The Dying Hours

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Saw it from his upstairs window.’ Thorne put his drink down. ‘Gave evidence, even though he was being threatened by some of Mercer’s mates. That’s why he got the medal. And Fiona Daniels worked in the bank.’ He looked to Holland. ‘Right?’

  Holland nodded. ‘She gave evidence too. I spoke to Andrew Cooper this afternoon and his dad was the doctor who provided the expert testimony about the gunshot injury. That’s what proved conclusively that the police officer had been shot at point-blank range, that Mercer hadn’t been where he said he was when the gun was fired. Proved it was an execution, pure and simple.’

  Hendricks tore at a large bag of crisps, opened it lengthways and put it in the middle of the table. Thorne and Holland dug in. ‘So, basically, Terry’s getting his afters on the people he thinks were responsible for having him put away. That’s what connects the victims.’

  ‘Basically,’ Thorne said. He looked anything but delighted that the connection had been made. ‘Piece of piss, this job.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Hendricks froze, about to put a handful of crisps into his mouth. ‘How old must Mercer be?’

  ‘He’s seventy-three,’ Holland said.

  ‘There’s going to be others.’ Thorne leaned forward, reached for more crisps. ‘Other witnesses, his legal team. God knows how many coppers. We’ll need to make a list.’ He glanced up at Holland, all three of them well aware that he was the one who would be able to put such a list together, the one with instant access to the computer systems. When the offer was not immediately forthcoming, Thorne stabbed a finger at the sheet of paper in front of him. ‘Listen, thanks again for this, Dave. Seriously.’

  Holland shrugged. ‘Didn’t need to do a lot of digging, if I’m honest. Most of that was straight off the internet.’

  Thorne did not know if Holland was being modest or if he was simply trying to convince himself that he had not done too much that might get him into trouble later on. Looking at the notes, it was clear that plenty of material had been taken off files that would have demanded access to several Met databases. Access that would certainly have been fully logged and monitored.

  ‘God bless Google,’ Hendricks said. ‘I reckon you’ll be making good use of it.’

  ‘Maybe we need to bring somebody else on board,’ Thorne said. ‘Spread the load a bit.’ He looked at Holland. ‘Make it a bit harder for them to join the dots later on, if it comes to that.’

  ‘Such as?’ Holland asked.

  ‘What about Yvonne Kitson?’

  Holland looked unsure. ‘I reckon she’s got more reason than most to say no.’

  ‘I can only ask,’ Thorne said. ‘If she doesn’t want to get involved, I think she’d just pass and forget I ever asked her. Got to be worth a try, though.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Holland said.

  Hendricks began humming a tune and held up four fingers.

  ‘What?’ Thorne looked confused.

  The tune became suddenly recognisable: Elmer Bernstein’s iconic theme from The Magnificent Seven. Hendricks said, ‘I’m Steve McQueen, obviously.’

  Even Holland smiled. ‘I reckon a Mexican bandit would be a damn sight easier to deal with than Terry Mercer. They had the villagers to help them, remember.’

  ‘There’d have to be an address on file,’ Thorne said, thinking out loud. ‘Probation arrangements or whatever. Must be some way to get that without ruffling too many feathers.’

  ‘What about the prison?’ Hendricks asked.

  Thorne nodded. ‘I’ve got a contact up there. On top of which, I reckon it might be useful to find out who was visiting Mercer before he was released.’ Looking at Holland and Hendricks, Thorne could see that they’d already reached the same conclusion he had. What Terry Mercer was doing would have taken a good deal of planning. For the killing to have begun so soon after he was released, there had to have been someone helping him.

  ‘So, what about this list then?’ Hendricks asked. Thorne had been fighting shy of coming straight out and asking Holland, but Hendricks clearly had no compunction.

  Seeing Holland’s hesitation, Thorne stood up, guessing that the time might not be right to push. ‘Who wants another drink?’

  When he returned and handed out the beers, Holland said, ‘It’s going to mean pulling another file.’

