Scaredy cat tt-2

by Mark Billingham

  Looking for murders committed on the same day had sounded fairly straightforward, but Thorne was not a man who did things by half. Both time-frame and search criteria were broadening all the time. McEvoy and Holland had begun by looking for strangulations first and then widened things from there. They couldn't rule out assaults as they might be the work of the same man who had now perhaps graduated to full-blown murder. Even discounting domestics and gang-related attacks, it was a big job. To check thoroughly, to go back far enough to find a pattern – if indeed there was one – was going to take time.

  Holland looked up at the clock. Another twenty minutes and they could call it a night. He tried to picture Thorne in a Stetson and cowboy boots but the image wouldn't stick.

  Thorne was too dangerous to be a figure of fun. Johnny Cash made good music to read post-mortem reports by. This, after all, was someone who once famously sang about shooting a man just to watch him die. Whether this was big talk or just a very bad case of boredom, he sang as if he knew a great deal about death. Thorne wondered, as he read the words Phil Hendricks had used to describe the manner of Carol Garner's death, how much he really knew. Now, the man with a voice like the long, slow tumble towards hell was singing about flesh and blood needing flesh and blood. Thorne certainly didn't require it, but the proof was there on his lap, right in front of him – the proof that sometimes, flesh and blood needed to destroy flesh and blood, too. The body of the second victim, Ruth Murray, had been examined by another pathologist. Thorne had seen the initial report which confirmed strangulation as the cause of death and revealed that tissue had been removed from beneath the victim's fingernails for DNA-testing. He wasn't going to get too excited just yet. It sounded promising, but he would wait to see what Hendricks had to say once he'd carried out a second PM.

  Thorne had once thought strangulation, as ways of dying went, to be a fairly soft option. It could surely not be as terrible as being repeatedly stabbed or bludgeoned. It was certainly not on a par with drowning, or suffocating or swallowing bleach. He'd thought this, until he'd read his first PM report on a victim of manual strangulation. In many ways, the use of the bare hands to throttle – the flesh on flesh – made it the very worst type of killing. There was no weapon to separate killer from victim. In most cases the victim would lapse into unconsciousness quickly, but the damage inflicted could be massive, often leaving the victim as bloody and bruised as if they had been attacked with a hammer. Carol Garner had died from asphyxia due to the compression of the carotid arteries, her body displaying virtually every classic trait consistent with violent strangulation.

  The eyes were open, the eyeballs distended, the corneas and skin around the eyes showing signs of hemorrhage. The neck was a mass of bruises, some nearly an inch in diameter and there were bloody, half-moon-shaped indentations from the nails on the fingers and thumbs of the killer.

  Thorne's hands drifted towards his throat. He closed his eyes. Was that chocolate bar his, Charlie? Did he give it you to keep you quiet? Or did he produce it himself, afterwards, and eat it slowly, watching her, while you were crying?

  There was massive bruising and abrasion to the floor of the mouth, the epiglottis and the lining of the larynx. The tongue had been all but bitten clean through. The crocoid cartilage was crushed, the thyroid cartilage virtually unrecognisable and the hyoid bone was fractured. It was this internal damage which most clearly indicated the severity of the attack which led to Carol Garner's death. Did you see it happen, Charlie? Did he shut you out of the room, or did you stand and scream, and beat your tiny fists on his back and watch your mummy's eyeballs bulging out of their sockets?

  Thorne leaned down to pick up the coffee that he'd left on the floor by the sofa. It was stone cold. He looked at his watch. He'd been immersed in the details of death for well over an hour. Thorne was as disturbed as always by this.., capacity he had. He'd tried reading crime fiction once but it had not suited him at all. He could barely read any so-called thriller for more than a few minutes without starting to drift away, and yet a jargon-filled description of ruined flesh had him riveted. He was confident that there was nothing overly perverse in this. He could honestly say that he had never enjoyed watching an autopsy.

  The truth was that an intimate knowledge of real killers and real victims made him a difficult reader to please.

