Lifeless Thorne 5

by Mark Billingham

  tough, but she’d eventually come through it. She’d proved how bloody-minded she was, if nothing else.

  In the last few months she’d started to return to her

  old self. Progress through the ranks would not be

  quite as mercurial from now on, but she didn’t seem

  overly concerned. She’d even begun seeing someone

  new; someone who most certainly was not a copper.

  “He wouldn’t know the Criminal Justice Act from

  the hole in his arse,” she’d announced gleefully. Thorne had raised his head wearily from a copy of

  Police. “Neither would a lot of coppers …” It was odd, but Kitson’s life had taken a turn for

  the better at around the same time that Thorne’s had

  begun its free fall. Now, with Thorne not around,

  Kitson was more or less running the show day to day;

  reporting to Brigstocke, who, as nominal senior investigating officer, was kept busy enough dealing

  with the press and the pressure from above. Stepping out of the mortuary suite, Holland could

  see Hendricks and Jago on a bench at the other end of

  the narrow corridor. Jago was sobbing and shaking

  her head. Hendricks had his arm around her shoulder. Holland and Kitson walked toward them, talking

  quietly to each other as they went.

  “Like I said, relief.”

  “If she’s crying like that now …”

  Kitson looked sideways at him. “She won’t have

  any tears left if her brother ever does turn up dead.” “I got the impression she’s expecting him to …” They arrived in front of the green plastic bench.

  Jago looked up at them. Managed to blurt out a broken “sorry” between sobs.

  “Don’t be silly, Susan,” Holland said.

  “I know you’re desperate to get out of here,” Kitson said. “I just wanted to be certain about a few things.” She gave Hendricks a look. He moved to the end of the bench and Kitson slid in next to Jago. “The thing is, I don’t quite understand why you thought the picture was your brother in the first place. I know it’s not a real photo, but you sounded

  so certain when you called us.”

  Jago took a few seconds, brought the crying under

  control. “It does look like Chris …” The accent was

  marked. Look rhyming with spook. She’d come down

  on the train that morning from Stoke-on-Trent. She nodded back toward the mortuary suite. “That

  poor sod probably did look a lot like Chris. It’s hard

  to tell, you know? I haven’t seen him in so long now

  that I’ve no idea what he might look like anymore, if

  he’s lost weight or grown a beard or whatever …” “I can see that, but even so …”

  “It’s definitely not him, ’cause there was no scar.”

  She rubbed her right arm, just above the elbow.

  “Chris caught his arm on some barbed wire, there,

  when he was a kid. Trying to get a ball back.” “Right …”

  “And the tattoo was wrong. I was so sure it was

  the same, you know? Then, when I saw it, I could tell

  it was different. Maybe it was the position of it. It

  might have been a bit lower down Chris’s arm than

  it was on … that bloke.”

  “How exactly was it different?”

  Jago started crying again, snatching breaths between the sobs. She raised her eyes to the ceiling and

  chewed her bottom lip.

  Holland looked down at her. He’d thought she was

  somewhere in her early thirties, but seeing her now,

  he wondered if she might be younger. The mascara

  that was smeared all over her face made it difficult to

  tell one way or the other. She had very dark hair and

  extremely pale skin. Similar coloring to the dead man

  lying in a drawer along the corridor.

  “How was the tattoo different?” Kitson asked

  again. “Different letters? Color? Was it laid out differently?”

  Hendricks drew Jago a little closer, nodded his

  encouragement.

  Between sobs: “I don’t … know.”

  “You’re certain it is different, though?”

  “Yes … I think so.”

  Kitson glanced up at Holland, raised an eyebrow.

  When she spoke again, her voice was still low and

  soothing, but Holland could hear the determination.

  “Look, we know the man in the mortuary isn’t

  Chris, which is great.” Holland caught Hendricks’s

  eye and had to look away for a second, embarrassed

  by the lie. “But I have to ask you if you recognized

  him at all. Had you ever seen him before?” The shake of the head was as definite as it could be. “I’m only asking you because of the tattoo. It’s

  such a unique design. Do you understand, Susan?

  Why would someone have a tattoo so similar?” Again she brought the crying under control, pressing a sodden tissue hard into both eyes.

  “There was a time, years ago, when Chris and his

  mates all went out one night and got one. They got

  pissed up and got their tattoos at the same time.

  They got the same sort of thing done. I don’t know

  why. I don’t know what it means.”

  Excitement flashed across Kitson’s face. “Chris

  and his mates? Is the man in the mortuary one of

  your brother’s mates, do you think? Is that possible?”

  Jago shook her head. “I told you, no. I’ve never

  seen him before …”

  The excitement had gone by the time Kitson had

  stood up. She nodded to Holland. “We’d better be

  getting back.” To Jago: “Do you want us to arrange

  a cab for you?”

  Hendricks moved his arm from her shoulder and

  took hold of her hand. “Why don’t I give you a lift?” “Could you?”

