Lifeless Thorne 5

by Mark Billingham

  Maxwell took a slurp of tea, then grunted and swallowed quickly as he remembered something. “Did that copper find you, by the way? He was going to look for you at the theater, I think …”

  Thorne nodded. “He tracked me down eventually.” He remembered Holland telling him on the phone that he’d come here; that Maxwell had pointed him toward the theater doorway.

  Since they’d met the day before in the park and Holland had shown him the magazine, Thorne had been anxiously waiting for news. It could only be a matter of time until they had names. It felt like they were turning a corner and picking up speed. Of course, he’d had the same feeling plenty of times before. Often, it just meant that you hit the brick wall that much faster.

  “What’s Phil up to?” Thorne hadn’t seen Hendricks for nearly a fortnight.

  The Irishman pointed a fork toward Thorne’s face. “He told me to make sure you took some painkillers if that was hurting …”

  “They’re fucking ganging up on me,” Thorne said.

  Maxwell looked confused for a moment, shrugged when Thorne shook his head. On the far side of the café, a plate crashed to the floor. Maxwell joined in with the cheer as loudly as anyone else. “You seeing a fair bit of the city, then?” he asked.

  “I’m seeing a lot of it, yeah. But I don’t know that fair is the right word.”

  “Not the stuff you see in the guidebooks, is it?”

  “It’s like being on Panorama,” Thorne said. “Only with more killing.”

  In the queue at the counter behind them, voices were suddenly raised. Maxwell pushed back his chair and stood, ready to step in, but the man doing most of the shouting was already striding toward the door, telling anyone who’d listen that they could go fuck themselves.

  Maxwell sat back down. “You like all that nasty stuff, though, right? Phil was telling me. All that blood and guts and Black Museum shit.”

  Thorne felt slightly irritated. He didn’t know if Maxwell was being deliberately obtuse or if Hendricks had just put it across to him badly. Knowing how Hendricks had once tried to explain Thorne’s love of country music by telling Maxwell that he liked songs about death and lost dogs, this was certainly possible. “I like history,” he said. “In London, a lot of it’s just … dark.”

  Maxwell pushed what was left of his breakfast around the plate. “Getting darker all the time,” he said.

  Thorne sensed a figure looming behind him and twisted his neck round to see Lawrence Healey standing there, clutching a tray.

  “May I join you?” Healey asked.

  Maxwell put his fork down and threw back what was left of his tea. “I’m just on my way to a meeting. Tom?”

  “Free country …” Thorne said.

  Maxwell looked across the table before he turned to leave, something Thorne couldn’t read in his eyes. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need …”

  Healey tucked into a bowl of what looked suspiciously like bran. There was a carton of yogurt on his tray and a cup of foul-smelling herbal tea. After a minute or two of silence and an exchange of awkward smiles, Healey cleared his throat. “I was going to ask how you were getting on, but looking at you, I’m not sure there’s any real need.”

  “You should have seen the other bloke,” Thorne said.

  “I saw him yesterday, as a matter of fact …”

  Thorne didn’t know what to say.

  Healey’s voice, even posher than Thorne remembered, suited a tone of wry amusement very well. “We have a weekly meeting with some of the officers from the Homeless Unit. Just a chat about anything that’s come up.” He stared across at Thorne for a few moments, nudged his glasses a little higher, then went back to his cereal.

  Thorne watched Healey eat. He looked fit and tanned under a brushed-denim button-down shirt. That said, most people would have looked well compared to Thorne himself. Or to any of the blotchy or the blasted, the washed-out or pastyfaced characters that moved around them. “Thanks for the concern,” Thorne said. “But I really wouldn’t bother.”

  “You might need some legal advice …”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “We can help you with that.”

  Thorne said nothing. He turned and looked at the noticeboard for a while, decided he’d probably give the poetry workshop a miss.

  “Things going okay, though?” Healey asked. “Generally, I mean?”

  “I’ve been better …”

  “I know.”

  “Really?”

