Lifeless Thorne 5

by Mark Billingham

  from far away, the words no more than a distant

  rhythm.

  If the man spoke to him before he struck, Bob

  didn’t hear anything.

  When it began, the shadow like a bludgeon, it was

  as if he could feel each part of it in isolation: the

  laces and the metal eyelets tearing the skin around his mouth and nose; the flesh of lips and nose flattening; the force that drove his head back against the

  wall shattering bones on both sides of his skull. Then, finally, those messages he had waited so

  long to hear began to come through.

  Something had been booted loose or realigned and

  suddenly the wave of pain became a frequency he

  had never received before. He couldn’t make out all

  of his wife’s words, but the tone of her voice told him

  everything he needed to know. The lilt of sorrow

  was unmistakable.

  He tried to shut out everything else—every other

  sound—and listen harder. The voices were still so

  familiar. There was something wet in his ear, something warm and sticky on his handset.

  His daughter’s voice was deeper than he remembered, and that made sense because she would be

  older now. As it began to break up, only one word in

  three, and then in five, was clear, but it was more

  than enough. It had faded away, though, before he

  could try to answer. Before he could send out any

  message of his own.

  Then, it was only the swing of his attacker’s leg.

  Imagined, as he’d already ceased being able to see

  anything at all. The swing and the stamp and the

  desperate breath kicked out of him.

  Aware, in those final few seconds before everything

  went dark. Aware, for the first time in as long as he

  could remember, that no one was talking to him.

  TEN

  The fat café owner had managed an even more miserable expression when he’d sloped across to deliver Holland’s change.

  Holland watched him walk back and begin stabbing at the buttons on his till. “What are your plans for today?”

  “No plans,” Thorne said. “I’ll just carry on drifting around, see who I run into.”

  “So, much like you’d be doing if you were in the office, then?”

  “The lack of any formal structure to the day is quite appealing, as a matter of fact. If it wasn’t for the cold, and the hunger, and the fact that you haven’t actually got anywhere to sleep, this homeless lark wouldn’t be too bad.”

  “Some people’ll do anything to avoid paperwork.”

  “That’s definitely a bonus.”

  “When this is all over, you will have to write up a report,” Holland said. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  Thorne’s arm snaked across the plastic tablecloth and he tipped the change from the plate into his hand.

  Holland watched him pocket the cash. “That’s cheating. It’d take you a couple of hours’ begging to make that.”

  “I’m only doing it to piss him off.” Thorne nodded toward the proprietor. “You think that’s bad?” he said. “He’ll have a face like a smacked arse when he doesn’t get a fucking tip …”

  Outside, they stood on the pavement and stared across at a newsagent’s on the other side of the road. A blown-up front page from The Sun was stuck in the front window: homeless murders. the face of the first victim.

  “He’s the key to this, you know?” Thorne said. “Let’s hope there is a key.”

  “Well, it won’t be found by any profiler. I’m telling you, it’s all about the first victim. The killer was looking for him.”

  “Speculation, based on highly unreliable hearsay.”

  “Unreliable or not, it also suggests that the second victim wasn’t selected randomly, either. Mannion was killed because he’d seen something, because he knew something.”

  They moved a couple of steps apart to let a woman in a smart business suit through and into the café behind them.

  “Look, it’s understandable,” Holland said. “I see why you’re fixing on the unidentified victim.”

  “I’m not fixing.”

  “But three more people have been killed since then. Raymond Mannion, Paddy Hayes, Robert Asker. I know you don’t want to hear this, but whoever’s responsible is a serial killer, whether you like it or not. By definition, if nothing else.”

  “There is nothing else,” Thorne said.

  “There’s the money he leaves on the bodies. Like it’s all he thinks the victims are worth. It’s a signature.”

  “If I was Ross Kemp and this was a two-part thriller on ITV, then maybe I’d agree with you. Come on, Dave, we’ve both been after people like this before and you know bloody well that the only signature most of them ever leave is a body. This is somebody saying, ‘Look at me! I’m a serial killer.’ ” Holland went to say something himself, but Thorne cut across him. “Yes, I know, he is.”

  “Even if you’re right and the first victim was killed for a specific reason, that’s not what it’s about now, is it?” Holland got no response, pressed on. “Say he killed Mannion to cover up, and Hayes to make it look like something random. What about Asker, and whoever’s next? He’s obviously started to enjoy himself now, hasn’t he?”

  “Maybe …”

  They looked over at the picture in the newsagent’s window; at the face staring back at them from across the road. This was a face that had been generated by a computer, and yet it had something of the same expression Thorne had seen many times already in the previous couple of weeks. The postmortem had confirmed that this man was not a drug addict, and yet there was the same look Thorne had seen on Spike’s face, and on Caroline’s, and on a handful of others. It was a look that was difficult to describe. That he could best place at a tipping point, somewhere directly between terrified and dangerous.