  Thorne had seen enough wild-eyed gunmen and bloodied blades, and soft-spoken, heavy-lidded perverts. He'd seen plenty of batterers and arsonists and smiling poisoners. He'd seen more than his fair share of damaged bodies: some dead, and others more damaged still, left behind to remember.

  He'd seen holes in flesh and holes in lives. Thorne picked up his coffee cup and was heading for the kitchen to make another when the doorbell rang.

  Hendricks was standing on the doorstep wearing a floor-length black leather coat and watch cap. He was brandishing a blue-striped plastic bag that was threatening to break at any instant thanks to the vast quantity of cheap lager it contained. The accent hardly suited dramatic declamation, but he did his best. 'Let us drink beer and talk of death.'

  Thorne turned and headed back inside. Neither of them was big on ceremony. 'It sounds like you've already started on the drinking bit…'

  Hendricks slammed the outer door and followed Thorne inside.

  'I've been doing both, mate. I've been with Dr Duggan most of the day…' He closed the inner door and moved into the living room.

  'He the one who did the first post-mortem on Ruth Murray?'

  'She. Emma Duggan. Very good, and very fanciable, if you like that kind of thing.'

  Thorne shook his head and reached into the plastic bag that Hendricks was now cradling gently. 'Formaldehyde does nothing for me, sorry.'

  'And I've spent the last few hours up to my elbows in Ruth Murray myself, so yes,' Hendricks said, dumping the. bag on the sofa, 'I did have a couple on the way over.'

  While Hendricks took off his coat, Thorne opened a beer and picked up the CD remote control. He switched Cash's Solitary Man back to the beginning. The guitar kicked in on 'I Won't Back Down'. Thorne took the chair and Hendricks the sofa. It was a familiar and comfortable arrangement that, bar a few awkward weeks the year before, had been repeated at least weekly since Thorne had first moved in nearly eighteen months ago. He'd rattled around in the big house in Highbury for three years after his divorce, before finally taking the plunge and buying the flat He still hadn't got used to the place. He did like the oatmeal IKEA sofa a lot better now it had a few beer stains, but though the place was at last starting to look worn, it had become no more welcoming.

  The person responsible for most of the stains grunted, at home now and ready to talk about death.

  'So…?' Thorne was trying not to sound impatient.

  'So… interesting.'

  The phone rang. Thorne sighed, pulled himself out of the chair and marched across to where the cordless phone stood, near the front door.

  'Thorne…'

  'Sir, it's Holland…'

  'Nothing so far then?' He could hear the confusion in the silence from the other end. 'Don't worry, Holland, I can always tell if you're excited. Your voice goes up an octave.'

  'Sir…'

  'So, nothing at all? Maybe we need to widen things geographically as well…'

  'There were a couple that looked likely, but there were arrests on both of them and the only other ones, two assaults.., and two women stabbed on the same day in July, didn't pan out timing-wise.'

  'Sure?'

  'Positive. McEvoy double-checked. Couldn't have been the same killer who did both. Even if… you know, the times of death were a bit off.., he'd have needed a helicopter to have done both of them.'

  'OK, knock it on the head… like you weren't about to anyway. Tomorrow you might have more luck. I'm sure this wasn't his first time. You'll get something. Besides, you won't have any distractions.'

  'Sorry?'

  'I'm taking DS McEvoy with me to Birmingham.'

  It took Ho
lland a few seconds to work out why Thorne might be going to Birmingham, and why he would want Sarah McEvoy to go with him. Once he had, he was grateful that he would be the one stuck in front of a computer all day.

  Then, after he'd hung up, Holland started to wonder what Thorne had meant by 'distractions'.

  'Tell me about interesting.' Hendricks looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. Thorne went on. 'Ruth Murray. "Interesting", you said.'

  Ruth Murray. 32. Married with, thankfully, no children. Hers actually the first body to be found, wedged in behind a large metal rubbish bin in a road behind King's Cross station.

  Hendricks had helped himself to the meagre contents of Thorne's fridge while he'd been on the phone to Holland, and his reply was broken up as he attempted to swallow an enormous bite of a cheese sandwich. 'I'm writing it up… first thing tomorrow…'

  'I won't be here first thing tomorrow.'