  “I do understand how hard it is.” Healey’s voice was lower suddenly. He reminded Thorne of an overearnest vicar. Or of Tony Blair. “It’s the adjustment that’s particularly difficult …”

  Thorne had actually found adjusting to other people the trickiest thing of all; to the way other people saw him. It was usually one of two reactions: he was avoided or ignored. In the first instance, pedestrians would steer clear, the more sensitive doing their best to make that feint to one side as unobtrusive as possible. In the second, he seemed to become completely invisible, as passersby simply pretended that they hadn’t seen him at all. Both reactions were gloriously British in their sly dishonesty, but no more so, Thorne decided, than some people’s when confronted by people whom they actually knew. When greeting those they perhaps hadn’t seen for a while. There was one phrase that Thorne particularly hated; it could cover a multitude of sins and was trotted out no matter how sick or sad the person on the receiving end appeared. No matter how frightful their clothes or hair, or how much weight they’d put on since the last time you’d seen them: “You look well …”

  Suddenly a hand fell onto Thorne’s shoulder and a rheumy-eyed whippet of a man he’d talked to once or twice leaned down close to him. “Great days, eh?” The man breathed sweet sherry into Thorne’s face. “Great days …”

  Thorne had no idea what the man was talking about. He watched him walk away and accost someone at the next table, then turned back to Healey. “I’ve met some fascinating people, though,” he said.

  “What’s it been now? A month or so?”

  “Something like that. You lose track.” Thorne wasn’t sure exactly how many rough sleepers came within the Lift’s remit, but he couldn’t help wondering if Healey knew as much about all his clients. “What about you?”

  “Sorry?”

  Thorne was thinking about what Healey had said when they’d met in the corridor a couple of weeks before. “We’re both ‘new boys,’ remember? How are you settling in?”

  “Oh … settled now, most definitely. Thank you for asking.”

  “Just talking,” Thorne said.

  “People can be suspicious of a new broom, you know? You just need to get your head down and get on with it, whatever anyone else thinks. A certain amount of tunnel vision definitely helps.”

  The concern in Healey’s voice had gone and been replaced by something a little more abrasive. Thorne saw that there was a resolve behind the nice-butdim accent and the do-gooder appearance. He also understood exactly what Healey was saying. Tunnel vision was something he’d been accused of himself, though it was usually described somewhat less politely.

  “It could help get you off the street,” Healey said.

  “Maybe it’s what put me on it.”

  “You want to talk about that?”

  “Not hugely …”

  When Healey began removing the foil from his yogurt carton, Thorne stood up and took his coat from the back of the chair.

  “I enjoyed the chat,” Healey said.

  Thorne bent to pile his empty plate and cup onto the tray. “You need to get out more,” he said.

  He slid his tray onto a trolley near the food counter, then looked back to make sure that Healey hadn’t gone anywhere. He wanted to check to see if there’d been any messages, and as long as Healey was still eating, it was the perfect time to nip up to the office and get his phone back.

  Looks played a major part in it; that’s how Russell Brigstocke felt anyway. It was like being a hard
man, like being feared. Yes, it was about what was inside your head, about having the will to dish out pain, and to take it, but once you had it going on up there, then what you looked like was the next most important thing. The set of your mouth, and the way your eyes absorbed the light—the way they sucked it in and smothered it—counted far more than your size, or how much weight your punch packed.

  It seemed to Brigstocke that Jason Mackillop looked like a copper. He had short hair and skin that was pitted with acne scars. He was heavyset beneath a blue M&S suit, and he stood awkwardly, as though he were designed to be permanently leaning on something: the roof of an unmarked vehicle; the windowsill in an airless interview room; a bar. What Mackillop looked like of course was a casting director’s idea of a copper, but as most of those who did the job for real looked like financial advisers—Brogstocke himself included, if he were being honest—that was probably no bad thing. At that moment, with the TDC standing in front of his desk and brightening the day right up, he decided that Jason Mackillop was the sort of copper he could do with a damn sight more of.