  Thorne knew he was projecting, yet he was sure he saw something around the mouth, and in the eyes, of course, that demanded a reckoning. Or perhaps it was a plea to be reckoned with …

  “Where are you sleeping tonight?” Holland asked.

  “Don’t know yet.” Thorne had spent the last week moving around, bedding down in a series of different locations, but in terms of shelter and security, his original choice had certainly been the best. “I might go back to the doorway at the theater.”

  “That’s the closest you’ve been to culture for a while.”

  “There’s an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical on. It’s as close as I ever want to get …”

  As he watched Thorne go, Holland had to remind himself that the scruffy figure walking slowly back toward the West End was, theoretically at any rate, still his boss. There’d never been a great deal of “yes sir, no sir” flying about between them, except when Thorne was in a really bad mood. He was not normally the type to demand, or to dish out that type of deference. Even so, Holland was aware that over the last couple of weeks he’d begun speaking to Thorne differently and that it had nothing to do with his own recent promotion to sergeant.

  It shamed him, but if Holland was being honest, his attitude had far more to do with what Thorne had become, with the part he was playing, than with anything that might have happened to him.

  He watched Thorne pull the dirty red rucksack up on to his shoulder before turning the corner. It had never been easy to read the man, but physically at least he was pretty bloody close to being unrecognizable. Holland knew that it had only been a fortnight, and that it was probably his imagination, but had he seen a stoop there, and something genuinely shambling in the gait?

  It worried him more than a little, because Tom Thorne might well be sleeping in a theater doorway, but he was no actor.

  Peter Hayes sat on the train back to Carlisle, thinking of little but how desperate he was to get home and to kiss his son. He decided that this was
because he’d watched his father die a few hours earlier, having just turned off the machine that had been keeping him alive.

  For the umpteenth time since he’d been given it, he smoothed down the pages of the handwritten letter and read. The words he’d scrawled in such an adolescent fury a dozen years before seemed rather clumsy now, their intention no more or less than to wound.

  He looked up from the page and out of the window.

  To wound. It was hard to imagine that they had done otherwise. So why the hell had the stupid, drunken fucker held on to the bloody thing?

  You left us like a snake, like we were shit, so you could crawl into a bottle and forget we were there at all. You fucking coward. Crawling, beery snake …

  He read the passage over again, each faded loop and slash of his handwriting like a decaying tooth to probe. Like a mouth ulcer to gnaw at.

  The buffet trolley was coming down the aisle toward him and he decided that he’d have tea, and perhaps a sandwich. He’d wait and see what they had.

  He’d wait and see just how hard the questions would be to answer, and how many times he’d ask them of himself. Questions about his judgment back then. About whether he’d pushed his father away until there’d been nobody for the poor old bugger to turn to except God.

  He put the letter away.

  He ordered tea and a chicken sandwich. He watched the scenery change as the train carried him farther north, and counted the minutes until he could hold his son again.

  Part Two

  Blood and Petrol

  1991

  There are two groups of men, four in each group. The differences between the two groups are strik

  ing, though the greatest differences are not the most

  immediate.

  Four men are sitting and four standing. The men on

  the floor are spaced out on the ground, each several

  feet from the next. Not within touching distance.

  They are all wearing drab, olive-colored clothing,

  though they’re not dressed identically: two have boots

  on their feet and two are wearing sandals; one has a

  hat but the other three are bareheaded. The black hair

  plastered to their skulls is all that can be seen of the

  men for the most part, until one of them raises his

  head and takes a bite from what looks like a chocolate

  bar. He chews mechanically.

  The rain and the darkness make everything appear slightly blurred and hard to make out clearly. In contrast to the first group, the men who are

  standing are dressed identically. Nothing of these

  men’s faces can be seen beneath the goggles and the

  multicolored kerchiefs or shamags that cover their

  mouths. Two are standing together, one of them

  flicking through a sheaf of papers that flap noisily

  in the wind. The other pair are placed like bookends: one at either end of the row of men on the

  f l o o r . Each is pointing a pistol.

  The man who is holding the papers waves them in

  the air, and shouts something across to the men on the

  floor. It is hard to make out all the words above the

  noise of the rain: “… are keeping … Do you understand?”

  The man on the floor who is chewing looks up at

  him, then back to the men who are sitting next to

  him. They all look up, their faces wet. Two of the others are also eating, but none of them says anything. The rain is fat, and black. Sputtering and hissing

  as it drops onto heads and hands and bodies. The

  man with the papers shouts louder: “We are keeping

  these. Do you understand?” And the man who is

  chewing nods quickly, twice.

  Nothing else is said for a while, and some time

  passes, though it is impossible to say how much. It is

  suddenly raining more heavily, and the dark hair and

  the olive clothes of the men on the ground are slick

  with it.