  Thorne waited, sipped his beer like he was in no hurry.

  ‘At least one other file.’

  ‘You’ve done more than enough, Dave,’ Thorne said. ‘We’re up and running, so if you’d prefer to call it quits now, that’s not a problem. And however this pans out, it won’t come back on you, I swear.’

  Holland looked at Hendricks, then Thorne, then his beer. ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘In for a penny.’

  Hendricks helped himself to the last of the crisps. Said, ‘In for a P45…’

  EIGHTEEN

  Some of them are dead already, obviously.

  The ones who’d been knocking on a bit even back then – that hatchet-faced old bastard on the bench, who’d droned on about his duty to protect the public, the clear and present danger to society, all that – had happily turned up their toes while he was still inside. Saved him the trouble.

  It’s not a very long list, as it happens.

  He holds it pressed against his chest as he lies on the bed and stares at the small TV in the corner, flicking through the stations, searching for something decent. Some bunch of Geordie kids shouting the odds, getting hammered and trying to sleep with one another. Another lot from Essex doing much the same thing. Gypsies, estate agents, bottle-blonde housewives who’ve been under the sunbed too long…

  The phones that do everything but make the bloody toast, the computers you can hold in your hand, he couldn’t really argue with any of that stuff, but Jesus H, the TV had gone to pot in the last thirty years.

  He can hear the family moving about downstairs. The nephew of an old mate: some jumpy, tattooed coke dealer and his lovely wife; his three lovely kids. He’d heard the whispered argument earlier on, had a good laugh listening to the wife hissing and spitting and demanding to know how long the ‘old man’ was planning on staying. The man of the house begging her to keep it down, promising it wouldn’t be for long and asking her to tell him what the hell else he was supposed to do?

  It wouldn’t be for long, of course. Maybe one more night in their youngest’s bedroom and he’d be on his way. Leave them a nice bottle of Scotch for their trouble, perfume or something for the wife, and a good long look at the front door, just to make sure they’d forget he was ever there.

  He lifts up the creased and tattered piece of paper and looks at his list, the names crossed off and the names of those he’s yet to visit. The one he’s saving until last.

  It’s personal, he wouldn’t deny that, but how could it not be?

  He never had time for busybodies, the ones who stuck their beaks in. They got what they deserved, simple as that, a long-overdue lesson about minding their own business. Them, and the ones who gave their so-called ‘expert’ opinions. People who saw nothing, who weren’t even there, but decided because they’d got letters after their names that they were fully entitled to stand up in court – for a decent fee, let’s not forget that – say their piece and help a jury decide how he was going to be spending the rest of his life.

  Well, it might have taken a while, it might have been years since they’d forgotten his name, but eventually they learned that sometimes it’s best to keep your opinions to yourself.

  They finally found out what he was an expert in.

  He hears the wife coming upstairs to get the kids into bed. She whispers, urging them to be quiet as they pass his door. She raises her voice just a little when the youngest starts whining and demands to know why he can’t sleep in his own room.

  ‘Who is he, anyway?’

  It’s a fair question. One he’d have to think about himself for a minute or two, if he was ever asked.

  It’s strange, but he can’t remember what his ex-wife looks li
ke any more, not clearly, and even when he dreams about his kids – wherever the hell they are – it’s like he’s seeing their faces through bubbly, coloured glass. But the faces of the men and women on his list, the way they were anyway, have never blurred, never so much as gone fuzzy around the edges.

  Funny, he thinks, how love fades so much quicker than hate.

  He smiles as he folds the list up and lays it down on the bedside table. He turns off the television and closes his eyes, listens to the sounds of the kids in the bathroom next door.

  Anyone who said ‘time heals’ had clearly not done any.

  NINETEEN

  ‘He was grizzly all morning,’ Helen said on the other end of the phone. ‘Took me ages to get him ready and get out of the house and he was still crying when I left the childminder’s.’