  “Right, let’s have those names …” Brigstocke said.

  The list of soldiers in the Glorious photograph had been divided up and Mackillop had been the one who had struck lucky. Among those in his allocation had been the writer of the original article, and not only had First Lieutenant Stephen Brereton been fairly easy to trace, but he’d had no great trouble providing the relevant information. Mackillop had already explained to Brigstocke how Brereton—now a major in the Corporate Communications Department of the MOD—had remembered Chris Jago pretty well. He’d talked about their time in Bremenhaven; about Jago’s fondness for German beer and German girls. He’d told Mackillop how each crew in the troop had been tight with one another; how a friendly rivalry between the different crews had been actively encouraged. Brereton hadn’t seemed to mind too much that he could not be told why the police were so interested, and had said he’d be happy to have a look through some of his old Gulf War journals and diaries. After no more than ten minutes, he’d called back with the names of the other three men who’d manned a Challenger tank alongside Chris Jago in the early part of 1991.

  “That major down in Somerset … Poulter? He said that these crews got moved about all the time, that they were sometimes shifted around in battle situations. How can Brereton be certain these are the men who were in that tank on February 26, 1991?”

  “He isn’t,” Mackillop said. “Not absolutely, one hundred percent I mean. I gave him the exact date and he told me that his memory wasn’t that good, but that he thought he’d remember if there’d been any injuries or last-minute transfers, you know? He wouldn’t stake his life on it, but he couldn’t recall any particular reason why that crew should have been split up.”

  “Right …” Brigstocke was holding out a hand, waiting to take the piece of paper.

  Instead, Mackillop looked at his list, read the names to the DCI: “Trooper Christopher Jago, he was the gunner; Lance Corporal Ryan Eales, the loader/operator; Trooper Alec Bonser was the driver, and the tank commander was Corporal Ian Hadingham. I reckon this was our crew, guv.” Then he stepped forward and passed the paper across the desk.

  Jago. Eales. Bonser. Hadingham.

  Brigstocke stared down at the names of four men who surely held the key to solving a series of murders. Four men who themselves had committed murder and who now appeared to be paying for it with their own lives.

  “Obviously, we’re still in the dark about which one of them is our first victim,” Mackillop said. “It could be Eales, Bonser, or Hadingham.”

  Brigstocke nodded. “Now we’ve ID’d the crew, we can put a bit more pressure on the Army Personnel Centre—”

  “I’m already on it, guv.”

  “I can’t actually promote you until you’ve made DC, you know, Jason.”

  Mackillop reddened. “Well, I’m not on it exactly, but Major Brereton said he’d talk to them and try to get at least the basic stuff to us A.S.A.P.”

  “Basic stuff?”

  “Individual pictures of the soldiers, and maybe some of the details that are in their records: height, weight, color of hair, blood group with a bit of luck. Hopefully, we should be able to figure out which one our mystery corpse is.”

  “Hopefully.” Brigstocke was thinking that they’d need more than a photo. The killer hadn’t left any of the victims in a state that was particularly recognizable. “He reckons he can do that, does he, this Major Brereton?”

  “He sounded like there was every chance, yeah. I think they respond better when requests for information come from other soldiers.”

  Brigstocke picked up the phone. “Not like the way most people on the Job respond to each other, then?”

  “Guv … ?”

  “You’ll know what I’m on about soon enough.” Brigstocke dialed a number, pointed toward the piece of paper. “Well done on this, Jason. Your luck was in, no question …”

  “Oh, it was pure bloody jam, guv, I know that.”

  “Luck’s no use to anybody unless they use it. It sounds like you dealt with this Brereton bloke very well.”

  Mackillop handled the praise like someone with far greater experience. Just a small nod. But Brigstocke caught the spasm of delight on his face, like a stifled sneeze, in the second or two before the TDC turned to walk toward the door.

  Brigstocke leaned back in his chair and listened to the phone ringing on the other end of the line. He was as absurdly excited as Mackillop had been by the prospect of giving Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Jesmond the first piece of genuinely good news in a while.

