Scaredy cat tt-2

by Mark Billingham

  A wise choice. Like ordering an expensive bottle of wine in some up-its-own-arse restaurant. A wise choice if I may say so, sir… It quickly became apparent to him that he was not going to get any work done. He could concentrate on nothing but the enterprise ahead. How was he going to kill her? Where? Jesus, so much excitement ahead, so many brilliant bits of it all left to work out…

  No wonder he couldn't be bothered with paperwork. That had always been his way though: scan the horizon, find the source of the new adventure and then forget everything else. Throw yourself into it, take others with you if they had the bottle to come, wring each last ounce of life out of it, every drop of juice… He'd pick up a nice bottle of something on the way home, Caroline would like that. She'd forgiven him for Monday night, suggested that maybe he was working too hard, getting stressed out. He'd. agreed, said that yes, perhaps he had taken on a bit much, laughed to himself about that when he was alone.

  Dinner and some TV, and then the radio later, after Caroline had gone up to bed. He was thinking about it already, but later, alone, he'd decide on the final wording. The wording of this first part at any rate. It wasn't going to happen immediately, of course. He'd need to make it irresistible and that would take time. The time frame was still a little vague. He only had a provisional date in mind for the big event itself, but he would start tonight.

  Sending out the invite.

  'We'll see the fucking prison in a minute, Palmer. It's less than half a mile.' Thorne was trying not to shout. 'Once I pull up to the barrier, that's it. You can forget anything else you might want to say to me, ever. If I don't hear something from you in the next few minutes, I stop listening. Do you understand?'

  Thorne wasn't sure he understood himself. He wasn't certain what he was threatening Palmer with. All he knew was that Palmer had seemed keen to tell him something. He always had. He suddenly wondered if all this time it had simply been the confession about exposing himself to Karen McMahon. That was certainly something about which he'd been obsessed. Thorne's hands were clammy on the wheel. Had he seen salvation or inspiration in what was nothing more than a teenager's guilt about getting his cock out?

  No, there had to be something else. Something that could point Thorne towards Nicklin.

  'What is it, Palmer?'

  Palmer, bouncing his handcuffed wrists on his knees, those annoying little nods…

  'For Christ's sake, you walked into a police station with a gun. You walked in bleeding. I saw how desperate you were, how fucked up. You said you were sick of it, you said you would do anything to help. You said you wanted to stop him.'

  'I do.'

  Thorne almost jumped. Palmer's first words since the railway embankment.

  'So tell me, then. What is it? What was it you were talking about in the prison the other day?'

  As Thorne asked the question, the car turned a corner and Belmarsh came into view, the lights of the perimeter fence just a thousand yards away, dancing as the light dimmed.

  'Here we go, Palmer, home sweet home.' Palmer made a noise, something like a growl. 'Not very nice is it? Why not go back in feeling like you've done something useful. You can't make up for the women you killed, but you can help me try and stop any more dying…'

  Palmer shaking his head, wrestling with something. Thorne no longer trying not to shout.

  'Come on!'

  They slowed down, stopping at the point opposite the main drive, the T-junction where they had to wait before crossing the main carriageway. Headlights sped towards them from their left, a gap in the traffic maybe half a minute away. The Vectra pulled out to come up alongside them.

  'I fucking mean it. I'm walking away…'

  The driver of the Vectra looked across at Thorne, waiting for the confirmation that everything was hunky-dory, looking for the signal that they could go.

  'Give me something on Nicklin. I know there's something you aren't saying…'

  Just a couple more cars.

  Thorne glanced to his right. 'How much more guilty do you want to feel? How much more fucking guilty?'

  Thorne waved. The Vectra nosed forward waiting for the gap. Palmer's body tensing, reaching for something.

  'Tell me about Smart. Tell me what you're thinking. Please..'

  The Vectra sounded its horn, the detective nearest Thorne's window raised an arm.

