Lifeless

by Mark Billingham

  “Maybe,” Thorne said.

  “Had enough yet?” Brendan Maxwell asked.

  Thorne ignored the sarcasm. “Tell me about Spike,” he said.

  As soon as the breakfast rush had started to die down, Thorne had wandered out. Holland had told him earlier that Phil Hendricks would be coming in, and Thorne was keen to see him. He’d headed surreptitiously toward the offices. The admin area was on the far side of the top floor and Maxwell had given him the four-digit staff code to get through each of the doors. There were coded locks on every door in the place.

  With the open-plan arrangement of offices offering little privacy, Thorne, Maxwell, and Hendricks had gathered in a small meeting room at the back of the building. If anyone wandered in, it would look like a caseworker/client conference of some sort, but Thorne wasn’t planning to hang around very long, anyway. It was just a quick catch-up.

  Maxwell was perched on the edge of a table next to Hendricks. “He’s not quite twenty-five, so Spike’s not one of mine yet, but I couldn’t tell you anything even if he was.”

  Hendricks looked sideways at his boyfriend. To Thorne, it seemed like a look that was asking Maxwell to lighten up a little. To bend the rules.

  “Come on, Phil,” Maxwell said. “You know how it works.” He turned back to Thorne. “Look, I had a long chat with your boss about this. There are major confidentiality issues that have to be considered.”

  “Fair enough,” Thorne said. Brigstocke had made the position very clear to him. Unless he had good reason to think it would directly aid the investigation, Thorne would be given no personal information about other rough sleepers.

  “It’s just the way we do things. I’ve had Samaritans on the phone trying to trace someone on behalf of parents. People who just want to know if their kid’s alive or dead. The person they’re looking for might be downstairs drinking tea, but I can’t say anything. I can’t tell them because maybe they’re the reason why the kid’s on the street in the first place, you know?”

  “Just talk to this kid if you’re interested,” Hendricks said.

  Maxwell nodded his agreement, leaned gently against his partner. “Spike’s not shy, I can tell you that much. You’ll get his life story if he’s in the mood to tell you.”

  For a few moments nobody said anything. Hendricks and Maxwell were usually a demonstrative couple physically, but Thorne sensed that, at that moment, Hendricks was a little uncomfortable with Maxwell’s arm resting on his shoulder.

  There had been periods in the past when the relationship between the three of them had become somewhat complex. Thorne thought that Maxwell could, on occasion, be jealous of the platonic relationship he shared with Hendricks. At other times, after a beer or three, Thorne was not beyond wondering if it was he himself who was the jealous one. Right that minute, he was too tired to think much about anything at all. He took a moment. He knew that if he was going to last the course, this was a level of tiredness he was going to have to get used to pretty bloody quickly.

  “So, what’s happening?” he asked Hendricks. Having spoken to Holland, he was practically up to speed, but Hendricks’s take on things, as the civilian member of the team, was always worth getting. “Anything I should know?”

  Hendricks looked thoughtful, then began listing the headlines. “Brigstocke’s talking to a profiler. They’re recanvassing the area where Paddy Hayes was attacked. Everyone’s waiting around for the next body to show up, to be honest. Oh, and Spurs lost three–one at Aston Villa last night.”

  “Cheers…”

  There was a knock and a man stepped smartly into the room. He was somewhere in his late forties with neatly combed brown hair and glasses. He wore jeans that were a fraction too tight and a blue blazer over a checked shirt.

  The man took in the scene quickly, then addressed himself to Maxwell. “Sorry, Brendan. Can I have a word when you’ve got a minute?”

  Maxwell pushed himself away from the table, but before he could say anything, the man was already on his way out.

  “Bollocks,” Maxwell muttered.

  Hendricks leaned toward Thorne, spoke in a theatrical whisper. “Brendan’s new boss.”

