Lifeless Thorne 5

by Mark Billingham

  “It’s always handy to know when someone’s coming,” Spike said. “The little fucker gets enough cash to keep him in football stickers.” He smacked his palms slowly against the blistered handrail as he led Thorne up to the top floor. “Everyone’s got some sort of habit, like …”

  Climbing, Thorne watched Spike trying, in cackhanded slow motion, to smarten himself up. He messed with his hair and stopped to tighten the laces in his trainers. He straightened his jacket and tucked in his T-shirt, and as they emerged onto a concrete walkway Thorne was still wondering who the effort was being made for.

  A door opened, two or three from the end of the corridor, sixty feet away. A man stepped out: thirty or so, short, with dark hair and stubble. He was wearing sandals, and creased gray trousers below a polo shirt.

  Spike stopped and waved. The man in the doorway raised up his chin.

  “That’s Mickey,” Spike said. “He’s from Malta, so he’s got brown balls …”

  Thorne watched the man take a step forward so that he could look down over the balcony.

  Spike leaned in with a grin, spelled out the joke loud enough for the man by the door to hear. “He’s a Malteser, like, so he’s got brown balls.” He looked round, gave the man another wave.

  Mickey smiled. “Fucking huge brown balls …”

  Spike moved away from Thorne suddenly, and began edging slowly back toward Mickey. He nodded at Thorne, once, twice. “It’s okay, mate, I’m good from here.”

  “Does your friend want something?” Mickey said.

  “No, he’s cool,” Spike shouted.

  Thorne wasn’t sure whether the dealer was talking about drugs or trouble. The man certainly seemed happy enough to provide whatever was required.

  “Really, it’s fine now,” Spike said.

  He was spinning around slowly as he went. He walked backward then forward between Thorne and the dealer, partially blocking the view as Thorne caught sight of a second figure emerging through the green door. Thorne stepped to one side to get a better look. To catch Caroline’s eye.

  She looked as pleased to see him as dead eyes would allow. She tugged on Mickey’s shirt and pointed. “He likes to beat up coppers,” she said.

  The dealer smiled. Let the backs of his fingers move down the girl’s arm. “I like it. He gets a freebie if he wants one.”

  “Honest, you can go now,” Spike said. He was starting to sound desperate, to look embarrassed that Thorne was there at all. “We’re sorted. Both of us. Right, Caz?”

  Caroline pulled fingernails through her hair and walked back into the flat as if she’d forgotten something. Thorne watched Spike drift over to the dealer. Watched the dealer press his fist against Spike’s and step back through the doorway.

  “See you at the Lift later, then?” Thorne said.

  Spike picked at the plaster, tore the stained wad of bandage from his neck, and lobbed it over the balcony. As he followed Mickey inside he stuck up a thumb without turning round, just as Hendricks had done the night before.

  Thorne waited half a minute after the door had closed before walking up to it. A curtain was drawn across the only window and he could hear no sounds from inside, so he turned and walked back toward the stairs.

  On the way down he took out his phone. He’d felt the vibration of a message coming through as he and Spike had walked from the tube station. It was a text from Phil Hendricks, another gag based around the possible “double date” with Brendan and Dave Holland …

  Thorne stopped and stared at the screen.

  He’d felt it up to now as something annoying yet unimportant; like something caught in your teeth that you couldn’t get at. That you pushed at until your tongue got tired and then gave up on. Suddenly Thorne knew exactly what had been nagging at him. And he knew why.

  You know all sorts of things …

  He remembered the voice from a dream, and he remembered other voices, too. He remembered what Hendricks had said:

  Brendan likes Dave. Actually, I think he fancies him a bit …

  And what Maxwell had said back at the Lift only an hour before. And, most important of all, what he’d said to Thorne a week or so before that …

  He dialed Brendan Maxwell’s mobile number, the excitement building in him like nausea. “Bren, listen, it’s Tom. Remember you told me that a police officer was looking for me. A week ago?”