  'Come on? Thorne shouted, as the car alongside him roared away to the right. Thorne watched it go, slammed his hands on the dashboard, took his foot from the brake. 'Too late…'

  The voice from the back of the car: 'I think he might be a police officer: Thorne's left foot slipped from the clutch. The car stalled and lurched forward. He rocked back in his seat, and was about to turn round when his head was pushed violently forward. Thorne was still conscious as his face bounced off the worn vinyl of the steering wheel, but not for very long.

  Might be seconds.., might be minutes.., how long?

  Thorne looked at the clock on the dash, waited for his vision to clear.

  Minutes. Just a few…

  He turned round slowly. He felt like cement had been poured in through both his ears. Palmer was gone. The back door was open. Where…? What was it he said…?

  Thorne looked around wildly, each eye movement like a punch as he scanned the area, desperate to see Palmer lurching away into the distance. Headlights from the cars that continued to rush past lit the darkening stain down his shirt, the string of scarlet snot that dripped from the steering wheel.

  A hundred yards behind the car was a fence maybe six or seven feet high. Up onto the telephone junction box there and over. Away into the building site.

  Piece of piss. Could he climb the fence with cuffs on? Probably. Taken the key anyway. Away and gone…

  Thorne opened the door and all but fell out onto the road. He stood up and stumbled a few feet forward. He raised an arm and waved at the oncoming traffic.

  Nobody stopped.

  Nobody gives a fuck. No trust in anyone these days. Six days a week, for the past eighteen months in that shop. Maybe if I produced my warrant card, showed them I was a policeman…,

  The Mondeo's headlights were still on. Thorne winced as he brought a hand to his shattered nose and stepped into their beam. The car that rushed past him blared its horn as Thorne staggered across the carriageway through a tunnel of light, towards the prison.

  TWENTY-THREE

  'Jesus, Tom. Do you feel OK?' Brigstocke looked shocked and concerned. The nose had swelled grotesquely almost immediately, and now, two days later, the rest of Thorne's face had caught up. He had huge dark rings under his eyes and blue-black bruises along each cheekbone.

  'I feel fine,' Thorne said. 'I look like a fucking panda but I feel fine…'

  The concern vanished from Brigstocke's face. 'That's very fitting, because pandas are an endangered species as well, aren't they? What the fuck did you think you were doing?'

  There had been occasions in the past when Tom Thorne would have fought his corner a little at this point. Stood his ground and made a speech about ends and means. Today, he couldn't be arsed.

  'I fucked up.'

  Brigstocke had stood up on Thorne's appearance in the doorway. Now, he slumped back down behind his desk. 'Listen, I've got to serve you with this.' He handed Thorne a piece of paper. 'It's a Regulation 7 notice. The DPS want to see you…'

  Thorne had expected nothing less. The Directorate of Professional Standards – another stupid American name for what had used to be the CIB, the Complaints Investigation Bureau: the team that was there to root out corruption, to weed out the bad apples. The same organisation that had recently been involved in a well-publicised operation to deal with officers moonlighting as extras on The Bill, and were currently investigating a complaint that an officer had broken wind during a raid and failed to apologise.

  'I can't wait,' Thorne said.

  'What about the nose?'

  'No picking, no sneezing. I go back in a week or so when the swelling's gone down
. Depending on how it looks, they either do nothing, or break it again, re-set it.'

  'Do they need volunteers?'

  Thorne crossed to the other desk and sat down. 'What are you doing about Palmer?'

  'What are we doing? You're priceless…'

  'Sorry. I know that sounded…'

  'We're doing what you'd expect, which is more than you did, isn't it?

  The media are all over this and we'll have to play along a bit if we want to use them. Somebody knows where Palmer's gone and the only way we're going to find them is through the papers, the TV…'

  As if on cue, Steve Norman strolled into the office.

  'Russell… DI Thorne…'

  Brigstocke stood up. Thorne, for no good reason, found himself wearily doing the same. 'I'm going to get coffees,' Brigstocke said, moving to the door. 'Everybody want one?'

  Thorne nodded. Norman grunted his assent as he dropped a pile of newspapers onto the desk. He picked off the top one and turned to Thorne, holding it up.

  'You certainly know how to generate a good story, Thorne.'