  The men who are standing use their sleeves to

  wipe the water from their guns.

  The light is even poorer than before, but the dull

  circle in the sky is most certainly the sun rather than

  the moon. It is dimmest, shittiest daytime, and now

  all the men with goggles are carrying pistols and

  pointing them.

  It’s virtually impossible to tell the four men who

  are standing apart from one another. Their faces are

  hidden, but even if they weren’t, the light would

  make it hard to read their expressions clearly. Yet,

  despite all this, the difference between them and the

  group of men on the floor is suddenly blindingly obvious.

  The men with guns are much more afraid.

  ELEVEN

  “That isn’t Christopher.”

  “Are you sure? It’s understandable if you’re not,

  what with the face being so—”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I can’t help you, I

  mean … But that’s not him. That’s not my brother’s

  body …”

  Susan Jago turned away as the sheet was lifted

  and placed back across the dead man’s face. Even

  though Phil Hendricks tried to be as gentle as he

  could, the noise of the drawer clanging shut seemed

  to hang in the air, as awkward as the pause that followed it.

  DI Yvonne Kitson put a hand on the woman’s

  arm. “Dr. Hendricks will show you out,” she said.

  “Phil … ?”

  Hendricks led Jago to the door and through it.

  Unlike the heavy steel drawer that had been built to

  take the weight of the dead, the door closed behind

  them with a soft snick.

  “Fuck,” Kitson said.

  Holland groaned. “She sounded so positive on the

  phone. And I thought we were in, you know, when

  she first saw his face.”

  Jago’s hand had flown to her mouth a second after

  the breath she’d sucked into it. She’d shaken her head

  and gasped, “Oh Christ.”

  “That could just have been shock at seeing the

  body,” Kitson said. “Or most likely relief.” “I suppose.”

  “It’s a natural reaction.”

  “It feels terrible, though, doesn’t it?” Holland

  walked slowly over to the wall of steel drawers. “Wanting it to be him so much. Is that a natural reaction?” There had certainly been a mood of celebration

  when Susan Jago had called two days before. She’d

  seen the picture in the papers and on the TV and was

  fairly positive that she could identify the man who’d

  been murdered two months earlier. She was confident that the first victim of the roughsleeper killings

  was her missing elder brother. Brigstocke had said it

  sounded as much like a decent break as any he’d ever

  heard, and the case certainly needed it. The powers

  that be were thrilled. More than a pint or two had

  been downed in the Royal Oak that evening. Holland stuck a thumb inside his sleeve, rubbed at

  a smear on the metal. “Wanting the body to be her

  brother’s. It feels selfish …”

  Kitson shrugged and walked across to where her

  coat and handbag were hung in the corner of the

  mortuary suite. There was a small red sofa and a low

  table, a box of tissues on a pine shelf. “It’s going to

  feel a damn sight worse telling Russell Brigstocke

  that we didn’t get a result. I’d as good as promised

  him a name.”

  Having made pretty much the same promise, Holland wo
uld be the one to break the bad news to Tom

  Thorne. Kitson didn’t know about Thorne working

  undercover. As far as Holland was aware, below the

  level of the DCI, he was the only person who did

  know.

  He wondered why that was.

  Maybe he’d been included because of what was

  perceived as some kind of special relationship between himself and Thorne. Maybe they just thought

  that dogsbody and go-between were his special areas

  of expertise …

  “I’m sure the DCI will take it in his stride. He

  must be getting used to disappointment by now.” Kitson turned sharply. “Sorry?”

  “On this case, I mean.” Holland could see that

  Kitson was annoyed, that she’d misunderstood him

  somehow. He tried to backpedal: “It’s been a bastard from the off, hasn’t it?”

  “I don’t care what it has been. Christ, what sort of

  attitude is that?”

  “I wasn’t implying anything, guv …”

  Kitson shoved her arm through the straps of her

  bag, lifted it up onto her shoulder. “Sorry, Dave. I’m

  just cheesed off and a bit snappy.”

  She walked toward the door and Holland followed.

  “Is everything all right?” Even as he asked he

  guessed it was a pointless question. Kitson rarely revealed anything of her private life anymore. “My eldest got sent home from school yesterday

  for punching another kid. Some little toe-rag who

  was picking on his younger brother.” She looked at

  Holland, unable to keep the grin at bay. “Of course,

  secretly I’m hugely proud of him …”

  Holland smiled and opened the door for her. Kitson had really got herself back together of late.

  A couple of years earlier she’d been seen as very much

  the role model for high-achieving female officers: on

  the fastest of fast tracks with job and family seemingly balanced perfectly. Then the news got out that

  her old man had caught her screwing a senior officer

  and had walked out, taking their three children with

  him. Though she’d got her kids back soon enough,

  everything else had unraveled very bloody quickly. It

  wasn’t the affair itself as much as the fact that it had become common knowledge that made things so