  “I’m right in the middle of something …”

  “It wasn’t Dave Holland, was it.” It was more statement than question.

  There was a pause. Thorne could hear others talking in the background. Maxwell lowered his voice. “Sorry, Tom, I’m not with you.”

  “This was a couple of days before Terry Turner was killed. You said that a police officer was asking where I was, and you’d pointed him toward the theater, yes?”

  “Yes …”

  “I know that Holland had been in, because he couldn’t get hold of me, so I presumed …”

  “Dave came in the day after, I think. If I’d been talking about Dave, I’d’ve said so, wouldn’t I, because I know him. I’d never seen this other bloke before.”

  “Right. And because I’m a fucking idiot, I’ve only just worked that out.”

  “Is this important?” Maxwell asked.

  Thorne began to move again. “How did you know he was a copper?”

  “Can I call you back?”

  “I just need a minute, Bren …”

  Maxwell sighed. “He introduced himself, then he showed me ID. I’m not a complete moron.”

  “Do you remember the name?”

  Another pause. “No. Far too many names to remember.”

  Thorne swung round fast onto another flight of stairs, began to swear with each step he took.

  “Sorry,” Maxwell said.

  “How did he get in to see you?”

  “Same as anybody else, I think. They called me down from reception and buzzed him through.”

  “So he would have signed in?”

  “He certainly should have done. They’re usually pretty hot on health and safety. Do you want me to go and have a look?”

  “I’ll be with you in about twenty minutes …”

  Thorne took the remaining stairs two at a time, feeling each step jar and burn in far too many places. He was aware of the skateboarder’s eyes on him as he came out of the covered stairwell a whole lot faster than he’d gone in.

  Rosedene Way was a quiet road, five minutes from the tube station and no more than a pitching wedge from Finchley golf course. The Volvo was not out of place among the SAABs and Audis; well-tended hanging baskets far outnumbered satellite dishes on the tidy thirties houses.

  Mackillop had driven round for twenty minutes looking for somewhere decent to eat, and had eventually given up. He’d grabbed a sandwich from the M&S at Tally Ho corner and eaten it in the car. Now he was stupidly early for the rendezvous with Andy Stone, but he was as happy where he was—with the car radio and a newspaper—as he would have been anywhere else.

  He looked up at the top floor of the house they would be visiting; it looked like an attic conversion. He dropped his eyes down to the ground floor, where their interviewee lived, then left to where a woman was watching him while her dog relieved itself in the gutter. Saturday afternoon and there were plenty of people around. He smiled at the woman, who bent down smartly, plastic bag at the ready to clear up the mess.

  Mackillop thought about what Andy Stone was doing. How long it had been since he’d done the same thing. He’d split up with his girlfriend four months before, and one pissed-up fumble with a Colindale WPC after a lock-in at the Oak was the closest to sex he’d managed since. Mind you, he’d probably get fairly close, at least by association, when Stone showed up, gagging as always to go over the highlights of his performance.

  The woman with the dog gave him a good look as she walked past the car; her face like she could still smell the turd in her plastic bag.

  He realized that he’d forgotten it was Sat
urday when he’d been talking to Stone about the best route to take. Traffic could very easily be snarled up on the North Circ. There wasn’t a lot of choice, mind you; it was a pig of a journey by tube, with at least a couple of changes between Willesden Green and West Finchley …

  He hoped he wouldn’t have too much longer to wait.

  When they started playing cheesy country rubbish, Mackillop quickly retuned the radio. Then he opened the Express to the crossword, folded it across the steering wheel, and dug around in his pocket for a pen.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Maxwell found the page he was looking for and passed the center’s registration book across. He pointed at the date and entry that Thorne would be most interested in.

  The name was scribbled rather than printed, but it was legible enough. “DS Morley,” Thorne said, reading. “Detective Sergeant T. Morley.”