  The front page of the tabloid was almost filled with a photo of Martin Palmer. The headline was simple and dramatic. What the Americans called a 'scarehead'…

  KILLER ON THE RUN.

  Thorne stepped around the desk. He was tired, in pain and in no mood for another shouting match. 'Listen, Norman…'

  Norman raised a hand to stop him and looked surprised when it did the trick. 'Look, before this kicks off, I want to apologise for the argument the other week. I was being an arsehole, OK? I've been meaning to come in and sort it out, but work's been piling up.'

  Thorne was completely on the back foot. 'Right…'

  'Things had been a bit tricky at home to tell you the truth, and I was just on a short fuse. It was out of order, and I know we're not going to be best mates but there's no point us being at loggerheads, is there?

  Especially not now. Fair enough?'

  Thorne nodded, wondering if he was suffering with delayed concussion. Norman thrust a finger at the front of the paper. 'Actually, this is exactly what we need. The phones have been ringing all morning. We'll probably have him back in custody by tea time.' Norman's expression darkened a little as he pulled out another paper from further down the pile. 'Did you see yesterday's?'

  Thorne shook his head. He'd been lying in a darkened room most of the day, waiting to stop feeling like somebody had their boot on his face. This time the picture on the front page of the paper was far more indistinct. Two figures, shot with a zoom probably, from hundreds of feet away, like one of those blurry photos of Bigfoot or the Beast of Bodkin.

  Thorne and Palmer at Karen McMahon's grave.

  'This one we didn't give them,' Norman said. 'Somebody did though. Somebody who's getting a bit too pally with the press.'

  Distasteful as it was, Thorne had to agree. Bracher was probably responsible for the early stuff the papers had got hold of, but this had to be down to someone on the team. 'I'll find out who it is.'

  'Good. I have to say, though, that it's doing us more good than anything else at the moment. We've actually started feeding them a bit more on Karen McMahon.' Thorne looked slightly confused. 'They formally identified her thirty-six hours ago. Around the time this was taken.'

  Thorne needed to catch up fast. He'd been out of the loop since he'd put Palmer in the back of the Mondeo on Thursday afternoon and driven him back to the railway embankment.

  'I think he might be a police officer…'

  'There's a lot of human interest there,' Norman said. 'Which they love of course. Fifteen years of torment for the parents, all that. Plus, the simple fact that a murder's been solved. Finding that body has done everybody a lot of favours. We can claw back a bit of lost ground.'

  The stabbing pain that ran across Thorne's face cranked up a notch. He reached into his jacket pocket for the painkillers. 'I found one body, then lost another.'

  Norman laughed, a wheezy snicker. 'Right. But they kind of cancel each other out.' Norman had a newspaper in each hand. He held them up in turn to illustrate his argument. 'Thanks to the brownie points we earn for finding Karen McMahon, we can let them go to town with Palmer's escape, and hopefully we can keep one or two of the less impressive procedural details out of it.'

  Less impressive procedural details?

  'Right,' Thorne said. 'Obviously I'd be grateful…'

  Thorne poured himself a glass of water. He needed it to swallow the pills and to take a very unpleasant taste out of his mouth. As he threw his head back, he caught sight of Brigstocke heading towards them across the incident room with three plastic cups.

  'Coffee's here…'

  'Great.' Norman's mobile rang. He looked at the screen. 'Excuse me, I need to take this…'

  Thorne watched as Norman took the call, turning away and murmuring into his phone. He was finding it hard to distinguish between the pain and disorder colliding in his head like a pair of very long trains, ploughing endlessly into each other. Norman apologising… one body lost, one body found.., a leak on the investigation.., the DPS… Palmer's tone of voice in the car when he said what he said about Nicklin.

  Then, there was the one less-than-impressive procedural detail he hadn't told them about at all…

  McEvoy was logged on to the Internet. Holland hadn't recognised the page she'd had up on screen, but the glimpse he'd caught before she saw him and quit, gave him the idea it might be a mail server. They were not supposed to use the system to send or receive personal e-marls, but Holland said nothing. In the scheme of things it was pretty trivial, and besides, he knew how any comment of that sort would be taken.