  Maxwell looked none too pleased. “He’s not my boss. He’s just the arsehole who controls our budget.” He walked to the door, stopped, and turned back to Thorne. “I was wrong about it taking a couple of weeks, by the way. You look pretty rough already…”

  Thorne watched him leave. There’d been a smile on Maxwell’s face, but it hadn’t taken all the edge off the comment.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Hendricks rubbed his palm rapidly back and forth across his shaved head. “He’s just in a shitty mood because he isn’t getting on with…” He pointed at the door.

  Thorne nodded. “The arsehole. He sounded pretty posh.”

  “Horribly posh. There’s a big consortium running all the outreach stuff now, and they want people with more of a business background. Brendan and a few of the others can’t even fill in a claim form for their expenses, so this bloke’s been shaking things up. There’s a bit of tension.” Hendricks was clearly struck by something hugely funny. “It’s like Brendan’s you, and this new bloke’s Trevor Jesmond.”

  Thorne scowled. “Then Brendan has my deepest sympathy.”

  “Actually, this new bloke’s not quite as bad as Jesmond.”

  “That would be going some…”

  “Stupid bugger had some high-powered banking job before this. Jetting all round the world for multinationals, oil companies, whatever, and he chucks it all in. Takes a massive pay cut to come and work for the care services…”

  “Bloody do-gooder.”

  “Mind you, you could be a paperboy and you’d still be taking a pay cut…”

  Thorne stretched, yawned noisily. “I’d better get back out there. I’m sure you must have things that need cutting up.”

  “I’ll find something.”

  “Brendan told me you think I’m mad,” Thorne said.

  “Only moderately.”

  “I didn’t see what else we could do. Still don’t.”

  Hendricks opened the door. “I’m not worried about the investigation…”

  They both turned at the sound of rain blowing against the window, exchanged the comically world-weary look of a practiced double act.

  “Brendan really doesn’t approve of this,” Thorne said. The silence told him that this was something Hendricks didn’t need to be told; that this was an issue he and Brendan had probably argued about. “Listen, I know how seriously Brendan takes his job, and I know that all he cares about is getting his clients off the streets. So tell him this when you two kiss and make up later on…”

  “Before or after?”

  “I’m serious, Phil. Remind him why we’re doing this again, will you? Tell him that there’s someone else out there who wants to get rough sleepers off the street, and this fucker’s got his own way of doing it…”

  By lunchtime, the London Lift’s café area was busy again. The tables had been pushed closer together and somewhere between thirty and forty people sat eating, or queuing for food at the counter.

  Thorne carried a plate of stew across to a table and got stuck in.

  Around him were a few faces he recognized. He exchanged nods with one or two people he’d run into during the course of the day so far: an old man he’d walked the length of the Strand with; a Glaswegian with a woolly Chelsea hat and no teeth; a scowling, stick-thin Welshman who’d become aggressive when he’d thought Thorne was stealing his begging pitch, and had then turned scarily affectionate once Thorne had explained that he was doing no such thing. On the opposite side of the room, Thorne saw Spike, sitting with his back to him with his arm around the shoulders of an equally skinny girl.

  Again, it was quieter than it might have been. By far the loudest noise came from a big, white-haired man at the other end of the table from Thorne. The man beamed and frowned—pushing a spoon distractedly through his food—far more intent on t
he two-way conversation he was having with himself on an invisible radio. Every half a minute or so he would hiss, imitating the sound of static, before delivering his message. Then, a few seconds later, he would move his hand, switch the “radio” to the other ear, and give himself an answer.

  “This is London calling the president,” he said.

  Spike went to the counter to collect his pudding. On the way back to his table he saw Thorne and shouted a hello. Thorne briefly waved a spoon, then carried on eating. The stew was thick with pearl barley and the gravy was tasteless, but at £1.25 for two courses, he had little cause for complaint.

  Once he’d finished eating, Spike walked over, hand in hand with the girl, to where Thorne was sitting.

  “This is Caroline,” he said. “Caz.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Tom…”

  The girl had red-rimmed eyes and hair like sticky strands of dark toffee. She wore a faded rugby shirt under a zip-up top and multicolored beads and thin leather bracelets around her wrists.

  “Spike and me are engaged,” she said.