  “Like I said on the phone, he had a warrant card …”

  They were alone in a small storage room next door to the laundry; the Saturday lunch rush was at its height and there were plenty of people in the building, both clients and staff. Thorne was fired up, but in spite of all that had happened, it was still important, especially here, to maintain the integrity of the undercover operation.

  Or, at least, as much integrity as he had left …

  “What exactly did he say?” Thorne asked.

  Maxwell sat down on a cardboard box marked domestos. The room smelled of polish and cleaning fluid. “Fuck … I’m not sure I can tell you exactly …”

  “Did he mention me by name?”

  “I suppose he must have done. It was definitely you we were talking about.”

  “Me specifically?”

  “Yeah, as far as I can remember …”

  “First name? Second name?”

  “I think he knew your first name. I think so …”

  “It’s about whether he was looking for me, or just looking for ‘the undercover copper.’ D’you see the difference? It’s about how much he knew.” Thorne stared at the name on the page, reached for his phone, and dialed Scotland Yard.

  “He knew enough,” Maxwell said.

  As soon as he got through to the information room, Thorne gave his name and warrant number. He told the WPC that he needed a check run on an officer. “The name is Morley,” he said, “first initial T. A sergeant …”

  The woman took down details of Thorne’s request, said that she’d call him straight back.

  “Any idea how long it’s going to take?”

  “You know how it works,” she said. “I’ve got to check you out before I can do anything else.”

  Andy Stone thought he’d got this one figured out, that they had an understanding, but she’d really surprised him. He’d thought it was all about sex; that she just wanted a quick session of an afternoon, same as usual. So he’d arranged to pop round for “lunch.” He’d worked out that he’d have enough time to get there, give her what she wanted, and get back in good time to meet up with Mackillop for the next interview. That was the theory, but it hadn’t quite worked out that way. The woman had only gone and cooked him a meal. She’d actually wanted to have lunch. Not that she hadn’t wanted to go to bed as well; she’d left him in no doubt that spaghetti Bolognese wasn’t the only thing on the menu. But he couldn’t just get straight down to it, could he? Not after packing all that pasta away. So twenty minutes for lunch, fifteen minutes to chat while they let it go down, then a decent half-hour bout between the sheets. Now there was no way he could make it across to Finchley in time.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on his socks as quickly as he could and making small talk; sneaking glances at his watch so as not to hurt her feelings. He thought she was starting to like him a bit too much. Maybe the whole cooking-lunch thing meant that she wanted to move things on a bit between them. He’d have to give that some serious thought.

  Shit: he hadn’t even ordered a cab yet. He asked her if she had a number she used, and stood as she moved toward him, naked, to fetch the card from her purse. She lowered a hand to cup his balls through his underpants as she passed, and he stepped back, telling her that he really was going to be fucking late and reaching into the corner for his trousers.

  She retrieved the card from her handbag and shouted out the number. Stone dropped back onto the bed. Dialed as he watched her walk into the en suite and bend to run the bath …

  Fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes behind schedule … if he was lucky. He ordered the cab and looked around for his shoes, deciding that he’d call Mackillop once he was on his way.

  The rhythmic drone became a high-pitched whine as one of the machines moved on to its spin cycle in the laundry room next door.

  “We’re talking about the killer here, aren’t we?”

  Maxwell said. “Tom?”

  “There’s every chance.”

  “So how did he know to come here and start talking to me as if he knew you?”

  Thorne could still not be certain that the killer didn’t know him. He looked up from the phone that was resolutely refusing to ring. “That’s what I’m trying to make sense of,” he said.

  Not that any of it made a great deal of sense. The killer may or may not have known the name of the undercover police officer he was looking for; following Thorne’s indiscretions in the aftermath of his arrest, that information was certainly out there. But even if the leak had come from McCabe or one of his team—even if DS T. Morley was one of that team— Thorne couldn’t see how the killer had connected him to the Lift.

  “It’s freaky to think that I talked to the fucker,”

  Maxwell said.

  “You get used to it.”

