momentary. A version of something she lives in terror of hearing, daily; the knowing remark, the veiled suggestion from this busybody or that concerned parent. Sarah has rehearsed any number of different responses.

  Shock, anger, outrage …

  A few minutes before, her skin hot against his, she had been able to do no more than whisper, ‘How did you know?’

  And he had blinked and said, ‘How did you?’

  She had slipped quickly from the bed after that and walked from the room, feeling his eyes on her at every step as she struggled to stay upright, to keep it together.

  She had needed time alone – just a few minutes, no more – to process and settle, to wait until her guts had stopped jumping and the scream inside her head had died away. Until that panic button had been reset.

  She stands, still not quite able to believe it, as the hum of the fridge moves through her.

  It’s impossible, she thinks, a million to one.

  A week before it was only her and her story, him in a different place with a story of his own. Neither of them aware that each was moving slowly towards the other, that however outrageous the odds, every single thing was about to change.

  That any of this was coming.

  Sarah turns and opens the fridge, takes out a bottle of water and a plate of cold, leftover chicken which she carries back into the bedroom. She climbs back into bed and they eat with their hands, wiping their greasy fingers on the sheets and on each other. She can’t remember the last time she enjoyed food – anything – as much, as if every taste and touch has been intensified. She can feel the air moving across her skin, the thread in the cotton sheets and the places where they’re sticky. She watches him chew and swallow, the muscles working in his neck and jaw and she feels dizzy with it, almost weightless; a thrill that vibrates in every bone and sings in her blood, because he knows her.

  Truly.

  Because he has seen her.

  When the food is finished, they fuck again. There’s something almost vicious about it this time, but it’s nothing that they aren’t both eager for. They demand and comply, all gentleness forgotten, and they don’t stop until they’re exhausted and slick with sweat.

  The moment they’re done, Sarah straddles him and pushes herself up. She says, ‘This means something, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It means I won’t be able to piss straight for a week.’

  ‘Seriously.’

  He reaches for her hands and squeezes. ‘It means everything.’

  ‘I need to know I can count on you,’ she says. ‘To be sure that you’re not going to let me down.’

  ‘Why would—?’

  ‘Too many other men have promised not to hurt me.’

  ‘I’m not other men.’

  ‘No,’ Sarah says. ‘You’re not.’

  He shifts slightly beneath her. ‘So …’

  She sits up higher on him and claps her hands like an overexcited child. ‘We should celebrate,’ she says. ‘We should celebrate this …’

  ‘If you like.’

  Sarah smacks him on the arm and laughs when he winces. ‘Of course we should.’ She pushes damp strands of hair from her face and stares, unblinking at the padded headboard, serious suddenly. ‘Because this is special, don’t you think?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘So, we should do … something we’re always going to remember.’ She leans towards him, her hands pressing down on to his chest. ‘Something together. We need to mark this.’

  He thinks for a few seconds, then says, ‘What about a trip to the seaside?’

  ‘I love the seaside.’

  ‘There you go, then. Seaside it is.’

  Sarah’s smile flashes just for a second, then creeps back to stay. She says, ‘Perfect,’ and lowers herself slowly until her head is resting just below his collarbone, and her lips move against his neck as she speaks. ‘You are perfect.’

  TWENTY

  It had been a while since he and Hendricks had been to a north London derby together and it was only a shame, Thorne decided, that it hadn’t been a better match. Or even a half-decent one. It was their custom, despite the fierce split in allegiances, to sit together among the home fans at whatever ground the fixture was taking place, so a Monday night game at the Emirates meant Thorne had been forced to endure the cheers and chants of the Arsenal fans surrounding him in the Clock End. Though his fellow Tottenham fans had not been far away, he had been able to do no more than hunker down amidst the banks of red and white; keeping any partisan critique well under his breath and wondering how he would combat the urge to celebrate when Spurs scored.

  He needn’t have worried.

  The rivals had ground out a largely tedious nil-nil draw, only marginally redeemed by a sending-off five minutes from time.

  ‘Now that,’ Hendricks said as they pushed towards the exit, ‘was a famine of football.’

  Notwithstanding the lacklustre display from both teams, Hendricks had certainly enjoyed himself. He had known many of those sitting around him and, when he hadn’t been joining in with the community whingeing or tuneless bellowing, he’d enjoyed nodding towards Thorne and pointing out that they had the enemy in their midst. It had all been good-natured enough, though Hendricks did have the decency to look uncomfortable when a few of those nearby had cottoned on and begun to chant ‘Yiddo.’

  Thorne had always believed that, provided you weren’t paying very close attention, his friend looked rather more like a stereotypical football fan than he did. The shaved head, tattoos, whatever. The piercings that were visible marked him out though, of course, and on closer inspection the tats were a little more … artistic than some of those on show around him. The Union Jacks rippling on necks or bellies. The badly inked cannons and, more disturbingly, the shields and crosses of the Football Lads Alliance or the English Defence League.