  'At least you're not leaving when I come into the office. We must be making progress.'

  McEvoy shrugged, not looking up. 'Can't let you accuse me of not doing my job properly.'

  Holland saw no point in pussyfooting around the issue. He opened his mouth and said it. 'I think one of us needs to transfer off this team.' Her face told him that he'd shaken her. 'Come on, you must have been thinking about it, it's-'

  She cut him off. 'Well I'm not fucking going.'

  'Sarah…'

  'Right, course. By one of us, you mean me. Well?'

  Now would be the time to walk away if he was going to; to forget he'd brought it up and make the best of it. He hesitated. 'Yes.'

  'Forget it.'

  'You're the one with the problem, not me.'

  'Are you sure?'

  'Don't psychoanalyse me. I'm not the one snorting away my wages, fucking everything up, putting the lives of my colleagues at risk…'

  The colour sprang into McEvoy's face. She could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. 'When? Tell me when?'

  'Maybe never. Maybe half an hour from now…' Holland wanted so much to cross the five feet of space between them, right then, and take hold of her. He couldn't.

  'Nobody else knows about this, Dave.' McEvoy watched herself, feeling like a ditzy blonde trying to avoid a speeding ticket. Loathing it.

  'Let's just forget all the shit that's happened. Dave…?'

  'Nobody else knows for now. I don't think you're doing a very good job of hiding it.'

  McEvoy changed tack in a second. 'You go to Brigstocke and I'll be right behind you. I'll tell him you've been harassing me. They'll think you're making it up because I wouldn't fuck you…'

  Holland could see that she was desperate, backed into a corner. He knew that she was clinging to the ledge by her fingernails, saying things she didn't mean and would never carry through, but still his temper got the better of him. He marched across the office, picked up the newspaper from the top of a filing cabinet and threw it down in front of her.

  McEvoy stared down at the picture of Thorne and Palmer at the drainage ditch.

  'You talk to anybody; Holland said, 'and you'll be opening a major can of fucking worms.'

  McEvoy looked up at him, confused. 'You think I'm the leak?'

  'I can't afford to waste i
t, you said.' Holland snatched up the paper, screwed it into a ball. 'Shit, this is easy money, isn't it? A tip here, a photo opportunity there, that's you sorted for the week. For all I know, they probably fix you up with the coke themselves, save messing about with cash.'

  'Dave…'

  'Just admit it, you did, didn't you? Just fucking well admit it…'

  Holland saw McEvoy's eyes flicker, saw her body tense. He turned to see Thorne standing in the doorway. There was no awkward pause, no meaningful silence. McEvoy was up and moving towards the door, wisecracking to Thorne on her way out as if nothing had happened.

  'Some people around here are obviously feeling as shitty as you look…'

  Then there was a silence.

  Thorne closed the door, moved into the room. 'Dave, is there a problem between you and Sarah?' Holland said nothing. Thorne felt hot and hassled. He did not want any more uncertainty, any more disorder.

  'DC Holland, is there a problem between yourself and Detective Sergeant McEvoy?'

  Holland looked at Thorne. Later, standing at bars or staring up at a striplight, he would remember this moment. In the months and the years to come, sitting on the side of the bed in the middle of the night, Sophie stirring next to him, he would look back and picture this instant. He would recall every detail of Thorne's bruised face, every nuance of his bruising voice. He would remember, and wish to God that he'd told the truth.

  Holland looked at Thorne. 'No, sir.'

  Thorne let out a long slow breath and moved across to the window. He looked down, hoping to see something that might raise his spirits. Some cadets marching badly would do the trick. Better yet, a group of them forming a human pyramid, mounted on the back of two motorbikes like they used to do on those displays when he was a kid… There was just a pair of civilian staff smoking in a doorway. Thorne turned and walked back across the room. He was feeling aimless, untrusted, unnecessary. He opened the door of the office, looked out across the incident room. In the far corner he saw Norman standing over McEvoy's desk. She said something that made him laugh.