  The four of them—Thorne, Spike, Caroline, and Terry T—sat around a table in a grotty café behind the Charing Cross Road. Terry had returned from his travels with a few extra quid in his pocket and had insisted on shelling out on tea and doughnuts for everyone. This, and the fact that he was able to make the word cunt sound like a term of endearment, made Thorne take to him straightaway.

  “You the cunt who’s been sleeping in my pitch?” Terry had said on being introduced. The voice was high and hoarse, ripening a thick London accent.

  Thorne had thought about it for a few seconds. “Yeah, I think that’ll be me. Just keeping it warm for you, obviously.”

  “Fair play, mate …”

  Terry T was every bit as tall as Spike had described, but he was also spookily thin. He was, Thorne guessed, somewhere in his late thirties, but he looked a damn sight older, with sunken cheeks, very few teeth, and what appeared to be no hair at all beneath a floppy green hat. Like a cross between Nosferatu and the King of the Gypsies. A feather dangled from one ear and he’d taken off his scarf to reveal a heavy-looking, tarnished padlock on a chain around his neck, which had turned the skin beneath it distinctly green.

  Terry had seen Thorne staring and reached up to finger the chain. “Lost the fuckin’ key, didn’t I?”

  “So where you been then, Tel? What you been doing … ?”

  Spike was buzzing, and for more than just the usual reason. He was excited to have his friend back. Thorne felt a peculiar twinge of something that might have been jealousy, though it was probably no more than a sugar rush from the doughnuts.

  “Been all over,” Terry T said. “Up north to Birmingham and Liverpool, then even further, mate. Up with the chilly Jockos.”

  Spike dipped a doughnut into a glass of Coke, let the drips fall off. “I thought most of them were here in London.”

  “Plenty more where they came from,” Terry said.

  Spike rolled his eyes, put on a cod-Scottish accent, and mumbled something incomprehensible. “It’s fucking disgusting,” he said. “They come down here, they beg on our street corners, they drink our Special Brew …”

  Terry and Caroline laughed.

  “How d’you get around?” Thorne asked.

  “Hitching, mostly. Got a couple of free trains by keeping an eye out for the ticket collector and spending a lot of time in the bog.”
r />   “I bet it’s a bit colder on the streets up there.”

  “I was indoors, mate. Sofasurfing …”

  Instinctively, Thorne looked to Spike for an explanation.

  Spike held out his arms as if riding a surfboard, repeated the phrase in a silly American accent. “Sofasurfing. Moving around, like. Dossing down on people’s floors, sofas, whatever …”

  “Loads of people do it,” Caroline said. She’d poured a small mound of sugar onto the tabletop and had been absently toying with it: drawing patterns in the grains with her finger. All at once she chopped the edge of her hand onto the table and swept the sugar onto the floor. “You think there’s a lot of people sleeping on the street and in the hostels, you can multiply that by tens of thousands …”

  More of those who, conveniently, could never be counted when the official figures were being produced; more of the so-called hidden homeless. Thorne suddenly wondered if Terry T knew what had been going on while he was traveling. What had happened to some of those who had been unable to hide.

  “So how long have you been away, Terry?”

  Caroline flashed Thorne a look. He could see that she knew what was going through his mind, but he couldn’t be sure what she was trying to tell him.

  “Christ … it was a few days after that poor bastard got his head kicked in round Golden Square. When was that?”

  “A couple of months ago,” Spike said.

  “Did they ever catch the bloke who did it?”

  Terry couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a paper or watched the news; he knew nothing of those who had died after that first victim. Caroline brought him up to date: she told him about the murders of Ray Mannion and Paddy Hayes; she leaned across to grab one of Terry T’s long, bony hands and told him what had happened to Radio Bob.

  Spike edged toward Thorne. “Terry and Bob were mates,” he said. Like it wasn’t obvious enough …

  “Do they know why?” Terry asked eventually.

  Spike snorted. “Not got a clue, if you ask me, like.”