  Thorne had seen rather more of those around since the result of the Brexit referendum.

  They walked beneath the railway arch, a choir of cheerful Gooners singing nearby as they negotiated the horse-shit. Headed to their regular post-match haunt, they carried on past the Che Guevara, where many fans gathered before the games, to listen to South American music or more likely ogle the underdressed Latina bar staff. The journey always reminded Thorne of others he’d taken a long time ago; the walk home from White Hart Lane with his father. Things had been very different then, and not just because of the rattles and scarves, the pies and Bovril at half time.

  His old man talking ten to the dozen, singing and full of it.

  Crossing the Seven Sisters Road, th
ey spotted the white Maserati which had been illegally parked in the same spot after every match for as long as Thorne could remember.

  ‘I’m going to find a traffic warden one of these days.’ He was still sulking at the temporary hiatus in gloating rights. ‘Grass that twat up.’

  ‘Or you could just key it.’

  Thorne had heard worse ideas.

  ‘Tell you what, why don’t you do it next time your boys beat us? The way they played tonight, I reckon he’ll be all right for a couple of seasons …’

  Despite the speed with which they’d left the stadium, plenty had beaten them to it and The Swimmer was already packed with fans. Thorne pushed his way towards the bar, waving at the barman above the heads of the small crowd gathered around a curly-haired comedian he recognised.

  They carried their drinks outside.

  Hendricks sat at a damp wooden table and hunched his shoulders against the cold. ‘Just the one, yeah?’

  It suited Thorne. ‘I’ve got plenty on tomorrow.’

  Brigstocke had been bang on of course, three weeks before, back when Thorne was wheedling to get the go-ahead to look into the Philippa Goodwin suicide. Almost as soon as that particular misadventure had hit its brick wall, there was a sharp increase in the murder rate. A spike, or an anomaly, depending on your point of view, on whether you were a copper or a politician. Three violent deaths in one weekend, and though the killers had all been identified quickly enough – one only to be killed himself before he could be arrested – there was still plenty to do before anybody was brought to court.

  Thorne was certainly busy enough.

  ‘Yeah, me an’ all,’ Hendricks said. ‘People do have this annoying habit of snuffing it all the time.’

  ‘Thoughtless, if you ask me.’

  ‘Right …’

  For ten minutes, Thorne’s friend regaled him with a few of the more recent and choicest tales from the pathology lab. As ever they were dark as all hell, but a damn sight funnier, and a woman nearby stared as Thorne all but spat out his Guinness. Hendricks had always been the same, quick to leaven the horror with a smart remark. These days, however, the jokes came a little faster and more often than usual and were not there simply to balance out the grim nature of the work he did.

  It was easier, Thorne knew, than acknowledging the only professionally dishonest thing Phil Hendricks had ever done. The post-mortem results from seven months before, a crucial element falsified to match one particular version of events and save Nicola Tanner’s career. Thorne’s, too, almost certainly.

  Not much to it, no more than a few millimetres, the relative thickness of a dead man’s skull. The lie told to save his friends, a few more to back it up, and now the three of them carried a bagful around.

  ‘Any more news on the Helen front?’ Hendricks asked.

  Thorne swallowed and shook his head. He had spoken to her several times since the night he’d left a semi-drunken message, but they hadn’t seen one another and nothing very much appeared to have changed.

  ‘Up to her, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t you have any say in the matter?’

  ‘Probably,’ Thorne said.

  ‘There you go, then.’

  ‘Only, I don’t really know what I want to say—’ He sighed, reaching for his mobile, which had begun to ring on the table in front of him. He answered and said his name.

  ‘You’re a hard man to get hold of.’

  Having clearly overheard, Hendricks piped up, just loud enough for the caller to hear. ‘I don’t think anyone’s been getting hold of him recently.’

  Thorne got up and moved a few steps away. ‘Sorry, who’s this?’

  The man identified himself as DI Colin Hatter from Kent Serious Crime and asked Thorne if he had a few minutes to talk. ‘I think you might be able to help me out,’ he said. ‘Well, we might be able to help each other out.’

  ‘I’m listening.’ Thorne watched Hendricks downing what was left of his pint and pretending not to eavesdrop.

  ‘We caught a murder ten days ago, in Margate,’ Hatter said. ‘Young man got his head caved in at the beach. We got some workable DNA at the scene, OK? A few spots of blood from the murder weapon. Killer must have cut himself on the rock he was using to batter the lad.’

  ‘Who said you couldn’t get blood from a stone?’

  ‘Better yet, we got a hit.’

  ‘Nice one,’ Thorne said.