  'I'll have it on your desk by midday, all right…?'

  'Just give me the highlights, please.'

  Hendricks wiped his mouth, swung his legs off the sofa and turned to face Thorne. There were important things to be said. 'OK, well first off, don't get too excited about the skin under her fingernails.'

  'Because…?'

  'Because most of it's probably hers.' He explained before Thorne had a chance to ask him to. 'It's quite common with strangulations. The victim often scratches their own neck in an attempt to remove the ligature.., or in this case the killer's hands.' As Hendricks explained, his hands automatically went to his neck and Thorne watched them scrabbling at the flesh. 'She had good nails.., made a right mess of her neck. She might have scratched him as well though, so it's worth looking at.'

  'Carol Garner didn't have good nails?'

  Hendricks shook his head. 'Badly bitten…' Thorne wondered if she'd begun biting her nails after her husband had been killed. Looking at her baby son and seeing his father. Never dreaming that the boy would be an orphan before his fourth birthday.

  'But…'

  'What?' Thorne leant forward, on the edge of his chair. Hendricks had been saving something up. Always the need to show off just a little.

  'We might… might, have another DNA source. Duggan missed something.'

  'But you said…'

  'She was good. Yeah, she is. Just not as good as me.'

  Thorne could not keep the irritation out of his voice. 'For fuck's sake, Phil, can we cut the Quincy crap?'

  'All right… look, once it had been established that there hadn't been a sexual assault, Duggan didn't see any point in looking for bodily fluids. It was a fair enough presumption really; the body was fully clothed, same as Carol Garner. But I'd checked when I did the PM on her, so I looked anyway…'

  Thorne held his breath. He could feel the excitement building in the same place it always did: at the base of his skull. A tingling, a buzzing, a low throb of excitement and revulsion in advance of the detail to come. He hated it when it was sexual. There was always a slightly higher chance of a result, but still, he hated it. Hendricks was equally excited. 'It was Luminol and UV that did it in the end. Tiny patches all over her face and on her arms. It took me ages to work out what it was; it was actually more about working out what it wasn't…'

  Thorne nodded. It was good news; if they caught him it almost certainly guaranteed a conviction, but it sickened him just the same. It was no consolation that the killer would probably have done it after Ruth Murray had been killed. If anything, it made it worse.

  'Forty-eight hours then?'

  Hendricks held up a hand. 'Yeah, hopefully. There's really only a minuscule amount of the stuff and to be honest, I'm not even sure we can get anything. There may be some cellular material, but I've certainly never heard of it being done…'

  Thorne stood up. 'Hang on, Phil, I'm lost here.., are we not talking about sperm?'

  Hendricks shook his head. 'Tears mate. Dried tears.'

  Thorne's mouth actually fell open a little. Hendricks casually reached down for another can of beer. 'Fucker wasn't wanking while he was killing her, Tom, he was weeping.'

  1983

  Nicklin walked back towards the railway line, his right hand hanging awkwardly, cradling his clammy treasure. In his other hand was the last of a melting chocolate bar. He pushed what was left of it into his mouth, threw the wrapper onto the floor and turned around. He was twenty feet or so away, ready for his run-up, but Palmer had put the bat down.

  Nicklin's face reddened. He had a good mind to stroll back and start smacking Palmer over the head with it, but he stayed calm. 'Come on Mart, pick the bat up. This is going to be brilliant.'

  The bigger boy shook his head, squinting at Nicklin and raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. 'I don't want to.'

  'Why not?'

  'I just don't want to.' They stared at each other for a while. 'Why can't I bowl? You're much better at batting than me…'

  'You can bowl next time.'

  Palmer looked vaguely sick. 'Are we going to do it again? But how…?'

  Nicklin laughed. 'There's loads of them round here. Now stop pissing around, Martin. Pick the bat up.'

  Palmer said nothing, thinking about the two more weeks until they went back to school.