  ‘Maybe he’s coming down with something.’

  ‘He didn’t have a temperature.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll call if she’s worried.’

  ‘I made sure there was Calpol in his bag anyway.’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Thorne said. ‘He just got out of the wrong side of the cot, that’s all.’

  ‘He is a bit funny sometimes, you know. If you’re not there in the mornings.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve noticed. I mean, kids like routine, don’t they?’

  Thorne said, ‘I suppose,’ and watched a woman light a fresh cigarette from her nub-end. She closed her eyes as she flicked away the butt and the smoke escaped on a single breath. Thorne hadn’t smoked for a long time, but had found himself thinking about it a lot in recent weeks. Perhaps it was because the last time he had smoked heavily was when he had been in uniform first time round. The association, the stress, whatever.

  He wondered if the woman would give him one if he asked.

  ‘What have you got on today, then?’

  ‘I’m going to catch up on some paperwork,’ Thorne said. ‘Get it all out of the way before tomorrow.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘And there’s a record fair in Camden, so I might wander down there if I get time.’

  ‘Have fun,’ Helen said. ‘How was Phil, by the way?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘Oh, he was fine,’ Thorne said.

  ‘What about this boyfriend stuff?’

  Thorne remembered the specifics of his lie. ‘He’s just being a drama queen,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to whinge, really.’ He glanced across and saw that the smoker had moved away. ‘Listen, I thought I might cook tonight.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘A chilli or something.’

  ‘You want me to get the stuff?’

  ‘No, I can do it,’ Thorne said. ‘I should be home by the time you get back—’

  ‘Oh listen, I told Jenny she could come round for dinner tomorrow night, is that OK? I haven’t seen her for a while, so…’

  Helen’s sister. Thorne had only met her once and he was not sure that she altogether approved of him and Helen living together. Being together. ‘Yeah, course.’

  ‘Not a big deal and she won’t stay late. We’ll probably just get a Chinese or whatever.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Great,’ Helen said. ‘Thanks. Oh, and I don’t suppose you fancy picking Alfie up later, do you?’

  Thorne hesitated; his day, for the most part, dependent on others. ‘Yeah, that’s probably all right.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’ll call you if anything comes up.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem though…’

  When Helen had hung up, Thorne turned and walked back into St Pancras. The station had certainly been given one hell of an impressive makeover – the sculptures, the statues of lovers and poets, the longest champagne bar in Europe – though Thorne wondered, sumptuous as it undoubtedly was, why it seemed easier to buy a glass of Moët & Chandon or a designer suit than it was to find the platforms or the timetable. Annoyed, after walking around the concourse for ten minutes, he finally found the information board.

  There was a train to Market Harborough in twenty minutes.

  He wasn’t sure if errant senior members of the Prison Service ever got slapped back down to the role of humble ‘screw’, but they certainly seemed to move around every bit as much as police officers. Thorne had known Caroline Dunn for the best part of ten years, during which time she had served on the management teams at Chelmsford, Wakefield and Long Lartin. She had been a deputy governor at HMP Gartree for the last eighteen months. The prison held more murderers than any other in the country, with lifers accounting for 85 per cent of its seven hundred inmates.

  Sitting in Dunn’s office, Thorne thanked her for making time to see him at such short notice.

  ‘It sounded interesting,’ she said. ‘It’s usually interesting when it’s you.’

  ‘You need to get out more,’ he said.

  Dunn laughed, loud and dirty. She was somewhere in her mid-fifties, with dyed blonde hair and a fraction too much make-up. Sitting across from her, Thorne realised that she reminded him a little of Jacqui Gibbs.

  More than once in recent days, Thorne had been happy to let those he was speaking to believe he was a detective and make no real effort to convince them otherwise. It was a risk, but one he had decided was worth taking. He would take no such chances with a deputy governor, who, for all he knew, might well be aware of the fact anyway.

  She certainly did not seem overly surprised when he told her.