  Hatter sniffed. ‘So, here’s the thing. It matched with a sample you uploaded to the database a week or so before that. Your sample doesn’t have the name of a suspect attached, but we’re assuming that’s because you don’t have one.’

  ‘Come again?’

  The DI began to reel off a reference number, but Thorne did not need to hear it. It was the sample extracted during the forensic sweep of Philippa Goodwin’s flat.

  Patrick Jennings.

  Thorne said, ‘There must be some screw-up somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘We ran it more than once to be sure.’

  ‘The suspect you’re talking about is a con artist, that’s all.’ Now Thorne could see that Hendricks had stopped pretending not to listen and was mouthing something at him. ‘Everything on that individual got passed over to the Fraud team.’

  ‘Well, I reckon it might be getting passed back,’ Hatter said. ‘So we should probably talk about the next step, don’t you think? Put our heads together, at least.’

  Thorne paced aimlessly to the kerb, then turned and walked back again, trying and failing to process what he had been told. ‘Listen, Colin, this bloke’s just a chancer. He’s a poxy scam-merchant who makes his money conning women.’ He moved towards the table and what little was left of his own drink.

  Inside the pub, someone had begun to sing.

  ‘Maybe he was,’ Hatter said. ‘But the evidence suggests he’s moved up in the world.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Margate

  The boy turns back towards the doorway of the bar and peers above the heads, as though checking to see where his mates are. Perhaps he’s concerned that they might be worried about him if he goes with this strange woman, but more likely he’s just looking for someone he can tell.

  ‘You coming or not?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah.’ The boy nods again, quickly. ‘Where—?’

  Michelle has already begun moving away, glancing back to see the boy quickly finish what’s left of his drink and come after her. ‘Don’t make it obvious,’ she says, when he has caught her up. She leans towards him and whispers, fingers brushing his jacket ‘Stay, I don’t know … twenty feet back? Just follow me.’

  They walk along the seafront, past the bars and the pizza palaces, then cross Marine Drive before cutting down on to the beach. She takes off her shoes. The sand is cold and clammy. He stays a decent distance behind her, like a good boy, the two of them drifting slowly and surely away from the noise and the lights. Away from any cameras.

  ‘Here,’ she says, eventually. A spot that is dark and deserted, shielded from view by a high wall and a concrete overhang. A spot she might easily have picked at random.

  It’s as quick and desperate as she’d expected, every bit as fumbly, until she makes it perfectly clear what she wants. She has no interest in the preamble, in his tongue or his pudgy, scrabbling fingers. It’s fine though, because it just sounds as though she can’t wait, as though she wants him.

  He does his best.

  She pulls him close and makes the necessary noises, his mouth wet against her ear, grunting with every tragic thrust, until the moment when the boy feels strong hands pulling him off and away, spinning him over and pressing him into the cold sand.

  Then he just tries to cover himself and says, ‘What?’

  There are seagulls screaming overhead, and there’s music, just audible from somewhere above and behind them. No more than a beat, like an insect buzzing against a window.

  Sh
e sits up, because she wants to watch, because there would be little point otherwise, but still she flinches a little when the hand that is holding the rock comes down the first time. The sound, like someone stamping on a bag of nuts. She crawls closer as it comes down a second time, and a third, until the boy has stopped making any noise and, to be honest, there isn’t much of that face left at all. Not even enough for a mother to recognise.

  She will remember it, though; they both will, for a while at least.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She nods, buttoning her shirt. She stretches to retrieve her underwear, then crawls across the sand to him, her arms reaching out as he rises to his knees, breathing fast and hard, worn out with it. Her hands are on him as he tosses the rock away and wipes a hand across his mouth.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘What about you?’

  The memory will probably fade in time, Michelle knows that. That look on the boy’s face. She doubts, though, that she will ever forget the taste of his blood on her lover’s lips.

  PART TWO

  Above and Beyond

  TWENTY-TWO

  There were a couple of different blouses laid out on the bed and she was struggling to choose. She liked both of them, but there was no question that one would reveal a little more than the other, might perhaps raise an expensively threaded eyebrow or two. No bad thing usually, but those sorts of games didn’t seem to matter quite as much any more, didn’t get her excited in the way they used to. She’d tried both of the tops on already, of course, and had now been staring down at them for five minutes but was still no closer to making a decision.

  She walked to the open bedroom door, leaned out and called downstairs to him.

  ‘I need your help. Conrad …?’

  He shouted something back, but she couldn’t make it out.

  ‘Conrad …’

  She still got a thrill from saying his name; the taste of it in her mouth almost – but not quite – as good as the taste of him. She said it a lot, more, she knew, than was strictly normal when the person himself was right in front of her, but she couldn’t help herself. She loved the fact that he did the same thing.