  The rails began to hum; there was a train coming. They watched as it rumbled past, a knackered old engine pulling a couple of rusty hoppers. Within thirty seconds, the only sound was a distant sizzle and the chirrup of a grasshopper from somewhere close by. Palmer looked up. He saw the blue and pink splotches of cornflowers and foxgloves against the green of the embankment on the other side of the tracks. He saw mare's tails and periwinkles at Nicklin's feet. He saw Nicklin just staring at him, with the look that made his palms sweat and his head ache and his bladder start to fill. Still, he didn't want to do this.

  It always came down to something like this. Nicklin would find him and they'd spend half an hour or so down by the railway line, chucking stones at bottles or talking about football, until Nicklin smiled that smile and the games would change. Then they'd be dumping turds through letterboxes, or lobbing eggs at buses, or… this. Palmer could hear a rustling in the long grass on the bank behind him. He wanted to turn around and see what it was, but he couldn't stop looking at Nicklin. Suddenly, Nicklin looked really sad. On the verge of tears almost. Palmer shouted to him.

  'Look, it doesn't really matter does it? We can do something else…'

  Nicklin nodded, tightening his fist, squeezing what was held inside.

  'I know, course we can. I just thought.., you were my mate that's all. If you don't want to be mates, just say, and I'll go. Just say…'

  Palmer felt light-headed. A trickle of sweat was running down his back. He couldn't bear the thought of Nicklin feeling like this. Nicklin was his best mate. He would far rather he was angry with him than feel let down. He felt himself reaching down for the cricket bat, and was elated to look up and see Nicklin beaming at him.

  'That's it, Martin. I knew you would. Ready?'

  Palmer nodded slowly and Nicklin started running towards him, concentrating, and his tongue poking between his teeth. The frog spread its arms and legs out as soon as Nicklin let it go and for a second it looked as if it was flying. Nicklin began to cheer as soon as he opened his hand.

  'Now Mart… now.'

  Palmer shut his eyes and swung the bat.

  It was a wet sound. Dull and sloppy. A small vibration up his arm. Nicklin watched the whole thing, wide-eyed and yelling. His eyes never moved from the glorious blur of blood and green guts that flew gracefully into the nettles on the other side of the railway line. He spun round, his black eyes bright in expectation of the sick, shit-a-brick look on Palmer's pale spotty face. The expression that he always saw afterwards. He froze and narrowed his eyes, focusing on something else: something behind Palmer and above him. Palmer dropped the bat and turned away without looking at the stain on the blade to climb back up the bank. He stopped dead in his tracks. Next to the hole in the chain-link fence, t
he tall grass past her knees, stood a girl with long blonde hair. She looked the same age as him, perhaps a little older. Palmer had never seen anyone as beautiful in his whole life. The girl put two fingers into her mouth and whistled. Then she started to clap, grinning her pretty little head off.

  THREE

  Both Thorne and McEvoy felt distinctly uneasy as they walked across the concourse at Euston station. Neither admitted this to the other and both later wished that they had. Both, as they bought magazines and papers, grabbed last-minute teas or cold drinks, imagined the eyes of a killer on them.

  He had watched Carol Garner in this same place, and followed her. Perhaps he'd been standing where they now stood when he first saw her. Reading a newspaper or listening to a walkman, or gazing through the window of a shop at socks and ties. Thorne looked at the faces of the people around him and wondered if Carol Garner had looked into the eyes of the man who would later murder her. Perhaps she'd smiled at him or asked him the time, or given him a cigarette… They walked towards the platform, past their own tattered posters requesting help and information from the public. There were similar posters at King's Cross and these had given them their only real lead thus far – a partial description. A forty-one-year-old prostitute named Margie Knight had come forward and told them about seeing a woman who she thought might have been Ruth Murray, talking to a man on York Way, a road running along the side of the station. She'd remembered because for a minute or two she'd thought it was a new girl muscling in on her patch.

  It had been dark of course, but there was some light from the shop fronts on the other side of the road. 'An ordinary kind of face really. He was a big bloke though, I can tell you that. Leaning over her, talking to her about something. He was tall. Not fat, you know, just big…'

  She'd claimed that the look she'd had was not good enough to make it worth her trying to do an e-fit. Helping the police was not something Margie felt particularly comfortable with.