  “Yeah, no problem. I’ll run you to Euston …” She looked up at Holland and Kitson. “I’ll have to

  sort out my ticket when I get there. I’m not sure what

  train I’m allowed to get, because I got an open return.” Her eyes were red beneath a film of tears, but

  Holland thought he could see real happiness in them

  for the first time. “I thought it was Christopher, you

  see? I didn’t think I’d be going straight back.”

  Thorne raised his hands, backing away. Though he could make out precious little of what the man was saying, the words fuck, off, and bastard were clear enough, so he picked up the gist of it.

  “Calm down, pal,” Spike said.

  The man hurled another torrent of incoherent abuse at them and wheeled away, just managing to avoid walking straight into the wall behind him.

  Spike hawked into the gutter and picked up his pace. “Fucking old tosser has a right go at me every time I walk past.”

  Thorne caught him up. They were walking north up Greek Street, toward Soho Square. The two of them had hooked up in a greasy spoon for breakfast and been mooching around fairly aimlessly ever since. Now it was raining and they were keen to get indoors; Spike had said he knew somewhere warm where they could get a cup of tea.

  “Why?” Thorne said. “What’s he got against you, then?”

  “He’s a boozer, so he doesn’t want anything to do with the likes of me, does he? With a junkie.”

  It was a word Thorne was used to hearing spoken with distaste. Spike said it casually, as if it were just another word to describe himself, like blond.

  In a little under three weeks, Thorne had seen enough to know exactly what Spike was talking about. The homeless community had its divisions like any other; its imagined hierarchies. There were, by and larg
e, three main groups: drug addicts, drinkers, and those with mental-health problems. As might be expected, there were one or two who could claim membership in all three groups, but on the whole they stayed separate. And, those with mental-health problems tended to keep themselves to themselves, so any antagonism festered mainly between the drinkers and the addicts.

  “It’s mad,” Thorne said. “The boozers can’t stand the junkies; the junkies hate the boozers; nobody much likes the nutters …”

  “And we all hate the asylum seekers!” Spike cackled, loving his own joke, flicking his fingers together like a young black man. “It’s a right old mix, though. I fucking love it, like. You’ve got your immigrants, you’ve got blokes who used to be in the army, you’ve got blokes who’ve been inside. There’s all sorts on the street, mate. All sorts …”

  Thorne wasn’t going to argue.

  They’d reached Oxford Street, where they waited for a gap in the traffic and started to cross. “You’re right, though, it is a bit mental that we don’t all get on.” Spike spun round, pointed back toward where they’d had their altercation. “Mind you, you saw what that boozer was like. They’re a mad, smelly bunch of fuckers. No offense, like …”

  “Eh?”

  “See, that’s another reason why the two of us wouldn’t normally get on, apart from the age-difference thing. A junkie and a boozer. You are a boozer, right?”

  For as long as he could remember, people had liked to imagine that Thorne drank a lot more than was actually the case. It was something expected of people who did what he did, saw the things he’d seen. The truth was that he liked expensive wine and cheap beer, and though he and Phil Hendricks could put a few away in front of the football, he didn’t have anything like a drink problem … not really.

  Yes, he’d drunk a little more than normal of late for obvious reasons, and he was drinking on the street, but only because the undercover role demanded it. As it was, he’d taken to buying piss-weak lager and pouring it into empty cans of Tennent’s Extra and Special Brew. No self-respecting alcoholic would be seen dead with a can of Carling or Sainsbury’s own brand first thing in the morning.

  “I mean it’s not like you’re always drinking,” Spike said. “But I’ve smelled it on you.”

  Thorne ran a hand through his hair and shook away the water. He winked at Spike. “I like a drink …”

  They walked on past the Wheatsheaf and the Black Horse. Past the Marquess of Granby on Rathbone Street. This pub was a favorite of Thorne’s, as it had once been of Dylan Thomas’s. The Welsh poet had been a regular visitor and enjoyed trying to provoke guardsmen, who had popped in to pick on, or pick up, homosexuals.

  Spike suddenly cut left, and within a minute or two they were in one of the quiet side streets behind the Middlesex Hospital, where Paddy Hayes had finally died almost a week earlier.

  “It’s like it is in prison,” Thorne said. “The way the groups don’t get on. Everyone thinking they’re better than everyone else. The white-collar brigade, the dodgy businessmen, and the con men think they should be kept separate from the real criminals. The honest-to-goodness armed robbers think they’re better than the murderers. Everyone hates the sex offenders …”

  Spike stepped ahead and turned round, talked to Thorne as he was half skipping backward, away from him. He looked like an excited, adolescent boy. “So, were you inside, then?”

  In retrospect, it hadn’t been the cleverest thing in the world he could have said, but Spike’s presumption wouldn’t do him any harm. He decided to just say nothing.

  “Listen, I’m sorry,” Spike said. “I didn’t mean to pry, like, and you don’t have to say nothing if you don’t want to.”

  He stopped suddenly, stood still for a second or two before heading up a narrow alleyway. Thorne followed.