  “Will I have to go to court if you find him?” “Maybe. Phil can give you some tips …” Maxwell smiled, but he looked uncomfortable.

  “Thing is, I don’t know if the image I’ve got in my mind is accurate or not? I don’t know whether I’m remembering this bloke or if I’m imagining him. Now that I know what he did, you know?”

  “We need to get you to a station as soon as we can,” Thorne said. “Start trying to put an e-fit together.”

  “If I hadn’t talked to him, Terry Turner would still be alive, wouldn’t he?”

  Thorne looked away. “I should have put all this together a lot quicker, Bren.”

  “If I hadn’t told him where you were supposed to be sleeping …”

  The phone buzzed in Thorne’s hand.

  The information-room WPC told him that there were two T. Morleys serving in the Met. “So I got on to both borough personnel offices.”

  “Thank you,” Thorne said.

  “Standard procedure. One’s on a Murder Squad in Wimbledon. The other’s a relief sergeant in Barnet. He’s the one that’s got a crime report attached to his records. Trevor Morley—”

  “Crime report?”

  “He’s not actually been back at work that long. He was mugged in a pub car park three months ago. Nasty attack, fractured his skull …”

  Thorne didn’t need her to tell him that the mugger had never been caught. Or that, among other things, Sergeant Trevor Morley’s warrant card had been stolen during the attack. He didn’t need to tell her that the warrant card would have been the reason Morley had been attacked in the first place.

  He thanked the WPC for her help. She told him she’d pass a report to the information room’s chief inspector, who might well need to get in touch with him. Thorne said that would be fine before he hung up.

  “Not a real copper,” Thorne said. “He was using stolen ID.”

  The information didn’t seem to make Brendan Maxwell feel any better. “It had his photo in it.”

  “Easy enough to paste in. How closely did you look?”

  Maxwell shook his head. About as closely as anybody looked at anything.

  “Whether you’re remembering his face or imagining it, we still need to get you somewhere and get it down. I’ll call someone and get it sorted.”

  “I don’t know how
much detail I can give anyone.”

  Thorne started pressing buttons on his phone, searching for Brigstocke’s number on the memory. “Just start with the general stuff,” he said. “Height, build, coloring …”

  “He was big. Six foot two or three, and well built. He looked pretty fit.”

  “Hair?”

  “Medium, I suppose, fairly neat. And he had a beard. Not ginger, but sandy-ish. He was that kind of coloring. Light-skinned … blue eyes, I think … and maybe a bit freckly, you know?”

  Thorne knew.

  He felt that rare, yet familiar, tickle of excitement. The shuddery spider crawl of it at the nape of his neck, moving beneath the hair and the collar of his dirty gray coat. “Do you recycle?” he asked.

  Maxwell looked and sounded confused. “Yes …”

  “Where?”

  “Out by the wheely bins.”

  Maxwell opened his mouth to say something else, but Thorne was already on his feet and moving toward the door.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Fucked-up weather and busybodies. Jason Mackillop reckoned they were both about as British as you could get.

  It was one of those bizarre, early-autumn afternoons that couldn’t make up its mind: sunshine, wind, and rain in a random sequence every half an hour or so. Now it was spitting gently, and Mackillop stared through the streaked windscreen at the man with the plastic carrier bags, who was walking toward the car and staring back with undisguised curiosity.

  Stone had called a few minutes earlier to say that he was running late. Mackillop had heard the grin in Stone’s voice; the implication that it was all due to his phenomenal staying power. Now Mackillop would be sitting there like a lemon for another twenty minutes or more …

  The man carrying the plastic bags walked a few yards past the target address, then stopped and came back. He stared until he caught Mackillop’s eye. He adjusted the grip on each bag and took slow steps toward the car.

  Mackillop leaned on the switch. He let the window slide down as far as possible without letting in the drizzle.

  “Can I help you?” the man said.

  Mackillop had been about to ask much the same question. He reached into his jacket, produced his warrant card. “No, I’m fine, thank you.”