  Spike and his girlfriend sat and talked to Thorne while he finished his lunch. They told him about the time when they were asleep and they’d been sprayed with graffiti, and how another time they’d been pissed on by a gang of teenage boys. About how Caroline had once been propositioned by a woman off the telly and told her to go and fuck herself. About the flat they were planning to move into together once they had a bit of luck.

  “It’s well fucking overdue, you know?”

  “I do know,” Thorne said.

  Spike did most of the talking. Thorne figured that this was about as close to normal as the boy ever got: a few hours of balance, of numbness between being wasted and needy. It was a window of opportunity that Thorne knew would get smaller and smaller as time went on.

  “Everyone deserves a bit of luck, don’t they?”

  When Caroline did speak, it was in a low mumble. Her voice had the flat vowels and slightly nasal tone of the West Midlands, but Thorne could hear a stronger influence.

  Smack had an accent of its own.

  There was a sudden, loud hiss from the other end of the table. The big man was receiving another message. Thorne stared at his red face and fat, flapping hands.

  “That’s Radio Bob,” Spike said. He leaned in and shouted. “Oi, Bob. Say hello, you cunt…”

  A pair of small dark eyes blinked and swiveled and settled on Thorne. “Houston, we have a problem,” Radio Bob said.

  Spike sniffed and pointed to a man sitting on an adjacent table. “And that’s Moony,” he said. “He knew Paddy as well.”

  “Did he?”

  Spike shouted, beckoned over a skinny character with a sparse, gingery beard. His straw-colored thatch hid the clumps of dandruff far better than the vast lapels of his dirty brown sports jacket.

  “This is Tom,” Spike said.

  Moony fiddled with the top of what looked like the plastic Coke bottle he had jammed into his pocket. Cooking sherry was Thorne’s best guess. It was certainly a long time since the bottle had seen anything as benign as Coca-Cola.

  “Give me a minute or two,” Moony said, sitting. The voice was high and light; effete, even. “Just one minute, and I’ll tell you what you do. I’ll tell you what you did, I should really say. In your previous life. I’m never wrong, never. I’ve got a knack for it…”

  Thorne spooned stew into his mouth, grunted a marginal interest.

  Spike hauled Caroline to her feet and moved toward the counter. “I’m going to get some tea.” He screwed up his face, put on a posh voice, and brayed, “Perhaps a crumpet, if they have such a thing.”

  Moony watched them go, expressionless, stroking the neck of his bottle.

  Thorne wondered if Moony was a surname or a nickname, but knew better than to ask. If the latter, then its origin was not obvious. Haggard and pockmarked, he certainly didn’t have a moonface. Maybe he was partial to showing people his arse when he’d had a few too many. If so, a sighting might well be in the cards, judging by the state of him. By the stink of him.

  “You knew this poor bastard that was half kicked to death, then?” Thorne spoke without looking up from his dish. “Haynes, was it?”

  “Hayes, right. Paddy Hayes. I knew Paddy well enough, certainly. On a life-support machine, according to the television, but we all know that means ‘vegetable,’ don’t we?”

  “Right.” Thorne had spoken to Holland about Paddy Hayes first thing that morning. There was no change. None was expected.

  “Not that he can think anything now, of course, but if he could, I wonder if he’d still think that everything happened for a reason. I wonder if he’d still be on good terms with Him upstairs. I wonder if he’d be all forgiving.” He scoffed, pointed a finger heavenward. “Mysterious ways, my arse.”

  Thorne folded a slice of tacky white bread in half and began to mop up the last of his stew.

  “I knew the second victim, too, you know.”

  Raymond Mannion. Found fourteen days after the first victim. Killed three streets away. Thorne looked up, but just for a second, doing his best not to appear overly interested.

  “Ray and I talked a great deal,” Moony said. “A great deal.”

  Thorne pushed a dollop of soggy bread into his mouth and wondered who it was that Moony reminded him of. He realized that it was Steve Norman, the press officer. Moony had that same self-importance that Norman had been full of when he’d introduced Thorne to his friend from Sky. He was enjoying himself.