  ‘So, come on then,’ Dunn said. ‘What did you do?’

  Thorne shrugged, the tease deliberate.

  ‘I could turn Her Majesty to the wall, if you like?’

  Thorne looked at the picture high on a wall to his left. Built in the mid-sixties, Gartree was a relatively modern institution and was certainly run in accordance with a progressive penal policy, but like many prisons in the system it nevertheless had a thriving drug trade, a racism problem and a portrait of the Queen on the wall of the governor’s office.

  ‘I was stupid,’ Thorne said. ‘That’s all.’

  Dunn leaned back in her chair and grinned. ‘You know, I’ve got a list of coppers, more than you’d think actually, who I always thought might mess up somewhere along the line and wind up inside one day.’

  ‘I’m on the list, am I?’

  ‘You’re top,’ Dunn said.

  Now it was Thorne’s turn to laugh, or at least to give a decent impression of someone who was laughing. ‘It was nothing that bad, Caroline. I promise.’

  ‘If you were to end up in here, I couldn’t guarantee any special treatment, you know that.’ She was still smiling. ‘An extra pillow maybe, and that’s about it.’

  The mild flirtation done with – Dunn was a happily married mother of four – they got down to business. She opened the bulging manila folder on her desk and began leafing through the documents inside. She glanced up at Thorne, said, ‘So what’s our lovely Terence been up to?’

  ‘Nothing serious,’ Thorne said. Then he took a leap. He was fairly confident that, on his release, Mercer would not have given the authorities any address he was intending to spend any time at and would certainly not have been staying in regular contact with the probation services as he should have. ‘It seems that he’s violated the terms of his licence.’ He was fairly sure that he was on safe ground, but still he felt another small crack appear in the limb he was out on.

  Dunn sighed, having clearly heard the same story many times, and scanned the document in front of her. ‘Right, so you’ve spoken to Alison Macken?’

  Thorne nodded. Without having had to ask, he had been given the name of Terry Mercer’s probation officer.

  One job done.

  ‘It’s come through to us,’ Thorne said, ‘and we’re trying to trace him, but there’s been some high-level discussion about just how much we should prioritise this. The usual bullshit. Does he still represent a danger to society, al
l that.’

  Dunn closed her folder and leaned back. ‘Look, I know what he was in for,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t be overly concerned.’

  ‘That’s good to hear.’

  ‘You’re not to quote me on that, obviously. I don’t want a knock on the door in six months when he runs into McDonald’s with a machine gun.’ She shrugged. ‘He had a reputation early on and I think he played up to it. There was that business with a prison officer a few years after he went inside, but actually I got on with him perfectly well. People change, you know? They get old.’

  Though she had obviously been joking at the time, Thorne felt a little better about what Dunn had said earlier. That stuff about the list. She was clearly not quite the judge of character he had thought she was.

  ‘Happens to us all,’ he said.

  ‘Since I took this job we’ve actually been doing a lot that’s geared towards the older prisoners. We had quite a few in their late sixties and seventies and it was felt… well, I felt that we should try and do a bit more for them.’

  ‘What, like bingo?’ Thorne asked.

  Dunn flashed him a sarcastic smile. ‘We work with them to promote access to rights and services for the elderly. Most of them are going to need a lot more looking after when they get outside.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Thorne said, thinking that Terry Mercer had adopted a rather different approach when it came to taking care of the elderly. ‘Can you let me have a list of his visitors in the last year or so? Might give us a lead in terms of trying to find him.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Dunn said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because that is a very short list. Not a soul on it.’

  ‘No visitors at all?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘What about family?’

  She shook her head. ‘Mercer hasn’t had a visitor in years. As far as I know there’s been no contact at all with his family, not for a very long time. I got the impression he didn’t really mind, or at the very least that he was used to it.’

  Thorne thought for a few moments. ‘Was there anybody he was particularly matey with in here? Anybody he hung around with, who he might still be in touch with?’