  It was the sort of crooked cut-through that London was riddled with; that hadn’t changed in hundreds of years. The windowless buildings seemed to press in on either side, closer to one another at the top than they were at street level. The black bricks were greasy, and the floor was rutted and puddled.

  A figure stepped into view at the other end of the alleyway and Thorne froze.

  “S’all right,” Spike said. He walked toward the man, who had clearly been waiting for him, while Thorne stayed where he was, and watched.

  It happened quickly enough: hands emerging from pockets, taking, handing over and put swiftly back again.

  While Thorne waited for Spike to finish his shopping, he thought about those different groups within the community of rough sleepers. The junkies, the drinkers, the nutcases. He realized that as far as the dead men who had been identified went, there was one from each group: Mannion was a drug user, Hayes was never seen without a bottle, and Radio Bob had certainly had mental problems. Was this a coincidence? Or could it be part of the way the killer selected his victims?

  Thanks to that woman who’d called to say the dead man might be her brother, they could well have a name for the first victim by now. Did he fit into this pattern at all? The postmortem had not told them much. There’d certainly been no evidence of drug use or excessive drinking …

  Thorne turned and walked slowly back toward the street. He wondered what his own internal organs, furred and fucked up as they probably were, might one day tell an eager pathologist. What they might have to say for themselves.

  He remembered a slight judder; the squeak of the belt as his father’s coffin had slid forward, a second before the organist had picked up her cue.

  Stopping and leaning against a wall, he hoped that when the time came, his innards would be there undisturbed and intact. Melting nicely. Burning along with the rest of him, having said fuckall of any consequence to anyone.

  “Why did you never report your brother missing?” Hendricks asked.

  “I just kept expecting him to pop up again. He always has done before.” Susan Jago had a red vinyl overnight bag on her knees. She twisted the handles around each other as she spoke. “Chris has been doing this on and off for years. He’ll go a bit funny and vanish off the face of the earth for a while, then come waltzing back like there’s no problem.”

  There were a variety of routes from Westminster Hospital to Euston Station, and Hendricks had mentally tossed a coin. He was driving along Victoria Street toward Parliament Square and from there he’d head north up Whitehall and keep going.

  “Was he on any medication?”

  “Blimey, he’s been on everything at one time or

  another. You name it …”

  “Got a loyalty card at the chemist’s, has he?” She laughed and let her head drop back. “He’s a

  complete mess, Christopher is. Has been for ages.”

  Hendricks steered the Ford Focus skillfully through the traffic, though the wet streets weren’t making him slow down overmuch. He’d already apologized once when he’d jumped a light and the woman in the passenger seat had sucked in a noisy, nervous breath. Now he raced to overtake a bus that was pulling out, and she did it again.

  “Sorry …”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Just trying to get you there a bit quicker. If you

  miss the next one, you’ll have a bit of a wait.” “Like I said, no one’s expecting me back. The kids

  are at a friend’s.”

  Despite the weather, Parliament Square was thick

  with people, and cars were taking an age to get

  around it. Hendricks had definitely chosen the tourist route.

  “Did he never have a job?”

  “He had all sorts of jobs, but they were all shit.

  Couldn’t even hold on to them. He’d get into a fight

  at work or just stop turning up. Then he’d be off on

  one of his walkabouts.” She shrugged, stared out of

  the window at the crowds under umbrellas outside

  Westminster Abbey.

  “Was there any kind of trigger for Chris’s illness?

  You said he’d been lik
e it for ages …”

  “I wouldn’t call it an illness, exactly. He just gets

  depressed, you know?”

  “It’s an illness.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I just wondered if there’d been a single event that

  might have sparked him off? A breakup with someone. A death in the family …”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Nothing you can think of?”

  “All of them things happen to everybody, don’t

  they?”

  “Yes, but we all have a different brain chemistry.” “He’s always had mates and girlfriends and all

  that, and a lot of the time he’s as happy as anyone is,

  but for ages now he’s just been liable to go off on

  one. I don’t know why. I don’t know what causes it. I

  just want to find him and keep a better eye on him

  this time. I want to get him some help.”

  She was starting to get worked up again, and

  Hendricks could hear in her voice that tears weren’t

  far away. He thought it was odd, considering how

  much she clearly cared for her brother, that she

  seemed to know so little about what was wrong

  with him. She was vague about the whats and the

  whens, but then denial tended to do that. He sensed

  that she blamed herself, that she somehow felt guilty

  for what had happened, for what might have happened, to her brother. He wished that there was

  something he could do to help her. He thought about

  the tattoo, about what Kitson had said back at the

  hospital. If Chris Jago was dead—and his sister had

  obviously thought that was possible—Hendricks

  thought there might be something he could do to

  help find him. But first he needed to go home, or

  back to his office at the hospital …

  She was staring at him. “Can I ask you, are you

  gay?” she said.

  Hendricks was stunned at her directness. He took

  a second, then barked out a laugh. “Yes, I am.” He

  was struck by a possibility. “Was Chris?”

  “God, no,” she said. “I’ve got a mate at work who

  is, and you’re a lot like him. It doesn’t bother me,