  “What did you talk about?” Thorne asked.

  “When you’ve got as much time to talk as we had, you tend to cover the entire spectrum. He was drug-fucked, so there were occasions when he couldn’t string a sentence together, but we discussed most things at one time or another.”

  “Did you talk to him on the night he was killed?”

  “Hours before he was killed, mate. Just hours before.”

  “Christ.”

  Moony lowered his voice. “Which is how I know he was scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Like I said, he was a junkie, so I thought it was just that at first, you know? Then I could see that something had really put the wind up him. Or someone had…”

  There was certainly an element of grandstanding to the way Moony was telling it, but Thorne thought he could smell truth as well as bullshit.

  “He’d said something before about someone asking him questions. It was just after that first bloke was killed he told me this, the one they can’t identify.”

  “Did you know him?”

  Moony shook his head.

  “So who was asking your friend these questions, then?”

  A flash of gold in his mouth, and a snigger that carried the smell of booze right across the table. “Well, this is the thing, isn’t it? Ray reckoned it was a copper, reckoned that he was looking for the bloke that turned up stiff a couple of days later.”

  Thorne let a look that said, I’m impressed, pass slowly across his face, while his mind raced. Mannion was a druggie. What he told Moony, if he told him anything at all, could easily have been down to a dose of everyday delusional paranoia. But what if this wasn’t a story cooked up in a dirty spoon? Was it at least possible that Raymond Mannion was terrified because he knew something, because he’d seen something? Did he think that someone he’d spoken to had kicked one rough sleeper to death and might fancy coming back for him?

  “So this is what he tells me,” Moony said. “And every time I run into him after that, he looks like he can’t decide whether to leg it or shit himself and, lo and behold, suddenly it’s Ray who’s the one with his brains kicked all over the shop and a twenty-quid note pinned to his fucking chest.” He leaned back, pleased with himself. “You’ve got to admit it’s bloody strange.”

  Thorne grunted. He did think it was strange, but he was already thinking about something else, something Moony had just said. There was only one thing it could possibly mean…r />
  He became aware of Moony talking again and looked up. “What?”

  “She’s pretty fit,” Moony said. He nodded across to where Spike and his girlfriend were talking to one of the care workers. The three of them were laughing, drinking tea. “Her. One-Day Caroline.”

  Thorne’s mind was still in several places at once, but one part of it was curious enough. “Why d’you call her that?”

  Moony looked pleased with himself again, like this was something else he was going to relish passing on. “Because she’s always bleating on about how she’s going to get herself clean ‘one day.’ Then, when she tries to give up, one day is usually as long as she lasts…”

  Thorne looked over, watched Caroline absently trailing her fingers down Spike’s arm as she listened to the care worker, nodding intently.

  He pushed his chair away from the table. “So, come on, then,” he said. “You’ve had more than a couple of minutes. What did I do before this?”

  Moony looked suddenly serious, as if he were getting in touch with something significant, something profound, deep down in his pickled innards. “It’s business, definitely business,” he said. “Some sort of financial thing. Accountancy or stocks and shares. I reckon you were loaded and then you lost the fucking lot. I’m right, aren’t I? I’m never fucking wrong.”

  “Bang on, mate.” Thorne raised his hands. “You are absolutely bang on. That’s seriously spooky.” He stood and walked away, leaving Moony nodding slowly, gently patting the bottle in his pocket as though it were his pet. Or his muse.

  Out near the reception desk, Thorne all but bumped straight into the man who’d walked in when he’d been talking to Maxwell and Hendricks that morning. Maxwell’s new boss…

  “Oh, hi, I’m Lawrence Healey.”

  The tone was not one Thorne had been on the receiving end of for a few days. It was brisk but friendly; respectful, even. Healey proffered a hand and Thorne shook it, wondering for just a second or two if the man knew he was really a police officer.

  “Brendan tells me you’re new.”

  “New-ish,” Thorne said.

  “Well, I know how you feel. I’m a new boy myself. If there’s anything you need, anything you want to talk about, you mustn’t be shy about it. Yes? You know where we are…”